Indie Gay and Lesbian Cinema

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Indie Gay and Lesbian Cinema
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Gus Van Sant

• Fresh distinctive voice in cinema
• His style is so personal that unlike Tarantino he
  has not been easily imitated

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Films

• Mala Noche 1987
• Drugstore Cowboy 1989
• My Own Private Idaho 1991
• To Die For 1995
• Good Will Hunting 1997
• Elephant 2003
• Last Days 2005

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Depiction of Outsiders

• Drug addicts and Male prostitutes are shown for
  their humanity and not for their tawdriness
• Eccentric point of view provides a look at
  down-and-out characters on the fringes of society
  whom he never romanticizes or pities
• Were looking through a peephole, dropping in on
  the secret lives of people
• -J Hoberman

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Van Sants attraction to street people

• Is based on the belief that they are more
  interesting
• There is more drama in their lives than middle
  class characters

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Expressive imagery

• Odd rhythms and a jagged camera style
• Studied painting at Rhode Island School of Design
• More concerned with images as a means to tell
  stories than other directors

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Mala Noche 1986

• Self Financed
• Follows the doomed infatuation by a skid row
  liquor store owner with a Mexican immigrant
• 25,000. Budget (grainy bw film
• Received scant attention until it won the Los
  Angeles Film Critics Award for best independent
  film

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Drugstore Cowboy 1989

• Depicts the life of Bob(Matt Dillon), a drug
  addict and dealer who supports his habit by
  stealing pharmaceuticals
• Van Sants non-judgement of the characters caused
  Hollywood funders to back off
• Van Sant saw it as an anti drug story
• Won best picture and best screenplay in 1989 from
  the National Society of Film Critics (upset
  beating Spike Lee and Steven Soderbergh

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Van Sant turned down Lucrative Hollywood Offers
to make My Own Private Idaho 1991

• A retelling of Shakespeares Henry IV with street
  hustlers
• Having teenagers lapse into Shakespearean verse
  doesnt always work, but it suits the story.

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Narrative

• Veers off the conventional track
• Pileup of open parentheses within parentheses
  that never get satisfactorily closed

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Characters

• Instead the filmmaker chooses to develop rich and
  interesting characters
• Most interestingly the central character Mike
  Waters played by River Phoenix a narcoleptic
  hustler trying to search for his lost mother who
  has abandoned him

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Scott Favor Keanu Reeves

• Mikes tragic unrequited love for Scott
• Bob Pigeon is the films Falstaff (Scotts true
  father)
• Scott is the Prince Hal figure who plans to
  renounce his street life once his father dies
• Class difference

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Reviews

• Uneven yet lyrically shot
• Elevates Van Sants issues to a lyric, poetic,
  and intensely sad place

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Controversy

• Treatment of homoerotic exploits of male hustlers
• He ignored warnings that male prostitution and
  homosexuality were taboos in a social climate
  marked by hysteria over the AIDS epidemic

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Mike

• What does it mean when a protagonist suffers from
  narcolepsy?

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Non-active central character-

• Misses most of the crucial developments of his
  own life
• Depends on others compassion
• Dreamy detachment
• Not a great hustler
• No long range plans
• Film is about each single moment
• Not about the destination

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Gay Sensibility not new to Hollywood Cinema

• Had to be hidden
• George Cukor, Mitchell Leison, Dorothy Arzner,
  Nicholas Ray
• Open secret in Hollywood, but kept out of the
  public eye

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The Celluloid Closet Vito Russo Book 1981, Rob
Epstein and Jeffrey Friedmans Film 1996

• Surveyed hundreds of films
• Looked at all the different gay stereotypes
  depicted in Hollywood film
• Comic sissies, lesbian vampires, pathetic queens
  sadistic predators

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The Film Points Out

• Depiction of homosexuals in Hollywood film has
  been used to get cheap, easy laughs from straight
  people
• This reinforces ignorance and prejudice

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Under the Studio System Classifications of

• Acceptable
• Morally Objectionable
• Condemned
• Meant that gay characters had to be shamefully
  degraded