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New York, NY, USA - Veteran director Gus Van Sant doesn't like to do anything predictably. A publicist warned that he speaks in long extended passages. But, in this interview, Van Sant did the opposite, answering in brief short passages that could be classed as terse to a fault. In his latest film "Last Days," he approaches the subject matter -- a rock star's ultimate demise -- with similar terseness of dialogue and shots. The 53 year-old Kentucky native rarely follows form from one film to the other -- witness the breadth of his style ranging from films such as "My Own Private Idaho" to "Finding Forrester" to "Elephant." Now, as he did with the Columbine massacre in "Elephant," Van Sant uses actual history -- the suicide of Nirvana lead singer Kurt Cobain -- to examine the psychological circumstances behind such an act in "Last Days." And through his offbeat, improvised and oblique filmmaking, how rock stardom impacts on a person and a band.
G21: When did you decide to do "Last Days?"
GVS: I thought of doing it in 1994. I was interested, at the very start, of doing something that was more of a biographical thing, about Kurt Cobain himself and not Blake [the fictional version]. I stopped working with that idea really fast, because it started to seem like "The Doors." Then, at one point, I wanted to do the same thing except with [The New York] Dolls, because I was into The Dolls at that moment. It was 1992 I think. I thought we could do a real bio pic, but it wouldn't look corny like "The Doors," because it would be The Dolls. You would be distanced enough that it would be interesting. Then I wrote about two pages and I stopped.
G21: That's similar to what director Todd Haynes did with "Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story"
GVS: I actually did ask Todd if he would mind if I used The Dolls, and he said that lots of people used The Dolls before him and he wasn't the original one to use The Dolls. But the main one I was referencing was "Superstar." Then I thought I should do something, not about Kurt, but about this other character. It would be interesting to do something about a time that didn't exist and an unknown performer's last couple of days as an idea.
G21: How did you write the screenplay?
GVS: It was based on really small things. After thinking about it, what happened really wasn't that interesting. He was missing and was found dead, but what had happened to him those three days were pretty simple. He did simple things around his house. The first person I tried to cast was Holger Thaarup, who I saw in a short film festival. He was an actor for [director] Thomas Vinterberg and [the film] was called "The Boy Who Walked Backwards." I visited with him and met Vinterberg. It was 1995 and they were just developing dogme95 [the unique anti-Hollywood/pro-digital style of filmmaking]. Then a couple of years later I kind of dropped the idea and didn't get around to doing it. And I met Mike Pitt [who plays Blake in a surprisingly Marlon Brando-like way], and was [he] much younger when I first met him. He was 17 and looked a lot like Holger, and he's part Danish. I said I wanted to do this story about this rock star walking around his house. Mike was on board and then six years went by.
G21: Did writing the severe depression of Blake's character affect you at all while you were forming the script?
GVS: I think it does work on you as your working on it in different ways. You do sort of feel the film, but it wasn't too terrible. I thought of him as someone who may have been frustrated and angry, but he was trying to carve out some space for himself. I don't think it was anything he hadn't dealt with before, but he was maybe making assumptions. At one second in his life he decided to pull the trigger, but once he did that he couldn't get back.
G21: How did you structure the story?
GVS: Originally, there were three different stories, sort of like "Elephant." One of the stories was the detective, another story was Asia's [Argento] character, and the third story was Blake's character. Even in the writing stages, the other characters weren't holding up, so I abbreviated those guys. We shot more footage than what was in the film, and even further abbreviated them. We tended to want to be more with the central character in Blake. In "Elephant." the kids had equal footing. In this film, it is more about this [one] guy, so it started to morph into something it wasn't originally designed to [be].
G21: Someone might say this movie proceeds in a slow, langorous pace.
GVS: Well, slow enough; so that certain things happen that don't necessarily happen when things are faster. It's just a way to get around a style [in which] we're sort of used to looking at things really quickly. Once we see it, we know it and off to the next thing, whether it's a steaming cup of coffee that somebody has just poured in a restaurant, or the lead character or whatever. You don't ever really get a chance to look at what that thing is. It's sort of like shorthand. In order to construct a story, you're not really pondering what you're looking at. [This film is] just a way to do it in a little bit different way, so you're allowed to think other things, [other] than just copy and cut.
G21: How did you cast the minor characters of "Last Days," such as the Yellow Pages ad salesman and the Mormon twins?
GVS: Well the yellow pages guy was a real one, and the two Mormon guys were from Aberdeen, Washington. They looked like Mormons, and we wanted them to be giving out sorts of religious paraphernalia. We didn't know that they would be Mormons right off the bat, but as we rehearsed, we thought that would be good.
G21: Do you feel "Last Days" dispels the notion of the rock star cliché?
GVS: I think its sort of supports it. It's saying that the cliché is real. The cliché being, if you give someone what they want, they'll go off the deep end. I guess that's part of cliché, money too. A cliché could also be Arnold Schwarzenegger running for public office. That's a positive cliché.
G21: Have the surviving Nirvana members or Courtney Love [Cobain's notorious widow] responded to "Last Days?"
GVS: They haven't seen it, but I offered it to Krist Novoselic [former Nirvana bassist] and Courtney, because I know them. I talked to her about it and sort of explained it to them. For me, I want them to see it because I like the film. I understand that this is a huge, traumatic thing in their life, and they had their own relationship to Kurt. They really don't need to see a movie by somebody else that's outside of that. You also don't want to dwell on it because it's such a tragedy.
G21: Do you usually have a lot of extra material from your films?
G21: We don't really shoot a lot of other material. I know that's what they like to do [for the DVDs- Criterion Collection just released "My Own Private Idaho]. "Elephant" didn't really have much. There was a little film that was made along side of it, but Criterion really likes to produce stuff. [In "Last Days"], it's sort of other people doing similar things to what Mike [Blake] is doing. Asia takes a bath; Nicole [Vicious] wakes up. The Mormon boys go on for quite a long time. There's like a 10-minute thing with them.
G21: You've made music videos in the past. Do you plan on directing them again?
GVS: I've tried to avoid music videos. I started to feel I didn't have the freedom to do what I wanted to do. You were trying to sell a product. I was under the impression that they were easier to make than commercials, but commercials might, in some ways, be easier. [In music videos], the band's the product and the product talks and thinks. If you're selling something like Ivory Soap, at least the product itself doesn't talk to you. The people around it do, but with the band it's really difficult.
G21: So you don't iintend to direct commercials again?
GVS: No, I haven't really done those either. I've been offered them, but I avoid them. It's easier to work on stuff I really want to get done.
G21: Why do you make so many films about young people?
GVS: I've started to be asked that. I don't really know how to answer that, except the movies that weren't about young people didn't get financed, and the ones that were did. It's a pretty graceful time in [a] person's life (under 20), so I'm attracted to that side of it. It's also an unknown time, everyone's most volatile time, and most important time of growing. If we were asked what our favorite music was, it would be something we were listening to at 18. There's something about that time that we just don't grow out of.
G21: Do your films relate to your own past experiences?
GVS: In ["Elephant"], for instance, I could very much relate to my past high school experiences. I went to a pretty big high school. It wasn't so much Columbine itself; it was just the whole idea of the things that made up Columbine, which I think everyone experienced (even if you went to a small high school). There were earmarks of things with that particular story. In this one ["Last Days"] as well, I think it's about someone who is trying to get away from his own life or responsibility. Things are overtaking him in his last days, and I think I can relate to that and others can as well. Maybe it's a long and overdrawn version of going home in a bad mood, but its sort of an epic version of that. You sort of wake up the next morning and everything's okay, but when you first get home it's not okay at all. It's that sort of thing that's going on in "Gerry." I very much related to that, just because I've been lost a couple of times in the desert.
G21: What's next?
GVS: I'm adapting "The Time Traveler's Wife" [a book written by Audrey Niffenegger]. It's a good book.
G21: What drew you to it?
GVS: Well I've just started so I don't know what I can say, except that I'm attempting it. It's just an interesting point of view of a classic love story. The time travel is interesting as well, [compared to] the literal time I've used in my films.
G21: Does commercial success mean much to you right now?
G VS: I'm not sure if it does now or has before. I don't think I've ever calculated anything. For me, calculations end up making you do something you don't want to do in the first place. And you could lose anyway.
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