Gus Van Sant, the guest on this episode of The Hollywood Reporter‘s Awards Chatter podcast, which was recorded in front of an audience at the Miami Film Festival’s GEMS event, has been described by the Los Angeles Times as an “iconoclastic visionary”; by the New York Times as being “in the front ranks of America’s most innovative independent filmmakers”; and by The Guardian as “the most consistently adventurous director in America … an artist whose fire, playfulness and taste for experimentation has only increased over time.”
The director of 18 narrative feature films over the past 40 years — among them classics like 1985’s Mala Noche, 1989’s Drugstore Cowboy, 1991’s My Own Private Idaho, 1995’s To Die For, 1997’s Good Will Hunting, 2003’s Elephant and 2008’s Milk — was in Miami to collect the fest’s Precious Gem Award in recognition of his body of work and his latest film, Dead Man’s Wire.
Inspired by real events that took place in 1977, but feel eerily relevant today (see: Luigi Mangione), Dead Man’s Wire centers on a working-class stiff who isn’t playing with a full deck (Bill Skarsgard), feels that he has been screwed over by his mortgage company and, in turn, abducts the son (Dacre Montgomery) of the company’s CEO (Al Pacino), demanding restitution and an apology.
The film had its world premiere at September’s Toronto International Film Festival and will be released by Row K Entertainment in January, having already had a 2025 awards-qualifying run.
Over the course of this conversation, Van Sant — a best director Oscar nominee for Good Will Hunting and Milk, each of which also was nominated for best picture and took home an acting award — reflects on his beginnings in the business, making low-budget, Portland-centric features that helped to usher in what B. Ruby Rich coined “New Queer Cinema”; his subsequent jumps between studio films and experimental indies; why he came close to directing, but ultimately did not direct, Brokeback Mountain, Call Me by Your Name and 50 Shades of Grey; and returning to feature filmmaking, with Dead Man’s Wire, after seven years of doing other things.
Read the full article here
