Anthony Minghella: The Hollywood Interview

Director Anthony Minghella 1954-2008.

I first met Anthony Minghella in January of 2000 at the press junket for "The Talented Mr. Ripley." Moments after sitting down with him, I knew Minghella was a different breed from most of the filmmakers I'd interviewed in the past, particularly those from this side of the pond. Minghella struck me as both a gentleman and a gentle man. He loved Bach as much as he revered the films of Hitchcock and the writing of Harold Pinter. He also listened as well as he conversed. I knew I would never forget my conversation with Anthony Minghella and, after a special American Film Institute screening of "Cold Mountain," he actually approached me at the post-screening reception, warmly shook my hand, and thanked me for the article and conversation we'd had three years earlier.

A gentleman, indeed. Rest in peace.



THE TALENTED MR. MINGHELLA
By
Alex Simon

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the February 2000 issue of Venice Magazine.

Anthony Minghella never intended to be a filmmaker, so no one was more shocked than he was when he picked up a Best Director statuette at the 1996 Academy Awards for his work on The English Patient. Minghella's first love was, and in many ways still is, writing, and he had in fact been a successful playwright, with many of his works performed on London's famed West End. All pretty heady stuff for a lad of humble origins. Minghella was born to Italian immigrants January 6, 1954 on the Isle of Wight, in England. A lover of literature from an early age, Minghella graduated from the University of Hull, where he went on to become an instructor of theater arts. He then quit teaching to pursue playwriting full time.

After several moderate hits on the stage, Minghella decided to film one of his unproduced scripts, a supernatural romantic comedy entitled Truly, Madly, Deeply as a vehicle for his good friend, actress Juliet Stevenson. Co-starring Alan Rickman as Stevenson's deceased husband who just can't stop loving her, the film was a hit in England and did well enough on this side of the Atlantic for Hollywood to entice Minghella to its shores. The result was Mr. Wonderful (1993), a competent, if uninspired romantic comedy starring Matt Dillon, that did little to showcase the incredible talent that Minghella possessed. That all changed with The English Patient, the sweeping romantic drama that walked away with nine Oscars in 1996, including Best Picture.

Minghella's latest is, dare we say it, perhaps even better than the magnificent English Patient. The Talented Mr. Ripley is based on Patricia Highsmith's classic novel, and was filmed once before, as Purple Noon, by French director Rene Clement in 1960. While that fine film still holds up today, this latest version is not only superior, but is one of the finest films of 1999, firmly establishing Minghella as one of the most inventive and talented directors working today. Tom Ripley (Matt Damon) is a men's room attendant in a fancy New York hotel in 1957. A social doppleganger, Ripley has no discernible identity or personality of his own, but survives by mimicking others that he views as superior and far more interesting than himself. When a chance encounter with a wealthy blue blood sends Tom off to Italy to fetch the man's wayward son (brilliantly played by Jude Law), Tom's true nature comes out: not only is he a doppleganger, he's also a sociopathic killer! And thus begins this Hitchcockian exercise in mistaken identity, sexual confusion, and class struggle (Highsmith also penned the novel on which Hitchcock's classic Strangers on a Train was based). Minghella has created a hypnotic masterpiece, blending his own deft directorial touches with John Seale's gorgeous 1950's Technicolor-style cinematography, Roy Walker's meticulous production design, Ann Roth's equally perfect period clothes, and a cast that dreams are made of: Damon, Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Cate Blanchett, Philip Seymour Hoffman (playing a womanizing preppie this time!), and the wonderful Philip Baker Hall. This is a rich, beautifully layered film that begs for multiple viewings.

The film is amazing. The recreation of the 1950’s Technicolor look is really remarkable.
Anthony Minghella: Well, I’d like to take credit for that, if I could, but I also managed to work with a really brilliant cinematographer (John Seale). I’ve been very lucky in that the people that I’ve worked with have stayed with me and I’ve borrowed a lot from them and learned a lot. I’ve found this amazing group of people: Ann Roth, who did the costumes, has done probably 100 films; Roy Walker, the production designer, has been working for 50 years in films and worked with David Lean and Fred Zinnemann; and Walter Murch, who’s my real mentor, is the editor. The smartest thing I’ve ever done is to surround myself with people who are more knowledgeable than I am, and try to learn from them. Also they insist on my being ready and prepared and having a point of view.

Walter Murch’s book (Blink of an Eye) is one of my bibles.
I can’t tell you what it’s like to have him waiting for the film to be finished. He’s so rigorous. I’m very compulsive. They had to snatch the movie away from us yesterday and go “Okay guys, that’s enough.” Otherwise, we both would have kept working on this movie for the rest of our lives. And because of that, I think the finish of the film is very detailed. He’s a wonderful sound editor as well as a film editor. You can keep building the film and refining it. I love working with someone who wants to see if there’s one more thing we can do to it, one more line we can find, or one thing that can make a difference.

You wanted to make Mr. Ripley prior to The English Patient, right?
Not prior to The English Patient, but for a while, it looked as though The English Patient wasn’t going to get made, which would have broken my heart. I was marooned, waiting to see if we could get financing. Sydney Pollack called me and told me that they had acquired the rights to the Patricia Highsmith novel, which is a book I love very much. I re-read it, and thought that it would be worth (adapting) while I was waiting to do The English Patient. While I was writing it, I thought ‘Wait a minute, why not direct it, as well?’ And Paramount was good enough to wait while I finished The English Patient.

What was it about the story that drew you to it?
(DON’T READ THIS ANSWER IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE MOVIE!)
Several things. One was, I loved the audacity of a character who gets away with it. I thought it would be a challenge to pull that off. I also thought that implicit in pulling it off, was a moral phrasing. Film fiction in particular, always aspires to a neat resolution, and I really didn’t want to find that resolution, I wanted to find a resolution that was tragic. Getting away with murder in terms of a public accountability is one thing. Getting away with it in terms of the spirit is another altogether. What I wanted to say at the end of the film is that Ripley may not be caught by the police, but he’s trapped inside a prison of his own making, which is his mind, from which there’s no escape. It’s the cruelest sentence. And I think the punishment of escape is what interested me in the film. The other thing was that I felt the character was so recognizable to me, not in terms of what he did, but why he did it, and what he did that was at the heart of it, which was a sort of self-loathing, a sense of inadequacy, of being an outsider, a sense of yearning, to love and be loved. I recognized every single one of those qualities. And every time I went to write a new draft, it got more and more personal. I felt that everyone knows what it’s like to feel inadequate, and everyone knows what it’s like to wish they were someone else, to have the grace, the privileges, and the talents of somebody else. The idea of being a fake somebody rather than a real nobody is one of the testing temptations of life. Also, I think the fear that we all have of what people would think of us if they knew who we really were, if they knew what was in our hearts would they reject us? This idea of the basement where we hide our demons, which is the most interesting part of every person, and the thing that they’re the most frightened of. It’s so full of noise and terror. And that really, really intrigued me. And finally, it was set in Italy, the country where I’m most happy. So the chance to go there with the people who I made The English Patient with, was too great an opportunity to turn down. Plus, the story takes place during one of the most exciting times in Italy’s history. While we were shooting, I could fantasize that La Dolce Vita was being shot around the corner from us! (laughs)

The other thing that struck me about it, was that it was a genre-blending
film: it was a mystery, a thriller, a character study and a love story.
Well that’s one of my problems as a filmmaker, I want my films to be everything: a jazz film, an opera film, beautiful to look at, as dark as it can be, as tragic as it can be…I want all the volume controls turned up.

Who are your biggest influences as a filmmaker?
I play a game sometimes, which is: who would be the best director of this movie? I always thought that David Lean would have made The English Patient and that Hitchcock would have made Mr. Ripley. It doesn’t change the way that I make it, it reminds me of what was wonderful about the movies that these men made. What Hitchcock did, was give you a sense of being disturbed. I kept thinking about Vertigo, how you’re never allowed to get your feet on the ground. You always have the sense that the ground is going to open up and swallow you. So that was very much in my head. But my biggest influences overall have always been Italian cinema, early Fellini, the Taviani brothers...When I first really began to study it one summer, I remember thinking ‘Thank God, I’ve found the place where I belong. I found the world that I understand in the humanism of those films. There’s a film by Ermanno Olmi called The Tree of the Wooden Clogs that had a profound effect on me. I had the great pleasure and honor of meeting him when I was in Italy. There were no words to express what a life-changing effect his work has had on me. The Bicycle Thief is another film that has been a big influence. As a writer, too, I’ve always related more to Italians. As a writer I’ve always felt sort of muddling and skinless, that I tend to deal more with feeling, whereas most English writers like Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard and Edward Bond are very austere. So I didn’t know where I belonged until I discovered Italian cinema, either as a writer or as a filmmaker.

Let’s talk about your background. You were born and raised on the Isle of
Wight.
I was, and lived there ‘til I was 18. At the time I was there, I couldn’t wait to leave, and now I would go back in a second. I had a wonderful first 18 years, which at the time seemed isolated and stark to me. I didn’t realize what a rich world I was in. That’s why I love Fellini’s I Vitelloni (1953) so much. I felt it was about my life (laughs). It’s about a bunch of guys living in a seaside resort, dreaming about going to Rome. I used to do the same thing with my friends, hanging out, looking over at the mainland. “What are you going to do?” “I’m gonna go to London and be a musician,” or an artist, or a writer, or whatever. In fact, most of them ended up staying there. Later when I read Samuel Beckett, he said “There are two types of fools: the fool that keeps moving and the fool who stays where he is.” I always wondered which kind I’d be, and I guess I’m the fool who keeps moving. (laughs) So I was very happy to leave, and became an academic, after graduating university. I taught theater history and all the time I was writing, and eventually resigned and became a playwright. Originally I thought I’d write music, but I stumbled into playwriting, just like I stumbled into filmmaking. That’s the way it’s always been for me. There’s never been a plan. When you talk about your career, it has all the authenticity of a career, but while you’re living it, it has all the mess of life.

You mentioned music. What’s some of the music that has influenced you?
Bach, who is my compass, I think. I couldn’t be more of a maniac for every possible type of music. I’m as in love with John Coltrane as I am with Mozart. John Martin, who’s a Scottish singer and has a song at the end of Mr. Ripley, Van Morrison. I love opera, which you can probably tell from the movie. When I’m writing, one of the ways in for me is to listen to music. When I was writing The English Patient, I listened to Hungarian music and Arab music, to Italian music from the end of the war. That was the sort of river that I was rowing. The same thing with Mr. Ripley. I surrounded myself with opera and jazz. It’s an incredible voyage, selecting the right music.

When you were growing up was there one film, or piece of music or play that did it for you, where you said “This is my calling”?
I was quite an unhappy adolescent. I was a much angrier person at 15 than I am now, and was a much more politicized person, and a rebel. I got into a lot of trouble when I was in school. I couldn’t even tell you why, which is why I get very bored with explanations in movies, which are always so simple: “He’s this way because of that.” If only we knew why we are the way we are, if only it weren’t so mysterious. What happened to me when I started listening to a lot of west coast music like Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead…I thought maybe through the piano, which I so despised learning, I could exorcise some of my demons. I mean if you gave me list of composers at that point in my life, Bach would have been put on the very bottom! I viewed him as the man who tortured me during my piano lessons!(laughs) So like some kids have a diary, I had a piano in my bedroom, and just banged away at it, and wailed at my demons. I think the first time I wrote a song when I was 15 or 16, that’s when I realized the way to escape: through creating something, through performing something. Through creation I could celebrate what was different about me, rather than apologize. The music was really the way out for me, and I think that’s the case for many people. I have this vision of my parents reading this version of my childhood, and not recognizing it, saying “We were very happy.” And we were! We were very happy, and I’ve always been very close to my family, yet I was miserable, and it would be a lie to say I wasn’t. And that’s what’s so intriguing.

What did your father do for a living?
He was and still is an ice cream man. My parents had a little café when I was growing up, and now they just run their ice cream factory and wholesale it. Neither of my parents went to school, were very poor. I don’t think they ever gave themselves the luxury of a lot of cultural exposure, but they’ve gained it as they’ve gotten older. They’re finally living the sort of life that they deserve. In fact, they’re both in Mr. Ripley. That’s my father playing bocci with Jude Law.

Tell us about some of your plays that you wrote.
I had just started to get some recognition as a playwright when I stopped writing plays (laughs). The last thing I did was performed on the West End, called Made in Bangkok. It was a fairly savage, but humorous look at why men in western Europe travel 6000 miles to behave in ways that they’d never behave at home. It’s a kindred spirit of Ripley. In fact, there’s a moment in that play when a man is confronted by his wife about what he’s been doing, She says “Why didn’t you come to me and tell me what you wanted. Why did you have to hide?” And he says “Because there’s a basement inside of me. And if I let you into it, you’d never be able to look at me again.” In effect, that was an early rehearsal for Ripley, about people who are so ashamed at who they are, they have to hide from it. So the secretiveness of men is very much at the heart of Made in Bangkok and Ripley. It reminds me of this guy I once met who said “I really hate people who cheat on their wives openly. I would never cheat on my wife within 50 miles of home.” And he said this with no sense of irony.

How did you make the jump from playwriting to directing?
It was less a jump than a lurch. (laughs) Essentially, what happened was I was writing plays for television, theater and the radio, and I worked with all these great directors and was always working with the same actors. But I was always turning my plays over to someone else, and I thought ‘Wait a minute. Why not do that myself?’ So I did Truly, Madly, Deeply with Juliet Stevenson, who’s a great friend and with whom I’ve collaborated probably nine or ten times. We shot it in 28 days for $600,000. It was a very “private film” in many ways. Doing it was a life-changing event for me, because I suddenly realized that this was what I should have been doing all along.

Any advice for first-time directors?
One thing that I’ve realized about making films is that when you get to the end of the movie, all the things that made your nervous about the idea of the film come back to you. So if you see something disturbing about the idea of the film in the beginning, try to fix it before you shoot. The fragility of the idea in its initial incarnation will be the fragility of the film. You always tend to think that some magic dust will sprinkle itself over the problem in the script and fix it, but it doesn’t, and the problem will still be there when the film is finished.

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VERA FARMIGA: The Hollywood Interview

This article originally appeared in the December 2005 issue of Venice Magazine. This was the second time I've interviewed Vera, and her star was certainly on the rise at this time, which would, of course, continue with the release of The Departed. Although this interview deals largely with the micro-budgeted Down to the Bone, she also touches briefly on Quid Pro Quo, another very unique and also very small film, which is finally about to get its theatrical release from Magnolia Pictures, a few years after being shot. Our upcoming interview with Nick Stahl, who she co-stars in Quid Pro Quo with, will cover the film in more detail. That interview with Stahl will also appear in this month's issue of Venice.

Vera Farmiga Gets Down to the Bone
by Terry Keefe

It's been over 4 years since we last met with Vera Farmiga and they've been very good to her. At the time, she was doing publicity for 15 Minutes, an action thriller starring Robert De Niro and Ed Burns in which she played a supporting role of an immigrant hairdresser who witnesses a murder. The actress was in the early stages of really getting noticed at that point, having landed other roles in Autumn in New York with Richard Gere and Winona Ryder, as well as The Opportunists with Christopher Walken. On a strictly visual level, it was easy to see why she was garnering attention from these small parts. Blessed with a model's looks, there is something strikingly otherwordly about her which stands out even in an industry known for its lovely ladies. Round features mix with angular ones on her face, which is topped off by stunningly large blue eyes. But perfect cosmetics aside, there was also clearly acting talent there, which she went on to display in television work such as the series "UC: Undercover" and the films Dummy [2002], Iron Jawed Angels [2004], and The Manchurian Candidate [2004].

On an interpersonal level, this writer recalls that Farmiga appeared resolute in not getting too sucked into the L.A. machine. A cell phone had been provided to her for use during her stay, and she referred to it as "this vulgar thing," with a laugh. Then, as now, Farmiga spends much of her time at her home in upstate New York and commutes out here when work requires it. Her desire to center her life close to home in Ulster County made Farmiga an ideal fit for director Debra Granik, who was putting together her feature project Down to the Bone some two years back. For a long time prior, Granik had been shooting videotape of the life of Corinne Stralka, a housekeeper in upstate New York, along with the lives of her children and boyfriend. Corinne was a recovering drug addict and Granik used those tapes as the inspiration for a short film entitled "Snake Feed," in which Corinne, her kids, and boyfriend played themselves. Down to the Bone would be a feature-length treatment of the same material, and in Farmiga, the director found a partner who was as interested in uncovering truth as she was. With a bare bones crew and shooting on digital video, Farmiga and Granik crafted Down to the Bone using largely non-actors and in real locations in upstate New York. Farmiga lived briefly at a rehab center as research and helped populate the film with some friends and neighbors in smaller roles. The film which has emerged takes a sparse fly-on-the-wall approach, which very much feels as if you are in the room with these characters. That isn't always a place easy to be, as the film never goes for a real manipulative moment to jolt you out of the malaise that is the reality of an addict's life. But it is perhaps the most honest portrayal of drug addiction captured in a narrative film yet. Farmiga's performance garnered a Special Jury Prize for acting at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, along with a Best Director nod for Granik. Both well-deserved.

Farmiga will soon be seen in Martin Scorsese's The Departed, opposite Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, and Jack Nicholson, as well as in Anthony Minghella's Breaking and Entering with Jude Law. And this January she'll be seen in Running Scared with Paul Walker.

Did you watch any of the original documentary tapes that the director Debra made of Corinne in preparation?

Vera Farmiga: I watched them once. The film is really a hybrid form, of documentary/cinema verite. It's a combination of scripted documentary from the real-life models, to scripted improvisation from Debra, to improvisation (with the actors) as the script is loose in format, particularly in regards to the scenes in rehab and the ones with the children, to the fact that I live in that part of the world in upstate New York and I bring my own experience to it. So I did watch them once, but I also spent a lot of time with Corinne. We cleaned houses together. I spent lots of time watching her and listening to her. I was right alongside her on my hands and knees scrubbing floors. You know, that original short won Best Short at Sundance, and the audience was really curious. They wanted to know more about where these characters went and what they did.

We are also. Where did Corinne's life go from where Down to the Bone leaves off?

Clean and sober for a long time now. Relapse is often a part of recovery, so there were a lot of hurdles and obstacles. But to obtain anything spiritually, there will always be pitfalls and obstacles in the way. It was a day-to-day struggle. But she is clean and sober. She's got a warrior spirit.

Did you feel the responsibility of taking on her mannerisms in your performance or it was it more her essence that you were going for?
Debra was very clear to me that she didn't want me to mimic. Although it was Corinne's story, I wasn't "playing" her, and Debra wanted me to use her as a source of inspiration. But for me, she moved me so much that I did adopt a lot of her rhythms, and her energy. The way she walks, she has this kind of tough girl exterior which really contradicts the sort of brittle fragility she had inside, at that point of her life at least. So I guess I did adopt some of her mannerisms, along with those of a few of the women who I met when I attended rehab [for research]. Namely, those of a girl named Vera who I met. [laughs]

How long did you attend the rehab program?

Several days and several nights. We slept there. It's amazing to me how open these women were, but it's a curious thing to be involved with, because it's their healing process. And you don't want to interrupt it. You also don't want them to perform for you. It'd be great if there was a glass window you could just observe through. But we were actually in the circle, in the meetings with them. It was a tricky situation, but they welcomed us. Their hearts and spirits were open. Ours were too, our intentions were clear and innocent and very simple. They knew that, so they trusted us. We shared with them our stories also. We'd partake in conversations, not necessarily about addiction, but wherever the conversation would go.

What was the process of working with the non-actors like?

You know, I absolutely loathe and am terrified by the notion of improvisation. It wasn't as frightening for me in this experience though. Somehow it wasn't so daunting. Debra put out an ad in podunk newspapers to come and be a part of this, and a lot of people showed up. The audition process for Debra with these lay people was to give them a situation and have them improvise. Sometimes though, even though they were so compelling to watch and had so much to bring to the roles, once it was scripted they froze up. And all those little beautiful gifts of their personas would disappear. So, we kept it loose and we would improvise. Like my friend Walt [who lives in Ulster County and is in the film] has that scene where he brings the deer head to me. He was given a situation and Debra encouraged Walt to go from there. He brought so much to it. He took the deer head from me and had that line about putting it against the knotty pine. That's who he is. It's hard to even write that. It's things like that which are the treasures of this movie to me. It really helped me to be in an authentic environment. Sometimes you just find yourself on a black soundstage, surrounded by plaster. To have real materials, to have a real knotty pine wall [laughs], it helps. We shot in all real locations in Ulster County. It makes a big difference, because the scent is just there. The scent of a real police station, you know? You don't have to pretend as much.

As opposed to a lot of films about drug addiction, Down to the Bone doesn't have that big histrionic breakdown scene. It portrays addiction much more as quiet suffering.

Yeah, because addiction is pretty monotonous. They always seem to glamorize it in the media and fashion and photography and music. There are people in the culture who can just dabble in it and shrug at it. But for people in real addiction, it's really a drab thing. The monotony of it on a daily basis is what's so scary. This is your life on a daily basis. That's the grisly, grim reality.

It must have been a temptation to go for those big moments though.

Because we're used to seeing something to get our adrenaline going. To manipulate you into some place, because you only have an hour and a half to tell the story. And instead of doing that via words and imagery and photography, the tendency in movies is to manipulate the audience into saying "This is how you should be feeling. You should be feeling sorry for this woman. So let's bring on the violins and cellos." And this film has none of that. Debra is really forcing the audience to sit there for this slice of life. A day-to-day reality of struggle. Debra is so full of integrity.

You also didn't have that fetishizing drug scene that seems to be in every drug film, with the needle slowly being inserted in the most glam manner possible with a hip score.

Oh, she was careful not to show any needles. Very little usage on-screen actually.

You've been getting much bigger studio roles now. Was there anything bigger on the studio level that you had to turn down in order to do this much smaller project?

No, the studio roles came because of this film. I had been steadily working and getting good feedback. But I consider this a gift from Debra. She entrusted me with this. There was no reason, box office-wise, that I should have been given that opportunity. But she did. We laid eyes on each other and trusted each other and there was an ease between us. We had the same philosophies and ideas about filmmaking, I think. This film is why I'm getting the higher-profile films. It's interesting, because no one's seen it other than a few privileged industry people and a few eager festival goers in Marrakesh and Utah [laughs]. But the performance has made an impact in the industry. Working with Marty Scorsese and Anthony Minghella has obviously been great, but the film I just came off of was very much in the spirit of Down to the Bone. It's called Quid Pro Quo, directed by Carlos Brooks. His writing is just impeccable. You know who your character is because it leaps right off the page. It's rare to find that, and it's usually where people want to take risks. That's where my heart is at.

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Gus Van Sant: The Hollywood Interview

Filmmaker Gus Van Sant.


GUS VAN SANT: GOOD WILL HUNTER
By
Alex Simon

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the December 1997/January 1998 issue of Venice Magazine.

Gus Van Sant has long been recognized as one of America's most audacious and original filmmakers. Born Gus Van Sant, Jr. in Louisville, Kentucky in 1953, Van Sant graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design, soon after traveling to Los Angeles where he landed a job as an assistant to director Ken Shaprio (The Groove Tube). Van Sant debuted as a director in 1985 with Mala Noche, the story of an ill-fated love affair between a homosexual clerk and a migrant worker. The work established him as an original voice and won the Los Angeles Film Critics Award for best independent film.

Drugstore Cowboy, his following film in 1989, was an unapologetic look at a drug-addicted "family" led by Matt Dillon that supported itself by robbing pharmacies across the pacific northwest. The film was a critical and arthouse hit, and set Van Sant as a voice for the young. His study of a gay hustler in My Own Private Idaho (1991), was praised for its lyricism, find performances and contribution to the canon of gay and lesbian cinema. It also contains what many feel is the late River Phoenix's seminal performance. His adaptation of Tom Robbins' novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues in 1994 received a critical trouncing that would cause many filmmakers to reassess their careers. Van Sant, however, bounced back the following year with To Die For, a blackly comic examination of the American obsession with fame and celebrity, featuring a career-redefining performance from Nicole Kidman and a witty, caustic screenplay by Hollywood legend Buck Henry.

Van Sant's latest effort is Good Will Hunting, from a screenplay by two of its stars, Matt (The Rainmaker) Damon and Ben (Chasing Amy) Affleck. Robin Williams co-stars as a determined psychologist who attempts to get through to a working class prodigal math genius (Damon) who buries his intellect under a veil of self-destruction and apathy. Minnie Driver also stars in one of the year's smartest and heart-felt films, which is sure to recognized on Oscar night and, quite possibly, put Van Sant's name into the (dare we say it) mainstream of American filmmakers.

Gus Van Sant recently spoke to Venice in a dubbing stage on the Disney lot about his enigmatic work and career.

You moved around a lot as a kid. How did this shape your perceptions?
Gus Van Sant: My father was a salesman of men's sportswear. In my lifetime we lived in Kentucky, Colorado, Illinois, California, Connecticut and Oregon. It made it easy for me to adapt to different places, but not necessarily to blend. They were all very suburban, very similar places.

When did you discover the arts?
When I was about 12 years old. I had some very influential teachers in my school in Connecticut. Painting was my original interest. I had a great art teacher. I had another teacher in 9th grade named David Soan, who used to show films and let the kids in his class make 8mm movies. So I started to do that with the family camera.

What were your first films about?
They were animated. That's also the sorts of films he was showing us in class, from the Canadian Film Board. Very experimental sorts of things. Schools in the 60's had a lot of very experimental aspects to it, which is why the English teacher was showing, essentially, art movies in class. It was the era of Marshall Macluhan. My English teacher actually wrote a book called Stop, Look and Write, that was sort of an experimental look at how to write. He even showed us Citizen Kane. Seeing that at 14 was a major influence on me. I don't know what would have happened had Mr. Soan not been there and he hadn't shown that film to me. Pretty amazing stuff for a public school. I was interested in film initially more as a painter than as a dramatist.

So you really had an introductory film education in high school before you even hit film school.
Yeah, we even made a 20 minute 16mm film at my high school in Oregon that was the equivalent of what you'd do as a senior project in most college film programs. So the first year of film school especially was quite easy for me.

Who are some of the filmmakers who influenced you early on?
A lot of avant-garde filmmakers from the 60's, like 80 or 90 of them, that I would read about during the 60's. Sometimes we'd see their films at the Museum of Modern Art or something like that. There were the Kuchar brothers, Bruce Conner, Kenneth Anger, Stan van der Beek...

There were parts of My Own Private Idaho that I thought hearkened back to some of Kenneth Anger's work, with the leather and biker imagery.
I never got to see any of his films until film school, but he took the same role on influencing me as the other guys. But it was mostly about reading about his films that influenced me. As a kid in the suburbs it was hard to see those kinds of films.

What about any of the European filmmakers from the 60's?
Yeah, a little bit. Fellini and Alexandro Jodorowsky. El Topo was one of the films I saw when I first came out, around '68 or '69. Bergman was another one...Truffaut, Goddard, Antonioni, Passolini. Lina Wertmuller was also very popular when I was in film school.

You went to the Rhode Island School of Design initially to study painting. What made you change over to film?
Well, you didn't have to declare your major until you were a junior...It didn't seem like painting would really be a way to make any kind of money or to support yourself. There were a lot of these art students that either wound up staying in Providence, or the people who went to New York City as painters, and remained unemployed. It was a long road to be traveling. There was a reward at the end of the long road, perhaps, but there wasn't a lot of hope...the painter students who'd come back to speak at the school, they'd reel off these statistics of how many painters were living in New York City and how many actually made it and it was pretty staggering.

So you looked on filmmaking as a more pragmatic way of making a living?!
Yeah. (laughs)

What did you do immediately after film school?
I actually traveled to Italy and visited all the working Italian filmmakers sets. We just sort of observed or sometimes would have interviews with the directors. We saw Fellini while he was shooting Casanova. Wertmuller was shooting Seven Beauties. Pasolini was finishing Salo. Tinto Brass was finishing Madame Kitty.

What was the set of Salo like?
We didn't actually go to the set on that one. One group of students got to watch him dubbing. Another that I was in got to go to his house and talk with him.

What was your impression of him?
He was very smart, but that was my impression of a lot of these guys as a 20 year-old student. Italy itself was quite interesting because it was sort of like being inside a Fellini film. So I could see where Fellini had gotten a lot of his material--from his own culture. The directors all had their kind of (quirks) that you would expect. We had lunch at a table with Lina Wertmuller and Giancarlo Giannini. None of us spoke Italian and sometimes we'd be interpreted through someone who did but...basically it was just being there. Our guide was Gideon Bachman, who still lives in Italy, writes and works on film projects there. He was the guy who knew all these filmmakers and got us in. Then after that I moved to L.A. because I didn't speak Italian...

What was Hollywood in the 70's like?
It was great. I went to a lot of places and met a lot of people and got a lot of advice, but again, there was no work to be found. So after about eight months of looking for work, I read this interview with Chevy Chase where he mentioned this old friend of his named Ken Shapiro. And I knew Ken Shapiro's movies, The Groove Tube I'd seen...Someone had told me early on in my journey to Hollywood that you could contact anyone you wanted, just call them up. You could call Hitchcock if you wanted and bug him for a job...So I realized that that's what I should start doing. So I decided to call Ken Shaprio as opposed to Hitchcock because that seemed slightly less intimidating...So I showed Ken some movies and he gave me a job and I worked for him for about two years on the Paramount lot and also at his office at his house. I learned a lot working with him. He was hot off The Groove Tube. This was 1975. There was a big group working for him before I arrived, including Lorne Michaels, who was writing a script for him before he went to make Saturday Night Live, which essentially used a lot of the ideas that were in The Groove Tube. Then when Lorne Michaels pitched the idea for SNL, they invited Ken to go along with them, but he felt like he had other important things to do and didn't want to get involved in what was essentially a pilot, even though it was live skit humor. So really all of his friends left and went to New York to work on that show. Meanwhile he was embarking on his career at Paramount, which at the time seemed like the better of the two deals. But, as you know, Saturday Night Live became this huge institution that unbelievably still exists today. But he was really like one of the creators, if the not the creator of Saturday Night Live, but he never got to see anything of it, even though it was really a spin-off of The Groove Tube.

The first film of yours that got you recognition was Mala Noche, right?
Yeah. It was my second film as a director. My first was called Alice in Hollywood in 1979. I also did a short film from a William Burroughs short story. I moved to Portland to make Mala Noche. Around 1980 or so, I got really fed up with L.A. I was writing screenplays on spec that weren't selling. I was getting editing jobs when I could. I was mostly working as a temporary secretary. Then when my father offered me a job working in his warehouse in New Jersey I realized that made about as much sense as working as a temporary secretary in L.A. So I moved to Portland...and Mala Noche took four years to make. Things were cheaper in Portland. I had friends who were filmmakers up there who had equipment. At the time the TV news was still being shot on film, so it was easy to get extra stock if you knew somebody. In those days video got a bad rap, I think. Now with the MTV generation, people are used to looking at film done in distressed super 8, video and all kinds of formats. Now you've got a moviegoing public that accepts any sort of distressed format...you can present it at Sundance and nobody will care that the image isn't perfectly pristine. It's all about your ability to tell your story in a way that isn't putting the audience to sleep... Filmmakers should try to shoot film every single day. It's almost like a weight lifter who decides he's going to save all his strength and not train until the day of the competition. Well when that day comes, he realizes that he should've been preparing by lifting weights every single day instead of just waiting around for the competition to finally start. It's the actual process of doing the work that's the most important thing. Shoot on video. Shoot on High-8. I've seen a lot of great things on video that couldn't have cost much.

You cast legendary author William Burroughs in your breakthrough film Drugstore Cowboy. Tell us about him.
He was very interested in the screenplay. He didn't want to play the character Tom the way he was originally written in the screenplay, which was as this sort of pathetic loser...he wanted the character to have some more pride. So he came up with the idea of making Tom be a junkie priest. So he pretty much created the stuff in his scenes on his own.

A lot of people consider River Phoenix's performance in My Own Private Idaho to be his finest. They've also drawn a lot of parallels between his character in the film and the way he died. Did you perceive any hint of the self-destructiveness that eventually killed him?
I never really saw his death as a self-destructive death. I see it more as a sort of calamity. A sort of mistake that was made on a wild bender that I don't think was related to self-destructiveness, because he really wasn't a self-destructive person. He got that rap though, I think, from the press, who have created a whole angle on his situation. I remember Johnny Depp saying that that kind of death can happen to anybody. And if people think that it can only happen to someone like River and not to them just aren't watching out. The media is its own sort of entity, its own sort of animal. River had a certain public image that went against the grain of how he died. It was like "how can a vegetarian possibly do drugs." It's like they felt they'd been cheated and lied to by this guy...If he had been hit by a truck it would have been different, which is really how I look at it, as a tragic accident. To me River really was a symbol of hope and good cheer. He was probably one of the greatest persons I've ever met.

Tell us about how you became involved with Good Will Hunting.
I read the screenplay and I knew the two guys who'd written it. Matt had tried out for To Die For and Ben I'd met on the set of To Die For where he was visiting his younger brother Casey, who was in it. As soon as I'd read it I was scrambling to find their numbers and finally got Ben on the phone and said "I'm in! I want to do this right away, as my next project." It's kind of an amazing thing to have happen, because they'd just gotten it set up at Miramax and hadn't really been around very long...but the screenplay was really good enough to attract attention right away. I was just lucky enough to get ahold of it first.

We spoke before about your advice to first-time filmmakers. Any more words of wisdom to impart?
Get plenty of rest and exercise and do your homework before you shoot. Don't wait until you get to the set.

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