My Own Private Idaho is considered a landmark film in New Queer Cinema, an early 1990s movement in queer-themed independent filmmaking.[1] Since its release, it has grown in popularity and been deemed a cult classic, especially among LGBT audiences. The film is notable for its then-taboo subject matter and avant-garde style.[2][3]
Plot
Mike, a street hustler, stands alone on a deserted stretch of highway. He starts talking to himself and notices that the road looks "like someone's face, like a fucked-up face." He then experiences a narcoleptic episode and dreams of his mother comforting him as home movies of his childhood play in his mind.
Later, after receiving fellatio from a client in Seattle, Mike returns to his favorite spots to pick up clients. He is picked up by a wealthy older woman who takes him to her mansion, where he finds two fellow hustlers she has also hired. One of them is Scott Favor, Mike's best friend, and the other is Gary. While preparing to have sex with the woman, Mike has another narcoleptic episode and awakens the next day with Scott in Portland, Oregon.
Mike and Scott are soon reunited with Bob Pigeon, a middle-aged mentor to a gang of street kids and hustlers who live in an abandoned apartment building. Scott, the son of the mayor of Portland, confides in Bob that when he turns 21, he will inherit his father's fortune and retire from street hustling. Meanwhile, Mike yearns to find his mother, so he and Scott leave for Idaho to visit Mike's older brother, Richard. Along this journey, Mike confesses to Scott that he is in love with him, and Scott gently reminds Mike he only sleeps with men for money. Richard tells a story of a man he claims is Mike's father, but Mike insists that he knows it is Richard. Richard informs Mike that their mother works as a hotel maid; when Mike and Scott visit her workplace, they learn she went to Italy in search of her own family. At the hotel, they meet Hans, the man who drove them to Portland, and prostitute themselves to him.
With the money they receive from Hans, Mike and Scott travel to Italy. They find the country farmhouse where Mike's mother worked as a maid and English tutor. Carmela, a young woman who lives there, tells Mike that his mother returned to the United States months ago. Carmela and Scott fall in love and return to the US, leaving a brokenhearted Mike to return on his own. Scott's father dies, and Scott inherits his fortune.
Back in Portland, Bob and his gang confront a reformed Scott at a fashionable restaurant, but he rejects them. That night, Bob has a fatal heart attack. The next day, the hustlers hold a rowdy funeral for Bob, while in the same cemetery, a few yards away, Scott attends a solemn funeral for his father.
Finally, Mike is back on the deserted stretch of Idaho highway. After he falls into another narcoleptic stupor, two strangers pull up in a truck, take his backpack and shoes, and drive away. Moments later, an unidentified figure pulls up in a car, picks the unconscious Mike up, places him in the vehicle, and drives away.
My Own Private Idaho originated from John Rechy's 1963 novel City of Night, which featured street hustlers who did not admit to being gay.[4] Van Sant's original screenplay was written in the 1970s, when he was living in Hollywood.[5] After reading Rechy's book, Van Sant felt it was considerably better than what he was writing, and shelved the script for years. In 1988, while editing Mala Noche, Van Sant met street kid Michael Parker, who inspired the character of Mike in My Own Private Idaho.[5] Parker also had a friend named Scott, a street kid like himself. In the script, Van Sant made the Scott character a rich kid, also fashioned after street hustlers Van Sant had met in Portland.[5]
Early drafts of the screenplay were set on Hollywood Boulevard, not Portland, with working titles such as Blue Funk and Minions of the Moon.[6] Rechy's novel inspired Van Sant to change the setting to Portland.[7] The script originally consisted of two separate scenarios: the first (Modern Days) recounted Mike's story; the second updated the Henry IV plays with Scott's story.[8] Van Sant realized he could blend the two stories together in the manner of William S. Burroughs' "cut up" technique.[8] In essence, this method involves various story fragments and ideas mixed and matched together to form a unique story. The idea to combine the two scenarios occurred to Van Sant after seeing Orson Welles's Chimes at Midnight.[8] He has said, "I thought that the Henry IV plays were really a street story. I also knew this fat guy named Bob, who had always reminded me of Falstaff and who was crazy about hustler boys". Van Sant realized that Prince Hal in the plays resembled Scott and the sidekick was Mike. His script ended up as a restructuring of the Henry IV plays.[9] Van Sant got the idea for Mike's narcolepsy from a man who was a guide of sorts when the director was gathering material for the film and who always looked like he was about to fall asleep.[10] The film's title is derived from the song "Private Idaho" by the B-52's that Van Sant heard while visiting the state in the early 1980s.[11]
Van Sant showed the script to a 20th Century Fox executive who liked Shakespeare.[9] Eventually, he toned down the Shakespearean elements and modernized the language. Van Sant was also working on a "My Own Private Idaho" short story that he intended to film. Twenty-five pages long, it concerned two Latino characters on the Portland streets who go in search of their parents and travel to a town in Spain. One falls in love with a girl and leaves the other behind.[9] Van Sant had another script, The Boys of Storytown, containing the Mike and Scott characters, as well as Hans and Bob; Van Sant wanted to make the film but felt the script was unfinished.[12] Ultimately, while editing Drugstore Cowboy, he combined the scripts for Modern Days and Storytown with the "Idaho" short story.[12]
Initially, no studio would finance the film because of its controversial and offbeat subject matter. After Drugstore Cowboy received favorable critical raves and awards, studios started to show some interest,[11] but they all wanted revisions. Frustrated, Van Sant attempted to make the film on a shoestring budget with a cast of actual street kids, including Michael Parker and actor Rodney Harvey, who was going to play Scott.[12]
River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves were excited to star in the film together but were fearful of the other not committing, so they shook hands on the deal.[13]
Van Sant faced the problem of casting the two central roles. He decided to send the script to the agents of Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix, figuring that their agents would reject the script.[14] Reeves's agent was amenable to the project, but Phoenix's would not even show it to him.[11] Not to be deterred, Van Sant got the idea for Reeves to personally deliver the film treatment to Phoenix at his home in Florida.[14] Reeves did so over the Christmas holidays, riding his 1974 Norton Commando motorcycle from his family home in Canada to the Phoenix family ranch in Micanopy, Florida, outside Gainesville.[14] Reeves was no stranger to River Phoenix or his family, having worked previously with River on Lawrence Kasdan's I Love You to Death and with his brother Joaquin Phoenix and girlfriend Martha Plimpton on Ron Howard's Parenthood. After reading the treatment, Phoenix agreed to play Scott, but since Van Sant had already cast Reeves in the role, they had to convince River to take the edgier role of the drug-addicted hustler Mike. Van Sant promised not to make either actor do anything embarrassing.[15] He got an offer of $2 million from an outside investor but when he put off production for nine months so that Phoenix could make Dogfight, the investor and his money disappeared.[16] Producer Laurie Parker shopped the script around and, at the time, New Line Cinema was in the process of branching out into producing arthouse films and decided to back Van Sant's vision with a $2.5 million budget.[11] In a 2012 interview, Kiefer Sutherland said that he declined Van Sant's offer to star in the lead role because he wanted to go skiing, a decision he has said he regrets.[17]
Principal photography
Principal photography took place from November to December 1990, primarily in Portland, Seattle, and Rome.[18] Scenes of the Idaho road depicted in the film were shot near Maupin, Oregon, on Oregon Route 216. Phoenix arrived in Portland two weeks before principal photography was to begin to do research and Van Sant remembered, "He seemed to be changing into this character".[19] One of the film's directors of photography, Eric Alan Edwards, recalled that Phoenix "looked like a street kid", and "in a very raw way he wore that role. I've never seen anybody so intent on living his role".[19] Several cast and crew members, including Michael Parker, Phoenix, Reeves, and Flea, lived together in a house in Portland during filming. A couple of times a week, they would play music together. Due to the low budget, a typical day of shooting started at 6 am and ended at 11 pm.[19]
The film was not storyboarded and was made without a shot list.[20] The campfire scene, originally just three pages,[20] was expanded by Phoenix into an eight-page scene in which Mike professes his love for Scott, thereby making the character's homosexuality obvious, as opposed to Van Sant's more ambiguous original version. Phoenix described his process as his "own stream-of-consciousness, and this just happened to be one that was more than actor notes. Then Keanu and I refined it, worked on it, but it was all done quickly. It was something I wrote down a night, two nights, before, and then I showed it to Keanu and Gus. And Gus kept the whole thing. He didn't pare it down. It's a long scene." Phoenix has said that neither he nor Reeves felt uncomfortable with Idaho's queerness.[21] When asked if he was worried that playing a gay prostitute might hurt his public image, Reeves said, "Hurt my image? Who am I—a politician? [laughs softly] No. I'm an actor. That wasn't a problem."[22]
Eric Edwards shot the time-lapse photography shots on his own.[23] They were not in the script and the film's producer was worried that he was using too much film. Van Sant originally had the screen go black when Mike passed out, but was not satisfied with this approach. He used Edwards's footage to present Mike's perspective of "an altered sense of time".[23] Some New Line executives disliked the Shakespeare scenes and wanted Van Sant to cut them, but foreign distributors wanted as much Shakespeare in the film as possible.[24]
Music
The film's score was composed by pedal steel guitarist Bill Stafford. He recorded various arrangements for the film, including instrumental adaptations of "Home on the Range" and "America the Beautiful". Stafford won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Film Music in 1992 for his score. Other original and selected songs from various artists were also featured in the film, including:
The film achieved critical acclaim. Film critic Roger Ebert wrote, "The achievement of this film is that it wants to evoke that state of drifting need, and it does. There is no mechanical plot that has to grind to a Hollywood conclusion, and no contrived test for the heroes to pass." [30] In his review for Rolling Stone magazine, Peter Travers wrote, "Van Sant's clear-eyed, unsentimental approach to a plot that pivots on betrayal and death is reflected in magnetic performances from Reeves and Phoenix."[31]Vincent Canby, in his New York Times review, wrote, "The performances, especially by the two young stars, are as surprising as they are sure. Mr. Phoenix (Dogfight) and Mr. Reeves (of the two Bill and Ted comedies) are very fine in what may be the two best roles they'll find in years. Roles of this density, for young actors, do not come by that often".[32] In his review for Newsweek, David Ansen praised Phoenix's performance: "The campfire scene in which Mike awkwardly declares his unrequited love for Scott is a marvel of delicacy. In this, and every scene, Phoenix immerses himself so deeply inside his character you almost forget you've seen him before: it's a stunningly sensitive performance, poignant and comic at once."[33]Entertainment Weekly gave the film an "A−" rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, "When Van Sant shows us speeded-up images of clouds rolling past wheat fields, the familiar device transcends cliché, because it's tied to the way that Mike, in his benumbed isolation, experiences his own life—as a running piece of surrealism. The sheer, expressive beauty of those images haunted me for days."[34]J. Hoberman, in his review for The Village Voice, wrote, "While Phoenix vanishes with reckless triumph into his role, Reeves stands, or occasionally struts, uneasily beside his, unable to project even the self-mocking wit of Matt Dillon's star turn in Drugstore Cowboy."[35] Hal Hinson of The Washington Post wrote, "Gus Van Sant's sensibility is wholly original, wholly fresh. My Own Private Idaho adds a new ingredient: a kind of boho sweetness. I loved it."[36]
Conversely, USA Today gave My Own Private Idaho two and half stars out of four, calling it "nothing but set pieces; tossed into a mix whose meaning is almost certainly private".[37]Time magazine's Richard Schickel wrote, "What plot it has is borrowed, improbably, from Henry IV, and whenever anyone manages to speak an entire paragraph, it is usually a Shakespearean paraphrase. But this is a desperate imposition on an essentially inert film."[38] In his review for The New Yorker, Terrence Rafferty wrote, "Van Sant has stranded the actor in a movie full of flat characters and bad ideas, but Phoenix walks through the picture, down the road after road after road, as if he were surrounded by glorious phantoms."[39]
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 80% based on 59 reviews, with an average rating of 7.7/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "A tantalizing glimpse of a talented director and his stars all at the top of their respective games, Gus Van Sant's loose reworking of Henry IV is smart, sad and audacious."[40] On Metacritic, the film holds a weighted average score of 77 out of 100, based on 18 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[41]
Home media
The film was originally released on VHS and LaserDisc in 1992.
In 2005, the film was remastered by The Criterion Collection and released on a two-disc DVD set.[42] The second disc features new interviews, outtakes and more information about the movie. This DVD set is accompanied by an illustrated 64-page-booklet featuring previously published articles, interviews with cast and crew, new essays by JT LeRoy and Amy Taubin, a 1991 article by Lance Loud, and reprinted interviews with Gus Van Sant, River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves.[43]Entertainment Weekly gave the DVD a "B+" rating and wrote, "While you may enjoy watching My Own Private Idaho, whether you choose to view this two-disc Criterion edition in its entirety depends on how much you enjoy watching people talking about My Own Private Idaho", and concluded, "But with all the various interpretations and influences, this is definitely a film worth talking about".[43]
In 2015, The Criterion Collection released the film on Blu-ray, based on a restored 4K digital transfer.[44]
Keanu Charles Reeves is a Canadian actor. Born in Beirut and raised in Toronto, he made his acting debut in the Canadian television series Hangin' In (1984), before making his feature film debut in Youngblood (1986). Reeves had his breakthrough role in the science fiction comedy Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989), and he reprised his role in its sequels. He gained praise for playing a hustler in the independent drama My Own Private Idaho (1991) and established himself as an action hero with leading roles in Point Break (1991) and Speed (1994).
River Jude Phoenix was an American actor and musician. Phoenix was known as a teen actor before taking on leading roles in critically acclaimed films. He received numerous accolades including Volpi Cup and the Independent Spirit Award as well as nominations for an Academy Award, and Golden Globe Award.
Gus Green Van Sant Jr. is an American film director, producer, photographer, and musician who has earned acclaim as an independent filmmaker. His films typically deal with themes of marginalized subcultures, in particular homosexuality. Van Sant is considered one of the most prominent auteurs of the New Queer Cinema movement.
City of Night is a novel written by John Rechy. It was originally published in 1963 in New York by Grove Press. Earlier excerpts had appeared in Evergreen Review, Big Table, Nugget, and The London Magazine.
Aleka's Attic were an alternative folk/rock band from Gainesville, Florida, formed by River Phoenix and Josh Greenbaum in April 1987.
Michael or Mike Waters may refer to:
The 57th New York Film Critics Circle Awards, honoring the best filmmaking of 1991, were announced on 17 December 1991 and presented on 12 January 1992.
Thumbsucker is a 2005 American independent comedy-drama film written and directed by Mike Mills in his feature directorial debut. The film stars Lou Taylor Pucci, Tilda Swinton, Vincent D'Onofrio, Kelli Garner, Benjamin Bratt, Vince Vaughn, and Keanu Reeves. The plot focuses on Justin Cobb, a teenager in suburban Oregon, as he copes with his thumb-sucking problem, romance, and his diagnosis with ADHD and subsequent experience using Ritalin. The screenplay was adapted from the 1999 Walter Kirn novel of the same name. Swinton also served as an executive producer.
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues is a 1993 American romantic comedy-drama western film based on Tom Robbins' 1976 novel of the same name. The film was directed by Gus Van Sant and starred an ensemble cast led by Uma Thurman, Lorraine Bracco, Angie Dickinson, Noriyuki "Pat" Morita, Keanu Reeves, John Hurt, and Rain Phoenix. Robbins himself was the narrator. The soundtrack was sung entirely by k.d. lang. The film was dedicated to the late River Phoenix.
Paranoid Park is a 2007 coming of age teen drama film written, directed and edited by Gus Van Sant. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Blake Nelson and takes place in Portland, Oregon. It is the story of a teenage skateboarder set against the backdrop of a police investigation into a mysterious death.
Tom Cramer is an American artist working in Portland, Oregon noted for his intricately carved and painted wood reliefs and ubiquity throughout the city of Portland. Often called the unofficial Artist Laureate of Portland, Cramer is one of the most visible and successful artists in the city. The influences on his work are both organic and technological. He is widely collected and is in many prominent west coast museum and private collections. He is in the permanent collections of the Portland Art Museum in Portland Oregon, the Halle Ford Museum in Salem Oregon, the Jordan Schnitzer Museum in Eugene, Oregon, the Boise Art Museum in Idaho.
Chiara Caselli is an Italian actress. In 1994, Caselli won the Nastro d'Argento for Best Actress award as well as the David di Donatello for Best Actress award. Caselli has appeared in American films including My Own Private Idaho opposite River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves.
William Richert was an American film director, producer, screenwriter and actor. He is known for writing and directing the feature films Winter Kills, The American Success Company, and A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon.
Chel White is an American film director, composer, screenwriter and visual effects artist. In his independent films and music videos, White is known for his stylized, often experimental use of images, unusual animation and narratives depicting an outsider's perspective. He often adopts darkly humorous and poetic sensibilities to explore topics of love, obsession and alienation; with dreams and the subconscious being his greatest influences. He describes his own work as “stories and images that reside on the brink of dreams, or linger on the periphery of distorted memories.” A Rockefeller Fellow, Chel White has made three films based on the work of Peabody Award-winning writer and radio personality Joe Frank.
Restless is a 2011 American romantic drama film directed by Gus Van Sant, written by Jason Lew, and produced by Brian Grazer, Ron Howard and his daughter Bryce Dallas Howard. The film stars Henry Hopper and Mia Wasikowska, with Ryō Kase, Schuyler Fisk, and Jane Adams playing supporting roles. The film was shot in Portland, Oregon.
Michael Waters is a fictional character in Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho, portrayed by River Phoenix.
Phillip Christon is an American film director and screenwriter. His writing and directing work includes Ricky & Lucy, The Bundle, The Chosen One and numerous commercials and music videos.
Keanu Reeves is a Canadian actor who has appeared in films, television series and video games. He made his film debut in the short One Step Away in 1985. The following year, Reeves appeared in the crime film River's Edge, and the television films Babes in Toyland, Act of Vengeance, and Brotherhood of Justice. His first lead role was as a teenager dealing with his best friend's suicide in the 1988 drama Permanent Record. His breakthrough role came when he played time-travelling slacker Ted "Theodore" Logan in the science fiction comedy Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989) with Alex Winter, which was an unexpected commercial success. Reeves followed this with a supporting role in Ron Howard's comedy Parenthood. In 1991 he starred in the action film Point Break with Patrick Swayze, the science fiction comedy sequel Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, and the independent drama My Own Private Idaho.
My Own Private River is a re-contextualized adventure drama film of My Own Private Idaho (1991). Using footage shot and directed by Gus Van Sant in 1990, the new edit gives James Franco and Van Sant a shared director credit. The project is in tribute to Franco's favorite actor, River Phoenix. Franco called My Own Private Idaho one of his favorite movies and praised River's performance as the actor's best.
Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot is a 2018 American comedy-drama film directed by Gus Van Sant and based upon the memoir of the same name by John Callahan. The cast includes Joaquin Phoenix, Jonah Hill, Rooney Mara, and Jack Black, and follows a recently paralyzed alcoholic who finds a passion for drawing off-color newspaper cartoons.
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