Gus Van Sant

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.