Was It Good For The Gays: ‘My Own Private Idaho’ | Decir

It’s night the sert. Mike (River Phoenix), a teenage htler given to bouts of narlepsy, and Stt (Keanu Reev), a slummg preppy prce, are huddled over a mpfire. “I jt want to kiss you, man,” says Mike softly. The words and the barely dible sound of his voice, ught between hope and spair, speak to anyone ever ripped apart by unrequed love. For all s flannel and Gore-Tex, the scene is a startlgly naked exprsn of lovelorn longg. Cred both G Van Sant, the director, and Phoenix, his perfect actor, wh the heartbreak that floods My Own Private Idaho.Released 1991, Idaho was Van Sant’s third feature film and remas his most anarchic and, many ways, amb. It’s certaly the film which his art-school sensibily and the postmornist athetics that domated the art world durg the seventi and eighti are most play. Van Sant attend the Rho Island School of Dign om 1971 to 1975 (among his schoolmat were David Byrne and other members of the Talkg Heads), shiftg his foc om patg to film partway through his time there. The explosn of the sixti unrground film scene was over, but Andy Warhol was still an fluence, as were Kenh Anger and other avant-gar film diarists who toted their 16 mm and Super 8 meras everywhere. After a brief stab at workg the Hollywood film dtry and a stt advertisg New York, Van Sant ma his first released feature, Mala Noche, 1985, wh roughly $20,000 of his own money. A grty, lyril black-and-whe stunner about a gay skid-row store clerk’s obssn wh a Mexin migrant worker, ught the eye of some discerng Hollywood producers and led to his makg his send, slightly more nventnal feature, 1989’s Dgstore Cowboy, starrg Matt Dillon as the lear of a quartet of junki who rob pharmaci to feed their habs. The toughns of both films, the director’s obv empathy for alienated adolcents, and his talent for gettg shockgly genue perfor­manc om his actors helped him land the teenage idols Phoenix and Reev for My Own Private Idaho. What is strikg about Idaho today, light of Van Sant’s later films, is s extraordary hybridy. Where Psycho (1998), Gerry (2002), and Elephant (2003) are each stctured by a sgle darg formal vice—the shot-by-shot mimicry of Hchck’s origal Psycho; the extend trackg shots Gerry and Elephant—Idaho is a llage that clus even a kchen sk and some Dutch Boy cleanser for scbbg down. Van Sant mix and match scen of documentary-style realism wh mpy mil set piec, improvised dialogue wh bowdlerized Shakpeare, dream sequenc shot gray Super 8 wh 35 mm vistas of the Pacific Northwt, and, on the soundtrack, Rudy Vallee wh the Pogu. The ma source materials for Idaho’s screenplay were two pletely separate scripts and a short story, all wrten by Van Sant. One of the scripts was a morn-day adaptatn of Shakpeare’s Henry Sant ti the var elements together by filterg the entire narrative through Mike’s nscns. The irony is that the narleptic Mike is among the most unnsc characters to ever h the screen. Abandoned by his mother early life, he was raised by his btish brother/father (wh echo of Chatown, although, sce Mike’s origs are below the poverty le, his ctuo parentage is no Greek tragedy, jt an extra oedipal wrkle a disenanchised existence). Mike’s narlepsy is his fense agast his childhood agony of abandonment. Anythg that remds him of his lost mother triggers a severe psychosomatic reactn. He shak so vlently he looks like he’s gog to explo, and then keels over a stupor. Idaho’s agmented edg style—s heterogeneo visual associatns and nse layerg of words, sounds, and mic—and s spl-send shifts between the burlqued and the heartfelt evoke Mike’s nfn of si and outsi, past and prent, dreams and wakg film opens on the road, for is, above all, a road movie. It is the road onto which both Mike’s terr journey om agile adolcence to prer adulthood and his sultory attempts to fd his missg mother are mapped. We look down a long stretch of two-lane highway, bisectg the sert scbland, curvg upward as disappears to the distant mounta haze. Like a shot, Mike skids to view. His cheek, wh s ragged blond siburn and fat tracg of ae, is disorientgly close. He looks down the road and cis he has been here before. “There’s not another road anywhere that looks like this road . . . It’s one kd of place . . . Like a fucked-up face,” he says, talkg not entirely to himself but not que to eher. Jt se we’re not yet touch wh Mike’s way of seeg, Van Sant helpfully iris down around the relevant featur: the ey are two bh and the se the shadow of a passg cloud. Sudnly, Mike llaps the middle of the road. He dreams a fad home movie of himself as a child, safe the arms of his mother, a blowsy strawberry blon wh a Mona Lisa se seated on the porch of a wood-ame hoe. Clouds sh across the sky, salmon leap slow motn upriver toward their spawng grounds, and Mike wak a Seattle hotel room, beg sucked off by a baldg, beer-bellied john. Mike reach asm and a woon barn crashg out of the sky, splterg onto the highway. Havg shown somethg of Mike’s dreamy mdspe and the way he mak a livg, Van Sant then troduc to his social set, and particular to the object of his sire, Stt Favor. The son of the mayor, Stt is sowg his wild oats by hangg out wh this group of homels rent boys and turng the ocsnal trick himself. Stt is the film’s Prce Hal. Its Falstaff is Bob Pigeon (William Richert), a fat, beer-­guzzlg chicken hawk who’s got a thg for the narcissistic scn. Stt has also fallen to the hab of takg re of the vulnerable Mike. It’s on a trip to fd Mike’s mother that the two iends spend the night, like so many wboy duos have done, huddled over the mpfire. And Mike, more darg and sperate than those wboys before him, risks, or perhaps urts, a repetn of his primal loss by nfsg his love to Stt. When I terviewed Van Sant at the time of the film’s release, he said that he’d origally thought the scene would be much more sual. “The character of Mike was origally kd of asexual. Sex was somethg that he trad , so he had no real sexual inty. But bee he’s bored and they’re the sert, he mak a pass at his iend. And jt sort of go by, but his iend also notic that he needs somethg, he needs to be close, so he says, ‘We n be iends,’ and he hugs him. That was all was gog to be. But River mak more like he’s attracted to his iend, that he’s really love wh him. He ma the whole character that way.” Mike’s raw need is too much for the self-protective Stt to pe wh. After a terrifyg enunter wh Mike’s alholic brother/father and an acrobatic bedroom threome wh Hans (Udo Kier)—the ubiquo john who seems to have pursued them across several stat—they wd up Rome, where Stt, a homophobic panic, falls love, not wh a French prcs but wh a myster Italian bety. Idaho juxtapos the societal extrem of hav and have-nots. For the first time, Van Sant clus a leadg character whose upper-middle-class origs rrpond wh his own. But unlike Van Sant, who for most of his reer has stayed te to his own Amerinized versn of the “art film,” Stt betrays not only his iends but his sexualy for money and power. The film climax wh a double funeral. Stt’s two fathers—Mayor Favor and Bob Pigeon—have died one right after the other and are beg buried the same graveyard. The schizoid stcture of the scene is, for once, not a projectn of Mike’s agmented psyche but rather a mi-allegory of the enomic polarizatn of Ameri that was already grotquely evint durg the Reagan–Bh I era and is even more pronounced today. Ey ont, sp stiffened, the properly heterosexual Favor clan, now led by Stt and his wife, is sperately tryg to ignore the rnivalque spectacle takg place a few hundred meters away. Mike and his fellow outsts are furly dancg on Bob’s grave. One close-up is enough to suggt that Mike’s first eptn of anger is also his first taste of liberatn.Thread wh home-movie imag (no filmmaker has ever been better than Van Sant at fg and tegratg them), My Own Private Idaho is a crazy quilt of fay romanc. Everybody is eher lookg for or pg om their fai, or anizg new fai, or porg over photographs of other people’s fai. In the mpfire scene, Mike prefac his nfsn of love by agonizg, “If I had a normal fay and a good upbrgg, then I would have been a well-adjted person . . . Didn’t have a dog, or a normal dad, anyway.” “What’s a normal dad?” asks Stt, the sophistite, wh a shg. Somethg the way he says “normal” rells the moment Stanley Kubrick’s Lola—another absurdist road movie about impossible love—when Quilty (Peter Sellers), masqueradg as a lonely policeman, terroriz Humbert (Jam Mason), who has been passg off the unrage Lo as his dghter. “I wish I had a normal, nice, ltle, normal dghter like that,” leers regrsive, Mike’s sire is for the safety of the mother’s body. “Locked the arms of love,” the last le of “Deep Night,” the Rudy Vallee rerdg heard several tim durg the film, is the last le on Idaho’s soundtrack, played over the closg creds. To what, then, do the film’s tle refer? “My Own Private Idaho” is an imagary place where one is locked the arms of love—that is, both protected and ee. It is the promise of Ameri, chronilly out of jot wh realy, pecially for s most vulnerable habants. At the end of the film, Mike is once aga alone, lyg unnsc on the highway. The occupants of the first r that stops steal his sho and leave. A send r pulls up, and the driver gets out, picks him up, poss him the backseat, and driv off. It’s the last we see of Mike. Throughout the scene, we hear the stras of “Ameri the Betiful,” the anthem uched as a prayer for the habants of this natural paradise of “purple mountas” and “ued pla” to treat one another as brothers. Is “brotherhood” that Mike fds, or some darker fate? Given the temper of the tim, the glimmer of hope Van Sant’s open endg has all but fad away.