Xixax Film Forum

The Director's Chair => The Director's Chair => Topic started by: pilgrim on June 22, 2003, 09:33:52 PM

Poll
Question: Favorite Film
Option 1: Mala Noche votes: 0
Option 2: Drugstore Cowboy votes: 15
Option 3: My Own Private Idaho votes: 9
Option 4: Even Cowgirls get the Blues votes: 1
Option 5: To Die For votes: 7
Option 6: Good Will Hunting votes: 18
Option 7: Psycho votes: 1
Option 8: Finding Forrester votes: 1
Option 9: Gerry votes: 5
Option 10: Elephant votes: 1
Title: Gus Van Sant
Post by: pilgrim on June 22, 2003, 09:33:52 PM
What's your favorite?
Title: Gus Van Sant
Post by: godardian on June 22, 2003, 09:53:46 PM
It vacillates between To Die For and Idaho. Today, it was Idaho.
Title: Gus Van Sant
Post by: SHAFTR on June 23, 2003, 12:12:11 AM
Either Drugstore Cowboy or Good Will Hunting, but I'm going to have to go with Good Will.
Title: Gus Van Sant
Post by: Ghostboy on June 23, 2003, 01:56:58 AM
Gerry, but possibly only because I haven't seen anything pre-To Die For. One of the many things I need to remedy.
Title: Gus Van Sant
Post by: chainsmoking insomniac on June 24, 2003, 08:53:20 AM
Tough call between Drugstore Cowboy and Good Will Hunting...it fluctuates, but I'd say predominantly Drugstore....
Title: Gus Van Sant
Post by: Pastor Parsley on June 24, 2003, 04:53:10 PM
Drugstore!....but have never seen Mala Noche.....how is it?  I like Goodwill, but it doesn't seem like a gus van sant film.
Title: Gus Van Sant
Post by: Derek on June 24, 2003, 06:36:10 PM
Psycho
Title: Gus Van Sant
Post by: pilgrim on June 24, 2003, 09:12:30 PM
Quote from: Pastor ParsleyDrugstore!....but have never seen Mala Noche.....how is it?  

Like a lot of first films, it's a prelude.  It deals with the same themes as the next three movies, put simply, screwed up relationships of searching young people.  It's in black and white, so it's not as visually stunning.  It's worth watching if you're a fan.

QuoteI like Goodwill, but it doesn't seem like a gus van sant film

Exactly, it seems that he developed a recognizable style with Drugstore, Idaho, and Cowgirls and was trying to break away from it.  I like Goodwill, but I think it's strength is more in the screenplay than the directing.
Title: Gus Van Sant
Post by: Pastor Parsley on June 25, 2003, 11:58:22 AM
Quote from: pilgrimI think it's strength is more in the screenplay than the directing.

I agree.  It's a great screenplay, I was impressed.  The directing seems transparent with no recognizable style.  Maybe it was done so as not to distract from the story.
Title: Gus Van Sant
Post by: MacGuffin on November 20, 2003, 10:53:38 AM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fcdn.digitalcity.com%2Fmff_takefive%2Ftopvansant&hash=cf36159caf6b1b21cbb6e914c47b394a2b55af38)

For every perfectly normal flick in Gus Van Sant's repertoire, the director keeps another puzzling head-scratcher up his sleeve. As much as you love audience favorites like Good Will Hunting and Finding Forrester, it's the in-between movies that truly reveal the director's style. Take the shot-for-shot remake of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, for instance. What was that about? Or his latest film, Gerry, in which two not-particularly-talkative buddies drive out to the desert hoping to find "the thing," stumble off the path and spend the next few days (about 90 minutes or so in screen time) searching for some sign of intelligent life or, at the very least, a way to make it out of the wasteland alive.

Sure, Van Sant could make a movie just like everybody else. But why would he want to? He's much more interested in testing your expectations about what films should be. So think of Gerry as a dare. Can you follow along with a film that supplies no obvious narrative, with characters who forgo dialogue and communicate instead through expression and action? In the words of Will Hunting, "How do you like them apples?" According to Van Sant, films like this can actually say more than your average Tarantino-style talk-a-thon. Now, in his own words, Van Sant explains the movies that inspired Gerry and shaped his style as a filmmaker...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
(1975, dir: Chantal Ackerman, starring: Delphine Seyrig, Jan Decorte)
Chantal Ackerman is a very experimental art installation sculptor and filmmaker. I've seen some of her other things, and they're always quite different. Jeanne Dielman is about a Belgian housewife -- the husband's gone, and she's a single parent -- and it's about three days in her life. It's the first time that I had seen [a movie] that was so contemplative about things that were outside the ordinary action-driving ideas of what you would call a narrative. [Because] it was about a housewife, they gave very ample time to things that concern a housewife, like peeling potatoes. They are not necessarily the things that you would think of as character-developing moments, which in fact they are. They're just not the standard ones. I think in general you always expect a conversational movie. The talking, the intellectual discussion, somehow overpowers the simple action, and that's apparently more interesting to the viewer. [In Gerry, Matt Damon and Casey Affleck spend the whole film hiking.] When you're on a hike, there are long periods of time that are spent walking. Traditionally, you would chop all that out, but in our case, they stop walking and then they just walk some more, as opposed to using the device where they would stop walking and talk about what they thought of their relationship. We viewed the walking part as an equal to the talking about the relationship part.

Sátántangó
(1994, dir: Béla Tarr, starring: Iren Szajki, Barna Mihok)
Sátántangó is about a commune of farmers in Hungary visited by two leaders who come back and tell them that they have to leave. The things Béla spends time showing you and the way he does that is pretty lifelike in the sense that you spend a lot of time on the farm with these characters in the same type of timeframe they are living. So, if there's a character looking out the window, you might watch him drawing a picture of what's out the window. It's never really "real time" because the story is taking place over a 10-day period, but it's able to go far enough in its attention to those types of details that it's no longer a cipher or a symbol. We get kind of lost when things aren't spoken. Words are so specific that we feel anchored, and it's like, "I know what's going on because it's told." But if [the meaning] is more interpretive because it's an image, the audience can feel like they're drifting, and their own minds start to work as well. With Gerry, we just try and take advantage of that rather than discourage it. At first there's an element of drifting, but then some people start swimming and other people just keep drifting. In some cases, an audience isn't thinking about the right things to be able to drift along, but there's also a good number of audience members [for whom] what they're thinking of is in collaboration with the movie's themes. They're thinking about the right thing in the sense that they're thinking about something that is illuminating them and not basically boring them.

Citizen Kane
(1941, dir: Orson Welles, starring: Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten)
The first influence was a very cliché influence, Citizen Kane, but it was true. My English teacher showed it to us when we were fourteen. It was an age where you were ready to see something that had more of an impact than a more passive film, than something that just had entertainment value, like James Bond films, which I think was my understanding of film to that point: just suspense or action. Citizen Kane just had a lot more that it was saying. It was starting to clue into all the metaphors and messages within the message, and the themes that sort of wrap around each other. Citizen Kane is like learning the film vocabulary.

Dog Star Man
(1963; dir: Stan Brakhage)
Right after that, my main interest was not really as a passive viewer, but more stuff that I was reading about, all the '60s underground filmmakers of the time. The Kuchar brothers or Kenneth Anger or Stan Brackhage. The experimental filmmakers, they showed you different avenues of thinking about film. I don't think there was one film -- they're just an influence over all. [But if I had to pick one,] you could say Dog Star Man. I was a painter, so I watched '60s filmmaking. They were films made by painters. Brakhage was a painter. Warhol, who was making films a little bit later, was a painter. With Dog Star Man, Brakhage did all kinds of things to it, so there are different parts to the film. In one part, only one of the layers is going on, and in other parts, there are different applications of printing happening to make the image. It's so abstract. It's not narrative at all. It's a visual piece. I could draw it for you. It's really kind of like a painting in that way, a kind of abstract moving painting.

Spellbound
(1945 ; dir: Alfred Hitchcock, starring: Ingrid Bergman, Gregory Peck)
In the '60s, I made films that were directly influenced by the experimental filmmakers, [but when it comes to the dream sequences in my films,] I probably shouldn't cite those filmmakers. They did sort of suggest uses of, they weren't really dreamlike images. I guess that came from the surrealist films that I saw at times. In Spellbound, Hitchcock had Salvador Dali design dream sequences for him. There's always been use of dream sequences through Hitchcock's films. But also other filmmakers, narrative filmmakers or Fellini, those were probably more of an influence on literal dream sequences. I think dream sequences have always been kind of like dream-making. The stuff in My Own Private Idaho would be more relatable to dream sequences in conventional films like Spellbound or Vertigo.
Title: Gus Van Sant
Post by: godardian on November 20, 2003, 11:02:04 AM
I'm surprised Todd Haynes didn't also mention Jeanne Dielman, as that was a very direct influence on Safe, more so than 2001, even.

It's disappointing that Good Will Hunting has the most votes as "favorite" van Sant.  :(
Title: Gus Van Sant
Post by: Pubrick on November 20, 2003, 11:33:27 AM
Quote from: godardianIt's disappointing that Good Will Hunting has the most votes as "favorite" van Sant.  :(
barely.
Title: Gus Van Sant
Post by: NEON MERCURY on November 20, 2003, 11:37:25 AM
.. i voted for good will..
but i guess that film is more about the great script..and not the direction though....but its my fav. among the others
Title: Gus Van Sant
Post by: godardian on November 20, 2003, 11:41:37 AM
Quote from: NEON MERCURY.. i voted for good will..
but i guess that film is more about the great script..and not the direction though....but its my fav. among the others

It's the best of his "sellout trio" (Good Will Hunting, Psycho, and Finding Forrester), but:

A) They're all very ordinary and dull at absolute best when compared to his really interesting films (To Die For and My Own Private Idaho are my faves, and even Even Cowgirls... is more interesting as a failure than Good Will is as something he pulled off).

B) The relative imagination, competence and good faith of Good Will is offset by the fact that it unleashed a Damon/Affleck beast that has yet to die. Or be killed off.
Title: Gus Van Sant
Post by: modage on November 20, 2003, 11:44:13 AM
but the soundtrack is mostly elliott smith.                  ELLIOTT SMITH?
Title: Gus Van Sant
Post by: soixante on November 21, 2003, 02:33:07 PM
Just watched Gerry -- I totally enjoyed it.  I was expecting an improv talk-athon with 2 actors, a la Before Sunrise, and I was pleasantly surprised that it was more like a Nic Roeg film about survival (like Walkabout).  I feel that Nature is the third character in the film, as much screen time is devoted to shots of mountains and arid landscapes.

I prefer Van Sant's artier films, but I think he flexes different creative muscles in Good Will Hunting and Finding Forrester.  There is a sense of watchfulness in Van Sant's direction, as he lets Sean Connery and Robin Williams fully express all the depth of their respective characters.  I felt Finding Forrester captured a unique visual sense of New York City.

I also applaud Van Sant for achieving a huge commercial sucess and Oscar nom for Good Will Hunting, and then making something as low budget and uncommercial as Gerry.  Most filmmakers, once they break out of the indie ghetto, never look back (also kudos to Damon for making this film and doing Project Greenlight).

Now I'm really looking forward to Elephant.

I only saw Private Idaho once, in 1991.  I didn't like it then, but maybe I just didn't understand it.  A second viewing is in order.  To Die For was cool, and it was the first film in which Nicole Kidman showed her acting ability.

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues was pretty forgettable.

In all, Van Sant's batting average is pretty good.
Title: Gus Van Sant
Post by: classical gas on November 21, 2003, 02:51:13 PM
Quote from: soixante

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues was pretty forgettable.


you might like the book...
Title: Gus Van Sant
Post by: Ernie on November 21, 2003, 03:25:35 PM
DC and Idaho are CLASSICS (I did say it) to me, they were both on my top 30 list, I could never comfortably decide between them. Today, I think I'll have to go with Drugstore Cowboy only cause I have to choose.

Good Will Hunting is good but it shouldn't have more votes than Idaho or anywhere near as much as DC either, much less tied with it. It's a good good good movie, it's good, but it's not one of the gems that DC and Idaho are. Gerry is definitely my least favorite Van Sant movie, just saw it this past weekend, it didn't hypnotize me like it was suppose to. There were some cool scenes and all but I was bored through a lot of it, I definitely can't say I enjoyed it all the way through, that's what I'm trying to say. Ummmm, oh yea, I only liked To Die For a little bit more. I can't fucking wait for Elephant, that looks amazing.
Title: Gus Van Sant
Post by: soixante on November 21, 2003, 03:36:40 PM
Quote from: classical gas
Quote from: soixante

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues was pretty forgettable.


you might like the book...

I doubt it.  I've never read anything by Tom Robbins, but his work seems too cutesy for me (like Lynda Barry's allegedly humorous work).
Title: Gus Van Sant
Post by: godardian on November 21, 2003, 03:41:34 PM
Quote from: soixante
Quote from: classical gas
Quote from: soixante

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues was pretty forgettable.


you might like the book...

I doubt it.  I've never read anything by Tom Robbins, but his work seems too cutesy for me (like Lynda Barry's allegedly humorous work).

I really like Barry's cartoons, but Robbins doesn't appeal too much.
Title: Gus Van Sant
Post by: cron on January 24, 2004, 12:34:39 AM
All the world's an art school

For reclusive director Gus Van Sant, films are his life. And, Hollywood schmaltz or avant garde, they all spring from his desire to experiment, he tells Simon Hattenstone. Is his latest the first interactive movie?

Saturday January 24, 2004
The Guardian

Gus Van Sant on the trouble brewing beneath middle-class society: 'People do things like play golf'
 
This is the conspiracy theory doing the rounds - there are two Gus Van Sants. One makes inspired indie movies (Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho) and is loved by true cineastes; the other is a mercenary who churns out Hollywood schmaltzbusters (Good Will Hunting, Finding Forrester). In recent years, the mainstream Van Sant has made the running, but his new film couldn't be more off the beaten track. Elephant, "inspired" by the Columbine school massacre, is about two students who go on the rampage. It has hardly any dialogue, no conventional narrative, and is little more than a series of tracking shots following the last 15 minutes of the lives of killers and victims. Van Sant doesn't make it easy for us. We have to watch closely, eavesdrop on elliptical conversations, and use our imagination to piece together the lives of sweet John who worries about his alcoholic father, the jock whose girlfriend may be pregnant, the aspiring photographer intent on capturing young love, the girl who so despises her body  


that she wears long trousers for games, the pianist who plays Beethoven with such tenderness. By the end, despite being told next to nothing, we know the characters intimately. Elephant, which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes last year, is Van Sant's masterpiece.

Portland, Oregon, where Van Sant lives, seems so familiar from his movies. The grey, swirling skies, the rain (151 days a year), the myriad bars, the cool dudes and weirdos, the glitzy and seedy, all side by side. This city in the Pacific northwest is made for students and artists, mavericks and misfits - repertory cinema after repertory cinema, the biggest independent bookshop in the world, and assertive beggars on most street corners.

Van Sant lives midtown, in a vast apartment block that has security codes to its security codes. Eventually, I work out how to use the entry phone.

"Hi, it's Simon ... from the Guardian newspaper in England."

"Ohhhhh ... Already?"

"Yes."

"Could you get me a coffee? Black, no sugar. Is that OK? It's just at the end of the block. When you get back, you need a code for the lift to get to my floor." He gives me an elaborate set of numbers. My mind and body are reeling. I've travelled 5,000 miles, am weighed down by two heavy bags, trying to remember Van Sant's various security codes, and now he's making me fetch his coffee.

I make it back to the apartment block and hitch the lift to his floor. Van Sant is waiting outside. My way in is blocked by chairs and tables that seem to be leaving as I arrive. I hand him his coffee, drop my bags and collapse on to the floor. His dog, Milo, licks my ears. Van Sant doesn't say a word. His hair is brown and lank, with white sideburns. He wears a shabby blue sweatshirt and jeans. He's 51, and resembles Anthony Perkins in Psycho more than ever.

There is something comforting in his silence. If he's not saying anything, I reckon I don't need to. So I just stay on the floor, stroke the dog and look around his apartment - it's huge, and crammed with guitars and records and videos and more guitars, a printing machine, a huge telescope, and yet more guitars.

I ask him how many guitars he has. He looks animated. "Ten? About ten." He says he spends most of his free time noodling, playing chords, and starts talking about how he was at Rhode Island School of Design with members of Talking Heads and how he used to be in a band and what a great era it was when groups were radical and formed for just one gig and then split. Suddenly there is no stopping him.

At that time, he had hoped to be a painter, but when all the art students came back from New York and said they didn't have a chance because there were 12,000 painters out there and only 64 galleries, he decided to concentrate on film, and has done so since.

He is obsessed with film. Just look at his walls - here is a poster of an African movie called Kunda that he has never seen but liked the sound of, there is a picture of Harmony Korine's Gummo, and by his bed is a poster of Elephant. He can talk film until the cows come home - from popular film to film theory to the interactive movies of the future that will enable the audience to take an active part in their creation. "Cinema will become something completely different, where you are in it, and it's no longer theatrically based." That is one of his main gripes about contemporary cinema - it is so conservative, he says, it is little more than screened theatre.

On the table in front of him is a copy of Guitar World magazine. He looks embarrassed when I point it out. "It's because I'm reading a piece on Kurt Cobain, it's not because I like Guitar World." He stops, realising it's pointless to deny his anorak tendencies. "Actually, I could conceivably buy Guitar World," he says in his deep, honeyed voice. He talks about why he first joined a band - to see if he had the nerve to perform live. "I didn't get stage fright in the end, but I didn't move very much. We only played eight times, but we had one guy who was like a really big fan ... "

Van Sant is a strange creature. In some ways so shy and naive, in others sure and assertive. He talks at tangents to himself, segueing from one subject to the next. He tells me about all the Christmas parties he avoided, and how as soon as he heard who turned up he regretted having skipped them. So why didn't he go? "I think it's just social anxiety. Most people don't want to be going half an hour before they're leaving for the party. But I let it get to me to the point where I don't actually go," he mumbles.

His films have always been full of mumblers - mumbling druggies, mumbling hustlers, mumbling students, mumbling psychopaths. His first three films focus on lowlife outsiders - Mala Noche and My Own Private Idaho explore the world of hustling, while Drugstore Cowboy is about a household of thieving junkies. But his own background couldn't have been more different. His father was a successful business executive, his mother a housewife, despite her university degree, and they went wherever his father's job took them - from Tennessee to Colorado to New York to Portland. Van Sant says there was something repressed in his family. "It was an upper-middle-class, bucolic environment and then there's all this trouble under the surface ... People do things like play golf." He says "golf" with some distaste, though he has been a keen player himself. He compares his parents' world to that of Rick Moody's The Ice Storm, with its trendily permissive exterior and emotionally frigid heart. In fact, he points out that The Ice Storm is set in New Canaan, next door to where his parents lived in Connecticut.

Did he feel that he belonged to that world, that he would take his due place in the corporate hierarchy of life? "You know, I don't think I had a concept of what I would be or do," he says. "I think if I drew a picture of myself, I would have a tie, because everybody wore a tie. I mean, they wore hats before Kennedy. In 1962, they were wearing felt hats." It's a typical Van Sant statement - fractured, vivid and bordering on the autistic.

After college, he moved to Los Angeles to try his luck in films, and he spent long afternoons in cafes on Hollywood Boulevard staring at the destitute kids on the street - the boy-men who had come to the city full of dreams and had soon ended up selling themselves or stealing or begging to make ends meet. He was fascinated by them. "I'm normally drawn to something I haven't done and seen before. And in general movies weren't made about street hustlers. Midnight Cowboy was a famous streethustler movie, but in general this was a place Hollywood didn't go, and that was something I was attracted to."

It took him until his early 30s to make his first film. And it took him almost as long to realise that he was gay. For many years, he says, he had been out with women, hadn't been sure about his sexuality, but hadn't been overinquisitive - there were so many other things to be getting on with. In his 20s, he occasionally went to gay clubs with friends who assumed he was straight and told him to watch his back.

While his movies are not camp, they have a particular sensibility. From the off, there was something ecstatic in his directing. You could identify Van Sant films by their giddy images of flying hats and cows and exploding houses, dusty highways, time-lapse photography and fake home-video footage. At times, you could identify them from artistic overindulgence - his crazy desire to incorporate Henry IV into My Own Private Idaho almost destroyed the movie.

Art is a word he comes back to time and again. Indeed, his art school background informs all his work. He talks of experimentation and wanting to achieve something new, and complains that so many contemporary movies are produced on an assembly line. Yet critics point out that he has spent the midpart of his career making just such films - notably the Oscar-winning Good Will Hunting and the slated Finding Forrester. Why?

Again, he returns to art school theory. "I became involved in the mainstream partly because I thought, in order to affect change, you needed to be able to do it." You mean, know your enemy? "Yep. You need to know the actual elements to be changed. But now I'm not sure. There's part of me that believes that," he says stammering towards his conclusion, "but there's also part of me that believes true change happens because the person affecting the change doesn't know how to do it any other way. When you look at, say, William Burroughs's writing, and he says, 'I've tried a hundred times to write a really good detective novel and I just can't', or Warhol, the movies that he made, that's all he knew how to do, he didn't know how to do the other part. But I was always ... it was part of a study working within the mainstream."

For many of his fans, it was disconcerting. He smiles - a rarity - and interrupts. "Ah, Good Will Hunting!" he says, and he's off again. He explains how artists originally made art for the community, then for their patrons and eventually for themselves. "The artist himself is actually the subject in everything after, say, 1900." He coughs to clear his throat before continuing with his now confident lecture. "Eventually, art becomes so removed from the community that you have to know about the artist before you can even look at the painting, because there is a conceptual idea going on. So the artist himself becomes the name, and the name is the value, it's no longer the art. So it has become like stocks. Uhuuuughm!" He coughs again. "So Good Will Hunting and Finding Forrester was like me going back, or trying to, in sentimental movie fashion, going back to make popular art, art for the populace."

At times Van Sant talks like an academic. And all this could sound pompous, but, from him, it rings true - even when he says that these commercial movies have been his most experimental, because they were so alien to him.

Wasn't part of the attraction the thought of making loads of money? "No," he says instantly, "it had nothing to do with money, because all along the way there were films I could make for a lot of money, but not Good Will Hunting, because there wasn't the big pay cheque and the two actors [Matt Damon and Ben Affleck] weren't big stars. It was more the type of film it was - it was like On Golden Pond or Ordinary People, the kind of film I watched in the early 1980s, but I'd never actually made one, so it was a challenge."

Although both films are so different from his early movies, the subject matter is basically the same - they are about young men (or, as Van Sant says, older boys) struggling towards an identity, through maths in Good Will Hunting and through writing in Finding Forrester.

I ask him what is the attraction of these young men: their youth, their physical beauty, their turmoil? "I think that's definitely the age where there is the most vitality in a human's life, somewhere between 14 and 20. Even though you haven't quite got a life, you're adaptable enough to survive." In a way, he says, he feels about these boys similarly to how he feels about himself now that he's turned 50 - they don't quite belong anywhere, because society deems them surplus to its needs.

Van Sant soon found himself in favour when movie-backers realised that he could attract aspiring stars, and give them credibility - Damon and Affleck in Good Will Hunting; Matt Dillon in Drugstore Cowboy; Nicole Kidman and Joaquin Phoenix in To Die For, his satire on celebrity culture; Keanu Reaves and, most famously, the late River Phoenix in My Own Private Idaho.

In the late 1990s, Van Sant wrote a novel, Pink, about a director obsessed with the gorgeous boy star of his infomercials who has recently died - not-so-loosely based on Phoenix, who died after overdosing on drugs. It's dedicated to Phoenix and reads like a love letter to him. "Yeah. Yeah," he nods. Van Sant was distraught after his death: "It was really like the wrong person to have died ... because, of all the people that you know, there are some people who are very charmed. He was like the favourite person of a lot of people, and when he died it was, like, 'Why couldn't I die? Why couldn't that other person have died? Why would it have to be him?' " Until a couple of years ago, Van Sant lived next door to the Phoenix family in New York.

Was he in love with River? "No. We were just really good friends and collaborators." He sits so still, his arms wrapped protectively around himself. He says that they were always looking forward to doing their next movie together and never got the chance.

There seems to be something in him that is drawn towards self-destructive people - he was friends with junkie novelist William Burroughs, who featured in Drugstore Cowboy; is close to celebrated movie bad boy Harmony Korine; and to Elliott Smith, who wrote the music to Good Will Hunting, killed himself last year. Again, he nods: "I think that what I'm attracted to is people who are wild. But the self-destructive side comes out of the wild side. The wildness is very different from me. That's why I think I like it."

He asks me if I'm hungry. Yes, starving, I say hopefully. "Do you eat yogurt?" Hmm. He takes out two blueberry yogurts - probably the closest you'll find to junk food (or any food) in his apartment. He lives here by himself. He once had a long-term, live-in boyfriend, but they split up in the mid-1990s after seven years.

I look through the telescope while he is stirring the yogurt and ask if he is into astronomy. "Oh no," he says. "No, it was a present. The last thing I looked at was a Christmas party going on over there." He points and I look. I begin to feel as if I'm in a Hitchcock film. "And I like looking at the construction workers over there. They were just hanging there from that crane the other week, making jokes. Incredible." Like so many film-makers, there is something of the voyeur in Van Sant, from the days on Hollywood Boulevard right through to his new way of making films - by following characters with the camera and allowing the audience to hear only snatches of conversation, he makes us feel that we're spying on them.

Perhaps Van Sant's most famous (certainly his most infamous) film is his frame-for-frame coloured remake of Psycho. It was much criticised, but I thought there was something beautiful about it - the greatest art film never to win the Turner prize. He says that he had wanted to make it for years, but the studio bosses thought it was a ridiculous idea. It was only when he had proved himself truly bankable with Good Will Hunting that they gave him the go-ahead - and then they paid him more than he had ever been paid for a film.

Why was he so keen to make it? Well, he says, it was an experiment and, of course, we're back with art history. "One of the things we first worked on in art school was appropriation, or finding a found object that we obsessed over and painted and redesigned and made copies of. It was like a big version of that." At a time when the big thing in Hollywood was sequels, he thought it could provide a lucrative alternative. "Hollywood had decided what movie they most liked to make, and that movie was a sequel of a successful movie, but the problem with making a sequel is that you have to have the success first - so the movie they'd most like to make doesn't exist really because it's a sequel." This, he explains, is because the moguls had neither the nous nor the confidence to make the original, so here was the solution. "Psycho was a chance to make a sequel without having to make the original. And if it did actually make money, then Hollywood could endlessly spin copies of movies." And, he asks, if you are going to remake a classic film, why do away with the director's original work when you can pay homage to him by copying it frame for frame?

Van Sant's face is expressionless. I think he means what he says, but is mocking the system at the same time. It's hard to tell what's going on in the head of an enthusiast who rarely enthuses, a joker who rarely smiles. There is something gentle but also rather sad about him.

Was Psycho a joke? "I saw it as a prank, yeah. But a prank only if it was successful." What ingenuity: take one of the most famous mainstream movies to play an avant-garde prank, and produce another monster movie in the process. "Right!" he says, still poker-faced. "And the only way it didn't do its job was that it was supposed to make a lot of money."

Remaking a film frame for frame is a fairly obsessive thing to do? "Yes, and it's an obsessive film, too," he says, pleased with the symmetry. Is he an obsessive man? "Yes, where it concerns my art. I think that's what makes art in the first place." And, as he says, there isn't much to his life when you strip away his art.

Like Psycho, Elephant is a remake. But there the similarity ends. While Psycho is a literal copy, Elephant is the loosest possible reinterpretation of English director Alan Clarke's 1988 film about snipers in Northern Ireland. What both Elephants do share, apart from their title and pointless killings, is a radical style. Van Sant's foray into mainstream Hollywood seems to have made him all the more determined to do his bit to reinvent the cinematic wheel. He took inspiration from film-makers such as the Iranian Abbas Kiarostami, whose movies are so slow they seem to take place in real time and whose "stars" are non-professional actors.

Van Sant's first film after Finding Forrester (his most clichéd stab at Hollywood convention), the predecessor to Elephant, was his most radical. Gerry is about two boys who walk in the desert and get lost - there is even less dialogue in it than in Elephant. It is an endurance test for both the characters and the audience. We feel nothing for them, but we do share their physical discomfort - when the sun glows, it blinds us; when the snow crunches, it goes through us. Elephant is a less purist version of Gerry, and more successful for it.

The evolution of Elephant was complex and messy. Van Sant originally wanted to make a quick-turnaround film for television about Columbine. No one would let him make something so specific, but he was told that he could probably get away with a film such as Clarke's Elephant, which had been made for the BBC. He had not seen Elephant, but Korine told him that it was his favourite film and said that he would write a screenplay for Van Sant's film. But he never delivered. Van Sant then asked the novelist JT Leroy to write the script. Diane Keaton, the film's executive producer, liked the result, but Van Sant thought it too conventional and lost heart in the project. He suggested that they strip Leroy's script of its plot and clichés, and that they make the film without a script or professional cast. "I was hoping to kill the project off, but they just said, 'OK, we'll do it that way', so I didn't get out of the job."

Clarke called his film Elephant because he saw Northern Ireland as the elephant in the living room: the taboo staring us in the face that we dare not acknowledge. Van Sant says that meaning is also applicable to his own film, but that what he had in mind when making it was the old parable about the five blind men who touch different parts of an elephant. "One thinks it's a rope because he has the tail, one thinks it's a tree because he can feel the legs, one thinks it's a wall because he can feel the side of it, and nobody actually has the big picture. You can't really get to the answer, because there isn't one."

The film has had its detractors in the US. For instance, Variety critic Todd McCarthy, who dismissed it as "pointless at best and irresponsible at worst". Van Sant says he still can't understand why it's fine to dramatise fictional or distant violence, but the moment it touches on contemporary truth it becomes "irresponsible". As for it being pointless, he says, that is the point - the whole thing is pointless. "Modern-day cinema takes the form of a sermon. You don't get to think, you only get to receive information. This film is not a sermon. The point of the film is not being delivered to you from the voice of the film-maker. Hopefully, there are as many interpretations as there are viewers."

As Van Sant talks about Elephant, I think back to what he was saying about the interactive film of the future and realise that this is his version of it - only, instead of pressing a knob or manipulating a mouse to decide who gets killed, Van Sant gives us clues and we shape the film for ourselves. I also think back to the conspiracy theory of the two Gus Van Sants, and realise how daft it is. The arty film-maker and the schmaltzbuster director are clearly of a piece - and, as he himself said before (then, typically, half-retracted), without Good Will Hunting, you wouldn't have got Elephant. It's a strange arc - arthouse to mainstream to avant garde - but one that makes perfect sense to Gus Van Sant.

I ask if he is fulfilled. "Workwise, I'm doing exactly what I want to do. Socially, I'm making myself crazy by being too reclusive, so I'd be less of a recluse. One of the things that is devastating is I realise I haven't been living a different life than when I was, like, 12. I'm shocked at how reclusive I've been since then. I was unaware of it until recently."

He comes to a stop, but he's still thinking about work. "Actually, what I'd really like to do now is try to lose the crew because they bother me. They make it so you can't do things. When I made Mala Noche, we had three people on the crew. So there'd be a cameraman, a soundman and me." That way, he says, you always create the most real characters.

Perhaps you could go one step further, I suggest - just pin a camera to the characters, let them do their thing, and there wouldn't even be any need for the director. His ears prick up and he smiles. The smile turns into a grin. I think he likes that idea

· Elephant is released on Friday.
Title: Gus Van Sant
Post by: MacGuffin on March 09, 2004, 10:49:41 PM
Van Sant set to rock with 'Last Days'
Source: Hollywood Reporter

Gus Van Sant is preparing to step from the high school hallways he explored in his Palm D'Or-winning "Elephant" to Seattle's grunge music scene with his next outing, "Last Days." The Oscar-nominated director is close to packaging up "Last Days" with Michael Pitt on board to star and HBO Films on board to finance, sources confirmed. Van Sant has a previous relationship with HBO after working together on the Columbine-inspired "Elephant." Pitt and Van Sant are known to have been collaborating on the project for several years. It is described by sources as a film loosely inspired by events in the Northwest rock 'n' roll scene during the mid-1990s. Lukas Haas is in talks to join Pitt in the project.
Title: Gus Van Sant
Post by: Ghostboy on March 09, 2004, 10:55:07 PM
Man, Michael Pitt knows how to pick 'em.
Title: Gus Van Sant
Post by: socketlevel on March 11, 2004, 12:23:22 AM
where the hell is elephant, that's his only masterpiece
Title: Gus Van Sant
Post by: MacGuffin on March 27, 2004, 05:58:12 PM
Van Sant Moving Film From Oregon to N.Y.

SALEM, Ore. (AP) - Director Gus Van Sant is moving production of his latest film from Portland to New York. The movie, titled "Last Days,'' is a look at the Northwest's grunge music scene in the mid-1990s, with Michael Pitt starring as the lead singer of a Nirvana-like band.

Open casting calls for the HBO production recently drew about 5,000 hopefuls in Portland, Eugene and Washington; Van Sant's "Elephant,'' the story of a high school shooting, had been shot in Portland with a cast of virtual unknowns.

Production was to have started in April in Portland, but Van Sant found a house appropriate for the film in New York.

"He decided ultimately to pick New York, which is a disappointment when they do that,'' said Liza McQuade, project coordinator for the Oregon Film & Video Office. "It was basically a matter of location, and his artistic vision of the film changed.''
Title: Gus Van Sant
Post by: godardian on March 27, 2004, 07:13:37 PM
Quote from: MacGuffinVan Sant Moving Film From Oregon to N.Y.

SALEM, Ore. (AP) - Director Gus Van Sant is moving production of his latest film from Portland to New York. The movie, titled "Last Days,'' is a look at the Northwest's grunge music scene in the mid-1990s, with Michael Pitt starring as the lead singer of a Nirvana-like band.

Open casting calls for the HBO production recently drew about 5,000 hopefuls in Portland, Eugene and Washington; Van Sant's "Elephant,'' the story of a high school shooting, had been shot in Portland with a cast of virtual unknowns.

Production was to have started in April in Portland, but Van Sant found a house appropriate for the film in New York.

"He decided ultimately to pick New York, which is a disappointment when they do that,'' said Liza McQuade, project coordinator for the Oregon Film & Video Office. "It was basically a matter of location, and his artistic vision of the film changed.''


:cry:
Title: Gus Van Sant
Post by: El Duderino on May 05, 2004, 07:41:12 PM
i'm in my Van Sant phase right now. i watched Gerry last night (on the reccomendation of Pubrick) and i really liked it. bout a week ago, i bought To Die For and Drugstore Cowboy, which are both excellent along with Good Will Hunting (which is already amongst my collection), but i really feel that Elephant is his best work. It might be the fact that since i was in the 8th grade, i've wanted to do a school shooting movie, and it's weird because some of the shots in the movie are extrememely close to the shots i had in my head, and i also liked the fact that he left most of the dialouge to the actors. the sound in elephant, as Pubrick said in the elephant thread, is so enthralling (i.e. when Elias is turning the film canister back and forth over the sink). so yeah, i think Van Sant is a great director.
Title: Gus Van Sant
Post by: Stefen on May 05, 2004, 07:43:21 PM
To die for is his best in my opinion. It's highly underrated. It's a complete mindtrip in the best kind of way. good will hunting is good too but it gets on my nerves and I can't watch it anymore. I'll be seeing elephant this weekend.
Title: Gus Van Sant
Post by: godardian on May 05, 2004, 08:44:53 PM
Quote from: StefenTo die for is his best in my opinion. It's highly underrated. It's a complete mindtrip in the best kind of way. good will hunting is good too but it gets on my nerves and I can't watch it anymore. I'll be seeing elephant this weekend.

I agree about To Die For, I think. It's excellent.
Title: Gus Van Sant
Post by: ono on March 09, 2005, 03:25:19 PM
I watched My Own Private Idaho this afternoon.  It is a beautiful film.  So beautiful, I really can't think of much to say about it.  It just drifted from one thing to the next, just like these guys' lives drift.  The sadness and loneliness conveyed.  The long shots of landscapes.  The Shakespearean riffs.  The ending.  It was all just so perfect.  Maybe I'll say more later.  Just wanted to post while I'm still thinking about it 'cause I have some more movies to watch today.
Title: Gus Van Sant
Post by: MacGuffin on March 17, 2005, 01:50:59 AM
'Time' travels with Van Sant
Source: Hollywood Reporter

Gus Van Sant is in negotiations to direct "The Time Traveler's Wife" for New Line Cinema. The studio acquired "Traveler" in 2003 for Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston, Brad Grey and Nick Wechsler to produce. New Line said Grey, who took over the reins of Paramount Studios on March 1, remains attached as a producer.

Written by Audrey Niffenegger, a writer and professor of book arts in Chicago, the book is a loose retelling of "The Odyssey." The story centers on a man with a time-traveling gene that allows him to appear to his true love at different points in her life. Jeremy Leven adapted the book. Richard Brener, Cale Boyter and Magnus Kim are shepherding the project for the studio.
Title: Gus Van Sant
Post by: Just Withnail on March 17, 2005, 07:00:31 AM
What the hell? That just doesn't sound right.
Title: Gus Van Sant
Post by: Pwaybloe on March 17, 2005, 12:24:35 PM
Sounds pretty fascinating to me.  

There's a lot of things Van Sant can play with.  I'm already picturing the possiblities.  

Decipher your woman's lies and truths, threaten pre-existing boyfriends, find out if that kiss with that girl in Panama City was REALLY that innocent, etc.  

This could be really amazing, if you think about it.
Title: Gus Van Sant
Post by: SiliasRuby on March 17, 2005, 10:40:15 PM
My favorite one of all the films I've seen of his is now My Own Private Idaho. To Die For is my second favorite now.
Title: Gus Van Sant
Post by: modage on April 21, 2005, 10:17:01 PM
cool foriegn website with trailer for Last Days here... http://www.mk2.com/last_days/site.html
Title: Gus Van Sant
Post by: MacGuffin on April 22, 2005, 02:46:10 AM
Why not start a Last Days thread?
Title: Gus Van Sant
Post by: Pubrick on April 22, 2005, 02:54:20 AM
Quote from: MacGuffinWhy not start a Last Days thread?
Quote from: themodernage02i have a thread starting phobia.
Title: Gus Van Sant
Post by: MacGuffin on April 22, 2005, 02:58:02 AM
http://xixax.com/viewtopic.php?t=7335
http://xixax.com/viewtopic.php?t=2284
http://xixax.com/viewtopic.php?t=3004
http://xixax.com/viewtopic.php?t=2042
http://xixax.com/viewtopic.php?t=7134
Title: Gus Van Sant
Post by: modage on April 22, 2005, 02:43:27 PM
i'm working on it.  but its still a phobia.   :elitist:
Title: Gus Van Sant
Post by: Gamblour. on May 04, 2005, 12:01:01 AM
To Die For is fucked up. I loved it.
Title: Gus Van Sant
Post by: rustinglass on May 04, 2005, 11:36:28 AM
That Last Days website is so awesome!!!! I love it that you can see the reflection of the trees on the TV screen, even while you watch the trailer.
I've got to spread the word on this. Thanks!
Title: Gus Van Sant
Post by: for petes sake on May 05, 2005, 11:52:08 AM
Quote from: socketlevelwhere the hell is elephant, that's his only masterpiece

thought i'd bring this back up.  can we get this added to the poll?
Title: Gus Van Sant
Post by: Pubrick on May 05, 2005, 11:57:48 AM
it wasn't out when the poll was created.

and besides, i already wasted my vote on finding forrester. :salute:
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: MacGuffin on May 26, 2006, 02:16:17 PM
Van Sant: a director in search of a pure cinema

CANNES, France (AFP) - Past Cannes winner Gus Van Sant is a director in search of a pure cinema, which can really show reality as he sees it.

Van Sant, who won the 2003 winner Palme d'Or for his film "Elephant" inspired by the Columbine High School shooting, was here for a new screening of his first film "Mala Noche" about a man in love with an illegal Mexican immigrant.

And he was casting a critical eye on the 1985 film, which is rarely shown, saying: "It looks pretty good, ... (but) when I was watching, it was kind of episodic.

"I never really noticed that before. I was watching so closely last night, because I was trying to analyze it.

"It's an older film but it's nice to be able to show it. 'Mala Noche' is sort of the first part of a trilogy, the second and third one being 'Drugstore Cowboy' and 'My Own Private Idaho.'

"Then, everything changed. 'Even Cowgirls Get The Blues' broke that line up," he told AFP.

"Mala Noche" was adapted from the novel of Walt Curtis, and shot in black and white. It is to get its first public release in France in October.

The 53-year-old director has gone on to build a major career in Hollywood, with films such as the delicious 1995 black comedy "To Die For" with Nicole Kidman, or the 1997 "Good Will Hunting" starring Matt Damon, or the 1998 remake of the Hollywood classic "Pyscho."

"Cinema is sort of an interesting method of recording and playing back. What you record and what you play back can be anything: a scientific experiment, a performance like Liza Minnelli singing, and you can also use it to tell stories, explain visually a story, observe the habitat of the penguins.

"There is so many different ways to use it," Van Sant said.

He said however that he was most interested in experimental or dramatic cinema and often drew his inspiration from novels, rather than documentaries.

But "I do believe that film doesn't need previous mediums to exist. There is a pure form we haven't really got into yet."

"Pure cinema is somehow connected with something you can read in a certain kind of novel, maybe like the Russian novels, where things take a long time," he said.

"When somebody walks across the desert, it can take 15 pages. It's also emulating what I interpret as reality as I see it, a kind of reality, so that whenever we were shooting in the last three movies especially, we were trying to think about how this would actually happen.

"It was an attempt to get away from something that's movie-real, movie-consciousness," he said, adding that films tended to concentrate on the verbal and not on action.

"Maybe because the verbal can be ... absorbing, because we like to hear ourselves talk, we like to hear the human voice. We're not interested in watching ourselves walk. We don't mind watching ourselves walk, but a few steps is enough.

"But in reality, we probably walk longer than we talk."
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: MacGuffin on December 22, 2006, 02:27:51 PM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thesmokinggun.com%2Fgraphics%2Fart3%2F1222061gusvansant1.jpg&hash=850b4ed6ac213a7c43175ee9efc0fce2e87aba91)

Filmmaker Gus Van Sant Cited for DUI

Filmmaker Gus Van Sant, whose credits include "Finding Forrester" and "Drugstore Cowboy," has been arrested here on a drunken driving charge, police said.

Sgt. Brian Schmautz, Portland Police Bureau spokesman, said Van Sant, 54, was arrested at 1:48 a.m. Thursday. A breath test showed a blood-alcohol level of 0.19 percent, Schmautz said. That's more than twice the state limit, 0.08 percent.

An officer saw that the headlights on Van Sant's vehicle weren't on, Schmautz said. Van Sant, who lives in Portland, had bloodshot eyes and slurred speech, smelled of alcohol and failed the sobriety tests, Schmautz said.

Calls to his film company seeking comment were not immediately returned.

Van Sant also directed "My Own Private Idaho" and "Good Will Hunting." Several of his films have been set in Oregon, including "Elephant," about a high-school shooting, which won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2003. He has been filming "Paranoid Park" in and around the city.
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: last days of gerry the elephant on December 22, 2006, 02:35:42 PM
 :(
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: MacGuffin on January 18, 2007, 10:22:39 AM
Van Sant Maintains DUI Innocence

Los Angeles (E! Online) - Gus Van Sant is calling for a second take.

The Good Will Hunting director pleaded not guilty Wednesday to charges of drunken and reckless driving, stemming from his Dec. 21 arrest in Portland, Oregon when police spied him sitting in his car at a traffic light with his headlights turned off. 

According to the Portland Police Bureau, officers approached Van Sant and observed that he had bloodshot eyes, was slurring his speech and smelled of alcohol. The filmmaker then failed sobriety tests and registered a 0.19 percent blood alcohol level—more than twice Oregon's legal limit of 0.08—on a Breathalyzer, after which he was taken into custody and booked for DUI at the Multnomah County Jail.

Van Sant, who did not appear in court on Wednesday, instead entering his plea via his attorney, is required to attend an alcohol diversion hearing Feb. 9, during which a judge will determine whether the 54-year-old auteur is eligible to enter a diversion program, a move that could eventually get the charges scratched from his record.

Multnomah County Court Judge Leslie Roberts ordered Van Sant to avoid alcohol and make sure to not drive without a license or insurance while this case is pending.

When not motoring around town, Van Sant has been busy shooting his latest film, Paranoid Park, in and around Portland. Most recently, he was one of 20 directors to contribute a five-minute segment to the experimental romantic drama Paris, I Love You.
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: MacGuffin on February 09, 2007, 04:13:48 PM
Movie Director Agrees to DUII Sentencing

Gus Van Sant, who was arrested on drunken driving charges in December, has agreed to an alcohol diversion program, his attorney said Friday.

Van Sant had a blood-alcohol level of 0.19 percent, more than double Oregon's limit of 0.08 percent, when he was arrested Dec. 21 on a main downtown street, police reports said

The 54-year-old director, whose films include "Good Will Hunting" and "Drugstore Cowboy," appeared briefly in court Friday morning, avoiding reporters who were told that his hearing was to be held later.

The state diversion program for driving under the influence of intoxicants, or DUII, requires participation in an evaluation and education or rehabilitation program for one year.

Participants must enter a guilty or no contest plea to enter the program, but if it is successfully completed, no DUII conviction is entered, according to the Oregon Judicial Department.

An assistant to William Uhle, Van Sant's attorney, said Van Sant pleaded no contest.

The diversion program also avoids suspension of a driver's license, and there is no requirement to serve jail time or perform community service work.

Van Sant has set several of his films in Oregon, including "Elephant," about a high school shooting, which won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2003.
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: MacGuffin on June 11, 2007, 12:03:38 AM
Van Sant in the 'Kool-Aid' mix
Director to adapt classic '60s novel
Source: Variety

Nearly 40 years after its original publication, Tom Wolfe's hallucinogenic tome "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" is headed for the bigscreen.

Gus Van Sant is attached to direct, and Lance Black ("Big Love") will write the script. FilmColony's Richard Gladstein is producing, and he's in the process of setting the project with a financier.

The book told the story of a cross-country road trip that "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" author Ken Kesey orchestrated with a group called the Merry Pranksters. Driving in a psychedelically painted bus from California to visit the World's Fair in New York in 1964, Kesey and his band used the trip as a way to turn on those they met to the mind-expanding wonders of LSD.

Kesey ingested the drug while he wrote "Cuckoo's Nest," crediting the hallucinogen for many of the ideas in the book.

Shortly after the Wolfe book was published in 1967, its film rights were purchased by entrepreneur Alfred Roven. Not a film producer, Roven had some meetings over the years with filmmakers but was very protective. When he died, Roven left the rights to his children, Daryn and Alison Roven. FilmColony's Gladstein was introduced to them by attorney Peter Grossman, and for the first time, the rights were entrusted to a producer.

Van Sant, whose latest film, "Paranoid Park," was honored at Cannes, signed on quickly. The filmmaker cast Kesey in his 1993 film "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues" and dedicated his 2002 film "Gerry" to the author, who died in 2001. Van Sant enlisted Black, with whom he's collaborating on a biopic of slain San Francisco pol Harvey Milk.

It's likely Wolfe will not be a major character in the film, which will focus on Kesey and include events that occurred after the road trip.

Gladstein completed producing the Zach Helm-directed "Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium," which Fox Walden releases this fall, as well as "The Nanny Diaries" and John Madden-directed "Killshot," both of which the Weinstein Co. will distribute through MGM this fall.
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: SiliasRuby on June 11, 2007, 12:20:11 AM
This is Fuckin' Awesome!
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: MacGuffin on September 10, 2007, 01:17:22 AM
Van Sant closing in on Milk tale
Source: Hollywood Reporter

TORONTO -- Sean Penn as openly gay '70s politician Harvey Milk and Matt Damon as his assassin? Yes, if Gus Van Sant has his way.

Penn is attached to play Milk and Damon is attached to play Milk's killer, Dan White, in the director's long-gestating Milk biopic.

Producer Michael London and his Groundswell Prods. are financing the film, set to be produced by Bruce Cohen and Dan Jinks from a script by Dustin Lance Black ("Big Love"). The filmmakers are now in talks with a leading specialty division to launch the project. Once a deal is finalized, the team behind the as-yet-untitled feature hopes to begin production in San Francisco as early as December. The uncertain start date may affect Damon's participation.

It's the latest chapter in a long-running race to film the biopic of the first openly gay prominent elected official, which has pitted Van Sant's project against another from fellow openly gay director Bryan Singer.

Producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron ("Hairspray") have attempted to produce a big-screen version of Randy Shilts' 1982 bio "The Mayor of Castro Street" for more than 15 years. Warner Bros. Pictures attached Singer to the project two years ago under exec Polly Cohen.

This summer, Warner Independent Pictures signed a deal with Participant Prods. to co-finance that project and brought in Singer's "Usual Suspects" scribe Chris McQuarrie to write a new draft of the script. But McQuarrie is now in Germany with Singer working on "Valkyrie" and also working on the "Castro" script, making an immediate production start less likely to happen before Singer starts his "Superman" sequel commitment.

In an ironic twist, Van Sant once wrote a draft of the "Castro" project and was set to direct his adaptation for Warners.

Penn has never portrayed an openly gay character onscreen, but he did play the sexually ambiguous Olivia Newton-John impersonator "Groovin' Larry" in a section of Trent Harris' 2001 cult hit "Beaver Trilogy." Penn's video short was shot in 1981, then combined with Harris' 1979 documentary short on the amateur performer and his 1985 short narrative version "The Orkly Kid," starring Crispin Glover as Larry, to create "Beaver."

Damon would play White, who shot San Francisco city supervisor Milk and Mayor George Moscone in 1978. After serving five years of a seven-year sentence, White committed suicide in 1985.

London's Groundswell, a financing and production outfit that makes around five films a year in the under-$20 million range, is close to closing a distribution deal for Tom McCarthy's Toronto fest entry "The Visitor." London has produced several acclaimed films, including "Sideways," "Thirteen," "House of Sand and Fog" and "The Illusionist." Upcoming projects include "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh," "Smart People" for Miramax Films, and "The Marc Pease Experience" for Paramount Vantage.

Jinks/Cohen Co. has produced such projects as "American Beauty," "Down With Love," "Big Fish," "The Nines" and "The Visitor."
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: children with angels on September 10, 2007, 06:29:26 PM
This could be interesting. It's a good story that needs to be told, and I would imagine that it will demand a different kind of storytelling style to what he's been ploughing lately. I love Gerry, admire Elephant, pretty much full-on disliked Last Days and don't have massive hopes for Paranoid Park. I like so much about his latest style on a formal level, but it's also come to be accompanied by a really irritating use of actors - treating them like blank, formal elements themeselves. The presence of Damon and Affleck, with their weight and star presence, helps Gerry avoid that paper-thin feel to characterisation, but the Milk story (along with Penn and Damon) will surely see him having to think a little more about his characters as people. Could be a nice refreshing change. 
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: MacGuffin on October 27, 2008, 11:56:02 PM
Duo takes 'Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test'
'Milk' writer, director reunite to adapt Tom Wolfe book
Source: Hollywood Reporter

Fox Searchlight has picked up "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test," a project which reunites the "Milk" team of director Gus Van Sant and writer Dustin Lance Black.

Richard Gladstein and his Film Colony banner are attached to produce.

"Kool-Aid," based on a 1968 Tom Wolfe book, was first packaged last year after Gladstein, who had the rights, enlisted Van Sant and Black. The project was then hunting for a financier.

"Kool-Aid" is Wolfe's account of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" author Ken Kesey and a group dubbed the Merry Pranksters as they drive across the country in a DayGlo-painted school bus dubbed Furthur, reaching personal and collective revelations through the use of LSD and other psychedelic drugs.

"Milk," which stars Sean Penn, Josh Brolin and Emile Hirsch, already is generating advance awards buzz for its telling of California's first openly gay elected official, San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk. Focus Features open the film Nov. 26 in limited release.
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: Bram on October 28, 2008, 03:48:14 AM
Fear and Loathing in extremely long takes? No seriously, that sounds awesome! Has anyone read the novel?
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: SiliasRuby on October 28, 2008, 05:24:22 AM
Quote from: Bram on October 28, 2008, 03:48:14 AM
Fear and Loathing in extremely long takes? No seriously, that sounds awesome! Has anyone read the novel?
One of my fav. books and one of the craziest novels I've ever read.
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: hedwig on October 28, 2008, 01:31:02 PM
it's not a novel.



ps. it's pretty difficult for me to imagine what a GVS adaptation of this book would look like.. which is exactly why i'm excited by this idea.
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: Stefen on October 28, 2008, 03:28:53 PM
Perfect. Just perfect.
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: MacGuffin on January 16, 2009, 11:10:34 AM
Gus Van Sant Talks 'Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test' Casting: From Heath Ledger To... Jack Black?
Source: MTV

While there is much in flux about Gus Van Sant's upcoming adaptation of Tom Wolfe's Zeitgeist-defining book, "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test," which centers on the LSD-infused cross-country road trip that novelist Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters took in the 1960s, the director is certain about one thing: he won't be able to cast his ideal leading man.

"Unfortunately, Heath Ledger was a pretty obvious choice, and he's gone," Van Sant told MTV News in an exclusive interview. But who else could play zany philosopher-king and "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" author Kesey?

"There's the opportunity that it could be Jack Black," says Van Sant, hinting the film might possibly take on a more comedic feel.

At the moment, though, the "Milk" director is awaiting the initial draft of the screenplay, which is being penned by "Milk" scriptwriter Dustin Lance Black.

"He's cracking the nut," Van Sant tells us. "I'm not sitting with him every day. I probably should think about doing that, but I haven't seen the first draft yet. I hope he cracks it. There are many ways to crack it."

Indeed, Wolfe's "Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" is a sprawling, multi-storyline beast of narrative nonfiction following, among other things, the LSD "test" parties Kesey and the Pranksters staged in San Francisco; early Grateful Dead shows; the Hells Angels biker gang; the psychedelic bus called "Further" that Kesey's wacked-out crew drove across the country, making experimental films and tripping their faces off; the drug-related legal troubles Kesey eventually encountered; and, of course, the wild, wild experience of dropping acid in Haight-Ashbury before the rest of America began to turn on, tune in and drop out.

However the finished script turns out, what is clear is the source material is dear to Van Sant's heart. He cast Kesey in his 1993 film "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues" and dedicated 2002's "Gerry" to the memory of the author, who died from complications following surgery for liver cancer in 2001. And for "Acid Test," when it comes time to cast the leading man after Sean Penn blew critics away with his turn as Harvey Milk, the Kesey role as directed by Van Sant will surely be chased by almost every able-bodied actor in Hollywood.
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: MacGuffin on August 23, 2009, 11:56:54 PM
Gus van Sant feels 'Restless'
'Milk' helmer in negotiations with Columbia
Source: Hollywood Reporter

Gus van Sant is in negotiations with Columbia to develop and direct "Restless," an original screenplay by first-time screenwriter Jason Lew.

Brian Grazer, Ron Howard and Bryce Howard will produce for Imagine Entertainment.

The logline is being kept under wraps, though it is described as contemporary and distinctive take on young love.

Lew and Bryce Howard attended New York University together and it was there that Lew first wrote the story as a play. Howard, who had acted in plays with Lew, got a peek at the story and encouraged him to write it as a screenplay.

After several drafts and a "gestation period," Bryce Howard brought it to her father Ron who, taken with Lew's perspective and originality, wanted to further develop it for Imagine. Lew kept on working on the screenplay with Imagine execs, who ultimately showed it to Van Sant. Grazer was looking to reteam with his friend, with whom he worked on the Imagine-produced "Psycho" remake.

Columbia's Doug Belgrad and Andrea Giannetti responded to the originality and raw emotion of the story and pounced on it. Giannetti will oversee for the studio, which aims to move fast on "Restless." The intent is to shoot the movie in Oregon for around $15 million.

WME-repped Van Sant last directed "Milk."
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: MacGuffin on October 09, 2009, 01:44:40 AM
Mia Wasikowska in talks for 'Restless'
Plays title character in upcoming 'Alice in Wonderland'
Source: Hollywood Reporter

Mia Wasikowska is feeling "Restless."

The teen actress, who plays the title character Tim Burton's upcoming "Alice in Wonderland," is in final negotiations to star in Gus Van Sant's next project, the dark coming-of-age drama "Restless" that's set up at Columbia and Imagine. Wasikowska would mark the first casting in the pic.

The Australian actress had previously been contemplating a part in Robert Redford's post-Civil War drama "The Conspirator" before opting for the van Sant pic. Both films are scheduled to begin shooting this fall.

A number of actresses had been in the mix for the lead role in "Restless," which delves into the complex tale of a teenage boy and girl who share a preoccupation with mortality. Producers are out to actors for the male lead.

Bryce Dallas Howard is producing "Restless" with her father, Ron Howard, and Brian Grazer. Rookie scribe Jason Lew, with whom the younger Howard went to film school, penned the screenplay, developing it from a play he wrote.

The WME- and RGM-repped Wasikowska also co-stars in Fox Searchlight's Amelia Earhart biopic "Amelia" and had a role in Edward Zwick World War II drama "Defiance" earlier this year. She came to prominence with her turn as the troubled teenager Sophie on HBO psychotherapy drama "In Treatment."
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: MacGuffin on October 13, 2009, 10:31:35 PM
Scribes make suicide pact
Gus Van Sant, Bret Easton Ellis team on film
Source: Variety

Gus Van Sant and author Bret Easton Ellis will team to write a feature about the double suicide of artists Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake.

PalmStar Entertainment, Celluloid Dreams and K5 Film have acquired screen rights to "The Golden Suicides," a Vanity Fair article written by Nancy Jo Sales.

Van Sant, who helmed "Milk" and is prepping the Columbia Pictures drama "Restless," is involved only as writer at this point.

Ithaka Entertainment's Braxton Pope will produce with PalmStar's Kevin Frakes and Celluloid Dreams' Hengameh Panahi.

Duncan and Blake formed a popular couple on the downtown New York and Venice, Calif., art scenes. She was one of the first videogame designers for girls, and his "digital paintings" -- kaleidoscopic images shown on plasma screens -- established him as a rising star on the circuit.

The couple descended into a paranoid spiral when the artists developed a consuming belief that government and religious organizations were conspiring against them. She killed herself in 2007. Blake found her body on the floor of their bedroom, and walked into the Atlantic Ocean a week later, ending his life.

Patrick Siaretta, Oliver Simon and Daniel Baur will be exec producers, and Courtney Andrialis is co-producer.
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: matt35mm on October 14, 2009, 01:33:23 AM
Wicked!  I heard some shady stuff about their connections to Scientology...
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: john on October 14, 2009, 02:09:26 AM
After I read that Vanity Fair article last year, I immediately thought Van Sant would be the perfect choice to make a film about their unraveling. I then dismissed the idea as being a little too on the nose and repetitive to some of the work Van Sant had already done. However, teaming up with Ellis seems like a really promising collaboration. I hope it comes to fruition, and I hope Van Sant does direct it. It's an affecting story that really lends itself to both Ellis and Van Sant's sensibilities and strengths.

Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: modage on October 14, 2009, 04:29:46 PM
I think anyone who has seen Gerrelephlastdayranoid Park has pretty much already seen this movie.
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: Stefen on October 14, 2009, 07:21:28 PM
I hope Chris Doyle is the DP. Imagine what he could do with some of Blake's artwork? :tightpants:
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: socketlevel on November 01, 2009, 03:31:18 PM
Quote from: matt35mm on October 14, 2009, 01:33:23 AM
Wicked!  I heard some shady stuff about their connections to Scientology...

Ya some have thought this is what depressed PTA for a while. blake did the art for punch drunk, and i believe they grew close.

when i was in university i wrote a thesis on Scientology and did a lot of studying into their history. the use of the word 'paranoid' is used very liberally in that description, almost implying it was all in their heads.  what that description doesn't know, or leaves out, is the spotty history of Scientology. i wouldn't be surprised if they were feeling real pressure and retaliation from the religion. the almost military style religious hierarchy is notorious for going after people that decide to leave the cult.  ruining many lives with horrible tactics, mainly blackmailing the exposure of undesired information; information that was gathered during their time of faith. Scientology has a very aggressive black list process.

I hope that these topics are in the movie if it was the reality of the situation. because everything, including the suicide, isn't uncommon when dealing with similar tragic real life occurrences with said religion.
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: MacGuffin on November 13, 2009, 01:06:13 AM
Gus Van Sant film keeps it in the family
Henry Hopper, Schuyler Fisk join drama
Source: Hollywood Reporter

The casting process of Columbia and Imagine's untitled Gus Van Sant drama is keeping with the project's familial theme.

The feature, on which Bryce Dallas Howard is teaming with father Ron Howard to produce with Brian Grazer, is opening its arms to Dennis Hopper's son Henry Hopper, who will star opposite Mia Wasikowska.

Schuyler Fisk, daughter of Sissy Spacek, also is boarding the movie, as are Chin Han, Ryo Kase and Jane Adams.

The drama, formerly known as "Restless," revolves around a teenage boy and girl (Wasikowska) who share a preoccupation with mortality.

In his first starring role, Hopper is playing the boy, who is trying to get over the death of his parents. Fisk will play Wasikowska's sister.

Chin Han plays a doctor treating Wasikowska, and Kase is a spirit of a World War II kamikaze pilot who regularly visits the boy. Adams plays the boy's aunt.

The movie begins production today in Portland, Ore., a favorite locale of Van Sant's; he shot 1989's "Drugstore Cowboy" and 1991's "My Own Private Idaho" there.

Rookie scribe Jason Lew, who attended film school with the younger Howard, penned the screenplay, developing it from a play he wrote.

"It captures the profoundly defining turning point of a young person's life with stark realism, irreverent humor and intense emotion," Bryce Dallas Howard said of the story. "I think that Gus was drawn to this story because he has an uncanny ability to convey the complexities of youth and outsiders, and this is, above all else, the journey of an outsider."

Hopper's only acting credit is "Kiss & Tell," in which he appeared at age 6. He was set to star in Wes Craven's "My Soul to Take" but had to bow out when he contracted mononucleosis.

Fisk, repped by CAA, most recently appeared in the 2006 indie film "I'm Reed Fish" with Jay Baruchel.

Chin Han, a veteran actor-producer in his native Singapore, might be best known in the English-speaking world for playing gangster Lau in "The Dark Knight." He next appears in Roland Emmerich's "2012," which opens today. The actor is repped by Echelon Talent and Untitled Entertainment.

Kase has numerous acting credits in his native Japan and appeared in Clint Eastwood's "Letters From Iwo Jima." Adams, repped by Framework Entertainment, appears in HBO's "Hung."
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: MacGuffin on May 06, 2010, 11:29:54 AM
US director Gus Van Sant wins Stockholm film award

STOCKHOLM - Organizers of the Stockholm film festival say director Gus Van Sant has been named the winner of this year's visionary award, hailing him as one of modern cinema's greatest American filmmakers.

Van Sant is expected to visit Stockholm in November to pick up the award — a 16-pound bronze horse.

Festival director Git Scheynius said Thursday that Van Sant's depiction of an alternative America "is a celebration of film art," adding that his films have been a part of the annual festival throughout its 20-year history. Van Sant's films include "Good Will Hunting" and "Milk."

The visionary award is one of the festival's most prestigious prizes. Previous winners include Wong Kar Wai, Wes Anderson and Terry Gilliam.
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: Mr. Merrill Lehrl on May 18, 2011, 08:36:37 PM
http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=31011

QuoteGaspar Noe Directing Golden Suicides?

It's an announcement to strike fear into even the most steel-hearted cinema-goer: Gaspar Noe is in talks to direct The Golden Suicides, from a screenplay by Brett Easton Ellis and Gus Van Sant.

Not usually a director-for-hire, the idea that Noe (the controversial talent behind Seul Contre Tous, Irreversible and Enter the Void) could be employed on someone else's project is an odd one. Ellis' involvement could be a clue to the attraction however: the author's penchant for mixing the bleak, the violent and the absurd seeming a good fit for an artist who told a botched-rape-revenge drama backwards and made a three-hour FX extravaganza from the POV of a dead guy.

The Golden Suicides stems from a Vanity Fair article by Nancy Jo Sales, and is based on the true story of the double suicide of Jeremy Blake and Theresa Duncan, popular New York artists who, for reasons unknown, became increasingly paranoid that they were being conspired against by the US government and the church of Scientology. Duncan overdosed on Tylenol in July 2007, and Blake is believed to have drowned himself in the Atlantic a week later.

We'd previously thought this a possible new entry in Van Sant's Death cycle (Gerry, Elephant, Last Days), but while Noe is reportedly only one of several names in contention at this point, there no longer seems to be any mention of Van Sant at all.

Mysteries to unravel then (Noe will be pleased), with Chris Hanley and Jordan Gertner of production companies Muse and Hero, currently schmoozing deals at Cannes. More news as it arrives.
Owen Williams
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: wilder on September 07, 2011, 06:13:45 AM
TV Teaser (http://tinyurl.com/4yuq9y4) for "Boss" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1833285/)

:yabbse-undecided:
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: Pubrick on September 07, 2011, 07:08:20 AM
is he gonna direct any more episodes other than the pilot?

imdb makes it seem like mario van peebles is the main director.

it could be like scorsese and boardwalk empire.. a low point, but nothing more.
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: MacGuffin on November 01, 2011, 09:17:48 PM
Taylor Lautner to Star in Gus Van Sant Indie Film (Exclusive)
The 'Twilight' and 'Abduction' actor also will produce the project which is based on a New Yorker article.
Source: THR

Get ready for Taylor Lautner, independent film star.
 
The Twilight actor, fresh from the disappointing performance of September's action thriller Abduction, is about to move into arthouse territory. Sources tell The Hollywood Reporter that Lautner is finalizing a deal to team with auteur director Gus Van Sant (Milk, Drugstore Cowboy) on a small-budget film based on a nonfiction article in The New Yorker magazine that Lautner has optioned.

Details are still emerging about the project, but sources say an announcement is expected later this week revealing who is write the script for the Van Sant-helmed film. The aim is to shoot the film in the first quarter of next year.
 
The move is an interesting one for the Twilight star, who has shown eagerness to capitalize on his burst of fame from the blockbuster teen fantasy series, the penultimate installment of which, Breaking Dawn: Part I, hits theaters November 18.
 
Since becoming a star in 2008's Twilight, Lautner has attached himself to several projects--with his price tag ratcheting up to $7.5 million. He circled Max Steel, based on a Mattel action figure, then decided to make Stretch Armstrong, based on a Hasbro property, at Universal. That project has lost momentum at the studio but sources say it is not dead.
 
Lautner also flirted with Northern Lights, a project from producer David Ellison about extreme flying, but he chose to do Abduction for Lionsgate instead. That movie, which opened in September, pulled in only $26.9 million in the U.S. It managed another $44.5 million overseas. Lautner also was reported as being attached to Incarceron, a sci-fi project at Fox. According to an insider, that project is headed into turnaround but Lautner is still attached.
 
The new project would almost certainly take Lautner's career in a new direction. He is said to be determined to work only with top directors and writers from now on as he strives to define himself as an actor.  
 
Lautner also will produce the project via Quick Six, the production shingle he runs with father Dan Lautner.
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: MacGuffin on January 06, 2012, 03:30:10 PM
Gus Van Sant Taking Matt Damon's Place on Dave Eggers Project
After the actor pulled out of directing the untitled film due to "scheduling conflicts," Van Sant will now take his chair.
Source: Playlist

Matt Damon might not be directing his untitled drama he co-wrote with John Krasinski and Dave Eggers, but the project is far from dead.

Gus Van Sant will sit in the director's chair after Damon fell out due to "scheduling issues." (The actor said yes to several movies this year, and the time required to prep what would have been his directorial debut would have impacted his other commitments.)

Damon came to the realization he would be unable to direct during the holidays and called Van Sant, who helmed him in his 1997 breakthrough Good Will Hunting, to step in.  

Damon will still star in the movie, along with which centers on a salesman (Damon) who arrives in a small town only to have his life changed. Krasinski was also due to star. The two are producing as is Chris Moore.

The next step for the project, which hopes to shoot in the spring, is financing. The project was initially set up at Warner Bros. in October but is no longer there. Discussions are underway with financiers to take it over.

Van Sant, repped by WME, last directed Restless, which starred Mia Wasikowska.
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: pete on January 06, 2012, 03:34:04 PM
good boys from Boston are running Hollywood right now!
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: MacGuffin on April 23, 2013, 07:10:25 PM
Gus Van Sant Shot Sex Scene Starring Alex Pettyfer in Bid to Direct 'Fifty Shades of Grey' (Exclusive)
Source: TheWrap

Two-time Oscar nominee Gus Van Sant has shot a steamy sex scene featuring Alex Pettyfer as Christian Grey in a bid to direct "Fifty Shades of Grey," the film version of the erotic bestseller, individuals familiar with the project have told TheWrap.

The scene, insiders said, is when the ingénue Anastasia Steele loses her virginity to Grey.

Van Sant previously directed "Promised Land" and "Milk" for Focus Features, which has the rights to EL James' novel along with Universal Pictures. Michael De Luca and Dana Brunetti are producing.

Insiders stressed that Pettyfer was cast as Grey just for the tape, not the movie, though Universal just got into bed with the 23 year-old actor on its sexy remake of "Endless Love," which he is currently shooting in Atlanta. TheWrap was unable to confirm the identity of the actress cast at Steele, the impressionable young woman who falls for kinky billionaire Grey.

Universal and Focus have declined to comment on any list stories, long or short, though a Universal spokesperson said that the studio isn't out to directors or actors, nor have they commissioned any test reels. WME has also declined comment.

Van Sant has not settled on a follow-up film since wrapping "Promised Land," which makes him available to begin working on the project as soon as writer Kelly Marcel delivers a finished draft of the script.

Van Sant was not officially asked by the studio to shoot a test tape. But doing so may indicate how badly he wants the coveted assignment.

Universal and Focus spent at least $3 million in a bidding war to crack the whip on "Fifty Shades of Grey," and they'll certainly be expecting the pop culture phenomenon to be a hit, and a franchise for the studio. Van Sant has only directed one film to cross the domestic $100 million mark -- 1997's "Good Will Hunting" grossed $138 million in the U.S. -- and only one more to cross the domestic $50 million mark, as "Finding Forrester" grossed $51 million in 2000.

Van Sant has long been considered a director who confronts themes such as sex and sexuality head-on, from his debut film the "Mala Noche" to the hustlers in "My Own Private Idaho" to Nicole Kidman's provocative dance in "To Die For" to serving as the executive producer of Larry Clark's explicit "Kids."

Van Sant's candidacy confirms the producers' intentions to hire a high-class filmmaker to deliver a tasteful adaption of the steamy novel. It's possible the success of Steven Soderbergh's male stripper movie "Magic Mike" and its appeal to female audiences is why Van Sant chose to use Pettyfer in his test tape.

"Fifty Shades of Grey" sold to Universal and Focus in March 2012, just two months after WME-repped Van Sant did Focus a favor by stepping in late in the game to replace his "Good Will Hunting" star Matt Damon as the director of "Promised Land," which Focus released to generally strong reviews in December.
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: jenkins on April 23, 2013, 07:29:15 PM
kinda wacky, kinda exciting (tbh), imagining van sant as the one making this movie. didn't expect an interest but there's now an interest and a mayor

new page oh
Quote from: MacGuffin on April 23, 2013, 07:10:25 PM
Gus Van Sant Shot Sex Scene Starring Alex Pettyfer in Bid to Direct 'Fifty Shades of Grey' (Exclusive)
Source: TheWrap

Two-time Oscar nominee Gus Van Sant has shot a steamy sex scene featuring Alex Pettyfer as Christian Grey in a bid to direct "Fifty Shades of Grey," the film version of the erotic bestseller, individuals familiar with the project have told TheWrap.

The scene, insiders said, is when the ingénue Anastasia Steele loses her virginity to Grey.

Van Sant previously directed "Promised Land" and "Milk" for Focus Features, which has the rights to EL James' novel along with Universal Pictures. Michael De Luca and Dana Brunetti are producing.

Insiders stressed that Pettyfer was cast as Grey just for the tape, not the movie, though Universal just got into bed with the 23 year-old actor on its sexy remake of "Endless Love," which he is currently shooting in Atlanta. TheWrap was unable to confirm the identity of the actress cast at Steele, the impressionable young woman who falls for kinky billionaire Grey.

Universal and Focus have declined to comment on any list stories, long or short, though a Universal spokesperson said that the studio isn't out to directors or actors, nor have they commissioned any test reels. WME has also declined comment.

Van Sant has not settled on a follow-up film since wrapping "Promised Land," which makes him available to begin working on the project as soon as writer Kelly Marcel delivers a finished draft of the script.

Van Sant was not officially asked by the studio to shoot a test tape. But doing so may indicate how badly he wants the coveted assignment.

Universal and Focus spent at least $3 million in a bidding war to crack the whip on "Fifty Shades of Grey," and they'll certainly be expecting the pop culture phenomenon to be a hit, and a franchise for the studio. Van Sant has only directed one film to cross the domestic $100 million mark -- 1997's "Good Will Hunting" grossed $138 million in the U.S. -- and only one more to cross the domestic $50 million mark, as "Finding Forrester" grossed $51 million in 2000.

Van Sant has long been considered a director who confronts themes such as sex and sexuality head-on, from his debut film the "Mala Noche" to the hustlers in "My Own Private Idaho" to Nicole Kidman's provocative dance in "To Die For" to serving as the executive producer of Larry Clark's explicit "Kids."

Van Sant's candidacy confirms the producers' intentions to hire a high-class filmmaker to deliver a tasteful adaption of the steamy novel. It's possible the success of Steven Soderbergh's male stripper movie "Magic Mike" and its appeal to female audiences is why Van Sant chose to use Pettyfer in his test tape.

"Fifty Shades of Grey" sold to Universal and Focus in March 2012, just two months after WME-repped Van Sant did Focus a favor by stepping in late in the game to replace his "Good Will Hunting" star Matt Damon as the director of "Promised Land," which Focus released to generally strong reviews in December.
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: wilder on February 04, 2014, 07:43:01 PM
Matthew McConaughey to Star in Gus Van Sant's Drama 'Sea of Trees'
via The Wrap

Gil Netter is producing the movie, which co-stars Ken Watanabe

Fresh off his first Oscar nomination for his devastating performance in "Dallas Buyers Club," Matthew McConaughey has signed on to star opposite Ken Watanabe in Gus Van Sant's drama "Sea of Trees," an individual familiar with the project has told TheWrap.

Chris Sparling ("Buried") wrote the script, which was voted to the 2013 Black List.

Story follows an American man (McConaughey) who takes a journey into the infamous "Suicide Forest" at the foothills of Mount Fuji with the intention of taking his own life. When he is interrupted by a Japanese man (Watanabe) who has had second thoughts about his own suicide, and is trying to find his way out of the forest, the two begin a journey of reflection and survival.

Gil Netter ("Life of Pi") is producing the movie, which is gearing up to start production shortly.

Both McConaughey and Watanabe are veterans of Christopher Nolan movies, as the former recently wrapped "Interstellar," while the latter actor co-starred in "Inception." Neither has worked with Van Sant before.

"Sea of Trees" will serve as Van Sant's next film, as he last directed the Matt Damon-John Krasinski drama "Promised Land."

McConaughey, who is currently earning rave reviews for his turn in HBO's "True Detective," can also be seen as hotshot stockbroker Mark Hanna in Martin Scorsese's "The Wolf of Wall Street." The actor, who recently won a Golden Globe and a SAG Award for "Dallas Buyers Club," is represented by CAA.
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: wilder on February 20, 2014, 04:17:11 PM
Gus Van Sant First Name Director on Revived BMW Films Series
via Showbiz 411

Remember the BMW Film series? Clive Owen played a James Bond like character in a series of short films, actually commercials, directed by a bunch of big names including Ang Lee, John Woo, Guy Ritchie (who used his wife at the time, Madonna, in his episode) and the late John Frankenheimer? The series ran online and in movie theaters from 2001-2002.

Now BMW is bringing it all back. I'm told the first director is the great Gus van Sant of "Good Will Hunting" and "Drugstore Cowboy" fame. This time, the series is about a couple. van Sant is looking now for big star names in their mid-30s.
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: wilder on February 24, 2014, 08:57:54 PM
Gus Van Sant interviewed on the Bret Easton Ellis Podcast (http://podcastone.com/Bret-Easton-Ellis-Podcast), discussing (among other things) the yet unmade Golden Suicides project about Jeremy Blake and Theresa Duncan
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: Pubrick on February 24, 2014, 10:05:23 PM
But I have to listen to Brett Easton Ellis?

Ugh.. can someone please take one for the team like I did with that Christian science lecture that Elswit got roped into?

Only the bits about the golden suicides, and any other juicy gossip. Just don't mention Ellis' opinion on anything. I'm sure JB has already listened to it multiple times.
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: wilder on February 24, 2014, 10:20:23 PM
It's all in the first 17 minutes if you can tolerate that much. They talk about the narrative challenges, Gus' reluctance to make a movie about someone who might come off as crazy, references a movie called The Snake Pit (1948) (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040806) as an example of something he felt actually did that well, the status of the movie being up in the air because Gaspar Noe is unreliable and hard to get ahold of...Blake and Duncan moving to LA with a two picture deal with little understanding of the movie business and it becoming completely dispiriting to them...BEE wanting to write the movie because he was in a relationship where he felt he would follow the person anywhere no matter how unhealthy it might have been for him, the state of mind in which you'd follow someone off a cliff. Joaquin Phoenix, Ryan Gosling, and Naomi Watts were all considered for various roles. It's not a bad discussion, they talk about quite a bit...
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: ElPandaRoyal on February 25, 2014, 10:42:45 AM
Well, I have to say I only listened to one of these BEE podcasts (the one with Matt Berninger) and I have to say I was very very pleasantly surprised with the quality of discussion. No douchebaging at all by Ellis, it was actually a great interview, with a few personal, interesting questions and a very personal introduction to the guest (or, in that case, the band). I actually downloaded the rest to see if they're all worth it. Interestingly enough, they discussed the Jeremy Blake and Theresa Duncan suicides, because Matt knew them as well and it seems they left a big mark on Ellis.
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: wilder on May 15, 2014, 06:37:53 PM
Cannes: Naomi Watts in Talks to Join Matthew McConaughey in 'Sea of Trees'
via The Hollywood Reporter

UPDATED: Director Gus Van Sant and McConaughey turned up at the festival Thursday to talk about the project, which begins shooting this summer.

CANNES – Naomi Watts is in talks to star in Gus Van Sant's Japan-set drama, Sea of Trees.
The news that Van Sant is planning to cast the Diana star came from the director himself, who showed up at the Cannes Film Festival Thursday with Matthew McConaughey, star of the film, to tout the project to foreign buyers. Sea of Trees, with a budget of $25 million to $28 million, is one of the biggest titles being shopped at the market this year.

Sea of Trees is the first title from Bloom, the new sales company launched May 13 by veteran foreign sales agent Alex Walton and Ken Kao. Bloom sought to further elevate the project's profile by flying in Van Sant and McConaughey (the actor arrived Wednesday night from Los Angeles, and will depart Friday).

McConaughey, fresh off his Oscar win for Dallas Buyers Club and who is next in theaters in Christopher Nolan's Interstellar, said the script for Sea of Trees was the best he's read in five years. He'll play an American who travels to Japan's famous "Suicide Forest" with the intention of taking his own life. Instead, he decides to help a Japanese man (Ken Watanabe) who has become lost, and the duo set off on a reflective, and sometimes dangerous, journey to find their way out.

"It's like [reading] a whole bunch of haikus back-to-back," McConaughey said. "I got the chills, which doesn't usually happen. And with Gus, I thought it was the perfect match."

Watts would play the wife of McConaughey's character. Their marriage is told through a series of flashbacks, Van Sant said.

"There are many different relationships in the film," the director said. "I can only hope that it will look fantastic."

Sea of Trees is McConaughey's next movie and begins production in July or August. Van Sant would like to shoot in Japan. If not, he's eyeing the Pacific Northwest (Van Sant lives in Portland).

Van Sant said he received Chris Sparling's script from producer Gil Netter (Life of Pi). CAA and WME arranged financing and are co-repping U.S. rights. Kao, heir to the Garmin fortune, is producing and financing Sea of Trees through his Waypoint Entertainment.

McConaughey gave foreign buyers a history lesson on the Suicide Forest, which lies at the foot of Mt. Fuji. "If you go online and look for the perfect place to die, this is the place that comes up. There are even signs that say, 'remember, you leave a family behind.'"

The actor said he is preparing for Sea of Trees by contemplating "the metaphors" provided by the script, and that the character's "visitation with death actually gives him life."

Watts, who received an Oscar nomination for 2012's The Impossible, has three films in post-production: Noah Baumbach's While We're Young, comedy St. Vincent De Van Nuys and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Birdman. She's repped by CAA and Untitled Entertainment.
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: wilder on February 20, 2015, 12:47:46 PM
Jenji Kohan's 'New World' Drama Ordered To Pilot At HBO, Gus Van Sant To Direct
via Deadline

HBO's long-gestating period drama project from Orange Is the New Black creator Jenji Kohan has been given an official pilot green light, with Gus Van Sant set to direct.

Co-written by Kohan, Bruce Miller (Alphas) and Tracy Miller, the project, titled New World, is described as a provocative period drama that explores the circumstances around one of the most compelling chapters in American history where intolerance and repression set neighbor against neighbor and led a town to mass hysteria. While HBO is not elaborating beyond the carefully crafted logline, New World is believed to be tackling topics inspired by the events surrounding the infamous Salem Witch Trials in 17th century New England.

Casting is currently underway, with production on the pilot slated to take place in Boston, Massachusetts this spring. New World is a co-production between HBO and Orange producer Lionsgate TV.

Kohan, Bruce Miller and Van Sant executive produce with Tara Herrmann. Mark Burley will co-executive producer, with Bruce's wife, Tracy Miller, serving as supervising producer. Kohan is with CAA, the Millers are with ICM Partners.
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on February 20, 2015, 05:40:31 PM
You're too late, Van Sant. Too late.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_erFOGbkNw
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: wilder on May 15, 2015, 02:57:33 PM
Oh no (http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jun/10/the-sea-of-trees-review-gus-van-sant-matthew-mcconaughey)
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: jenkins on May 16, 2015, 12:41:30 PM
QuoteOne way to pass the time during "The Sea of Trees" — preferably during one of Matthew McConaughey's interminable misty-eyed monologues — is to try and figure out exactly how many bad movies the actor, screenwriter Chris Sparling and director Gus Van Sant have managed to squeeze into their tale of a man's lonely quest to take his own life. Almost impressive in the way it shifts from dreary two-hander to so-so survival thriller to terminal-illness weepie to M. Night Shyamalan/Nicholas Sparks-level spiritual hokum, this risibly long-winded drama is perhaps above all a profound cultural insult, milking the lush green scenery of Japan's famous Aokigahara forest for all it's worth, while giving co-lead Ken Watanabe little to do other than moan in agony, mutter cryptically, and generally try to act as though McConaughey's every word isn't boring him (pardon the expression) to death.
http://variety.com/2015/film/reviews/the-sea-of-trees-review-matthew-mcconaughey-cannes-1201495483/
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: jenkins on February 20, 2016, 01:40:39 AM
i agree with looking forward to this movie

Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: wilder on November 29, 2016, 10:51:17 PM
Joaquin Phoenix & Gus Van Sant To Reteam For 'Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far On Foot'
via The Playlist

Variety reports that "To Die For" team Phoenix and Gus Van Sant are looking to reunite on the biopic, "Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far On Foot." A project that has eluded being made for years and years in Hollywood, the film is based on the autobiography of John Callahan, who was paralyzed at the age of 21, and turned to cartooning, eventually winning acclaim (and some controversy) for his work that appeared in the New York, Playboy, and Penthouse. Here's the book synopsis:

Is it possible to find humor — corrosive, taboo-shattering, laugh-till-you-cry humor — in the story of a 38-year-old- cartoonist who's both a quadriplegic and a recovering alcoholic? The answer is yes, if the cartoonist is John Callahan — whose infamous work has graced the pages of Omni, Penthouse, and The New Yorker — and if he's telling it in his own words and pictures. But Callahan's uncensored account of his troubled — and sometimes impossible — life is also genuinely inspiring. Without self-pity or self-righteousness, this liberating book tells us how a quadriplegic with a healthy libido has sex, what it's like to live in the exitless maze of the welfare system, where a cartoonist finds his comedy, and how a man with no reason to believe in anything discovers his own brand of faith.
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: Drenk on February 22, 2018, 04:48:21 PM
Quote from: wilder on November 29, 2017, 04:16:42 PM
First Look: Joaquin Phoenix In Gus Van Sant's 'Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far On Foot'
via The Playlist

Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Jonah Hill, Rooney Mara, and Jack Black, the film tells the true story of John Callahan, who was paralyzed at the age of 21, and turned to cartooning, eventually winning acclaim (and some controversy) for his work that appeared in the New Yorker, Playboy, and Penthouse. Here's the official synopsis:

John Callahan has a talent for off-color jokes...and a drinking problem. When a bender ends in a car accident, Callahan wakes permanently confined to a wheelchair. In his journey back from rock bottom, Callahan finds beauty and comedy in the absurdity of human experience.

The Sundance Film Festival runs from January 18-28.

(https://i.imgur.com/75lmuPL.jpg)

I saw it. It's a basic biopic. It gets kind of better toward the last half, but it is everything you expect it to be. The expectations are low. There is one scene which is absolutely ridiculous—I can't believe they made it, and I'm not sure it was supposed to be ironic...? Joaquin Phoenix is good. As usual. Jonah Hill is absolutely fantastic in this movie. The scenes they share together are the best, you kind of forget the whole thing, and you're with them.

I'm fond of the last shot.
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: jenkins on June 04, 2018, 09:30:51 PM
oh i remembered my last thing in terms of now

there are 2 movies i've seen this year

1 Black Panther
2 Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far On Foot. i saw it in some screening room on Wilshire. it was weird, four of us were in this small theater with leather seats, i was with one person, Mark Olsen was another person, the fourth person i didn't know. so that was a special unusual circumstance and still i thought the movie was just okay. it's what they say: an AA meeting as a movie. the theme of perseverance through life obstacles is important, and i personally adored its appreciation for dark humor, but the movie felt flat and only later did i remember that Van Sant often goes flat, i forgot to mention Phoenix is at peak sure, Jonah Hill is solid sure, the movie disappointed me but also i'm being hard on it.
Title: Re: Gus Van Sant
Post by: wilder on April 05, 2022, 10:23:09 AM
'Feud': Naomi Watts To Star In 'Capote's Women' Season 2 Of FX Series Written By Jon Robin Baitz & Directed By Gus Van Sant
Deadline

Ryan Murphy and Plan B have set a second installment of their FX anthology series Feud. Titled Capote's Women, the project will star two-time Oscar nominee Naomi Watts as Babe Paley who ruled the glamorous world of New York society in the 1960s and 70s. Two-time Oscar nominee Gus Van Sant is set to direct all eight episodes, with Tony and Pulitzer-nominated Jon Robin Baitz, who put together the high-profile package, writing all episodes and serving as showrunner.

An adaptation of Laurence Leamer's bestselling book "Capote's Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era," the miniseries is set in the 1970s, and ends with Truman Capote's death in 1984. It chronicles the tale of the famous wunderkind author as he stabs several of his female friends — whom he called his "swans" — in the back by publishing a roman à clef short story called "La Côte Basque 1965" in Esquire in 1975. The piece was intended to be a chapter in Capote's infamous unfinished novel "Answered Prayers," his followup to the blockbuster "In Cold Blood."

Following the enormous success of "In Cold Blood," Capote was the toast of New York high society who counted the city's most beautiful, stylish, and wealthy women as close friends, his swans. The list of top socialites in his inner circle included Babe Paley, wife of CBS head Bill Paley, who will be played by Watts in Feud: Capote's Women; Slim Keith; Pamela Churchill Harriman, ex-wife of Winston's son and future wife of Slim's husband; Lee Radziwill, sister of Jackie Kennedy; Gloria Guinness and C.Z. Guest.

La Côte Basque's characters were thinly disguised versions of Capote's  female confidants and exposed their shocking secrets and scandals, from adultery to murder. Its publication destroyed Capote's friendships, with all of his swans cutting him off, as well as his reputation and his social standing.