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Gus Van Sant (1952 - )


No make-up is better than make-up.
No light is better than light.
No cutting is better than cutting.
A fabricated story isn't as good as
something that's more organic.


Filmography

Milk (2008)

Paranoid Park (2007)

First Kiss - segment of Chacun son cinéma... / To Each His Cinema (2007)

Le Marais - segment of Paris, je t'aime (2006)

Last Days (2005) (DVD Beaver)

Elephant (2003)

Gerry (2002)

Finding Forrester (2000)

Psycho (1998)

Good Will Hunting (1997)

To Die For (1995)

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1993)

My Own Private Idaho (1991) (DVD Beaver)

Drugstore Cowboy (1989) (DVD Beaver)

Mala Noche (1985) (Criterion / Mk2)


Forum Discussion

Gus Van Sant's Death Trilogy: Gerry, Elephant and Last Days.


Web Resources

The Wrong Stuff (Finding Forrester) by John Patterson at The Guardian.

Sands of Time (interview about Gerry) by Scott Macaulay at Filmmaker Magazine.

Review of Gerry by Ryan Gilbey at Sight & Sound.

The Searchers - The Influence of Anxiety (review of Gerry) by J. Hoberman at The Village Voice.

Interview about Elephant by Steve Head at IGN.

Beauty and the Banal (William Eggleston and Elephant) by Steve Rose at The Guardian.

Too Cool for School: Social Problems in Elephant by Tony McKibbin at Senses of Cinema.

Sublime Anarchy in Gus Van Sant's Elephant by Neera Scott at Senses of Cinema.

Interview about Last Days by Sean Axmaker at Greencine.

Observable Death: Gus Van Sant's Last Days by John Lars Ericson at Senses of Cinema.

Déjà Vu by Joshua Clover at the Village Voice.

Sound Garden by Joshua Land at The Village Voice.

All This Useless Beauty (interview about Last Days) by Robert Christgau at The Village Voice.

His Own Private Biopic by Rob Nelson at The Village Voice.

Interview about Le Marais by Jason Guerrasio at Filmmaker Magazine.

Cannes 2007: Hell Is Not Other People (spotlight on Paranoid Park) by Mark Peranson at Cinema Scope.

Roll Forever (interview about Andy Warhol) by Amy Taubin at Sight & Sound.

Down With the Kids (interview about Paranoid Park) by Matthew Hays at the Guardian.


Print Material

Portland's Butterfly by Shawn Lewy (Sight & Sound, March 2001, p.32-34).

Sundance 2002: New Directions by Rachael K. Bosley (American Cinematographer, April 2002, Gerry: p.92-98).

Part of the Problem by Amy Taubin and Kent Jones (Film Comment, September/October 2003, p.26-33).

Walking the Halls of Fate by Patricia Thomson (American Cinematographer, October 2003, p.60-71).

Shock Corridors by S.F. Said (Sight & Sound, February 2004, p.16-18).

Requiem for a Rock Star by Chris Pizzello (American Cinematographer, August 2005, p.24-27).

Blurred Exit by Amy Taubin (Sight & Sound, September 2005, p.16-19).


Books

Pink by Gus Van Sant (Faber & Faber, 1998).

American Independent Cinema by Geoff King (I.B. Tauris, 2005).

for me, gvs begins and ends with 'drugstore cowboy'. nothing else he did comes even close to this great film. and he really captured the look of the 1970's, at least in the first half of movie. i used to kind of like 'my own private idaho', but it didn't hold up on repeated viewings.

i haven't seen
Restless (2011)
Paranoid Park (2007)
Last Days (2005)
Elephant (2003)
Gerry (2002)
Finding Forrester (2000) (?)

i just gave up on him after a while. he doesn't tell stories that are of interest to me.

Wildly erratic, but for my money, he's made five, maybe six really good films, with at least one being a genuine masterpiece. In order of preference:

1. Elephant
2. My Own Private Idaho
3. Drugstore Cowboy
4. Mala Noche
5. Paranoid Park
6. To Die For

Are we in the rating-stages now?

Van Sant is one of my favorite directors - the only true misfire of his I have seen is Promised Land.

The top 3 hearthesilence posted could as well be mine. Paranoid Park and the (in film-experts-circles quite underrated) Good Will Hunting follow. How'd you like THEM apples?

I also am very fond of Last Days and Restless. While Restless is a bit flawed, Wasikowska turns in a fantastic performance. In-between all the twee, there's a very heartfelt story. It might take repeated watches, but I still think it's quite an achievement. Last Days is abrasive, but I do happen to count "In Utero" as one of my favorite records - anybody even mildly interested in Cobain should find this one engrossing.

Finding Forrester feels like a sequel to Good Will Hunting in aesthetics and overall thematics, and also happens to be underrated.

It's barely anecdotal but I found this interesting tidbit on reddit lately, concerning someone who delivered room service to Scott Weiland who was in the middle of watching Last Days.

New Danny Brown video directed by Jonah Hill, featuring Gus Van Sant (NSFL)

Not Safe For Lunch?

It will probably ruin your appetite.

Van Sant to direct the entire second season of Feud, which will adapt Laurence Leamer's Capote's Women and star Naomi Watts

With Tom Robbins’ recent passing, I’ve been thinking about Van Sant’s almost universally drubbed adaptation of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. Jonathan Rosenbaum enjoyed both the vastly different 1993 festival cut of it and the theatrically released version. It seems that the Academy has both prints and an interpositive of the pre-wide release version. I wish an entity like the American Cinematheque would screen it, as I doubt any boutique label would try to invest in a release of either iteration.

Shelley Duvall had tried to interest Hal Ashby in signing on to direct an adaptation of the novel in 1982

beamish14 wrote: Thu Mar 20, 2025 5:25 am With Tom Robbins’ recent passing, I’ve been thinking about Van Sant’s almost universally drubbed adaptation of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. Jonathan Rosenbaum enjoyed both the vastly different 1993 festival cut of it and the theatrically released version. It seems that the Academy has both prints and an interpositive of the pre-wide release version. I wish an entity like the American Cinematheque would screen it, as I doubt any boutique label would try to invest in a release of either iteration.

Shelley Duvall had tried to interest Hal Ashby in signing on to direct an adaptation of the novel in 1982

If ever there was a film that needed a reappraisal, it's this one. I had no idea about the festival cut, but my indifference to the theatrical has softened over the years. I don't know if it'll ever be a "right" time for that appraisal, unfortunately (it's Tom Robbins material, after all), but Gus was logically firing on all cylinders, at least in the visual sense, perhaps not the editorial one.

Somewhere between this & David Lynch's The Cowboy & The Frenchman (1988) is probably the most annoying & boring western-themed film imaginable, but I would absolutely go all-in for extended versions of either one (also, somehow that ideal is probably Dudes (1987)) :-#

I could see Vinegar Syndrome going after this if the rights were available. It's locked up in the Fine Line Features vault from which few films seem able to escape, but we did get Gummo recently, so who knows?

I hadn't seen any of Gus Vant Sant's work since Milk, but I forgot he had done so much television work - apparently a lot of it and much more than feature film work. His new film, Dead Man's Wire, had a preview yesterday, and after it was over, it wasn't surprising to hear that he actually replaced another director (Werner Herzog?), possibly with mere weeks before production started. With that in mind, it also wasn't surprising that some elements were choices made by a producer, possibly before Van Sant signed on (like Pacino's casting and the use of one particular song). There are little moments that look like things Van Sant would do, but they almost play like superficial imitations. And something about the rhythm and the characters and the dialogue feels too clean, too thin and sorely lacking in nuance - in a lot of ways, it's what I'd expect from a network TV pilot. Maybe this has more to do with the way the whole film came to being, but still, I walked away really missing what made his best features so great compared to the studio films being done at the same time. An attempt was made to connect Dead Man's Wire to Luigi Mangione, but it felt strained given the film's lack of depth and complexity - for starters, if you really wanted to explore the implications of that murder, you would have to unpack why it would make such a huge impression on the general public, and what little we see in the film with regards to public support of vigilante justice boils down to the grievance that he was cheated by dishonest assholes....

Spoiler

and a trial verdict of not guilty, which is all we see in terms of a public reaction or public discourse.

Compare that to, say, Elephant which said a whole lot more with an elemental plot. (They're about different things, but it terms of examining people and society, Elephant feels far more thoughtful and probing.) The brightest spot for me was Dacre Montgomery, whom Van Sant actually cast himself. I've yet to see Stranger Things beyond a few brief moments (and I don't even recall if Montgomery was in what I had seen), but he gives a performance that would feel right at home in any of Van Sant's great early features, suggesting a lot more than what's said and often doing it in reaction shots to what other actors like Pacino are saying.

Two of Van Sant’s pre-Mala Noche shorts were screened by Lightstruck at 2220 Arts in Los Angeles last month. My Friend and Nightmare Typhoon were both made in 16mm and presented in said format, with the latter being a new restoration. Very wry and funny monochrome works that both star Van Sant himself; he’s literally in virtually every frame of both, and he breaks the fourth wall in My Friend. Neither even have credits. One gets the sense that he basically made them entirely by himself by putting a camera on a tripod and shooting from his home at the time. I do hope they can appear on home video at some point, but maybe he sees them as too amateurish to get more exposure

I'm still of course dying to see his short Easter from the Korine-scripted and abandoned Jokes omnibus. It will never get screened here so I'm hoping against hope there is some release one day. I've dreamt about it for over 20 years from reading the screenplay and I've always adored Bruce LaBruce's mesmerising recap On The Set Of Gus Van Sant's Easter preserved on Angelfire lol

@hearthesilence That's so cool you got to see Dead Man's Wire, although I guess not so surprising that it's a bit mid considering the circumstances. I was really impressed with the way Van Sant and the cast talked about it at the Venice press conference though (Dacre Montgomery was especially charming) so it got my hopes up. He is so far from the Elephant era at this point but I did still watch and enjoy all of his post-Milk features, as there was something kind of emotionally healing in them which moved me. He is still a serious artist who can get amazing performances out of his actors.

I see that Row K recently released a teaser trailer for Dead Man's Wire and it has the textural approach I was anticipating so I'm still keen and I'd love for it to be screened here.

Gus Van Sant on Bill Maher's podcast is about as unexpected and awkward as it sounds.

I never saw it, but I do remember when he and Kelsey Grammer did a TV show together. That must've been an odd coupling.

cantinflas wrote: Mon Dec 22, 2025 10:28 pm Gus Van Sant on Bill Maher's podcast is about as unexpected and awkward as it sounds.

Wow, yeah not the guest I'd expect him to have. Maher must pay a good chunk of change to his guests, for them to willingly go on that show. Billy Joel was on it a while back and that too was extremely awkward (the bits I saw by skimming through it, anyway), or just embarrassing for Maher. It was pretty much entirely Maher talking about himself (no surprise there). Joel really acted like he didn't want to be there, and that episode was filmed at Billy Joel's house. I feel like Van Sant would be similar, but I can't bring myself to watch Maher anymore.

Tim Heidecker's parodies of Maher's podcast are great if you've ever watched just one or two episodes of the real thing.

Interview about Dead Man's Wire

I sitll haven't had a chance to see it yet so I've only skimmed those parts but there's a bit of Korine talk I enjoyed, especially this bit:

Gus, you made a film called Easter with Harmony Korine in 2000. Will it ever be released?

Gus Van Sant: It hasn’t been released because it was a company that had gone out of business. Also, it was something that I think was a nice idea, but I have played it occasionally at festivals, and it didn’t really play so well. I think my interpretation was a little bit stiff for Harmony’s craziness. It wasn’t necessarily a good match.

Completists would like to see it, regardless of what you consider to be its quality.

Gus Van Sant: Maybe we can find a home for it.