My Own Private Idaho (1991)
Directed by Gus Van Sant
In this loose adaptation of Shakespeare's "Henry IV," Mike Waters is a hustler afflicted with narcolepsy. Scott Favor is the rebellious son of a mayor. Together, the two travel from Portland, Oregon to Idaho and finally to the coast of Italy in a quest to find Mike's estranged mother. Along the way they turn tricks for money and drugs, eventually attracting the attention of a wealthy benefactor and sexual deviant.
6 connections found
View:
6 films that influenced My Own Private Idaho
What critics say influenced My Own Private Idaho
Scott, who is the son of Portland’s mayor, is modelled on Shakespeare’s Prince Hal; the Falstaff character here is a scruffy gay cokehead called Bob (William Richert), and his scenes with Scott are stylized variations of incidents from both parts of “Henry IV” (hence also variations on Orson Welles’ “Chimes at Midnight”).
Even the parts that show some strain—like the film's extended hommage to Orson Welles's Chimes at Midnight—are exciting for their sheer audacity.
Should this particular scenario sound oddly familiar, it's because it's based closely on the characters of King Henry IV, his son Prince Hal, and the shameless Sir John Falstaff as delineated not only in several plays by Shakespeare but also in Orson Welles' memorable "Chimes at Midnight."
In a deliberate respinning of Orson Welles's Shakespearean "Chimes at Midnight," they converse in bardspeak.
In his ratty red jacket, Phoenix’s Mike is a cousin to James Dean’s sensitive boy in “Rebel Without a Cause.”
Scott is the son of the mayor of Portland, and after three years of street life under the tutelage of Bob Pigeon (William Richert, director of "Winter Kills," as the Fagin-like leader of an army of callboys), he's about to come into his inheritance.
He also offers the most memorable visual metaphor for orgasm since Stanley Kubrick opened the trapdoors on Alex in "A Clockwork Orange."
Advertisement
Van Sant, still flush from the critical success of 1989's Drugstore Cowboy, made what's in essence a homosexual road movie that espouses the family values of a Disney feature and the pop art sensibilities of a Warhol piece — with a liberal dose of Shakespeare thrown in for good measure.
The third feature by the independent filmmaker Gus Van Sant (“Mala Noche,” “Drugstore Cowboy”) is like an exploded version of the previous two, and it scatters meanings all over the landscape.
In "Drugstore Cowboy," too, he embraced his junkie milieu, in a manner that was comic yet sternly clinical.
Van Sant did ''Drugstore Cowboy,'' a saga of drugs, sex and death.
I am one of a tiny minority who was not enamored of Van Sant's last film, Drugstore Cowboy, which won several critics' awards in 1989.
The movie takes place in Portland, Ore., and the open spaces of the Pacific Northwest - the same territory covered by " Drugstore Cowboy ," Van Sant's previous picture.
The third feature by the independent filmmaker Gus Van Sant (“Mala Noche,” “Drugstore Cowboy”) is like an exploded version of the previous two, and it scatters meanings all over the landscape.
Director Gus Van Sant, who scored both with "Mala Noche" and "Drugstore Cowboy," gets his artistic hat trick.