Gus Van Sant has got a book out. It is, as one would expect, really quite amazing. I mean, this is a man who pretty much prompted the mass sexual awakening of thousands of confused teenage gays when they watched River Phoenix get sucked off in My Own Private Idaho, in turn also prompting such other important questions as: is being a rent boy actually quite a glam career choice? And: do I have the calves to pull off a cowboy boot? The book, entitled “Gus Van Sant: Icons”, collated by Matthieu Orléan, does pretty much what it says on the tin – collecting together the American director’s most enduring filmic images, alongside early polaroids he took of filmstars like Keanu Reaves, Drew Barrymore and Nicole Kidman, when she still maintained the ability to move her face. “His films flirt with the dreamlike and psychedelic while, paradoxically, embodying what is most human in contemporary cinema,” says Orléan. Released last week, it is the follow up to exhibition of the same name shown The Cinémathèque Française during July. Alongside the images, there are also essays by Stéphane Bouquet, Benjamin Thorel, Bertrand Schefer and Stefano Boni, as well as Orléan’s interview with Gus that was undertaken for the exhibition. The perfect book with which to bestow your coffee table a certain amount of class.
Photograph courtesy of Gus Van Sant and HBO
Gus Van Sant: Icons, published by Actes Sud/Cinémathèque Française is out now…
