My Own Private Idaho / Drugstore Cowboy

MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO, 1991, Fine Line Feature, 104 min. River Phoenix plays a troubled narcoleptic looking for a family, and Keanu Reeves is a street hustler trying to flee his, in this beautiful and thoroughly original drama. Director Gus Van Sant uses Shakespeare by way of Orson Welles (the film owes a great deal to Welles's CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT) to create his underlying structure, but the characters and elegant use of Pacific Northwest settings are all his own.

DRUGSTORE COWBOY, 1989, MGM Repertory, 102 min. Devilishly charming Matt Dillon is the head honcho of a quartet of ne’er-do-well addicts (the superb Kelly Lynch, James LeGros and Heather Graham round out the foursome) who support their habits by robbing drugstores in the mid-1970s Northwest. Director Gus Van Sant expertly shifts his matter-of-fact tone from humorous to gut-wrenching, proving a potent force to be reckoned with in his first major film.