Born On This Day, 1952: Gus Van Sant

Jim Burroway

July 24th, 2016

Born in Louisville, Kentucky, Van Sant’s traveling salesman father moved the family around through much of his childhood. One thing remained constant though, and it was the young Van Sant’s interest in painting and Super-8 filmmaking. He enrolled at the Rhode Island School of Design to study painting, but he switched to cinema after discovering avant-garde films. Since avant-garde films were never much of a money-maker, Van Sant wound up being very familiar with some of the more derelict areas along Hollywood Boulevard, and 1985’s Mala Noche, the story of a doomed love affair between a gay store clerk and a Mexican immigrant, was the first of many films touching on the fringes of society. 1989’s Drugstore Cowboy and 1991’s My Own Private Idaho became signature films which established Van Sant as a director to be taken seriously.

His 1993 flop, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, very nearly unraveled his career, but 1995’s To Die For (starring Nicole Kidman, Matt Dillon and Joaquin Phoenix), his first major studio production for Columbia, catapulted him into the mainstream. Good Will Hunting, which starred and was written by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, earned Van Sant a Best Director Oscar nomination. His remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho was considerably less successful. His decision to re-create Hitchcock’s film shot-for-shot in color instead of black and white looked more alike a parlor trick than a serious artistic decision. He then turned to art-house films, including Elephant (a fictional film inspired by the 1999 Columbine shooting) which earned the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2003. He returned to the mainstream again in 2008 with his biopic Milk, starring Sean Penn as the late San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk and featuring a screenplay by Dustin Lance Black (Jun 10). Again, Van Sant was nominated for an Oscar for Best Director, although he lost to Danny Boyle for Slumdog Millionaire.

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