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Gus Van Sant: Films
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The success of Good Will Hunting afforded Van Sant the opportunity to remake the Alfred Hitchcock classic Psycho. As opposed to reinterpreting the 1960 film, Van Sant opted to recreate the film shot-for-shot, in color, with a cast of young Hollywood A-listers. His decision was met with equal parts curiosity, skepticism, and derision from industry insiders and outsiders alike, and the finished result met with a similar reception. Starring Anne Heche, Vince Vaughn, and Julianne Moore, Psycho, if not exactly a failure, wasn't much of a triumph, either. However, its mixed reception didn't deter the director, who was soon busy again with a number of projects. In addition to directing, he ... devoted considerable energy to releasing two albums and publishing a novel, Pink, which was a thinly veiled exploration of his grief over River Phoenix's 1993 death.
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With “Last Days†(2005), a fictional rendition of the last days before tortured rocker Kurt Cobain’s self-inflicted shotgun blast to the head, Van Sant again crafted an innovative and hypnotic film. Starring Michael Pitt as Blake, an introspective artist buckling under the weight of fame, stardom and mounting isolation, “Last Days†borrowed liberally from Cobain’s own sad story while maintaining its independence and claim on being a work of fiction. Though reviews for the tragic tale were mainly positive, “Last Day†opened in a mere twelve theaters, earning a paltry $86,000. No plans for a wider release were announced.
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Van Sant appeared in a cameo on screen in Kevin Smith's Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back playing himself. In the movie, he is counting wads of money which was made during Good Will Hunting. As an added joke, they were filming a fake sequel to the movie, called Good Will Hunting 2: Hunting Season.
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"There's a connection between all of them and the way I think of (them) as well," Van Sant says during a break from fine-tuning the Forrester sound mix at the Saul Zaentz Film Center in Berkeley. "(They're) pretty much about family, and most of the times about people that have formed families that are not originally families. The centerpiece of the films is always friendships between people."
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Police spokesman Sergeant Brian Schmautz said that, at approximately 1:40 a.m., officers noticed Van Sant's 2006 Porsche Cayenne stopped at a traffic light, headlights off. The filmmaker was pulled over and asked to take a field sobriety test after the cops smelled alcohol and observed that he had glassy, bloodshot eyes and was slurring his speech. News of the arrest was first reported by thesmokinggun.com.
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In making the film, Van Sant departured from tradition. But in essence what he did was reenact the tragedy as the camera's cold eye followed the characters to find out if anything could be learned from the process.
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