LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Gus Van Sant: Matt Damon
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Van Sant received a Best Director Academy Award® nomination for Good Will Hunting (1997), which received a total of nine Academy Award® nominations (including wins for Best Supporting Actor Robin Williams and Best Original Screenplay by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck). Van Sant followed with the controversial remake of a classic Alfred Hitchcock thriller, Psycho (1998), which was the first shot-for-shot recreation of a film. The new millennium brought the release of the literary drama Finding Forrester (2000), starring Sean Connery, Rob Brown, F. Murray Abraham, and Anna Paquin. Van Sant returned to his indie roots with the beautiful and austere Gerry (2002), which he wrote with the film’s stars Matt Damon and Casey Affleck. The experience of making the improvisational Gerry informed the making of Van Sant’s next film, Elephant (2003). Elephant premiered in competition at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival, where it garnered the Palme d’Or and Best Director prizes.
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Van Sant reacted by moving to Portland, Oregon, where he set up house and began giving life to the ideas rejected by Universal. With the assistance of independent production company Avenue, the director made Drugstore Cowboy, his 1989 film about four drug addicts who rob pharmacies to support their habit. Cowboy met with great critical success; in addition to furthering Van Sant's reputation as a gifted director, it helped to revive the career of Matt Dillon, who was remarkable as the junkie leader who decides to come clean.
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Van Sant was nominated for an Academy Award for 1997’s “Good Will Hunting,” starring Matt Damon, Robin Williams and Ben Affleck. Other notable actors in Van Sant films include Heather Graham, Vince Vaughn, Matt Dillon, Sean Connery, William H. Macy, Julianne Moore, Anne Heche, Keanu Reeves and Viggo Mortensen.
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For better and for worse, Van Sant says, he lacks the temperament to fight. In the case of working with actors, his nonconfrontational approach obviously works. Phoenix, Damon, Kidman, Minnie Driver and Matt Dillon have all delivered their best, mostly deeply textured performances in his films.
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[O]penly gay Gus is just one of many prominent alties roaming the rainy City of Roses. Other PDXers include Matt Groening, Ken Kesey, Chuck Palinchuk, Stephen Malkamus, Todd Haynes, not to mention members of Sleater Kinney, The Shins, The Decemberists, Modest Mouse, Pink Martini, and Built To Spill. The following is a list of sights that give Portland its edgy vibe.
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The writing credits are shared by Van Sant and the two actors and it certainly sounds like most of the dialogue was improvised, but with a slacker blur and a cryptic edge. When Affleck starts talking about having conquered Thebes you wonder if he has gone totally off his rocker because of the disorientation and the heat or if he is just referring to a video game or a play he might have acted in. How much of this is real? Do Damon and Affleck call each other Gerry in real life?
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