Interview with Gus Van Sant.

GVS Hold on a second.... Hi.

BLB Do you have a visitor?

GVS No, it was a phone call--we're scouting punk rockers.

BLB You're what?

GVS Scouting for punk rockers.

BLB For your next movie?

GVS Yeah.

BLB Oh, cool.

GVS So they're out there going to punk shows and stuff.

BLB Oh neat. In Portland?

GVS Yeah.

BLB Okay I'll get back to that in a minute. So, it was Harmony who told you about the Alan Clark movie celled Elephant originally?

GVS Yeah, we would have times when we would talk about that stuff on the phone, and I guess he told me about an Alan Clark film retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art.

BLB That was made for BBC. From what I've heard of it, it must have been pretty radical for the BBC.

GVS His films I think were pretty radical.

BLB It is surprising that it was actually made by and shown on the BBC? It's weird that you made Elephant for HBO, which is a parallel to him making it for the BBC. I think most people who see Elephant would be surprised that it's made for TV.

GVS Well his film was thirty five minutes, for one thing. It was made in '89. The violence in Ireland had reached a high point then. There were Catholics and Protestants shooting each other, and that's what they showed. They basically took that and put it on the air without any identification of who was who, so there was just people shooting each other. Which is why Harmony liked it, because it was this random violence, that it reduced the violence to ...

BLB To its essence ...

GVS To the essence of the violence, people were just shooting each other, it didn't really matter why.

BLB But still, to have it shown on BBC, it seems somewhat radical. I noticed on the Internet--I was looking at a lot of the reviews for Elephant--that the people who take issue with it want explanations for everything, they say the movie doesn't explain things. Some people like that and other people are freaked out by it.

GVS Elephant was very much like that, the original Elephant by Alan Clark, it's not explaining anything on purpose. When we showed it here to our crew, they didn't know what to think, because they were just watching people kill each other. And that's what Harmony liked. I guess it was a very simple, interesting way to go about it, but the British are so odd, I don't really know what to expect from them, The comedy over there is like odd enough that it won't even play here, so I can't say that that was radical for the BBC. I mean like The Goon Show and stuff like that. Or their talk shows or just the stuff that I see now, the comedy talk shows are so odd ...

BLB Do you know those guys have all these fantasies that are on the Internet, like people write reams and reams of pages of fantasies about imagining a homosexual relationship between Ben and Matt?

GVS No.

BLB Yeah! It's the same with a lot of celebrities, Bert and Ernie, for example, from Sesame Street. Whenever there's a male buddy team, they're always sexually fantasized about on the 'net.

GVS Aren't male buddies kind of sexually connected anyway? Whether or not they do it?

BLB Yeah.

GVS Like modern male buddies when they're young. Everything's so open now, they actually do have sex a lot of the time, even though they're heterosexual.

BLB Right, like the infamous shower scene in your movie Elephant.

GVS Exactly.

BLB I didn't really read that as them being gay, I just read it like: well we're going to be dead soon so we'd better try something out that we haven't tried before.

GVS Well they just spontaneously ... I mean in confessional gay literature there's stories about warriors going to war, they have sex because they are going to die ...

BLB It's very Mishima, actually.

GVS Yeah, well I don't know, I think Mishima was very homoerotic but ... Roman soldiers would have sex with their horses. They had sex all over the place. Back in certain times there were different types of sex and people just did it, they didn't really particularly label it as much as we do.

BLB They didn't analyse it to death.

GVS Yeah, we have only one perception.

BLB Yeah.

GVS You're either gay or straight. There's no in between.

BLB And there it's very fluid, I mean my boyfriend's Islamic and they have a very fluid, very open kind of concept of sexuality, it's more like sensuality than sexuality or ... they're not so object-based-it doesn't just have to be one object that your whole sex life revolves around and that has to be a member of the opposite sex. He refuses to call himself homosexual; he calls himself unheterosexual.

GVS And even within heterosexuality there's about a hundred different kinds of heterosexual. But, that particular scene in Elephant was over-thought, we had to over-think it from the very beginning because ...

BLB Well was it partly because in Columbine Klebold and Harris were identified as fags?

GVS They were?

BLB Yeah, I was just thinking about a column I wrote that talks about how it was perceived by the media. In protests after Columbine, outside the high school, people were holding signs that said "Fags Killed Our Children."

GVS Really?

BLB Yeah

GVS Wow. I didn't know that there was that strong an identification. I just assumed on my own, and I didn't really even assume that they were gay ...

BLB Well I don't think that they were necessarily gay either but I think with Klebold and Harris everyone was calling them fags and they were inseparable and didn't have girlfriends, and blah blah blah. It's almost one of those things where they think we're fags anyways, so fuck them. We'll act like fags. That kind of punk gesture.

GVS But even as a disclaimer, we had them say in the shower "I've never even kissed anybody," we're trying to explain it, it's so over-thought that scene.

BLB Do you think that was a mistake? or ...

GVS No I don't mind trying to explain it, but even with the explanation, critics like Todd McCarthy of Variety identify these guys as gay, not me.

BLB Well is he the one that hated it?

GVS Yeah.

BLB Todd McCarthy. He said "I was in high school and it was nothing like that," that it was based on media stereotypes.

GVS But that's the thing about film, you're always working in some sort of stereotype, otherwise you wouldn't get people to identify with the characters. Just to have even good and evil is a stereotypical thing. So that kind of stereotype argument I find very odd, because you can't find non-stereotypes in movies, even if they're not stereotypes then that's a stereotype. They're anti-stereotypes. He also accused us of having our actors look too much like Calvin Klein models, which, he's right about, but as my friend Alan says, that's a good thing.

BLB Well, Calvin Klein has an eye for good-looking. That's what teenagers look like, right?

GVS I think he was just accusing them of being too pretty.

BLB But they are pretty.

GVS Well, pretty much all the kids are pretty so ...

BLB One of my favorite characters in Elephant was the poor girl who's wearing the long gym pants.

GVS She has glasses.

BLB Yup, she was the one I identified with the most.

GVS Well she's very pretty but she's ...

BLB Well she's very--I love her look. Yes, she's very attractive but she's not conventionally ...

GVS She would be identified as not pretty.

BLB As the ugly kid, yeah.

GVS But you know from our point of view, because she's young, she's pretty. There was something about her on screen that was very compelling as well. And that was disturbing when she was the first one shot, because it really enforced the randomness of the whole thing: like, why her?

GVS The way the whole story was handled is an attempt to create a film by gathering information about what is happening right at that moment. We're filming right on location and it's not a documentary. The information and the story emerge out of the process, rather than being dictated by the voice of the author.

BLB So would you be writing before and after takes?

GVS We had an outline that we were following but we could change it whenever we wanted. I think in other situations there would have been more change. Everybody was so non-professional that there wasn't mental power spent trying to figure out what was going on. It pretty much just sort of happened. And things like the sound were handled that way as well.

BLB So it was a live mix?

GVS The location sound was live ... yeah. And then some sounds were on different channels because that's the way they were put down originally ... whatever happened to be captured at that moment.

BLB Is that what Altman used to do?

GVS Yeah, Altman would do that too but he often threw a lot of people and cameras into the situation, and it wasn't about one floating camera it was about capturing a more chaotic situation.

BLB So where did you get the idea for the over-the-shoulder shots? I love those shots, they're very anti-conventional. In most tracking shots you always see the character's face or from their actual point of view, but instead it's not even over their shoulder, it's actually focused on the back of their neck.

GVS I don't know ... that's the culmination of lots of different influences. Even back in college I remember doing stuff like that. I'm not sure it comes from an actual place but maybe it comes from what I feel like when I'm walking around the Earth. I always feel like you're just always walking and life is going someplace and then stuff happens at places, but then you have to walk to the next place.

BLB And that was a Steadicam, or no?

GVS Yeah, it was usually a Steadicam and then sometimes the Steadicam got onto a dolly, so when we're walking down the hall the Steadicam is standing on this little wheel thing, almost like a platform with a railing wheeling down the hall and then when you get to a doorway the Steadicam will jump off and run around.

BLB In a lot of the shots you have moments where the action slows and then goes back to normal again. Was that a decision you made in post, or ...

GVS No, that was done on the set.

BLB That wasn't done in-camera?

GVS Yeah, it was done in-camera.

BLB Really?

GVS Yeah. You can't really do it like that in post. We did want to do it more and we kind of lightened up on that particular thing because ...

BLB Was it done somewhat randomly, or ...

GVS I was choosing the places, but we stopped doing it because doing slow motion takes up more film. In order to do a lot of it we had to have a really large film magazine, which would make the camera weigh too much for the Steadicam. So we had to lighten up on the slow motion or we wouldn't have been able to do those smooth tracking shots with the steady cam.

BLB What about the music, why do you use classical music?

GVS We were going to have a score at one point. And then Alex, who's the dark-haired killer, ... we were shooting a scene where he goes into the girls' bathroom with his gun, and during lunch he was sitting at a piano in the lunch-room and he was playing Beethoven's Fur Elise. still dressed in his combat fatigues and I thought it was this really strange, haunting image. But also I noticed that he could play really well, so I said, "We have to get a piano into your room because tomorrow we're going to shoot in your basement room, and you can play the piano there."

BLB It's also really cool that that's the song that Schroeder plays all the time in Peanuts.

GVS Really, which one, Fur Elise?

BLB Yeah, Fur Elise. That's his theme song.

GVS Because there was also Moonlight Sonata.

BLB No, Schroeder plays Fur Elise on his little toy piano.

GVS It's the song that everybody learns when they're learning piano. As well as Moonlight Sonata, which he suggested, it's really kind of dark and sad, so he played those two songs and after that we ended up putting a recording of Moonlight Sonata under the beginning and then we just kind of left it. It's just that song and then in the bedroom and then also during the opening credits.

GVS And then the rest of it was a score of sounds which is from Hildegard Westerkamp from Montreal, one of the pieces is called "Doors of Perception."

BLB It's kind of electronic.

GVS No, it's not electronic, it's the way they do it, it's recorded sounds, you know like forests and birds and doors and things, but it's technically music--it's just not music with instruments.

BLB Right. It's kind of eerie.

BLB Just off on a tangent, I forgot to ask about the three girls, Brittney, Jordan and Nicole, when they go to the toilet and have their bulimia banquet? You know there used to be a punk band called Bulimia Banquet.

GVS Really?

BLB Yeah. I read on the 'net a few people were perturbed about that scene, they thought that it was jarring or it didn't work, but I thought it was funny. I thought that it was kind of punk rock because it's very politically incorrect to treat that kind of subject in a more comical way. The same with the opening when the boy's driving with his father and the car's slamming into other cars, I mean it's sad, but it's also funny ...

GVS Well it's funny because it's outrageous.

BLB It's outrageous, yeah. And you can be like that in a situation with a drunken parent or something and they will say something funny, or there is a comical aspect to it, it's not always this grim, movie-of-the-week tragedy. With the girls in the bathroom too, it was treated in a humorous way. Did you do that on purpose or was it just the girls ...

GVS Did you think that the girls were humorous?

BLB Just the way it was done where they all go into the toilet together, and you know that they're all going to throw up together.

GVS Because it was something that I actually heard from Heather Matarazzo, that there was a club at her school ...

BLB That's the Welcome to the Dollhouse girl?

GVS Yeah. It was during a casting session and she was telling me about her high school and she said some of the kids were really crazy and she used that as an example, it was a club of some kind. They went together after lunch into the stalls. Like most of the things in the movie, its based on reality ... on things I've heard, or imagined, or experienced so it wasn't really supposed to be funny, I mean if people find it funny ...

BLB Whatever happened with your involvement with [J.T. LeRoy's book] Sarah? Why didn't that happen? I mean it always freaks me out when I hear that even people as established as you have trouble getting projects funded.

GVS I think partly it had to do with ... I have this aversion to letting the lead cast members guide the film. I always want the backers of the film to really like the material, and usually with something like Sarah, they have to have more impetus because they realize that Sarah could be very inflammatory in the sense that this weird teenage transvestite prostitution stuff goes on in truck stops. You know they think in terms of, do we really want to piss off the Teamsters in America, do we want to make them look bad? Although they're just background to the story. You've read the book?

BLB No. I read half of it. I can't read anymore, I just don't have the attention span.

GVS It was one of those things ... it wasn't like I could say that Kieran Culkin is going to be in it, and the mom's is going to be played by ...

BLB Beverly D'Angelo. Is that what they wanted?

GVS That's kind of what they always want, you know, they think it's good that I'm going to do it, but I guess I'm not powerful enough to just say I'm doing it, and that's all you get.

BLB Do you think if you still had the rights, and after winning at Cannes, you could have gotten them to make it the way you wanted to make it? Or it doesn't work that way?

GVS Yeah, I could probably make it now at HBO.

BLB So it's all timing. I want to ask you, you said, "Vive la France" when you won ...

GVS My single, evil political statement ...

BLB Yeah, well that was great because of course the whole anti-French thing in America is absurd and ridiculous.

GVS They applauded, too.

BLB Yeah, I bet. But do you think your win there was in any way political? The French, I think, interpreted the film as anti-American, and they equated the elephant with Republicans ...

GVS Well we knew that going in, especially this year anything that resembles unrest in America or Americans shooting each other plays well in a place like that. And I guess Bowling for Columbine was an example of that.

BLB Were you influenced by Bowling for Columbine?

GVS No, it just happened at the same, I mean, ours probably started at the same time as his, as an offshoot of the event itself, but no.

BLB I liked the way that the violence was sometimes kind of fake looking. When the one student got shot in the hall and they kind of dragged him into the room or whatever, it [was] almost awkward looking, ... but then when the nerdy girl gets shot it looks really real. Did you do that on purpose, or ...

GVS What do you mean, when Kristen gets shot?

BLB Yeah.

GVS Well no, we always tried to make it look as real as possible. It was a bit hard because with the special effects I don't really know what it does look like when someone gets shot, and I was always trying to figure out what it would look like, in terms of my own imagination, which usually went counter to what the effects guys can do for you because the effects guys are basing all their stuff on, you know, John Woo movies or whatever--something that's not necessarily tied to reality ... which is another way we tried to base the story on banal situations. It was not heightened and exciting.

BLB Right, so sometimes, real violence looks fake.

GVS Yeah.

BLB Because it's not movie violence.

GVS Or it just looks ... to me whenever I see something that's real, what strikes me the most is that it looks uncoordinated. It looks grotesquely stupid when it's real. And that's the thing that's the most scary to me, is the stupidity of the way it looks: not coordinated and under control and choreographed.

BLB It's really messy and chaotic.

GVS But when Kristen gets shot, there are certain things about it that look real, but it's not. We could have worked longer, days and days on just that one thing. But it wasn't the most crucial thing.

BLB I really liked that, because at that point for me it almost, it broke me out of the movie, to me it almost looked ... well I don't mean this as an insult but it kind of looked like a high school play or something, like kids acting out. I became aware that it was real kids acting out this kind of violence, and for me that really worked, it kind of made it more poignant in some ways.

GVS We certainly didn't want it to be cool looking, mostly because we didn't think that's the way it really looked.

BLB That's a real problem.

BLB But what's this punk rock thing? I forgot to ask you. Are you making a punk rock movie?

GVS We're trying to.

BLB I thought Elephant was punk rock, actually.

GVS Did you? Why was that?

BLB Like I said, it wasn't afraid to be politically incorrect and sort of humorous and I think the randomness was real. The moments that you chose to show were just kind of random. If you had been an observer in the school you would have seen just these random, fleeting moments of somebody running out of a room, or somebody just standing frozen in fear or ...

BLB I mean the whole approach to the film was like a punk gesture. But um, so what's the new punk film?

GVS We don't know yet, because we're just casting.

BLB Oh, so are you doing the same process that you did with Elephant? The casting first and then ...

GVS Yeah ...

BLB Oh that's neat. And do you have any studio things in the works?

GVS No.

BLB Do you think you'll make another studio picture?

GVS Maybe some day.

BLB What about your punk remake of Psycho?

GVS Yeah, I'm not going to do that.

BLB No. Too bad. Maybe you should just remake Psycho now for the rest of your career, over and over and over again.

BLB Are you going to be in Portland for the next while?

GVS Yes, I think so.

BLB Well maybe I'll come down and visit some time.

GVS Okay. Bye.

Bruce LaBruce is a writer, photographer and filmmaker living in Toronto. He recently had a solo exhibition of photographs at peresprojects in San Francisco.