SCHOOL DAY: An interview with Elephant director Gus Van Sant. By Warren Curry 10/28/03

(From Left to Right) Elephant's Alex Frost, producer Danny Wolf, and director Gus Van Sant.

(Read the review of Elephant)

"I'm going in a weird, I don't know where, direction," comments director Gus Van Sant, while promoting his latest film, Elephant, at a roundtable interview in Los Angeles. "I prefer anything to how standardized filmmaking has become." Following his last two films, the rigidly experimental Gerry and the only slightly more accessible Elephant, one would be hard pressed to argue his statement. What's interesting is that 2003 has seen Van Sant return to his independent filmmaking roots, after three studio projects that ranged from highly entertaining (Good Will Hunting) to ill-advised (Psycho) to purely mundane (Finding Forrester). What's even more intriguing is how traditional his early landmark independent films (Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho) appear in comparison to his latest work.

Since he has made films that have done decent business at the box office, is the director fearful of alienating moviegoers everywhere with the challenging nature of his newest material? "There are a whole lot of films I've made that have always had the idea that not everyone is going to go," says the director matter-of-factly. "There were some films that I've made that we had the idea that we wanted everyone to go -- Good Will Hunting and Finding Forrester. They were designed to bring them all in. Even so, Good Will Hunting isn't really an action movie. If you want every single person to go -- little kids and older kids -- then you have to basically make an action movie."

Whether or not Elephant, which won the Palm d'Or at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival, where Van Sant was also honored with the Best Director award, will find an appreciative audience remains to be seen, but the film's subject matter doesn't exactly scream box office hit. Based not-so-loosely on the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado, the film handles its characters and events from a uniquely distanced viewpoint. Shouldn't a film that depicts such a tragic, disturbing event espouse some sort of discernible philosophy?

"What's interesting for me about Gus' movie is the fact that he's not trying to say, 'It's because of this,'" offers Elephant's executive producer Diane Keaton, more familiarly known as one of the most accomplished actresses currently working. "He forces you to have to sit there and watch it unfold before you in this amazing away, and you have the responsibility of your own thoughts. You have to sit there with your own fucking thoughts and think about it. I thought that was astonishing."

As he did with Gerry, Van Sant shot Elephant without the aid of a script (although an early draft was penned by young cult author, J.T. LeRoy), a highly risky move in this instance considering that he was working mainly with a non-professional cast of high school students. Because all of the dialogue is completely improvised, the limitations of Elephant's actors turns out to be a blessing. Instead of incessant chatter, the dialogue is, thankfully, very succinct.

But in throwing this much caution to the wind, one naturally wonders if at some point Van Sant began to question any of his decisions. "I think when you're on a film and you're doubting something, it's because you don't think the audience is going to like it," he mentions. "I got rid of that element in my head…what I could always see was something that I understood, without the element of trying to make it specifically for the audience." He continues, "You can imagine any number of different types of audiences. It can be an audience of your friends -- I never got that audience out of my head. But the audience of unseen moviegoers sitting in a cinema in Oklahoma, you can't think about that audience, because you probably wouldn't do any of the stuff that you do."

Taking these sentiments into consideration, just who exactly does Van Sant envision responding to his new film? "I think that the kids will be the best audience," he says. "I think they recognize the "answers" as scapegoats or red herrings. They know, since they live in the situation, the "answer" is way more unpredictable than having a specific answer."

Anyone familiar with Van Sant's body of work, and his unrelenting interest in the lives of American teenagers, most likely saw the above response coming a mile away. The filmmaker's brand of teen movie is innovative in the way that it refrains from simplifying its characters and the world they inhabit. His respect for young minds is evident in Elephant, as he never once asserts that his film contains a solution for the alarming amount of Columbine-esque violence that has reared its ugly head. "(Teenagers) are smarter than that; they already know that they have to do a little more thinking; that it's specifically less curable than just having the warning signs gone over," remarks Van Sant. "When you talk to them, they can play the part of the Eddie Haskell -- the student who's just playing up to the adult and pretending that they know all the things they should be saying about school shootings. Or they can be themselves, and they can tell you that they're sick of the whole thing and that adults don't get it."

In a career that's been full of surprises, it's anybody's guess as to what territory Van Sant will next decide to explore (and he gives us no hint, declining to comment about future projects). But fans of the filmmaker's influential early work should see 2003 as an artistic renaissance for Van Sant; a surprising return to form for one of the distinct voices to emerge from the American independent film community in the late '80s/early 90s, with the promise of more innovative, unconventional work to come.

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