I wouldn’t say he’s obsessed with death at all. I think all of us are to a certain degree, it’s what comes at the end! I think if anything, Van Sant seems to be militantly gay. Speaking as a gay man myself, I get exhausted with some of his films that seem to shove the homosexual “it’s okay to be gay” message down my throat. I personally don’t give a damn whether it’s okay to be gay or not – nor do I care how the majority of the world feels about this. Van Sant is different I assume.
Mala Noche was really a great film, being that it was his first. The homoeroticism is wide open here, but the camerawork and originality trumps the “look we’re gay and it’s ok” message
My Own Private Idaho is probably his masterpiece. Gay characters, brilliantly filmed, based on legitimate literary source and chock full of great actors – he was on the right path, and then…
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues – granted, this movie makes me laugh like none other…but it’s impossible to believe. It was noble of him to give the lesbians a voice after MOPI, but really now…come on…John Hurt made this movie viewable for me.
Elephant – oh lord that’s just moronic, the entire movie was fine up until we had to shove the two boys in a shower together and let them make out a little…why, why?
Last Days – that one is fine, albeit he’s trying something new so the whole time you feel something is missing (it’s the gayness)
Psycho – yeah um…I’m still trying to figure that one out
Good Will Humping – oh wait, that wasn’t actually Van Sant…his film was fine (I hate Matt Damon though)
Milk – uh…
I understand gay people want to be heard and respected, but for some of us gays in the world – having this message shoved down our throats leads us to feel like we’re more of a militant group, angry/loud/revengeful. I appreciate Van Sant trying to deliver a socially conscious theme in all his films, but honestly…not EVERY film needs to have a homoerotic moment to appease all his gay fans.
Well, being that Van Sandt IS openly gay, I feel the whole point of his emphasis on the gay element in his films is because it’s a reflection of who he is and where he’s been. I don’t think he’s trying to tell gay people that it’s “OK to be gay.” He’s an auteur, and his films are just an extension of himself. As far as the death themes, I believe that is just a “mortality” phase he went through. Perhaps he is still going through, but God I hope not. I hated those films.
Elephant and Last Days have obvious correlatives in real life that I think Van Sant felt were cultural significant to make films about—Columbine and Kurt Cobain’s suicide. Van Sant wrote a novel called Pink
http://www.salon.com/books/int/1997/10/24int.html
that’s inspired by River Phoenix’s death, so perhaps some of that process worked its way into his filmmaking as well.On Last Days:
http://www.greencine.com/article?action=view&articleID=225
Van Sant: So I can only give a partial answer. But I think that moment [Cobain’s death] is where all of it just stopped abruptly. There was this big thing that came out of the sky and stopped alternative music. And it became fake alternative music the day after. It was so abrupt. Even though none of that is in the movie, it was probably the impetus: the notoriety of this character and what it meant. That was probably one thing, having been part of something similar myself in Portland, having gotten something going and having stayed in Portland and having had an awkward relationship to my own city where I came from, and having bought a house that cost a lot of money, which he had also done. He had done these things that were similar. Living in LA some of the time, going back and forth, all that stuff. I guess I just drew parallels. "
On the so-called “Trilogy of Death”:
http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2007/10/gus_van_sant_on_his_failed.html
I’ve heard your last three films — Gerry, Elephant, and Last Days — referred to as a Trilogy of Death. Was that your idea?
Van Sant: Yes, and I’ve referred to it that way. Death is a plot device in my other films, like Drugstore Cowboy or Idaho or To Die For. Good Will Hunting didn’t have a death, but I tried to put one in. I tried to kill Chuckie [Ben Affleck’s character]. There was actually a wake scene and everything. But I think it was getting to be too much my movie, and they decided to go back to what they had before. But in all these cases, death was just a device — it wasn’t really the specter of death. The later films were conceived of as meditations on death: death by misadventure in Gerry, death by another person in Elephant, and death by your own hand in Last Days.
What prompted all that?
Van Sant: Yes—Probably just middle age. [Laughs.]
His best film about death is My Own Private Idaho. No one actually dies, except Bob and the father, but the terrible isolation of the River Phoenix character, as well as his tumbling into narcolepsy, are metaphors for death — as is the general broken heartedness. Those vast desert landscapes — that’s death. That painful laying awake as the guy you love bangs the shit out of a girl in the upstairs room — death.
The so-called death trilogy (who comes up with these names?) is, I think, just a way of linking three of Van Sant’s experimental, “story-less” films. Death is actually not death in Elephant — the living people are the ones who are dead, and the heroes love death so much that it becomes something else. It becomes a kind of lover. Last Days — well, yes, he dies, but it’s also a film about music, rock legends, betrayal, futile attempts at liberation, Top 40 devouring alternative, and choosing to live the kind of life you want/need to live. Gerry — no one dies in Gerry, both Gerries are the same Gerry all along, and while I don’t think Damon leaves the desert cured of schizophrenia, he has nonetheless reached some point of integrating selves and realities. But, as usual with Van Sant, reality is the craziest thing of all, because that strange father and son who pick him up — well, if anything’s symbolic of death in Gerry, it’s them.
If you notice, most of the movies he’s made were not written by him besides My Own Private Idaho, and Drug Induced Cowboy. Or rather, the concept was not originally his idea. Gerry is supposedly based off something that happened, as is Elephant, Last Days, and Paranoid Park is a book. There is also more of a story with his four Thousand’s films than the others. They just have less plot. There was just one Gerry? Really? So, that’s his Persona then.
It is like a male Persona, and I sometimes think that Van Sant’s whole point in these moody, elliptical character studies is to dwell on male actors in such a way as to prove that men are as enigmatic, mysterious and profound as women are. So it’s more about life, ultimately.
Kenicky Donald
Have their been any events in his life that have inspired his interest with death or is it just the events caused by death that he’s interested in? Why?
Im thinking mostly about; Last Days, Paranoid Park, Elephant and Gerry.