Gus Van Sant
9 titles · american independent
Drugstore Cowboy follows a crew of addicts robbing Oregon pharmacies, and eight years later Good Will Hunting was nominated for nine Oscars. Both are his. The career runs on two tracks that rarely touch: studio films about a gifted young man and an older mentor, and quiet ones that follow teenagers with a camera at the back of the head and refuse to explain them. Paranoid Park belongs to the second and never resolves what the boy did.
Signature
- Two parallel bodies of work, studio prestige and drifting formalism.
- Long following shots tracking a walking adolescent from behind.
- Withheld motive, especially where a crime is involved.
- Mentor and protégé as the recurring studio shape.
fit
Lineage
Earlier films these works draw on, and the films they went on to shape — each link checked to name a film that actually came first.