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Gus Van Sant |
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Director / Screenwriter /
Editor / Producer |
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1952 - |
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Born July 24,
Louisville, Kentucky, USA |
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Key
Production Country: USA |
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Key Genres: Drama,
Psychological Drama, Road Movie, Gay & Lesbian Films |
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Key
Collaborators:
Harris Savides (Cinematographer), Curtiss
Clayton (Editor), Casey Affleck (Leading Player/Screenwriter/Editor), Dany
Wolf (Producer), John Campbell (Cinematographer), Eric Alan Edwards (Cinematographer),
Danny Elfman (Composer), Missy Stewart
(Production Designer), Matt Dillon (Leading Player), Matt Damon (Leading Player/Screenwriter/Editor) |
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Highly Recommended: Elephant
(2003)*^ |
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Recommended: Good
Will Hunting (1997),
Gerry (2001)^, Paranoid Park (2007)^, Milk (2008)^ |
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Worth
a Look: Mala Noche
(1986), Drugstore Cowboy (1989), My Own Private
Idaho (1991)*, To Die For (1995), Last Days (2004)^ |
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Duds: Even Cowgirls
Get the Blues (1993), Psycho (1998) |
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* Listed in TSPDT's
1,000 Greatest Films
section; ^
Listed in TSPDT's
21st Century's Most Acclaimed Films
section. |
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Links:
[
Amazon
] [
IMDB ] [
TCMDB ] [
All-Movie
Guide ] [
Film Reference ]
[
A
Gus Van Sant Page ] [
About.com
Interview ] [
Spliced
Wire Interview (2003) ] [
Film
Monthly Interview (2003) ] [
Gerald
Peary Interview ] [
Green
Cine Interview (2005) ] [
Reverse Shot
Feature (2007) ] [
Guardian Article (2007) ] [
LA Weekly Interview (2008) ]
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Books: [
Gus
Van Sant: An Unauthorized Biography ] |
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"Gus Van Sant’s support
and patronage of Larry Clark and Harmony Korine clearly
feeds back into his own cinema, resulting in Gerry
(2002) and Elephant (2003), his return to independent
productions about young men. Before Gerry, his career
seemed to be evolving away from the independently themed
films of Drugstore Cowboy (1989) and My Own
Private Idaho (1991) and toward the studio productions
of Good Will Hunting (1997) and Finding Forrester
(2000). But Van Sant’s studio films are by no means artistic
sellouts." -
Steven Dillon (The Solaris Effect: Art
& Artifice in Contemporary American Film, 2006)
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"Directors
often flip-flop between the demands of art and commerce,
alternating personal projects with those that pay the bills.
However, few of them have produced movies as violently and
puzzlingly different as Gus Van Sant, prompting wry
speculation in the press that their could, in fact, be two
Gus Van Sants... If there is one thing that unites the two
Van Sants, it is the pervasive sense of melancholic
transience that is eloquently expressed in his trademark
shots of clouds (in the perpetual motion of time-lapse
photography), going nowhere fast."
-
Lloyd Hughes (The Rough Guide to Film,
2007) |
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"A
director who is capable of crafting both deeply
unconventional independent films and mainstream
crowd-pleasers,
Gus Van Sant has managed to carve an enviable niche for
himself in Hollywood. Since debuting in 1985 with
Mala Noche,
Van Sant has
become one of the premiere bards of dysfunction, populating
his films with a parade of hustlers, junkies, psychopathic
weather girls, homicidal teens, and troubled geniuses." -
Rebecca Flint Marx (All-Movie Guide) |
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"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." -
Gus Van Sant |
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Please
note that the rating given for this director (see top-right) is based
only on the films we have seen (listed above). Films by this director
that we haven't seen include The Discipline of D.E. (1982) and Finding
Forrester (2000). |
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"In
the late 1980s, Gus Van Sant commenced establishing himself
as one of America’s leading and most influential independent
filmmakers. His films, often peopled with characters
scuffling along on the fringes of American society, explore
human feelings and frailties in often-understated fashion,
and for the most part, Van Sant has proven himself a
filmmaker with a deft touch... it was Drugstore Cowboy
that established him as one of independent filmmaking’s most
authoritative new voices. The film’s low-key tale of a pack
of 1970s-era junkies in perpetual pursuit of drugs won
near-unanimous accolades."
-
Kevin Hillstrom & Robe Edelman,
International Dictionary of Film and Filmmakers |
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Top 250 Directors |
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21st Century Top 50 |
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100 Essential Directors (Pop
Matters) |
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Ranked
40th on The Guardian's 2004 List of the World's 40 Best Directors |
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Ranked 4tht on Film Comment's list of the 25 Best Directors of
the Decade (2000-2009) |
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501 Movie Directors: A
Comprehensive Guide to the Greatest Filmmakers |
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See Also |
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Gregg Araki |
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Larry Clark (external link) |
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Sofia Coppola |
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Alex Cox |
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Rainer Werner
Fassbinder |
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Todd Haynes |
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Jon Jost |
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Paul Morrissey |
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Jerry Schatzberg |
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John Schlesinger |
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Steven Soderbergh |
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Peter Weir |
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Gus Van Sant's Favourites |
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Last of England (1988)
Derek Jarman,
The Palm Beach Story (1942)
Preston Sturges,
Sátántangó (1994) Béla Tarr, Sunrise (1927)
F.W. Murnau,
Synecdoche, New York (2008) Charlie Kaufman.
Source:
Newsweek (2008) |
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