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Article and Interview with Gus Van Sant from Comme au Cinema .com
Transcribed from French to English using Babel Fish Translation
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| As on its preceding films, Gus Van Sant made call at the same time with professional actors and amateurs. The director of casting Mali Finn, had already played an essential part for the development of the casting of the students in Elephant. In Last Days, the secondary roles were cut to measure for each actor. For example, Lukas Haas, guitarist in the life, incarnate a musician, member of the entourage of Blake and live in its house. Like Lukas Haas, the actors who surround Blake carry their true first name. Asia is interpreted by the actress and director Asia Argento (the Book of Jérémie), Scott is played by Scitt Green (former assistant of Gus Van Sant ) and Nicole is played by Nicole Vicius.
Danny Wolf : "Gus is known for its very instinctive castings. Last Days is a prolongation of what Gus lived on Elephant. It creates the situation, but the person remains itself. Lukas Haas is not doped, it does not carry large glasses, but it is an actor full with talent. The phase of repetition and this process helped people to include/understand what one awaited from them. I am really impressed by what the actors brought à Last Days ". The intuition of Gus Van Sant also played in the case of Thadeus A. Thomas, who plays the part of the salesman of the Yellow Pages. Thomas was an unknown which unloaded at the time of a fitting of costumes at the offices of the production of Last Daysà Cold Springs, State of New York, in a district considered for its flea market and its antique dealers. Gus Van Sant : "As one had clothing on the bearing ones, our offices resembled much the other warehouses of the district. Thadeus unloaded to sell to us advertising space in the Yellow Pages. I immediately proposed to him to play his own part ". Mali Finn had suggested entrusting to the magician, to actor and to author Rick Jay (the Captive Spanish one) the role of the private detective who seeks Blake. During several years, Jay had published Jay S Journal of Anomalies, a review dedicated to the strange phenomena, the odd episodes of the history of the spectacle and well of other things. Gus Van Sant : "I explained to him that on Last Daysil would have space to improvise. It answered: ' It is a superb occasion for me to tell one of the many stories which I did not use yet - I have tons of them!'. That which it tells in film is veracious, and it chose it because it made echo with that of Blake ". | |||
Discussion With Gus Van Sant
| Is Last Days a ramification of Gerry and Elephant?
In a certain manner, yes. The three films are held in a single place, with a reduced distribution and a technical team. From the point of view of the style, these three films wanted to break with certain cinematographic conventions, like using several angles to film a scene. These three films are inspired by real facts. But rather than to make docudramas, you chose another way... The goal of three films was to use the fiction to again discover something on a given situation. In the three stories, people are unaware of what really occurred, because they miss certain elements. In the case of Gerry, two types leave in the desert but only one in cost. There is only one version of the history. For the shootings in the schools, there is always the question of "why", "how that it arrived?". For Kurt Cobain, nobody really knows where it was during the last two days of his life. The source of inspiration of Last Days is not as well the event in oneself as the interrogation on what occurred. However Last Days is not a psychological analysis in the conventional direction of the term. Each spectator will find there his own explanation psychological by interpreting the images which proceed under its eyes. Psychology is in fact in the spirit of the spectator, it is not assénée like a thesis, like a thing called to the screen. The film is dedicated to the memory of Kurt Cobain but it is not a biography. What guided your choices compared to the resemblances and the differences between the real person and the character of film, Blake? I believe that I very invented. There was not many information, with share what was appeared in the popular press. Certain people with Portland affirmed knowledge of the things on Kurt, but I wanted to use my imagination to create the history of Blake. Did you do many research? Not. I did not make the kind of research necessary for a film on somebody of precis. I was more at ease by inventing all. I did not treat a long period, only two days. When Kurt Cobain died, its last days exerted a true fascination. It is a little as what I had lived River Phoenix some time before. A man was in crisis, nobody could not help it. Where was it? Which were its last moments? You Kurt Cobain, that did it met influence your design of Last Days? Not, not really. I had met it only once, in his manager. The other contact that I had with him, it is when it called me in connection with a job for one of his friends, which was very nice of its share. In what the death of Kurt Cobain you does have it affected? These suicides, such those of Hunter Thompson or Elliott Smith are always particularly painful. At the time of died of Kurt Cobain (April 1994), I came to live dramatic the experience to lose a close friend with disappearance To rivet Phoenix in octobre1993. It is such a shock that one remembers where one was when the news was learned. That always gives the feeling which one cannot return any more behind. Particularly sharp feeling in the case of To rivet, because I knew that he did not want to die, it was not his goal. At least, it is what I believed. Does Last Days reflect your experiment of success and the celebrity? I suppose it. It is more or less the same period. In my case, I was known only after having made Drugstore Cowboy in 1989. The success of film allowed our group of Portland cement and the North-West to obtain a reputation of truths scenario writers. One year and half later, it arrived the same thing at Nirvana, in much more important, in the field of the music. We had a whole a common wish: to remain in our area. Success is difficult to manage at the beginning within an artistic community. You buy a house because you always lived in apartment and that of only one blow, you have money. You say yourselves: "One can buy a large house! One will live there all together and it will be super ". To the arrival, people come to strike with your door, ask to you whether they can squatter your soussol or claim you money or an autograph. When I wrote Last Days, I thought of all that, the house, people who challenged me of their car when I left to take the air... On the basis of a minimal scenario, how do you conceive your turning? The places of turning and the actors are influential factors, but nothing is immutable, because I can take or to leave a place and, in a certain manner, I can take or leave an actor. This choice is very important, but it is essential not to be too rigid compared to this choice, in order to better interpret it. For example, we had thought of another place of turning before selecting the house of Blake. If it had been turned in this other place, the film would have been different. The place is dominating, but it is not all. With the final one, which counts, it is the geometry of the plan, the light and the action. How Michael Pitt did it arrive on film? About 1997, I met Mike Pitt. Even if it were a little older, it resembled to the young boy of one of the versions of Last Days. I started to imagine it in the role. One spoke about it during six years. One said oneself unceasingly: "It is necessary that it is done, one will work above". Michael is also a musician. Was that a factor determining in your decision? It was like a no-claims bonus, even if it were not a condition necessary. When I met it, it had been just put at the music. When one finally started to turn, it was 23 years old and had progressed as a musician. The song which it interprets in film, Death to Birth, is one of those which it sang at the time where I met it. Does Mike really play of all the instruments in the scene of the living room, and that where it sings Death to Birth? Yes, they all are into live. Mike plays in the two scenes and it is him which wrote the two songs. The film refers very little to the career of Blake - there is not even the certainty that he is large a star. Michael incarnated what was Blake, a musician. One did not have any more. How did you develop the characters who live in the house with Blake? Having lived myself in community, I was useful myself of my own experiment to imagine what people at various times do. How did you work with the actors to define the relations between the various characters? We have all of the friends famous actors or musicians and when one goes on their premises, there is always a group which revolves around: it is the entourage. These people are of a savage honesty. One of them is sometimes a friend or a relative. Generally, the famous person is at the top of the pyramid, with her secrecies and her particular requirements. Nobody wants to call into question the structure of the capacity... Nicole, Lukas, Scott and Asia knew all this kind of situations. One calls the members of the entourage "the rabbits" because they are interchangeable and lay down the ones with the others. They are timorous, timid and dependent and, like rabbits, have the appearance of preys. At one moment, Blake puts a cap of hunter and plays Elmer Fudd which drives out rabbit. |