On Gus Van Sant

Certain directors’ work I just don’t miss; they drop new movies and I’m there, no questions asked. Gus Van Sant (My Own Private Idaho, Good Will Hunting) is one. His recent films were two of the most experimental commercial releases I can remember: Michael Pitt (loved him in Bertolucci’s The Dreamers) rocked Last Days as a Kurt Cobain dopplegänger, an alienated rock star on the verge of suicide; Elephant was another alternate-reality history, this time of the Columbine high school shootings, starring teenage non-actors. Both films have a combined 15 minutes of dialogue tops. Last month, Van Sant’s mainstream Paranoid Park hit France half a year before its March 2008 USA release – in fact, it won the 60th anniversary prize at the Cannes Film Festival – and I’m glad for the preview.

The plot of Paranoid Park centers around a skateboarder who accidentally murders a nighttime security guard protecting a train yard. Whatever the story, Van Sant’s substance is his style, his medium the message. Not directed as straightforwardly middle-of-the-road as Finding Forrester (with its great shot of The Bronx’s Co-op City, never before seen on celluloid) or To Die For, the new film stays true to his avant-garde style. An opening scene at the fictional skateboarders haven of Paranoid Park somewhere in California is emblematic: kids freaking frontside lipslides in slow motion over Robert Normandeau’s “La Chambre Blanche.”

And here’s a short list of directors whose movies I’m there to see on Day One whether or not I have the faintest idea of what they’re about (holla under comments if you hear me): Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Wes Anderson, P.T. Anderson, Spike Lee, John Singleton, Sofia Coppola, Bernardo Bertolucci, Woody Allen, Hype Williams…