Good Will Hunting

Background:

"I guess I'm interested in sociopathic people. In life and in my movies." Gus Van Sant.

Film director Gus Van Sant, first burst onto the scene with his widely acclaimed feature film Mala Noche (1985), received a Best Director Academy Award nomination for Good Will Hunting (1997; starring Matt Damon and Robin Williams). The openly gay filmmaker who has made a number of hallmarks of 90's independent cinema, notably Drugstore Cowboy (1989), My Own Private Idaho (1991) and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1993), was also praised for directing such feature films as To Die For (1995; starring Nicole Kidman), Finding Forrester (2000; starring Sean Connery), Palme d'Or-winning Elephant (2003) and the semi-biopic of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, Last Days (2005). His upcoming film project is Paranoid Park, inspired by Blake Nelson's novel.

Van Sant also has directed music videos for many top recording artists including David Bowie, Elton John, The Red Hot Chili Peppers and Hanson. A longtime musician himself, Van Sant, a member of a band called Destroy All Blondes, had two solo albums “Gus Van Sant" and "18 Songs About Golf" which were released on the PopTones label in late 1997.

Nearly Christmas in 2006, Van Sant made headlines when he was arrested on a drunken driving charge in the Portland, Oregon area.


Kentucky Root

Childhood and Family:

On July 24, 1952, Gus Van Sant was born in Louisville, Kentucky. His father, Gus Van Sant Sr., was a traveling salesman. And due to his father’s profession, Van Sant and his family moved continuously during his childhood. He attended Catlin Gabel School, Portland, Oregon, and earned a BA at the Rhode Island School of Design before moving to Hollywood. He currently lives in Portland, Oregon.


On The Director’s Chair

Career:

"I have this new theory about films. It's almost like astrology, where if we started on a Tuesday the film will be different than if we started on a Wednesday. Not because of the planets. It's that sometimes you start with the wrong balance and the whole thing gets messed up." Gus Van Sant.

Since his early years, Gus Van Sant has been interested in painting and Super-8 filmmaking. In school he began making semi-autobiographical shorts costing between 30 and 50 dollars. At age 16, he had a summer advertising job on New York City’s Madison Ave. As an art student, Van Sant was inspired to start making films after he discovered the work of Andy Warhol.

Graduating from college, Van Sant moved to Hollywood in 1976. He found job as a production assistant to writer/director Ken Shapiro, working on comedy scripts. In 1978, he received credit for the sound on the comedy film Property.

In 1981, he made a film about a naïve aspiring actress who goes to Hollywood and abandons her ideals, Alice in Hollywood, which was never released. The next year, he made a 9-minute comedy film called The Discipline of D.E., which debuted at the New York Film Festival.

Van Sant’s first feature film, Mala Noche, was released in 1985. Based on the Oregon poet Walt Curtis autobiographical novel of the same name, the black-and-white, low-budgeted film received rave reviews and won the Los Angeles Film Critics Award for Best Independent/Experimental Film of 1987. Following his successful feature film debut, Van Sant made more short films, the 3-minute films Ken Death Gets Out of Jail, My New Friend, and Five Ways to Kill Yourself (all three in 1987).

Drugstore Cowboy (1989), based on the then-unpublished novel by James Fogle, was Van Sant's breakthrough picture. Van Sant's first film with a sizable budget and his first feature in color, with Matt Dillon stars in the title role, received numerous awards, including Best Director from the National Society of Film Critics.

After making the 3-minute musical comedy Thanksgiving Prayer (1991), a segment of the PBS compilation special American Flash Cards, Van Sant went to helm My Own Private Idaho, a 1991 gay-themed independent film loosely based on Shakespeare's history play “Henry IV, part 1.” It stars River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves as two street hustlers from the Northwest travel as far as Rome, Italy in search of Phoenix’s character’s missing mother.

In 1993 Van Sant signed a contract with The Gap to film commercials. He also started a band in Portland, Oregon, with Mike Parker and Scott Green, the two former hustlers who inspired the leads in My Own Private Idaho. That same year, he directed Uma Thurman in his film adaptation of Tom Robbins' cult novel first published in 1976, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, which recounts the misadventures of a beautiful young woman whose enormous thumbs establish her as a very formidable hitchhiker.

Van Sant’s next project, To Die For (1995), inspired by the novel of the same name by Joyce Maynard, helped star Nicole Kidman winning a Golden Globe Award. Both the film and the book were based on the real-life Pamela Smart story, a teacher who seduced her 15-year old lover into murdering her husband. Although the film won high critical praise, particularly in Kidman's performance, it performed only modestly at the box office.

1996 saw Van Sant helmed "Understanding," a music video by the band Candlebox, and the 4-minute film Four Boys in a Volvo. He also made another short film, Ballad of the Skeletons (1997), which won Best Short Film at the Seattle International Film Festival. Additionally, he directed Good Will Hunting, a 1997 psychological drama film set in working-class South Boston, Massachusetts. Van Sant’s brilliant work earned him Best Director nomination at the Academy Awards. Meanwhile, Robin Williams, who played psychologist Sean Maguire, won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Screenwriters Matt Damon and Ben Affleck (both also starred) won an Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay and a Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay - Motion Picture.

"You can't copy a film. If I hold a camera, it's different than if Irving Penn holds it. Even if it's in the same place, it will magically take on his character. Which was part of the experiment. Our 'Psycho' showed that you can't really appropriate. Or you can appropriate, but it's not going to be the same thing." Gus Van Sant (on Psycho (1998)).

Following his Oscar-winning film, Van Sant received a Razzie award for directing the 1998 remake of the Alfred Hitchcock 1960 version produced, Psycho. The horror/thriller, based on the novel by Robert Bloch and stars Vince Vaughn, Anne Heche, Julianne Moore, Viggo Mortensen and William H. Macy, received mixed reviews and was awarded a Golden Raspberry Award. And when asked "Why in the hell would you want to do a shot-by-shot remake of Psycho in color?", Van Sant serenely replied "So no one else would have to."

In the new millennium, Van Sant directed Finding Forrester, the story of Jamal Wallace (played by Rob Brown), an Afro-American teen writing prodigy finds a mentor in a reclusive writer (played by Sean Connery). He once said: "Part of me believes in anonymous art. I got that from a writer named Jamake Highwater, who wrote about painting before the Renaissance. The way people related to art in, say, ancient Greece. How it was about the community for the community and not the self-expression of the artist. I thought of 'Good Will Hunting' and 'Finding Forrester' as doing it for the people, and wanted to speak without the hindrance of my own style. I'm not sure if that's possible, but it was my rationale."

Two years after Finding Forrester, Van Sant cast Matt Damon and Casey Affleck to star as two driving companions, both called Gerry, in his (2002) drama comedy film with the same name. He also wrote and directed the high school drama Elephant (2003), based in part on the 1999 Columbine High School Massacre. The film, stars mostly new or non-professional actors including John Robinson and Alex Frost, was generally acclaimed by critics and received the Palme d'Or (highest honors) at the Cannes Film Festival.

Van Sant's Last Days (2005), a fictionalized account of the last days of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain (played by Michael Pitt), was released to theaters in the United States in July 2005 and was produced by HBO. He then helmed the romantic film Paris, je t'aime (segment "Le Marais"), which was screened, shown at Cannes on May 18 and was shown at 2006 Toronto Film Festival. Van Sant is currently sitting on the director’s chair helming Paranoid Park, inspired by Blake Nelson's novel.

Van Sant, an avid photographer, released a collection of photos entitled 108 Portraits (Twelvetrees Press) in 1995 (some source said in 1992). He is also a writer and published his first novel, Pink (Doubleday), a satire on filmmaking, in 1997.

Additionally, he has directed music videos for many top recording artists including David Bowie, Elton John, The Red Hot Chili Peppers and Hanson. A longtime musician himself, Van Sant, a member of a band called Destroy All Blondes, had two solo albums “Gus Van Sant" and "18 Songs About Golf" which were released on the PopTones label in late 1997. His musical/spoken word collaboration with William S. Burroughs, "The Elvis Of Letters," was also released in 1985 as the first album put out on the Tim Kerr record label.


Awards:

- French Syndicate of Cinema Critics: Best Foreign Film, Elephant, 2004
- Cannes Film Festival: Best Director, Elephant, 2003
- Cannes Film Festival: Cinema Prize of the French National Education System, Elephant, 2003
- Cannes Film Festival: Golden Palm, Elephant, 2003
- Toronto International Film Festival: Visions Award - Special Citation, Gerry, 2002
- Berlin International Film Festival: Guild of German Art House Cinemas, Finding Forrester, 2001
- Razzie: Worst Director, Psycho, 1999
- Oberhausen International Short Film Festival: FICC Prize - Honorable Mention, Ballad of the Skeletons, 1998
- Seattle International Film Festival: Best Short Film, Ballad of the Skeletons, 1997
- Independent Spirit: Best Screenplay, My Own Private Idaho, 1992
- Deauville Film Festival: Critics Award, My Own Private Idaho, 1991
- Toronto International Film Festival: International Critics' Award (FIPRESCI), My Own Private Idaho, 1991
- Berlin International Film Festival: Forum of New Cinema, Drugstore Cowboy, 1990
- Independent Spirit: Best Screenplay, Drugstore Cowboy, 1990
- National Society of Film Critics: Best Director, Drugstore Cowboy, 1990
- National Society of Film Critics: Best Screenplay, Drugstore Cowboy, 1990
- New York Film Critics Circle: Best Screenplay, Drugstore Cowboy, 1989
- Los Angeles Film Critics Association: Best Screenplay, Drugstore Cowboy, 1989
- Torino International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival: Festival's Plate, Mala Noche, 1988
- Los Angeles Film Critics Association: Independent/Experimental Film and Video Award, Mala Noche, 1987
- Berlin International Film Festival: Best Short Film, Five Ways to Kill Yourself, 1987
- Berlin International Film Festival: Best Short Film, My New Friend, 1987