Gerry
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Three Interviews with Gus Van Sant About his Long-Take, Béla Tarr-Influenced “Death Trilogy”
With a Gus Van Sant retrospective currently playing at New York’s Metrograph Cinema until July 12, we’ve reposted the three interviews we did with the director for his celebrated “death trilogy.” Comprised of Gerry, Elephant and Last Days, these three films — all based on actual news reports, dealing with mortality and shot in a long-take style influenced by directors such as Béla Tarr and Chantal Akerman — constitute one of cinema’s most audacious, radical and rewarding change-ups from a director who has had at least one foot in mainstream cinema. All three films are part of the Metrograph series, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 5, 2018 -
“Agitating the Information”: Director Gus Van Sant on his Long-Take Columbine Drama, Elephant
The following interview was originally published in our Fall, 2003 print edition. When I first interviewed Gus Van Sant, he had just finished editing his feature Gerry and was preparing to launch it at the Sundance Film Festival. A radical left turn from the two studio films, Good Will Hunting and Finding Forrester, that preceded it, Gerry mixed together movie stars (Matt Damon and Casey Affleck), the “long-take” style of such filmmakers as Béla Tarr and Chantal Akerman and a simple yet metaphorically rich scenario taken from the news headlines. Working without a formal script but with the remarkable director […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 5, 2018 -
Fuller: On Great, Boring Movies and Cultural Vegetables
Unless you are a very serious basketball player — at minimum serious intramural league level, or one of those Wall Street guys who absolutely must blow off a ton of steam by playing their hearts out on the court or else they’ll absolutely lose their soul — there is a very distinct qualitative difference between what it feels like to play basketball for a while and to run for a while. After you finish playing basketball for a while you feel good, you’ve gotten some good cardio, but that cardio is intermittent, the game being filled with plenty of pauses […]
by Zachary Wigon on Jun 7, 2011
