{"id":332724,"date":"2025-10-26T01:09:13","date_gmt":"2025-10-26T01:09:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/332724\/"},"modified":"2025-10-26T01:09:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-26T01:09:13","slug":"gus-van-sant-talks-dead-mans-wire-and-river-phoenix-memories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/332724\/","title":{"rendered":"Gus Van Sant Talks ‘Dead Man’s Wire’ and River Phoenix Memories"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tGus Van Sant<\/a> is still moving. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think a lot of the films I\u2019ve made, even unintentionally, have been based on real things,\u201d Van Sant says with his familiar mix of understatement and curiosity. \u201cThat\u2019s a genre, I guess. I\u2019ve always been drawn to what makes people do what they do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn \u201cDead Man\u2019s Wire,\u201d Van Sant\u2019s latest film, which premiered at AFI Film Festival on Saturday, that fascination becomes electrified \u2014 literally. The historical true-crime drama, based on the real-life 1977 Tony Kiritsis hostage case, unfolds like a pressure cooker between desperation and spectacle.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen I read the script,\u201d he recalls, \u201cthere were links embedded in it \u2014 you could click them and hear the real 911 calls. Tony talked so fast, like Scorsese on a cocaine bender, cracking jokes and losing his temper. I thought, \u2018This is an amazing character.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tVan Sant\u2019s words carry a quiet thrill, the sound of an auteur who has spent a career balancing empathy and danger. From \u201cDrugstore Cowboy\u201d and \u201cMy Own Private Idaho\u201d to the Oscar-nominated \u201cGood Will Hunting\u201d and \u201cMilk,\u201d he\u2019s never chased a single genre; only human behavior.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe story had this weird barnstormer energy,\u201d he shares. \u201cWe were meeting in the Soho House, and the producer said, \u2018We have to start shooting in Louisville in two months.\u2019 That was the most appealing thing \u2014 just hitting the road like Huckleberry Finn.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tNow 73, Van Sant is nostalgic when talking about creative chaos. \u201cThe best thing about film is still the accident,\u201d he says. \u201cRiver Phoenix used to love when something unexpected happened on set. He\u2019d come alive inside those moments \u2014 he could feel his character reacting in real time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat memory lingers, as does the one of the fog machines at the 1998 Oscars that made him physically ill while \u201cGood Will Hunting\u201d (1997) lost most of its awards to \u201cTitanic.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019m allergic to stage fog now,\u201d he says with a chuckle. \u201cSo I never use it on set.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s been seven years since his last theatrical film (\u201cDon\u2019t Worry, He Won\u2019t Get Far on Foot\u201d), but Van Sant is back with a story that echoes his fascination with real American tragedy and absurdity \u2014 a director drawn, as ever, to the ragged edge between empathy and obsession.<\/p>\n

\n\tWith \u201cDead Man\u2019s Wire,\u201d Van Sant delivers his most arresting and charged work since \u201cMilk.\u201d The film hums with the restless energy that defined his early 1970s-like masterpieces while showcasing a sharpened maturity in tone and control. Skarsg\u00e5rd gives a career-best performance, grounding Tony Kiritsis\u2019 volatility with flashes of humor and heartbreak, while Dacre Montgomery<\/a> and Colman Domingo deliver richly textured performances. Dark horses for the Oscars? Of course. But that doesn\u2019t mean it shouldn\u2019t be considered. In particular, Van Sant\u2019s direction is at once intimate and explosive, framing the chaos with empathy, allowing the audience to feel the pulse of desperation behind every decision. The film\u2019s screenplay, adapted from real events by first-time screenwriter Austin Kolodney, is infused with humanism and dark wit, standing as one of the year\u2019s finest.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a wide-ranging interview with Variety, Van Sant talks about his past, present and future in the industry he\u2019s spent over four decades mastering.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u2018Dead Man\u2019s Wire\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tStefania Rosini SMPSP<\/p>\n

\t\tLooking at your filmography, this fits with your interest in real-life characters and crimes.<\/strong>\t<\/p>\n

\n\tYeah, I think so. A lot of my films, even the fictional ones, are based on something from the real world \u2014 a news story or an article. \u201cDrugstore Cowboy,\u201d \u201cElephant,\u201d and \u201cLast Days\u201d all came from that impulse. It\u2019s not \u201ctrue crime\u201d like television, but it\u2019s about what makes someone act a certain way \u2014 that question inside the crime.<\/p>\n

\t\tHow did you settle on Bill Skarsg\u00e5rd<\/a> for Tony and Dacre Montgomery for Richard?<\/strong>\t<\/p>\n

\n\tCasting was probably as important as the script. I was at a spa one weekend, listening to ambient music, trying to decide if I should jump into this project immediately \u2014 we had to start shooting in November. I\u2019d always wanted to work with Bill. I\u2019d offered him roles before that didn\u2019t happen. He has this fascinating career \u2014 horror films, yes, but he\u2019s like Lon Chaney, the man of a thousand faces. He\u2019s also 10 years younger than the real Tony, which made it interesting.<\/p>\n

\n\tDacre I knew because of his audition tape for \u201cStranger Things.\u201d It\u2019s one of those legendary tapes actors pass around \u2014 perfect lighting, perfect eyelines. I didn\u2019t even watch the show at first, just his scenes. He felt new, unpredictable, and that was what the movie needed.<\/p>\n

\t\tAnd Colman Domingo as the radio DJ \u2014 it\u2019s such an inspired choice.<\/strong>\t<\/p>\n

\n\tWe actually modeled that character after the DJ in \u201cThe Warriors.\u201d That was in the script. We had a few actors pass before Colman came aboard. He was working with our producer, Cassian Elwes, on another project and said, \u201cI\u2019d love to work with Gus.\u201d He was perfect \u2014 his presence grounds the film.<\/p>\n

\t\tFans always ask if you\u2019d ever revisit \u201cDrugstore Cowboy.\u201d<\/strong>\t<\/p>\n

\n\tActually, there are screenplays that the same writer wrote \u2014 James Fogle. There were four different ones, and one of them is called \u201cSatan\u2019s Sandbox,\u201d that I think James Franco wanted to do, but that was the one I kind of preferred. It\u2019s set in San Quentin prison. And actually, when we met him and made the movie, he was in Walla Walla State Penitentiary in Washington State, and so he had some stories when they were out of prison, like \u201cDrugstore Cowboy,\u201d when they were running around, selling drugs and stealing drugs. So there are other ones, yeah, there are other ones that exist.<\/p>\n

\t\tRiver Phoenix was so prolific in your cinema journey. He definitely is one of the core reasons I, myself, fell in love with movies. How often does he cross your mind?<\/strong>\t<\/p>\n

\n\tI mean, I think about him all the time \u2014 there\u2019s a picture on the wall of him. He was sort of like, you know, a very great collaborator. And we only did that one piece, and we were planning on \u2014 he was planning on being in what turned out to be \u201cMilk.\u201d But that didn\u2019t happen till later, before he died, so there was a project that we were talking about. But, yeah, he was very spontaneous. He loved to improvise. That was his favorite thing. And I don\u2019t think he got to, necessarily, depending on who he was working with, go off the page and improvise. It probably wasn\u2019t the type of films that he was doing \u2014 he was doing traditional pieces that were pretty much, like, securely in Hollywood. You know, he was doing traditional pieces, that\u2019s what he was offered.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd in that environment, you\u2019re not making a film like \u2014 you know, like you\u2019re mentioning Scorsese \u2014 where they improvise whole scenes. And when we did, he found out that I liked it, you know, that I was okay if he just did something for like five minutes that wasn\u2019t even in the screenplay, because then he could actually research stuff, and he could feel very open about what he was playing. So that was kind of magical, that he liked it, and he had not been able to do it. So he was very excited about it, because he wasn\u2019t normally doing it.<\/p>\n

\n\tI don\u2019t know, there\u2019s lots of things. His upbringing was such that he didn\u2019t really have a lot of film history connected to his memory banks. He was homeschooled, so he didn\u2019t have a lot of teaching that he knew about concerning war. His homeschooling consisted of, like, no war. So characters like General MacArthur weren\u2019t in his world \u2014 he didn\u2019t know who they were. And then conversely, he didn\u2019t know what humor was. He didn\u2019t know what, like, a quote-unquote joke was, until he was nine, he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe found that out because he went to a traditional school \u2014 a public school \u2014 and kids were telling jokes. It was an era when kids were all about jokes. He didn\u2019t know what they were; they were just like a foreign thing to him. He also didn\u2019t have a smile, which people don\u2019t necessarily know. He told me that \u2014 he said, \u2018Well, I don\u2019t have a smile.\u2019 And I said, \u2018You\u2019re kidding.\u2019 And then he smiled and showed me his smile, and I said, \u2018Oh yeah, I don\u2019t see that smile in your films.\u2019<\/p>\n

\n\tSo he had this interesting thing \u2014 for a movie star, an interesting absence of that kind of giant smile. But meanwhile, he was very funny, and his most favorite thing was just to laugh and tell stories.<\/p>\n

\t\tYou\u2019ve been nominated twice for an Oscar. What do you remember about those mornings?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tMostly that I didn\u2019t realize when the announcements were happening. I woke up to a bunch of phone calls. It\u2019s the big Hollywood prize \u2014 it feels great. At the ceremony for \u201cGood Will Hunting,\u201d they unveiled this huge Titanic ship set, and fog rolled out everywhere. I got so sick sitting there, I swore I\u2019d never use fog on my sets again.<\/p>\n

\t\tThere\u2019s a lot of talk about the \u201cdeath\u201d of cinema. Do you believe that?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tNot at all. Movies always follow technology \u2014 from nickelodeons to iPhones. What matters is the gathering, that communal experience. The art form isn\u2019t dying; it\u2019s just shifting. The best films of the 1920s were miracles because nobody knew what cinema was yet. We\u2019re in another one of those periods of discovery.<\/p>\n

\t\tCan we expect another film soon? Or do we have to wait another seven years?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tI hope so. I did the Gucci project and six hours of \u201cFeud,\u201d so I haven\u2019t been idle. There are hundreds of ideas \u2014 digital files full of them. Some might take decades, like \u201cMilk\u201d did. But they\u2019re there, waiting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gus Van Sant is still moving. \u201cI think a lot of the films I\u2019ve made, even unintentionally, have…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":332725,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5131],"tags":[5229,5643,1587,165007,165008,165009,1589,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-332724","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-phoenix","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-arizona","10":"tag-az","11":"tag-bill-skarsgu00e5rd","12":"tag-dacre-montgomery","13":"tag-gus-van-sant","14":"tag-phoenix","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115437801929506286","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332724\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/332725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}