my own private idaho
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my own private idaho is most striking as a vision of a vanished bohemian city .
2. the film journal: my own private idaho page by j. d. lafrance
river phoenix and keanu reeves in
my own private idaho .
( warner bros. )
river phoenix in my own private idaho by gus van sant (1991) © warner bros inc .
twenty years later, gus van sant reflects on my own private idaho’s vanished city of flophouses and hustlers .
[ video ] “river phoenix researching for “my own private idaho” part 1 of 9″. youtube. com. urltoken
keanu reeves and river phoenix in my own private idaho by gus van sant. photograph: © warner bros inc
criterion collection to release' the brood,'' my own private idaho,'' mulholland dr.'
gus van sant' s' my own private idaho' uses a variety of devices to keep viewers off balance .
looking for movie tickets? enter your location to see which movie theaters are playing my own private idaho near you .
the film inside me, inside us: the experience of' my own private idaho' through a phenomenological lens .
my own private idaho lacks the dramatic punchiness of drugstore cowboy, yet it' s a rich, audacious experience .
river phoenix gives the finest performance of his tragically short career in my own private idaho, now streaming at sbs on demand .
text emily manning keanu reeves and river phoenix in my own private idaho by gus van sant (1991) © warner bros inc .
documents similar to the film inside me, inside us: the experience of' my own private idaho' through a phenomenological lens .
keanu reeves and river phoenix in gus van sant' s my own private idaho. photograph: cine text / allstar / sportsphoto ltd
this is river phoenix and keanu reeves at their best. my own private idaho is my favourite river phoenix movie. a superb movie of tragedy, love and lost .
the title my own private idaho was inspired by the b - 52' s song
private idaho ,
although the film has little in common with the song. the
private idaho
in the film is the visions that mike occasionally sees in his mind. therefore it can be said that mike is
living in his own private idaho
- - an idaho which is visible only to him .
the film inside me, inside us: the experience of' my own private idaho' through a phenomenological lens. | perception | consciousness
there is a moment in gus van sant’s 1991 film my own private idaho when the main character awakens on a desolate midwestern american highway .
my own private idaho
is both a love story and a tragedy. it remains the high point in gus van sant' s career .
. “she had a real intuition about me, and not since my own mom had anybody really had my number. she really understood my tastes, and my ambition, and my fear, my anxiety about wanting to do everything by thursday morning. ”
somewhere between surreal depravity and renaissance tragedy is gus van sant’s “my own private idaho, ” a visually compelling examination of unrequited love - romantic and otherwise .
“beautifully wrought, darkly funny and finally devastating, my own private idaho almost single - handedly revives the notion of personal filmmaking in the united states. ” — chicago tribune
criterion' s blu - ray edition of my own private idaho is available now. watch an exclusive clip of a conversation between todd haynes and gus van sant below :
music featured in my own private idaho (1991). many of the songs in the film were not released, so this is not at all a complete list .
hand2mouth' s
time, a fair hustler
is a collage of influences, including shakespeare' s history plays and gus van sant' s
my own private idaho .
“ gus van sant ‘s sensibility is wholly original, wholly fresh. my own private idaho adds a new ingredient: a kind of boho sweetness. i loved it. ” — washington post
my own private idaho received generally positive reviews in the gay media, typified by planetout. com’s popcornq, which called my own private idaho a “deliriously unhinged story” that contains “one of the most beautifully nuanced depictions of naked desire ever captured on film” and which is part of “a cinema that resonates with more than just the facile palliative of happily - ever - after” (8) .
alex g ¡all - time quarterback! the mountain goats my own private idaho lofi singer / songwriter love songs and other stuff... .... . everything is painful though river phoenix
grungy, grubby and authentic, the clothes in films such as my own private idaho were never meant to look good. but now a new paris exhibition is celebrating the director’s unlikely influence on the catwalk
van zant' s my own private idaho is the story of two male hustlers, mike waters and scott favor, who meet in a bad section of portland oregon, befriend each other for some time, and then separate .
the first time i viewed my own private idaho, at rit' s talisman, i found it quite confusing. only after attending the second screening did it make some sense to me. my own private idaho is a very complex film which ends without resolution of the story. it deals with
taboo
ideas which are not generally dealt with in the american cinema. one reason for my initial confusion may have been i was uptight about what i was seeing on the screen, and this distracted me from the story at hand. during my second viewing i knew what to expect, and devoted my attention to the story .
after studying under cinematographer ed lachman, shevaun mizrahi forged her own unique filmmaking path with its own set of rules .
because river phoenix' s agent refused to show him the film treatment for
my own private idaho
, in late 1990 keanu reeves rode his motorcycle from canada to phoenix' s hometown of gainesville, florida to hand deliver it himself .
“there’s not another road anywhere that looks like this road—i mean, exactly like this road. it’s one kind of place. one of a kind, like someone’s face. like a fucked - up face. ” —river phoenix, my own private idaho
tags: bisexual representation theme week, bisexuality, drama, keanu reeves, lgbtq, logan kenny, my own private idaho, river phoenix bookmark the permalink. follow comments with the rss feed for this post. both comments and trackbacks are closed .
the title of the film was based on the the b - 52' s song
private idaho
, released in 1980 .
“my own private idaho” is a film that is reflexive back on the original author of the story, william shakespeare. as one might know, or notice when watching the film, the film’s dialogue seems to be inspired by some kind of old - time poetry. gus van sant loosely based “my own private idaho” on one of the two plots of shakespeare’s play, henry iv, in which henry iv’s son, prince harry’s strained relationship with his father leads him to doing rebellious things, ignoring his responsibilities until he gets the money that he will inherit. in “my own private idaho, ” this can be seen clearly in the character of scott favor. but ironically enough, mike waters is the main protagonist of the story, on whose consciousness the film is based .
here’s further fuel to fire up those beliefs that james franco has succeeded in cloning himself. beginning on saturday, the actor together with director gus van sant are debuting an exhibition titled “unfinished” at the gagosian gallery in beverly hills. it consists of two films based on my own private idaho which van sant directed but franco did not star in. (it co - starred keanu reeves and the late river phoenix as street hustlers .) but after casting franco in 2008’s milk, van sant showed him the dailies and other footage that he had shot many years before for the 1991’s my own private idaho but which did not make it into the final cut. so franco decided to fashion it into two new films, riffing off the original title: endless idaho and my own private river .
out: first, i wanted to say that my own private idaho was the first “gay” movie i ever saw, since it somehow ended up in the little shop where we could rent vhs tapes on the air force base in japan where i went to high school .
tags: bisexual representation theme week, bisexuality, drama, gus van sant, jamie righetti, keanu reeves, lgbtq, my own private idaho, river phoenix bookmark the permalink. follow comments with the rss feed for this post. both comments and trackbacks are closed .
[ van sant ] disdain [ s ] narrative. he got away with drugstore cowboy because its band of drugged - out dodoes were engaged in a petty crime spree that almost passed for a plot. but my own private idaho is a different story. or rather nonstory .
according to the official descriptions, franco “edited outtakes, deleted scenes, alternate takes, and behind - the - scenes footage from my own private idaho into the 12 - hour film endless idaho which circa andy warhol provides an unprecedented look into the workaday process of making a movie, from location scouting to repeated takes. in a blend of documentary and fiction, interviews with actual hustlers who played secondary characters in my own private idaho are intercut with shots of river phoenix and keanu reeves improvising and refining their performances under the direction of van sant and his crew”. by contrast, my own private river “consists largely of shots of phoenix’s character woven into a compelling portrait. franco describes being mesmerized by phoenix ‘s ‘uninhibited acting’ in this unreleased footage, and his edit captures the gifted actor at his most emotionally expressive and physically dynamic” .
the 2015 criterion release of my own private idaho is based on a new 4k digital transfer, and presented in the film’s original 1. 85: 1 aspect radio. this release includes a number of extras, most of which were also included in the 2005 release from criterion .
a strong beginning that becomes a bit cryptic towards the end, my own private idaho is a respectable piece of film and is pure van sant. the poetic dialogue in some scenes mixed in with river phoenix' s narcolepsy brings a story that develops unusual characters and a excellent adventure .
my own private idaho finds a home in cinema revolution as one of the first major titles from fine line features, a production / distribution company that was founded in 1990 as the art house division of new line cinema and run by cinema revolution curator ira deutchman from 1990 - 1995 .
my own private idaho, van sant’s third feature film, is a landmark of the new queer cinema of the 1990s - a movement which gave voice and expression to lgbtq stories, while also exhibiting distinctly fluid and subversive styles of filmmaking that rejected conventional narrative forms. accordingly, my own private idaho’s story about a group of young male hustlers in portland has an episodic structure, and is visually and tonally experimental. a dense dreaminess implants mike’s narcolepsy within the film’s fabric. this magnifies the sense that mike is adrift without an anchor; that he experiences the world through an altered reality, where time is fragmented .
the shakepearean subtlety and sedation found in “my own private idaho” is seen loosely, aside from the plot, on the characters’ lines as well. the lyrical and poetic tone of mike, scott, and bob’s words are actually paraphrases of shakespeare’s script from his play, henry iv. compared to the loud, aggressive, and violent depiction of shakespeare’s titus andronicus by julie taymor, there is no doubt that “my own private idaho” is more tranquil and relaxed. it may also be attributed to the different contents and contexts of the two plays, but it can nevertheless be credited to the two directors’ treatments of the material .
my own private idaho is not a genre film, per se, but it is a formula film in the fact that there is a main character (mike) who is searching for a long - lost relative. generally formula films are simply reworkings of cookie - cutter stories, but director / screenwriter gus van zant has decided to work a formula story into a product which contains unconventional ideas and characters, and forms of sexuality which are not appealing to the general public. these ingredients make for a very unpredictable film, yet it is a formula film nonetheless. my own private idaho is certainly not typical hollywood fare .
even as hand2mouth seeks to audio - visually transport its audience to a sepia - toned past, walters insists that
time, a fair hustler ,
isn' t purely nostalgic - - not about the
life on the edge
portrayed in
my own private idaho ,
nor about the lost city the film portrays .
river phoenix died of an overdose just two years after making idaho, leaving behind a powerful legacy of performance which included stand by me, the mosquito coast and an oscar - nominated turn in running on empty. but as the drug - taking, narcoleptic street hustler mike waters in my own private idaho, phoenix delivered the gutsiest performance of his career and was rewarded with an independent spirit award for best male lead .
my own private idaho and the living end are very private films. conspicuously addressed to a particular audience and commercially limited by both budget and aesthetics they are not films open to everyone, entries into universal popular culture that could potentially play to random spectators. they are special, personal films that rely on audience identification for much of their impact. though it is impossible to demonstrate a gay - male - heavy demographic break down of the audiences of these two films, and though the star power of phoenix and reeves has no doubt drawn many non - gay male viewers to my own private idaho, the assumption that the two films enjoyed a proportionately large amount of interested gay male viewers on their initial release is, i believe, a reasonable one (10) .
my own private idaho will play in the annex cinema tonight at 7 pm, the penultimate addition to cinema revolution. next week, we will conclude with robert altman’s 1992 black comedy, the player. next, be on the lookout for the release of our annual summer classics film series coming next month. see you at the michigan !
frank church wilderness, idaho the largest wilderness in the lower 48 states and my personal favourite. the middle fork section of the salmon river is a legend among rafters .
before good will hunting and finding forrester; before the ill - advised psycho remake and the experimental gerry; before the movies about harvey milk and kurt cobain, portland - based indie auteur gus van sant made my own private idaho, an avant - garde drama starring river phoenix as a narcoleptic gay hustler and keanu reeves as his friend and co - worker .
my own private idaho is a wistful, delicate hybrid, a movie that does more than it could possibly seem to be doing at once. on the 25th anniversary of its release, it reminds us of the risks hollywood’s periphery used to take, and of the stakes that even a not explicitly political movie often had ascribed to it. van sant grew up in a wild era for cinema, amid an explosion of radical underground movies by the likes of andy warhol, but also on the cusp of new hollywood. his own art is a symptom of both trends, which might explain why a movie like my own private idaho now registers as a strange artifact, off - kilter and unusual but not quite avant - garde. van sant’s approach comes off as natural and lived in, warm rather than academic .
as a retelling of shakespeare’s “henry v, ” now set among street hustlers, “my own private idaho” was by turns nonchalant and touching, structurally loose but coherent, graced with unexpected lyrical images and narrative hairpins. shakespeare is used in the film to convey the transcendence of time, wishing to convey that mike and scott are figures than can exist anywhere and anytime .
phoenix’s best performances stand out because of this intimacy. his work in my own private idaho is all heart – open and unselfconscious, bruised yet tough. he brings us painfully close to mike so we care what happens, where he goes, what will come next. van sant’s film is a testament to the actor’s beauty, vulnerability, and his abundant talent .
on this day in 1991, my own private idaho, an independent film written and directed by gus van sant and starring keanu reeves and river phoenix, premieres at the new york film festival. the movie told the story of two young male hustlers, one of whom (phoenix) is a hapless narcoleptic searching for the mother who abandoned him, and the other of whom (reeves) comes from a wealthy family (the character was inspired, in part, by shakespeare’s prince hal in henry iv). the pair meets in portland, oregon, and later travels to idaho and italy. my own private idaho –the title reportedly came from a song by the rock band the b - 52s–was nominated for six independent spirit awards and won for best screenplay, best male lead (phoenix) and best film music .
the late river phoenix opens gus van sant’s 1991 surrealist drama my own private idaho on an open road in the middle of a stunningly vacant idaho landscape. he is completely alone yet sets the stage by breaking out into soliloquy, as an actor would at the beginning of a stage play. it’s a stylization choice from van sant and a reoccurring theme in the film that explores the lives of street hustlers in the pacific northwest, projected through a shakespearean lens .
after getting some attention with his micro - budget debut, mala noche, van sant wanted to make my own private idaho next. but everyone in hollywood told him a story of gay hustlers was too
niche
to get any traction. so instead he made drugstore cowboy, about a roving band of junkies who rob pharmacies—a premise with more mainstream appeal, apparently .
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the music selected by van zant for this project consists primarily of old american folk tunes. therefore it is not incidental in nature, rather it provides a continual background
mood music
effect. this is totally incongruous to the typical hollywood style, where the story is punctuated by orchestral music. the style of music used in my own private idaho perfectly suits the smooth, unobtrusive editing and chronological narrative structure. my own private idaho has a very slow, leisurely pace. scenes flow at an almost standstill rate, focusing on small details. sometimes this is beneficial, as the dialog seems to be written as though it were a literary masterpiece and not natural speech. the slow pace gives the audience time to contemplate what the characters are speaking of .
any would - be filmmaker can tell you how nerve - racking it is to meet with potential producers and then wait to hear back about whether they' re going to make your movie. van sant said he found out his producers had committed to making my own private idaho when other filmmakers told him ,
congratulations, they' re skipping our film to make yours. ”
my own private idaho, on the other hand, often seems as rootless as poor mike. yet the film has an authentic emotional lyricism. when van sant shows us speeded - up images of clouds rolling past wheat fields, the familiar device transcends cliche, because it’s tied to the way that mike, in his benumbed isolation, experiences his own life — as a running piece of surrealism. the sheer, expressive beauty of those images haunted me for days. a -
- the making of my own private idaho, a documentary that runs about 40 minutes and includes editor curtis clayton, directors of photography john campbell and eric alan edwards and production designer david brisbin talking about the film’s development, production and post - production. good stuff, if you enjoy going beyond the principal creatives to find out what other above - the - line people think about filmmak
my own private idaho ‘s mike (river phoenix) is always destined to end up in the same place. no matter where he goes, he will always end up on this deserted road in idaho where the film begins. he can go anywhere in the world and he’ll end up back where he started, dealing with his thoughts, his fading memories, and his narcolepsy. this is his existence, almost the entirety of it: go somewhere, meet people, have sex, come back here. my own private idaho is an almost aimless film, there is no traditional narrative and many scenes occur with no real sense or purpose. while there is sometimes the idea of a plot or narrative goal, the film isn’t really about that; instead, it’s a film about characters and how they live their lives, their circumstances, and the things that haunt them .
hand2mouth' s
my own private idaho
- inspired production ,
time, a fair hustler ,
examines both that civic story and the story of van sant' s film through a lens of bittersweet nostalgia. the show, which opens friday, july 31, imagines what might have happened to the film' s characters in the nearly 25 years since the events of the movie took place. where, it asks, would these derelicts and drifters fit into the tidier portland of today - - if they' d fit at all? summoned together in a vaguely judicial setting, the personae of
my own private idaho
give testimony on what they' re up to now and how they were connected with mikey and scott' s story. as they reminisce, memory overwhelms reality .
my own private idaho often feels like two films spliced together. indeed, van sant’s main sources for the film were two separate screenplays and a short story, all written by him. during the making of his first feature, mala noche (1985), van sant met a street kid who became the inspiration for mike. there is also the influence of shakespeare’s plays, henry iv (parts 1 and 2) and henry v, or more precisely, of orson welles’ chimes at midnight (1965). welles’ film is focused on the falstaff character from those plays, reimagined in my own private idaho as bob (william richert) – a mentor to the hustlers, and the man from whom rich kid scott (reeves), like prince hal, must break away to accept his destiny .
i found my own private idaho to be a very depressing film. river phoenix' s character never does find his mother; and to make matters worse, he loses scott to a woman. his narcolepsy is uncontrollable, and this makes him an oddity to most people. without scott, it appears that he has no one to turn to at a time when he seems to need help the most .
my own private idaho represents the shotgun marriage of two individual stories that, like mike and scott themselves, don’t really belong together: a road movie about mike’s fruitless search for love and security, and an arch modern retelling of shakespeare, with scott playing a role distinctly abstracted from the gritty day - to - day of his temporary street - hustling brethren. it’s common to hear people talk about my own private idaho as two movies in one—conversations that usually end with a preference for mike’s heartrending tale of unrequited love winning out over keanu reeves doing shakespeare. but the impulse to treat the film like competing anthology hours misses how gracefully van sant incorporates the two stories while making a point of how distant they are from each other. even when they occupy the same space, like the campground the characters improvise in an idaho field, they’re worlds apart, and no amount of yearning on mike’s part can bridge the gap .
the relentless deployment of the road movie genre in both films seems far from incidental. my own private idaho and the living end are overt road movies. the road is a central, fleshed - out character in both films. in idaho, a particular road that mike says he “knows” bookends the film and is returned to in a number of scenes. at one point mike ascribes a face to it, and later ponders whether it has an end, or whether it runs all the way around the world .
idaho to north carolina: wherever you go, i' ll follow ya .
by leftleg
i’m a bisexual man. i realized i was bi earlier this year. i haven’t known who i really am for very long and since i’m young, i still have a lot to learn about myself. the first time i watched my own private idaho was the first time i felt like i wasn’t straight. it kick - started my awakening sexuality, the first step of many in realizing who i truly am. it was the first time i felt sexual desires towards men and for a couple weeks, i thought that i could be gay since i thought like this. then i realized that i was attracted to both women and men and i didn’t have to choose; i could be attracted to both and that would be okay. i came out to my parents, a lot of my friends, and my girlfriend. this film changed everything about my life, nothing was the same for me after watching .
my own private idaho was a landmark film when it was released in the early 1990s and joined other standout movies of the time, including jennie livingston’s documentary on new york’s underground drag shows, paris is burning (1990); todd haynes’ feature poison (1991); derek jarman’s version of christopher marlowe’s edward ii (1991); and gregg araki’s moving road - trip film, the living end (1992) .
in his follow - up to drugstore cowboy (1989), the gifted writer - director gus van sant has bucked expectations in more ways than one. my own private idaho, which stars phoenix and keanu reeves as street hustlers drifting around the northwest — one homeless and mostly gay, the other a bisexual rich boy who turns tricks out of boredom and rebellion — blithely detonates any conventional wisdom about the sorts of roles young hollywood heartthrobs are supposed to be taking on. van sant, though, isn’t just out to shock the mainstream. the viewers who may actually be most taken aback by my own private idaho are those who loved drugstore cowboy and were hoping for a companion piece, a movie that burrows into the desolate street culture of young gay prostitutes with the same outlaw vitality that marked van sant’s comic tale of early - ’70s portland druggies .
it’s been 20 years since river phoenix’s death, and gus van sant’s 1991 road movie my own private idaho is still almost unbearably sad to watch. it isn’t just that phoenix’s charisma and promise are on full display, though idaho ranks alongside running on empty and dogfight among his best roles. it’s the way van sant’s script leaves phoenix in a state of constant vulnerability, like a turtle without its shell. at times, his character’s narcolepsy—in which he suddenly, unpredictably falls into a deep sleep—feels like a narrative contrivance, an ongoing deus ex machina calibrated to pivot the story in whatever direction van sant decides to take it. but it’s really more a metaphor for a lonely, loveless drifter who has no defense against a world that can take his money, his heart, and his life. phoenix and his character aren’t one and the same, but they share an openness and sensitivity that’s keenly felt in my own private idaho. they’re prey for a rapacious world .
my own private idaho was the result of three projects coming together. the first was a modern adaptation of henry iv called
howling at the moon
, which was about street kids in portland, and was told entirely in william shakespeare an verse. the second was called
in a blue funk
, and was about two spanish cousins, living on the streets of las vegas, who decide to go to spain after seeing their last name on a spanish map, and wanting to find out about themselves and their family. the third was actually titled
my own private idaho
, and was about an early version of the mike character as a hustler, who gets picked up by a german auto parts salesman and
kept
at his house. gus van sant had trouble finishing the scripts, so he merged them together into the finished form .
in this essay, i will argue that the films of “new queer cinema” were generally misread. i will read two films from the period, my own private idaho (gus van sant, 1991) and the living end (gregg araki, 1992), not as defiant and coherent queer responses against the visceral and cultural traumas of the aids crisis, but as passive pieces of shrapnel from the epidemic, hiv - positive cinema .
my own private idaho follows the journey of two street hustlers, mike (river phoenix) and scott (keanu reeves). mike has the condition of narcolepsy, something that comes up multiple times in the film, starting in the beginning while standing at a lonely stretch of highway in idaho. later, he gets hired by an older woman, who takes him back to her mansion, where two other hustlers await, including scott, mike’s best friend. right before performing his services for the woman, he experiences another fit of narcolepsy .
“my own private idaho” is a personal film, reflecting some of van sant’s own encounters and experiences. michael parker, a homeless street hustler who smokes pot, served as inspiration for the character of mike waters. scott favor, the tale’s other lead, is a rich boy who goes slumming in the underbelly of portland and seattle. as the product of upper - class family, van sant could relate more easily to scott: “scott is, or could be, me, coming from the blue - blood and royalty of portland. ” the project became even more personal, when van sant cast himself as the ponytailed bellboy in the idaho hotel .
when i had first watched the film my own private idaho (1991), i was unaware of the specific references to shakespeare’s henry iv parts i and ii and henry v. categorized and hyped as a queer - road - western film by the press, the shakespearean element was largely overlooked in favor of the then - shocking reality that beloved teen heartthrob and james - dean - lookalike river phoenix was portraying a gay street hustler type .
after the emotional wringer of filming gus van sant’s my own private idaho, “i just did not feel like barreling through someone’s psychosis, ” river said. he opted for a low - stress money gig: sneakers. as one actor in the film said of the title, “it sounded like a bad teen comedy about a hapless junior - high basketball team that is saved when they recruit a girl point guard who’s a great shot. ”
the eldest son of a fugitive family comes of age and wants to live a life of his own .
- since my own private idaho features homelessness pretty prominently, it only makes sense that leroy (played either by an actor or by albert) and director jonathan caouette would sit down to talk about how their own street experiences have influenced their work, i suppose. both have connections to van sant—he produced caouette’s film tarnation and used leroy / albert’s screenplay for his film elephant — but beyond that, i’m not sure these two deserve more than 50 minutes of special features space for their discussion, especially when you consider that this is another audio - only track .
these sound like caricatures, and in some small way they are. but my own private idaho ’s enduring accomplishment is that it can see all of these men with sympathy and good humor. it allows them to be idiosyncratic and strange, and practically lynchian in their inability to conform to the usual modes of behavior. as such, they’re a spectacle to be acknowledged and loved, without suggesting that they also need to be forgiven. that’s queerness. and my own private idaho is a masterpiece because that queerness is an ethic, not a subject. it’s an ethos, not a convenience. in 2016, when the threats to gay life have become subsumed beneath performances of polite politics and the needs of the middle class, it’s helpful to remember a movie like this, full of people like these, who confront us with who they are without giving us a chance to tell them who to be .
my own private idaho was a troubled production from the beginning, and was actually a merger of three different projects that gus van sant was working on. he was very intent on adapting shakespeare and retaining the quality of the original language in the film, which new line cinema initially rejected, but which the international market seemed to be quite excited for, allowing for much of the dialogue to maintain the original shakespearean feel. review our gay themed films here
getting much less attention not far from the kodak theatre, in beverly hills, was a gallery exhibition called unfinished, where just two days prior to oscar night franco had presided over the rebirth of another fallen star. working with director gus van sant, franco launched a powerful installation of video art, cutting a 100 - minute film full of unseen footage of river phoenix from the dailies of van sant' s modern day classic my own private idaho .
although river phoenix has distinguished himself as an actor ever since his second film, stand by me, nothing he has ever done before prepares you for his performance in private idaho as the motherless, homeless, loveless piece of human driftwood .
really amazing! river phoenix is just fantastic, and van sant really knows his stuff. i love the cameos made by actual hustlers from the streets of portland, or. it really rings true. my own private idaho was the result of three projects coming together. the first was a modern adaptation of henry iv called howling at the moon, which was about street kids in portland and was told entirely in william shakespearean verse. the second was called in a blue funk, and was about two spanish cousins, living on the streets of las vegas, who decide to go to spain after seeing their last name on a spanish map and wanting to find out about themselves and their family. the third was actually titled my own private idaho and was about an early version of the mike character as a hustler who gets picked up by a german auto parts salesman and
kept
at his house. gus van sant had trouble finishing the scripts, so he merged them together into the finished form. it is a must own !
i’m a huge river phoenix fan (rip), and i also enjoy gus van sant’s work when he’s on his game (about 75% of the time), so “my own private idaho” has been one of my favourite films since i was a teenager. mostly, i think that it’s phoenix’s tragic performance that carries this film and allows it to hold up 20 + years after its initial release. he brings such a raw emotion to the character of mikey, and this is definitely one of the films that reminds me of how big of a loss his death was .
in many ways, gus van sant’s my own private idaho (1991) is a film about duality, weaving together conflicting stories about love, family and the inescapable lure of home, even when it is a place you can never go back to again. and that duality also lends itself heavily to the sexual identities of the film’s main characters, mike (river phoenix) and scott (keanu reeves), two street hustlers with opposite views of their own bisexuality, as well as the fulfillment they receive from their life on the street and where it will ultimately take them .
gvs: but i was trying not to bring my own personality into it; i was trying to just get out of the way of the script. i was trying to make something that i thought was in their minds .
the episode “our private idaho” takes viewers to coeur d’alene, idaho. once the epicenter of the aryan nations’ white - supremacy movements, coeur d’alene has nearly doubled in population in the last two decades. nearly 90 percent of its new arrivals are white, and although the percentage of nonwhite residents is gradually increasing, it’s still tiny at 5. 5 percent .
musing on a desolate highway in idaho, mikey waters (river phoenix) convulses and collapses in a narcoleptic fit. the sky passes overhead in time lapse as he dreams of his mother holding him, comforting him before the titles commence. already, in these first few shots, we are introduced to several tropes that by nearly all accounts should come across as tired cliché or, at the very least, wholly unoriginal. but it is a testament to gus van sant that “my own private idaho” rises above hackneyed tropes, repurposing rote cinematic sequences to breathe new life into the normally trite .
i' m fascinated about the class differences between the two men in my own private idaho and think it remains a hot topic, especially when arguments around the marriage equality battle come up. or how people with wealth and privilege urge younger kids to come out, but they can be rejected and end up being homeless or sex workers or doing whatever they have to do to survive. do you think that’s a topic that should be tackled in some way in art or in film ?
if you’re going to make a movie about queer people, you’re likely going to get a divisive response. does it reinforce negative stereotypes? does it provide an accurate cross - section of the diverse lgbt community? how many think pieces will it incite? in this regular column, we’ll look at depictions of queers in cinema and ask, was it good for the gays? today we look at gus van sant’s classic entry into the new queer cinema movement, my own private idaho .
to a portlander watching two decades later, my own private idaho is most striking as a vision of a vanished bohemian city. van sant’s half - condemned landscape of questing rent boys and itinerant prankster - kings is hardly visible beneath today’s downtown, where youthful “creatives” tap ipads at prohibition - esque cocktail bars and homelessness seems anything but romantic. reeves’s and phoenix’s flannel - clad apparitions might wonder where to cruise for johns, but they could sell their wardrobes at vintage stores for hefty sums .
“my own private idaho” won the independent spirit award for best screenplay. the film also gained river phoenix the best actor honor at the venice film festival. quite established for his age, phoenix had already impressed in “stand by me” (1986) and had also received a supporting actor oscar nomination for “running on empty” (1988), sidney lumet’s political melodrama. van sant’s feature also helped keanu reeves, then best - known for his “bill and ted” movies, to get better screen roles .
made for two and a half million dollars (7), my own private idaho made around seven million dollars at the u. s. box office, and won several awards at film festivals around the world, mainly for phoenix’s performance, and van sant’s screenplay. it has remained a relatively well - known film, probably due to the subsequent career successes of van sant and reeves, and the enduring pop - mythology of river phoenix, who died of a drug overdose in 1993 .
gus van zant' s three feature films are not very similar in directional style; however they do have a few similar traits. van zant' s films contain serious stories which appeal to one' s intellect. at first, my own private idaho seems to be a simple and straightforward story, but as previously mentioned it is quite complex and involved. the subject matter that van zant works with is unique and original, as most directors would not be willing to work on such projects as he. during the height of nancy reagan' s
just say no !
campaign, van zant completed drugstore cowboy, a film whose primary characters are drug addicts. my own private idaho contains prostitution and shades of homosexuality, and was made during a time when one of the most deadly diseases in the world can be transmitted by sexual contact. for whatever reason, aids simply does not exist in this film, and the omission is so obvious that it must have been intentional .
van sant includes large chunks of shakespeare’s henry plays, as filtered through orson wells’ chimes at midnight, in my own private idaho. it certainly breaks the narrative flow to hear street hustlers speaking in a modernized version of blank verse, dropping in some direct quotes (“i have heard the chimes at midnight”) and re - enacting scenes straight out of the play / film. the fact that some of the young actors can’t quite handle their lines only adds to the disruptive quality of these sequences .
william richert was a writer and director who' d made a night in the life of jimmy reardon, in which phoenix played the title character. for some reason, phoenix became fixated on the idea of richert playing bob pigeon in my own private idaho, even though richert was not an actor. richert was offended by the suggestion, telling phoenix ,
it' s a big fat pederast. is this what you think of me? is this what you think i should be playing ?
rewatching the film means even more to me as a bi man because of how it portrays sexuality, something that passed me by the first time. i started to notice so much more and i cried a lot. that’s okay though because this film means more to me than i can ever fully describe. we need more films with the sexual representation of my own private idaho so that other queer kids like me can figure out who they really are. it is truly a spectacular piece of work .
the film was part of a new wave of gay cinema, and it added to phoenix' s burgeoning reputation as a sensitive, brooding actor, made all the more tragic by his sudden death two years later. it changed van sant' s life, too, putting him on the path that would lead to high - profile hits like good will hunting. a quarter - century later, let' s look back at the making of my own private idaho and see what dreamy treasures await us .
according to the u. s. census (2010), the population of coeur d’alene is just over 44, 000, making it the seventh - largest city in idaho. boise city is idaho’s largest city with over 200, 000 residents .
while van sant’s breakthrough feature, drugstore cowboy (released in 1989), did not feature any gay themes, his debut feature, mala noche (released in 1988), was revolutionary in that it depicted gay characters and relationships in an apolitical way. my own private idaho continued that trend (as well as drugstore cowboy ‘s depiction of street culture, trading drug addicts for male hustlers) and featured river phoenix as a gay male prostitute in portland who falls for his co - worker of sorts, keanu reeves .
here’s one thing i can say for sure after rewatching gus van sant’s my own private idaho, 16 years after it first hit the cinemas: it’s nothing like a conventional hollywood film. i saw it when it first came out, in 1991, but somehow over the years my memory revised it to be an edgy story about two hustlers in the pacific northwest, with a wickedly funny sequence in which porn magazines come to life. that’s not an entirely wrong description, so much as it is incomplete: van sant does tell an edgy story about hustlers, and the porn magazine scene is pretty much as i remembered it, but what my memory erased about this film is how essentially disruptive it is, presenting anything but a conventional narrative in the usual hollywood sense .
i' ve been tasting roads all my life. this road will never end. it probably goes all around the world .
when mike is in idaho he has a clear view of mt. hood. not only is the mountain too far away to see (over 200 miles), there is another mountain range lying between idaho and mt. hood, blocking the view .
the music (by bill stafford) is also a jarring mix, incorporating cowboy ballads like eddy arnold’s “the cattle call” and bill stafford’s “home on the range”, and crooner rudy vallee’s “deep night”, alongside more contemporary songs like elton john’s “blue eyes” and madonna’s “cherish”. even the title cards are unconventional in my own private idaho: each is in a different, bright, solid color, behind plain white text, producing as jarring an jarring effect as if an avant - garde novel suddenly morphed into a children’s picture book.
my own private idaho is a 1991 american independent adventure drama film written and directed by gus van sant , loosely based on shakespeare 's henry iv , part 1 , henry iv , part 2 , and henry v , and starring river phoenix and keanu reeves . the story follows two friends , mike and scott , as they embark on a journey of personal discovery that takes them to mike 's hometown in idaho and then to italy in search of mike 's mother . van sant originally wrote the screenplay in the 1970s , but discarded it after reading john rechy 's 1963 novel city of night and concluding that rechy 's treatment of the subject of street hustlers was better than his own . over the years , van sant rewrote the script , which comprised two stories : that of mike and the search for his mother , and scott 's story as a modern update of the henry iv plays . van sant had difficulty getting hollywood financing , and at one point considered making the film on a minuscule budget with a cast of actual street kids . after van sant sent copies of his script to reeves and then reeves showed it to phoenix , both agreed to star in the film on each other 's behalf . my own private idaho had its premiere at the 48th venice international film festival , and received largely positive reviews from critics including roger ebert and those of the new york times and entertainment weekly . the film was a moderate financial success , grossing over $ 6.4 million in north america , which was above its estimated budget of $ 2.5 million . phoenix received several awards for his performance in the film , including the volpi cup for best actor at the 1991 venice film festival , best male lead from the independent spirit awards , and best actor from the national society of film critics . 
my own private idaho is a 1991 american independent adventure drama film written and directed by gus van sant, loosely based on shakespeare's henry iv, part 1, henry iv, part 2, and henry v, and starring river phoenix and keanu reeves. the story follows two friends, mike and scott, as they embark on a journey of personal discovery that takes them to mike's hometown in idaho and then to italy in search of mike's mother. van sant originally wrote the screenplay in the 1970s, but discarded it after reading john rechy's 1963 novel city of night and concluding that rechy's treatment of the subject of street hustlers was better than his own. over the years, van sant rewrote the script, which comprised two stories: that of mike and the search for his mother, and scott's story as a modern update of the henry iv plays. van sant had difficulty getting hollywood financing, and at one point considered making the film on a minuscule budget with a cast of actual street kids. after van sant sent copies of his script to reeves and then reeves showed it to phoenix, both agreed to star in the film on each other's behalf. my own private idaho had its premiere at the 48th venice international film festival, and received largely positive reviews from critics including roger ebert and those of the new york times and entertainment weekly. the film was a moderate financial success, grossing over $ 6.4 million in north america, which was above its estimated budget of $ 2.5 million. phoenix received several awards for his performance in the film, including the volpi cup for best actor at the 1991 venice film festival, best male lead from the independent spirit awards, and best actor from the national society of film critics.
my own private idaho is a 1991 american independent adventure drama film written and directed by gus van sant, loosely based on shakespeare's henry iv, part 1, henry iv, part 2, and henry v, and starring river phoenix and keanu reeves. the story follows two friends, mike and scott, as they embark on a journey of personal discovery that takes them to mike's hometown in idaho and then to italy in search of mike's mother. van sant originally wrote the screenplay in the 1970s, but discarded it after reading john rechy's 1963 novel city of night and concluding that rechy's treatment of the subject of street hustlers was better than his own. over the years, van sant rewrote the script, which comprised two stories: that of mike and the search for his mother, and scott's story as a modern update of the henry iv plays. van sant had difficulty getting hollywood financing, and at one point considered making the film on a minuscule budget with a cast of actual street kids. after van sant sent copies of his script to reeves and then reeves showed it to phoenix, both agreed to star in the film on each other's behalf. my own private idaho had its premiere at the 48th venice international film festival, and received largely positive reviews from critics including roger ebert and those of the new york times and entertainment weekly. the film was a moderate financial success, grossing over $ 6.4 million in north america, which was above its estimated budget of $ 2.5 million. phoenix received several awards for his performance in the film, including the volpi cup for best actor at the 1991 venice film festival, best male lead from the independent spirit awards, and best actor from the national society of film critics.