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| Images courtesy of Janus Films |
New Queer Cinema purveyor and torchbearer Gus Van Sant, the
writer-director of Mala Noche, Drugstore Cowboy and much later
winner of the coveted Palme d’Or for his Columbine based drama Elephant,
is one of the great directors of our time.
Though he’d eventually cross over into the mainstream with Good Will
Hunting and Finding Forrester, Van Sant remained an arthouse auteur
at heart. A much kinder, gentler kind of
Gregg Araki with his camera trained on bisexual drifters or hustlers on the
roads of the American Midwest foraging for survival fishing around for some
measure of love however miniscule.
Following his second feature Drugstore Cowboy with
Matt Dillon and Kelly Lynch in the Portland, Oregon shot and set drug addiction
dark comedy, Van Sant sought to do something far more ambitious and perhaps on
the same level of experimental artistic intellectual acumen as his contemporary
Todd Haynes and his own 1991 debut Poison. The result was a loose reinterpretation and
transposition of William Shakespeare’s Henry IV: Part 1, Henry IV:
Part 2 and Henry V into a modern-day odyssey of cross-country (and
eventually international) self-discovery with the landmark epic My Own Private
Idaho.
Mike Waters (River Phoenix in a career best performance) is
a bisexual street hustler suffering from narcolepsy with frequent blackouts including
during sessions with clients, often winding up in places with no sense of time or
whereabouts. Abandoned by his mother as
a child, glimpsed through grainy home movie styled flashbacks, he wanders the
streets of Seattle amid other male prostitutes before ending up with an older
female client Alena (Twin Peaks star Grace Zabriskie) alongside two
other hustlers Scott Favor (Keanu Reeves) and Gary (Rodney Harvey). Blacking out right before sex with the woman,
he wakes up with Scott in Porland, Oregon.
From here, Mike and Scott form an unlikely union working together as
hustlers but mostly screwing around and playing ala The Last Detail.
A bit of a road movie, their sojourn introduces Mike to
Scott’s friend Bob Pigeon (William Richert) a scruffy middle-aged former mentor
to young hustlers seeking shelter in his squalid apartment building where it
comes to light Scott is sitting on a pending inheritance from his father and
Portland Mayor Jack Favor (Tom Troupe) who is put off by his son’s hustling
ways. Mike, still yearning for reunion
with his mother who comes into his every blackout, with the help of Scott and a
dandy male client Hans (Udo Kier) and his fancy car ventures off to Idaho to
meet Mike’s older brother Richard (James Russo) with the hopes of gathering
information on his mother’s whereabouts.
Turns out she herself went to Italy in search of her own ancestors,
eventually leading our two heroes overseas in search of Mike’s mother. Instead they meet a young Italian woman named
Carmela (Chiara Caselli) who lives there now and quickly steals the heart of
Scott away from Mike who by this point has fallen in love with him.
Presented in a fragmented, elliptical style reflecting the
half-awake and sleepy perspective of Mike Waters as his partner in crime and
close friend Scott Favor navigates him through open plains and highways, grimy
alleyways and dilapidated hotel grounds littered with drug addicts, petty thieves
and dirty bathrooms filled with cruisers turning tricks, My Own Private
Idaho is a tragicomic odyssey through the heart of the American Pacific
Northwest. At once brutal and
unforgiving while also being tender and romantic, from Bill Stafford’s gentle
natured pedal steel guitar score to Eric Alan Edwards and John Campbell’s
striking, Earthy cinematography from innovative uses of slow motion to
curiously transcendent sexual encounters featuring actors in compromising
positions that feel less like porn and more like artistic poses, the film is
honest but never acerbic or abrasive despite the then-taboo subject matter.
In addition to Bill Stafford’s arrangements for Home on
the Range and America the Beautiful and two Udo Kier tracks, the
film is a cacophony of needle drops still without an original soundtrack album
release. From Madonna’s Cherish
and Elton John’s Blue Eyes to a striking recurring use of Rudy Vallée’s
Deep Night, the film speaks to Gus Van Sant’s musical vocabulary and how Van Sant
would later help secure the rights to the needle drops populating one man
wunderkind Jonathan Caouette’s epic self- portrait Tarnation in 2003. As with My Own Private Idaho due to
the nebulous rights issues surrounding many of the artists featured on the film,
no soundtrack album exists for Tarnation at present, another vital
chapter in the emergence of idiosyncratic and often experimental New Queer
Cinema.
River Phoenix who would tragically pass away two years later
following his Volpi Cup win at the Venice Film Festival and the Independent
Spirit Award for Best Actor for My Own Private Idaho, is a subtle and
nuanced yet fully committed and detailed performance from the multifaceted
actor. Made the same year as Dogfight,
another groundbreaking performance and Criterion Collection pickup, Phoenix achieves
a palpable disorientation and emotional chilliness onscreen only rivaled by the
likes of Mickey Rourke or D.B. Sweeney.
Most startlingly for viewers is the arrival of Keanu Reeves on the
dramatic stage as the adventurous alpha male lead in this unlikely couple of
gay hustlers. Having recently been in
the Bill and Ted movies, his commitment to the role of Scott Favor and
his own respective character transformation almost makes you forget where you
last saw him. Turning over strong
supporting roles including Udo Kier including a hilarious bit where he sings a
song he wrote specifically for the film, Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist
Flea, director William Richert in a rare acting bit and Grace Zabriskie in one
of her few non-terrifying roles.
Premiering at the 48th Venice Film Festival in the
Fall of 1991 before being granted a limited theatrical release at the end of
the month in the United States, the conceptually controversial $2.5 million
evocative road movie with Shakespearean overtones did modestly well raking in
somewhere around $8.1 million including Canadian and United Kingdom sales. An out of the gate critical triumph with many
of the film industry’s top critics heaping effusive praise upon River Phoenix’s
performance, it further went on to win both Best Screenplay for Gus Van Sant and
Best Film Music for Bill Stafford at the Independent Spirit Awards.
Originally released on tape and laserdisc in 1992, the film
was given a much-needed dose of adrenaline in 2005 thanks to The Criterion
Collection who put together a comprehensive two-disc DVD set before rereleasing
the film again in 2015 on Blu-ray in a new 4K digital restoration. An important film for all involved,
particularly Van Sant in his first real enigmatic narrative predating Elephant
and Last Days while also being perhaps the peak screen time with
River Phoenix in a film that also helped Keanu Reeves grow his dramatic
strengths, My Own Private Idaho remains an essential piece of 1990s
modern cinema where all the stars aligned and shined brightly and proudly.
--Andrew Kotwicki
