By 1991, Kentucky born director Gus Van Sant was in transition of the freewheeling world of independent film in to something much more established in the world of commercial movie making.
By 1991, Kentucky born director Gus Van Sant was in transition of the freewheeling world of independent film in to something much more established in the world of commercial movie making. He was riding the high off the success of “Drugstore Cowboy”, a tale of drug addicts who rob pharmacies for their pill fixes, and was a hot new talent ready to be molded from the burgeoning late 80s independent cinema landscape.
With his next movie, “My Own Private Idaho”, Van Sant thought to meld two separate but interwoven stories to ultimately explore one idea of unformed identity. Mike Waters (River Phoenix) is a narcoleptic gay hustler searching for his estranged mother and stumbling through life half asleep, while Scott Favor (Keanu Reeves) is an updated version of Prince Hal in Shakespeare’s Henry IV plays: the defiant son of the mayor of Portland, turning tricks on the streets to amuse himself before he comes into his inheritance and ignore all past indiscretions. Bob Pigeon (William Richert) provides a roly-poly but charismatic king of the street hustlers who is in love with Scott who doesn’t even swing that way.
Van Sant’s third feature and his final film before venturing out to make adaptions of “Even Cowgirls Get The Blues” and “To Die For” which led him to be a director-for-hire with his 90s commercial peak “Good Will Hunting” and a complete misfire with a remake of Hitchcock’s “Psycho”. He would go on to direct a series of more personal films, a string often referred to his trilogy of “death” including 2002’s “Gerry” and 2003’s “Elephant” and “Last Days”, until another commercial hit with 2008’s “Milk” which was nominated for 8 Academy Awards including two wins. The man has been busy and with no shortage of outings that have commercial appeal and conceptual art house provocation.
Mike, who is unrequitedly in love with Scott, is searching for some understanding of himself and the whereabouts of his estranged mother would be the primary story arc here but certainly not the only one to comb through. With “My Own Private Idaho”, Van Sant marries two stories into one and borrows heavily from Shakespeare with truly mixed results. The overriding story between two young male hustlers is easily the biggest appeal while retelling Shakespeare’s Henry IV and V with modern vernacular isn’t as much. Watching Reeves transition into modern day Shakespeare is obtusely jarring and bewildering if not adequately prepared for it. Van Sant even recounts friends who felt specifically the blending of the Shakespeare with his modern tale stopped the movie in its tracks and was a colossal mistake in tone. It’s hard to say they weren’t right.
At the time of making “My Own Private Idaho”, Phoenix was a bona fide teen heartthrob and was desperately retreating from any kind of fluff his career trajectory could muster or at very least get his face off the covers of “Tiger Beat”. His agent actively withheld the script from him prompting Reeves to hand deliver it himself by driving down the eastern coast from his home in Canada to Phoenix’s in Florida. “My Own Private Idaho” was his opportunity to not only prove his acting chops but to scratch his own curiosities and artistic vigor. Phoenix’s eventual drug overdose and premature death retroactively magnified his astonishing performance as his vulnerability for the character and ability to play off heartbreak were immaculate. Famously the campfire scene where Mike can barely confess his love to Scott is perhaps his career highlight and still achingly sad to watch.
“My Own Private Idaho” comes upgraded in a 4K digital transfer approved by Gus Van Sant courtesy of The Criterion Collection. It’s a step up significantly from the version released over ten years prior and makes for a compact but bountiful single-disc release. Supplemental materials include an hour long illustrated audio conversation between Van Sant and filmmaker Todd Haynes, The Making of “My Own Private Idaho,” a 2005 documentary featuring cast and crew, Kings of the Road, a 2005 interview with film scholar Paul Arthur on Van Sant’s adaptation of Orson Welles’s Chimes at Midnight and Shakespeare’s Henry IV, a conversation between producer Laurie Parker and actor River Phoenix’s sister Rain, 6 deleted scenes, an audio conversation from 2005 between writer JT LeRoy and filmmaker Jonathan Caouette, a trailer, and a book featuring essays by film critic Amy Taubin and LeRoy; a 1991 article by Lance Loud; and reprinted interviews with Van Sant, Phoenix, and actor Keanu Reeves. Missing sadly are the outtakes that made the 2005 DVD version. All in all this is a plentiful package with some great use of the iconic imagery in the film.
“My Own Private Idaho” is not just a road movie but also a western, an adaptation of Shakespeare, a gay art-house flick, and a coming of age tale all in one with literature and poetry littering its streets. The various thematic themes Van Sant utilizes are to showcase how yearning to discover oneself through the past is the most powerful exploration on display. Abrupt scene transitions, crashing housing falling onto the highway, poetic showings of the passage of time, shots of beautiful iconic American landscape and imagery are all devices that Van Sant utilizes to show the uncharted social identities that play out in the film. “My Own Private Idaho” features some of the most striking images from Van Sant’s career and continues to find new audiences since its release decade’s prior. He cleverly and repeatedly shows unorthodox apparitions of movies that we have already seen and traveled through. To tell stories we haven’t seen by tying that paradox of the American outsider with masculine identity and self-realization is pretty novel and succeeds to tell ultimately several different kinds of movies all in one. It may not be a perfect film but it is an exemplary artful one.
My Own Private Idaho
United States (1991)
Director: Gus Van Sant
Spine # 277
Available on Criterion Blu-ray & DVD
