Gus Van Sant has made a number of pictures worth seeing—certainly To Die For, Good Will Hunting, Finding Forrester, and Elephant, which Phil already mentioned—along with a bunch of clunkers and interesting failures (the shot-for-shot remake of Psycho is among the most bizarre projects by anyone in the past 20 years). But Drugstore Cowboy remains my favorite and nothing else by him has ever come close. Maybe it's something about 1989—Spike Lee also released the only movie by him that I love without qualification that year, Do the Right Thing. Steven Soderbergh and Sex, Lies, and Videotape looked like another parallel until Soderbergh started getting his ship righted in the late '90s.
Drugstore Cowboy has a little something to offer everyone—nostalgia for the post-'60s hangover, a satisfying dramatic story, a nicely ambiguous ending, great language woven all through, and some fun caper turns—but what I like about it best is how it manages to be anti-drug without getting preachy and at the same time perfectly straightforward and convincing about the appeal of the life in the first place. For all the pathetic low-life qualities evinced in the clip at the link, everything you need to know about why anyone would get involved in a life of drugs is nicely detailed there.
I used to think the appearance of William Burroughs in the second half was a bit of a pro forma nod to a living legend, something there just for the cachet, especially when the screenplay feeds him familiar lines out of his own work. But with more recent views he is more and more becoming one of my favorite parts of the whole thing. That's partly, yes, because it's a bit of a pro forma nod to a now-dead legend. But it's also because the guy clearly had a handle on the live current that animates the best of what's here. He embodies it in every word and gesture. For that matter, so does the mise en scene provided by Portland, Oregon; setting it there remains one of Van Sant's most inspired decisions in a movie full of inspired decisions.
"After any kind of drug haul, everyone in the crew indulged." [video deleted]
Phil #19: The Candidate (Michael Ritchie, 1972) (scroll down)
Steven #19: Mean Streets (Martin Scorsese, 1973)
I don't think I would put Drugstore Cowboy this high on another list. There are still two late swap-outs and a few other switch-arounds ahead, but I decided just to leave this one in place, even after a late re-viewing of it (first time in many years) had disappointed a little—or maybe I should say especially after this happened, given my previous panics with this type of experience. It probably belongs in a list of my top 50 somewhere, or close to it, so I just let it lay.
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