The Mosquito Coast

The Mosquito Coast (1986) is one of Harrison Ford’s most fascinating performances and it came at a time when he was able to use his box office clout from the lucrative Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises to push through the Hollywood system more challenging films. And this certainly applies to this film which focuses on a brilliant inventor who decides that western society has become too corrupt and materialistic and moves his family to the jungles of Central America where he attempts to manipulate a small village into his idea of a civilized society. Not exactly the most accessible project but Ford and director Peter Weir, hot off their successful collaboration on Witness (1985), teamed up again on The Mosquito Coast, an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Paul Theroux.


The film is about a man obsessed with imposing his will on others to the degree that he exhibits self-destructive tendencies. What better person to realize this than Paul Schrader who was brought on to write the screenplay. He knows a thing or two about these types of protagonists as evident with Taxi Driver (1976) and Raging Bull (1980), both of which he wrote. The Mosquito Coast also allowed Weir to continue his fascination with strangers in a strange land, which he had explored previously in The Year of Living Dangerously (1983) and Witness. So, the trifecta of Ford, Schrader and Weir was an inspired one but the end result was too extreme for mainstream audiences and the film was a box office flop and received mixed reviews.

The film is narrated by Charlie Fox (River Phoenix) and done after the events depicted in the film. He is a young, teenage boy who clearly idolized his father: “I grew up with the belief that the world belonged to him and that everything he said was true.” Allie Fox (Harrison Ford) is a brash and brilliant inventor. Right from the first shot, he expresses his disappointment with what America has become as he tells Charlie, “Look around you. How did America get this way? … This place is a toilet.” Weir cuts to a shot of Allie and his son driving down a street dominated by fast food restaurants, their large signs almost completely obscuring several trees and a grassy hill as the visuals only serve to prove Allie’s point and will be eerily relevant towards the end of the film.

Allie continues his rant as if he were channeling Travis Bickle’s disgust for society from Taxi Driver: “The whole damn country is turning into a dope-taking, door-locking, ulcerated danger zone of rabid scavengers, criminal millionaires and moral snakes.” Amazingly, these words come out of a film released during the height of the supposedly “Greed is good,” Ronald Reagan-era 1980s in America when the country’s economy was booming. However, these sentiments also apply to our current situation with the war in Iraq, the Enron scandal, 9/11, and the collapse of the global economy. Allie is disgusted by what America has become and is “sick of dealing with people who want things I’ve already rejected.” Ford delivers this angry monologue with just the right amount of self-righteous indignation.

The first inkling we get that Allie is losing touch with reality is the cooling system he was supposed to make for a nearby farmer. Not only is he late with the device but it isn’t what the man wanted. Ford is brilliant here as he shows how Allie takes a rejection and deflects it, and ignores his mistake as a shortcoming of the farmer. This incident only confirms his beliefs. The farmer’s parting shot is probably the best observation about Allie: “A know-it-all who’s sometimes right.” After observing some poor migrant workers, Allie begins to think about how valuable ice and his cooling system would be in the jungle where it is always oppressively hot. He laments that these workers left the jungle to work basically as slaves for the farmer and muses about how much courage it would take to leave civilization and go live in the jungle.

So, Allie uproots his family – wife (Helen Mirren), two sons and two daughters – and heads for the jungles of Belize. En route, he and his family cross paths with the Reverend Gurney Spellgood (Andre Gregory) and his family. Spellgood is a man who will play a prominent role in their lives. Allie has little time for Spellgood and religion, referring to The Bible as “God’s owner’s handbook.” He is even able to quote Scripture back to Spellgood. Like Allie, Spellgood is zealous in his beliefs, they just happen to be based in religion and not science.

As soon Allie and his family arrive, Weir immerses us in this strange new world with an audio-visual assault on our senses with local music and the hustle and bustle of the port city. Allie buys a small town and the next day, he and his family take a boat there. Weir shows a long shot of their journey along a curvy river that goes deep into the jungle and one can’t help but think of Willard’s river journey in Apocalypse Now (1979) only Allie is Colonel Kurtz ready to go native and impose his will on the locals. The river journey features some beautiful cinematography courtesy of Weir’s regular cinematographer John Seale. The vibrant greens of the lush jungle jump out at you and are in sharp contrast to the brown dirt that populates the jungle floor. As he did with Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) and The Year of Living Dangerously, Weir has a real knack for immersing us in the film’s setting, so much so that it almost becomes like another character. The Mosquito Coast is no different as we see how harsh the environment is, from the intense sun to the monsoon-like rain. This inhospitality is juxtaposed with the beauty of the trees and the serene river that winds through the jungle.

Allie puts his family and the natives to work, clearing the land and gathering up resources so that they can build his utopia. At times, he seems to do through sheer force of will. Everything seems to be going smoothly until Spellgood shows up and tries to win back the hearts and minds of the townsfolk only to have Allie spurn him yet again, much to the pastor’s chagrin. The confrontation is only a prelude to future conflict between these two headstrong men.

This is one of Harrison Ford’s best performances as he shows us the method to Allie’s madness. He is a charismatic despot of sorts. In a way, many of his diatribes about the wasteful nature of America are right on point. It’s his solution to its ills that don’t always make sense. Ford is fully committed to the role without a shred of vanity. He’s not afraid to play an unlikable character and approaches Allie Fox as someone who thinks that they aren’t crazy even though it is pretty obvious that he has a very skewed perspective on things. Ford nails the zeal of Allie’s beliefs but is still able to make him somewhat relatable thanks to his natural charisma. It’s a role that calls for the kind of physicality that Ford excels at as we see Allie building the town up with his own hands. He is so good at the physical aspects of acting – hence all the action roles he’s played in his career – and Allie is no different. More importantly, Ford shows how Allie’s megalomaniacal tendencies gradually consume him. It is small things, at first, like the way he belittles one of his sons for complaining about roughing it in the jungle.

Weir does a good job ratcheting up the tension during a sequence where three armed mercenaries arrive and Allie has to come up with a way to get them to leave. It is where Allie’s madness actually works to his advantage but at a horrible price, as he is willing to destroy everything he worked so hard to build up in order to get rid of them. Eventually, Allie’s epic vision becomes incredibly myopic as he alienates his own family. The actors that play the family members are all excellent, from Helen Mirren as the nurturing mother, to River Phoenix as the loyal son. Initially, they all believe in what their father is doing unconditionally but over time they gradually come to question his methods. They are decent people pushed to their breaking point by Allie.

Producer Jerome Hellman read Paul Theroux’s novel in1982 and bought the film rights with his own money shortly after it was published. He felt that a great film was possible if the right people were involved but also had his reservations and admitted that he “didn’t fully appreciate how out of the ordinary the Establishment would consider this.” He soon hired screenwriter Paul Schrader to adapt the book and a first draft was developed in 1983. That same year, Hellman approached Peter Weir to direct based on films like Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Year of Living Dangerously. Hellman said, “the thematic harmony between Peter’s previous work and The Mosquito Coast was striking, but I was also impressed with the humanism in his work.”

After reading the first draft of the script, Weir met with Hellman and Schrader in Sydney, Australia where they spent a week discussing every aspect of it. Once he felt that it could be made into a film, Weir agreed to direct. Hellman then brought him to the United States and showed him the book’s New England locations. The producer also arranged a meeting between Weir and Theroux but the director was apprehensive because he had a bad experience with a novelist on one of his earlier films. Fortunately, the two men got along and Theroux encouraged Weir to make the film his own. Hellman and Weir then spent two years trying to get a studio interested in making The Mosquito Coast but with little success. Hellman remembered that they were turned down all over Hollywood, “most places three or four times.”

In early 1984, they realized that due to the seasonal demands of the plot, they would have to delay principal photography for another year. However, Weir was chomping at the bit to direct a film and he received an offer to direct Witness. During the making of that film, he developed a close working relationship with its star, Harrison Ford. During this time, Jack Nicholson became interested in taking on the role of Allie Fox but when the deal fell through, Hellman and Weir agreed that Ford would be perfect to play the character. Ford was drawn to the role because it was so different from anything he had done before: “I was aware that there was opportunity here for more complicated characterization and because the character is so verbal and effusive, it goes against the kind of characters for which I’m best known.” Ford also wanted “the edgy feeling of the book still to be preserved. We didn’t want to abandon the balls of it because it’s not necessary for him [Allie] to be entirely likable as long as the audience can understand what he’s about.”

After Witness was released and became a big hit (garnering several Academy Award nominations), almost every studio wanted to make The Mosquito Coast but Hellman, burnt out from shopping the film around and getting repeatedly rejected, wanted to find independent financing. He met with producer Saul Zaentz to ask for advice and to read the script. He did and was so taken with it that he offered to have his company finance, present and supervise the distribution of the film.

Seeing as how most of the film is set in the jungle, it was crucial that Hellman and Weir find the right location. They considered Costa Rica, Guatemala, Jamaica, Mexico, and Hawaii before picking Belize, which had everything they needed: mountains, ocean, jungle and rivers – all within an hour radius of Belize City. It was also an English language country whose political situation was stable. While filming in the jungle, the cast and crew endured cuts and bruises, mosquito bites and heavy sunburn with large snakes common on the set. Ford found the shoot long and humid. It was more exhausting for him mentally than physically because of “the complexity of the role and the endless process of sorting out and reappraising where we were at.”

Weir drew inspiration for the visual look of The Mosquito Coast from a bulletin board he had on location that was adorned with postcards, pages from magazines, a pressed flower, a match box, and so on. “It’s a question of texture, a kind of mosaic of inspirations,” he said. Weir felt that it was important to shoot the construction of the town Allie owns to be filmed in continuity and so three versions of it were created. Each was a little more advanced than the one before. As the crew moved from one set to another, the construction crew would do additional work on the previous set. This allowed Weir to film in days what would’ve taken many months to do.

Not surprisingly, The Mosquito Coast did not fare well with critics at the time. Roger Ebert gave the film two out of four stars and wrote, “Allie Fox's madness is more of a drone, an unending complaint against the way things are. It is painful to watch him not because he is mad, but because he is boring – one of those nuts who will talk all night long without even checking to see if you're listening.” However, the Washington Post’s Rita Kempley enjoyed Ford’s performance: “Sooner or later a man of invention will pollute paradise, a grand contradiction that gives Mosquito its bite and Ford inspiration for his most complex portrayal to date. As a persona of epic polarities, he animates this muddled, metaphysical journey into the jungle.” In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, “In spite of its authentic scenery (it was filmed in Belize), this Mosquito Coast is utterly flat. Even its exotic melodrama fails to excite the imagination. The problem is not in the performances but in the way they have been presented, most of the time in a cool, dispassionate, third-person narrative style, stripped of Charlie's troubled thoughts and feelings that give the book its emotional force.” The Los Angeles Times’ Sheila Benson criticized Weir’s approach to the material in her review: “He's orchestrated The Mosquito Coast's action to match Fox's progressive mental state, from rage to explosion to squalls and finally to hurricane velocity; however, the film leaves us not with an apotheosis, but exhaustion.” To his credit, Harrison Ford has no regrets about making the film: “I adored that movie. If people didn’t want to see me be mean to kids, I understand that. But I was thrilled to have made that movie.”

In some respects, one could see The Mosquito Coast as a commentary on the extreme nature of the cult of personality as both Allie and Spellgood are prime examples of someone who believes that their vision of society is the right one. At first, Allie’s vision is quite seductive and seems to work but as time goes on and outside forces threaten it, the cracks begin to show. Weir takes an unflinching look at the extremes of science and religion and this apparently turned off audiences and critics alike. It is time for this film to be rediscovered and recognized as one of his more thought-provoking efforts made within the system by a movie star with enough clout to make it happen.

 

Running on Empty

Imagine the scene: a teenager is playing baseball. It's his turn up at bat and he promptly strikes out. He dejectedly leaves the diamond on his bike — presumably bound for home. On the way, he spots two cars with suspicious looking men in them. The boy quickly ditches the cars and finds a younger boy by giving a dog his shoe. It does not take long to deduce that they are brothers. No explanation is given for this rather odd behavior. However, we soon find out that the boy's name is Danny Pope (River Phoenix) and that his parents, Arthur (Judd Hirsch) and Annie (Christine Lahti) are 1960s subversives who went underground after claiming responsibility for bombing a military research lab that was developing napalm in 1971. The resulting action accidentally blinded a janitor which caused the Popes to become fugitives, roaming the country like gypsies, always trying to stay one step ahead of the law. Arthur and Annie made a choice a long time ago to live this kind of life. But their two sons are also stuck with this choice and its consequences. As Annie tells her husband at one point, "Look at what we're doing to these kids. They've been running their whole lives like criminals and they didn't do anything."

And so begins Running on Empty (1988), a film about choices: how important they can be and how they affect others. As the film progresses, Danny, the eldest son, is on the verge of being accepted to college. He is a gifted musician who discovers that he has a real chance at getting accepted into Juilliard. To make matters more complicated, he falls in love for the first time with Lorna (Martha Plimpton), a smart, independent girl who shows Danny that he must develop a life of his own. As a result Danny must make the toughest choice of his life. Does he stay with his family, thereby sacrificing any chance for a life of his own, or does he take advantage of a shot at a real life and run the risk of never seeing his family again? The dramatic tension central to the film is the choice Danny must make and how it will affect those around him.

The film’s producers Amy Robinson and Griffin Dunne first thought of the idea for Running on Empty in the early 1980s after reading a newspaper story on the arrest of two underground radicals in upstate New York. In 1983, Lorimar commissioned a screenplay. Screenwriter Naomi Foner was brought on board to work on the script and decided to tell the family’s story from the children’s’ perspective. She had known radicals who had gone underground and interviewed people who had lived that way, incorporating details from their lives into the script. Foner was also inspired by several women who were members of Students for a Democratic Society, now living in hiding with their children. Lorimar decided not to go ahead with production because the executives who had originally approved the project had been replaced.

Director Sidney Lumet read Foner’s script and decided to exercise an option he had as part of his contract with Lorimar that allowed him to produce one film of his choosing. Actress Christine Lahti was cast first and she had participated in the student unrest at the University of Michigan in her youth. She did a lot of reading as research and was fascinated by the support system that provides people who have gone underground with money, cheap housing and fake IDs. River Phoenix and Martha Plimpton were cast next.

Running on Empty is a film that refuses to restrict itself to a specific genre. As Lumet, points out, "it's not exactly a coming-of-age story. Danny, the older son, is already mature and knowledgeable. It's more about the consequences of our actions and the dynamics of what makes a family. These people's lives are a mess. The children are the only success they've got." If anything, Running on Empty is also a sobering look at the darker side of the '60s. Some people really wanted to change the world and found out that their actions, no matter how noble they seemed, had their consequences as well. The film shows how two people are forced to live with the actions of their past and how it has changed their lives and the lives of their children forever. However, the film ultimately focuses on Danny and his attempts to break free of his parents' problems and lead a normal life.

Danny's story is so powerful and interesting because of the intelligent screenplay by Naomi Foner and the performance by River Phoenix. Foner's script contains realistic dialogue so natural that it could have been plucked from real life. Her characters are not hackneyed stereotypes but engaging three-dimensional human beings that you come to love and care about over the course of the film. And this reaction is due in large part to the actors themselves: veterans like Judd Hirsch and Christine Lahti and younger thespians like Phoenix and Martha Plimpton deliver outstanding performances.

The moments between Phoenix and Plimpton, in particular, are charged with emotion and intensity that has a real ring of honesty to it. There is a scene where Danny comes to see Lorna in the middle of the night and he sneaks her out of the house in order to tell her who he really is and why he is so evasive about revealing personal information. It is a warm, intimate moment that feels completely authentic. The way the two actors interact with each other is touching and very emotional because it seems so believable. Others must have thought so as well. Phoenix, only 17 years old at the time, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Danny as well as being named Best Supporting Actor by the National Board of Review and being nominated for a Golden Globe. It was a real testament to his acting ability and is without a doubt one of his best performances, equaled only by his work in Stand by Me (1986) and My Own Private Idaho (1991).

The film was barely given a decent theatrical release and was fairly well-received by critics at the time. Film critic Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars and called it "one of the best films of the year." In her review for the New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, "The courtship between Danny and Lorna is staged especially disarmingly, with Mr. Phoenix and Miss Plimpton conveying a sweet, serious and believably gradual attraction.” Newsweek magazine’s David Ansen wrote, "A curious mix of soap opera and social history, Lumet's film shouldn't work, yet its fusion of oddly matched parts proves emotionally overpowering. You have to be pretty tough to resist it.” However, Hal Hinson, in his review for the Washington Post wrote, “Running on Empty doesn't make much sense for the title of the movie ... but it does work as a description of the director. Sidney Lumet may be the laziest major director working today.”

Running on Empty is about making the kind of decisions that alter one's life. Danny's parents made a decision a long time ago and now it is their son's turn. What is so interesting about a film like this is that it explores the ramifications of these kinds of important decisions and how people live with the results. This film refuses to depict its characters in any kind of cliché manner, instead opting for a kind of realism that has a ring of honesty to it. After watching this film, you feel like you have just looked through the window into a very special world with characters that you grow to care about and admire. It is the kind of film that can affect you in a meaningful, emotional way that resonates long after the images fade from the screen. For all the seriousness of its subject matter, Running on Empty is a very entertaining film that refuses to give any easy answers to the complex problems it raises.

My Own Private Idaho

They say that the best stories are right in front of our eyes. No one is more aware of this idea than filmmaker Gus Van Sant. In his first two motion pictures, Mala Noche (1986) and Drugstore Cowboy (1989), Van Sant skillfully legitimized everyday existence on film by presenting fascinating explorations into street life. Coming from a well-to-do middle class family, he became interested in the street life of Portland that he saw as "a secret world I knew nothing about." These films never exploited or romanticized their rather seedy subject matter, but viewed the characters impartially, leaving it up to the viewer to make a value judgment. Both films, however, were based on other people's work — a warm-up for Van Sant's next film, My Own Private Idaho (1991). This feature is arguably his best effort to date because it is his most personal project, a labor of love that shows a filmmaker at the apex of his powers.

Idaho is an ambitious blend of Shakespeare's Henry IV and the lives of Portland street hustlers. The film focuses on the adventures of two social outcasts. Scott Favor (Keanu Reeves) is a modern-day Prince Hal, a rich kid from an affluent family slumming with street folk as an act of rebellion against his father, the mayor of Portland. It is only a few days until he turns 21 years old, at which point he will inherit a lot of money. His close friend, Mike Waters (River Phoenix), is a gay, narcoleptic street hustler prone to lapsing into a deep sleep during times of stress at the most inopportune moments. Mike is the son of a mysterious waitress, (we only catch glimpses of her through his grainy, Super-8 reminiscences) and this results in a desire to track her down. It is a quest that takes both hustlers from the streets of Portland to America's heartland, as symbolized by Idaho, and finally a trip to Italy. But the film and Mike keep returning to "both the literal Idaho of his early years and the utopian Idaho of rooted love."

Early drafts of the screenplay were set on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles with working titles like Blue Funk and Minions of the Moon. Then, Van Sant read John Rechy's 1963 novel, City of Night and decided to change the setting to Portland. Idaho's screenplay originally consisted of two separate scenarios: the first was called Modern Days recounting Mike's story and a second one that updated the Henry IV plays with Scott's story. Van Sant realized that he could blend the two stories together a la the "cut up" technique used by writer, William S. Burroughs. In essence, this method involves various story fragments and ideas mixed and matched together to form a unique story. The idea to combine the two scenarios formed in Van Sant's head after watching Orson Welles' Chimes at Midnight (1966). "I thought that the Henry IV plays were really a street story," Van Sant once said in an interview. "I also knew this fat guy named Bob, who had always reminded me of Falstaff and who was crazy about hustler boys. It was then that I decided to combine the stories." Van Sant gives the Bard's dialogue a streetwise twist to produce amusing situations where high culture meets low culture. The effect produces a kind of absurdist feel to the proceedings and reinforces the timelessness of Shakespeare's prose by giving it a modern facelift. Van Sant got the idea for Mike's narcolepsy from a man who was a guide of sorts when the director was gathering material for the film. According to the director, he always looked like he was about to fall asleep.

Van Sant ended up renaming the screenplay My Own Private Idaho — derived from the B-52's song of the same name which he had heard numerous times while visiting Idaho in the early 1980s. At first, no studio would touch the script because of its potentially controversial and off-beat subject matter. After Drugstore Cowboy received such favorable critical raves and awards, studios started to show some interest. However, they all wanted their own versions made and not Van Sant's, so he was back to square one. This frustration prompted the filmmaker to attempt the feature on a shoestring budget with a cast of actual street kids filling out the roles. Fortunately, New Line Cinema, the same production company behind the very successful A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, were in the process of branching out into producing "art house" films and decided to back Van Sant's vision with a $2.5 million budget.

Once the financial backing was secured, Van Sant faced the problem of whom he wanted cast in the two central roles. He decided to send the script to the agents of Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix, figuring that their agents would reject the script. He assumed that these up-and-coming actors would probably not want to take a chance with such an unusual film. However, Reeves' agent was amicable to the project, but Phoenix's agent wouldn't even show the screenplay to the young actor. Not to be deterred, Van Sant got the idea for Reeves to personally deliver the film's treatment to Phoenix at his home in Florida. Reeves did so over the Christmas holidays, riding his motorcycle from his family home in Canada to the Phoenix family ranch in Micanopy, Florida, outside Gainesville. Reeves was no stranger to Phoenix, having worked previously with River on Lawrence Kasdan's I Love You to Death (1990). Once Van Sant got by their agents and talked to the two actors he realized that they were up to the challenge. Reeves and Phoenix had their doubts about such a risky venture but decided to take the plunge and made a pact to do the film.

It is easy to understand the actors’ apprehension in getting involved with Van Sant's film. How would Hollywood react to these two "rising stars" appearing as hustlers in a "gay" film? For Phoenix, it was the perfect project to experiment and to grow as an actor. It was also the perfect role to shed, once and for all, his "teen idol" image and the baggage that accompanied such a perception. Van Sant never saw his film as a story about gay street life, but rather "about an area of society—prostitution—that's not defined in terms of gay or straight." Originally, the screenplay was rather nebulous in its view of whether Mike was gay or not. It was Phoenix who decided to make Mike gay and this change only strengthened the character and improved the film.

Idaho is Van Sant's own unique spin on the road film. The motion picture opens and ends with Mike on the road — a deserted, picturesque stretch somewhere in Idaho. In both scenes Mike delivers a monologue, a Kerouacian ode to the road before passing out in a narcoleptic fit. There is something about this road that induces Mike's seizures. Perhaps it is his observation that when looked at in a certain way (with the visual aid of an iris lens) the road seems like "a fucked-up face, like it's saying, 'Have a nice day.’” Mike's narcolepsy is an important motif in the film. It is the first image we see, appearing highlighted in a dictionary. His black outs act as a portal that allows us to enter Mike's world: the private Idaho of the film's title which offers us glimpses into his dreams, his aspirations, and gives us clues to his past. Mike’s narcoleptic escapades are comprised of fragmented, "visionary" footage: fast moving clouds in vast, blue skies; salmon jumping up stream; and old, scratchy, 8mm film of Mike's trailer park past. These images were amassed by Van Sant and his cinematographers, Eric Alan Edwards and John Campbell who, at first didn't really know what to do with this abstract footage, but Mike's fractured past provided the ideal vehicle for these scenes.

Mike's fractured past is actually a microcosm of the overall structure of Idaho which blends all sorts of styles of filmmaking. Again, this approach harkens back to Burroughs' "cut up" technique as the film shifts from the surreal, with a scene that involves the covers of male porno magazines coming to life, to a parodic, mock documentary style where anonymous hustlers recall horror stories of their first dates. Van Sant even imparts a kind of dreamy, romanticism to the film with beautiful vistas and rolling landscapes captured via time-lapse photography. All of this never becomes too conceited which is due in part to Van Sant's direction and the actors’ (in particular, Phoenix) ability to impart a certain amount of humor — whether it is through Phoenix's comic asides, referring to Idaho as "the potato state," or Van Sant's inversion of cliché images and the use of music to simultaneously pay homage and parody the idea of the open road. Imagine William S. Burroughs rewriting Jack Kerouac's On the Road and you get an idea of the tone that Van Sant is trying to establish.

Like Austin filmmaker Richard Linklater, Van Sant's films mix professional thespians with non-actors effortlessly. The rather eclectic cast (that features 1960s cult actor and Andy Warhol regular, Udo Kier; Red Hot Chili Pepper bassist Flea, and director of Winter Kills, William Richert) fill out their respective roles admirably, but the film really belongs to River Phoenix. Mike is clearly the heart of the film with Scott's story taking up very little screen time. With his narcoleptic flashbacks, we see most of the film through Mike's eyes. As one critic described him, "at once pathetic flotsam, passive dreamer, and true visionary." He yearns for love and eternal friendship from Scott in an incredibly touching and tragic scene where the two are sitting by a campfire on the road to Idaho. Mike tries to articulate his feelings for Scott when he says, "I love you and you don't pay me." Mike conveys a feeling that Scott could never imagine, let alone feel. This scene, which Phoenix rewrote with Reeves input, includes incredible character defining dialogue and "provides countless clues to the interior depths" of Mike's character. This scene is the highlight of the film and really showcases Phoenix's formidable acting talents. Keanu Reeves, as in most of his other films doesn't really act, but rather reacts to what other characters do as this scene so adequately demonstrates. While Phoenix suggests so much by doing so little, Reeves remains what one critic described as a "reactive slate." Reeves reportedly was not comfortable with this aspect of the film as he said in an interview, "I'm not against gays or anything, but I won't have sex with guys. I would never do that on film. We did a little of it in Idaho and, believe me, it was hard work. Never again.”

Phoenix delivers an intelligent performance by giving life and depth to the character of Mike. He clearly enjoyed Van Sant's relaxed approach to his actors which drew such good performances from them.

“Gus is very open to collaboration. He doesn’t direct in a show-and-tell style but instead asks questions and brings it out of you like a good psychiatrist might. He allows you to be responsible for your role. Directors can be very frightened of collaborative things with actors. When we talked, we cut a deal where I had complete creative control. I was curious because I had a lot of input and he was very open about my suggestions. So this collaboration became my apprenticeship with Gus.”

To fulfill his end of the deal, the young actor put hours of research into his role. "I spent quite a few hours on the streets in Portland between eight and four in the morning," Phoenix remembers. However, he may have immersed himself too far into the role as Van Sant commented, "he seemed to be changing into this character." One of the film's cinematographers, Eric Allan Edwards also noticed a change in the actor. "He looked like a street kid. In a very raw way he wore that role." And it shows in the way Phoenix looks in the film with a combination of messed up hair, bedraggled clothes, and "bruised good looks." His rumpled appearance and mannerisms make one think of James Dean's tortured teen, Jim Stark in Rebel Without A Cause (1955). Like Dean, Phoenix can suggest emotion from simple movements and gestures. Idaho enabled Phoenix to shed the pretty-boy/Teen Beat image that had dogged him throughout his career and portray a character that could really exist. His performance in Idaho, with its willingness to take chances, ranks right up there with some of the great performances of our time and makes one realize what a talent has been lost in his death.

Van Sant's film received largely positive reviews. Film critic Roger Ebert wrote, "The achievement of this film is that it wants to evoke that state of drifting need, and it does. There is no mechanical plot that has to grind to a Hollywood conclusion, and no contrived test for the heroes to pass.” Vincent Canby, in his New York Times review, praised the performances of the two lead actors: "The performances, especially by the two young stars, are as surprising as they are sure. Mr. Phoenix (Dogfight) and Mr. Reeves (of the two Bill and Ted comedies) are very fine in what may be the two best roles they'll find in years. Roles of this density, for young actors, do not come by that often.” In his review for Newsweek, David Ansen praised Phoenix's performance: "The campfire scene in which Mike awkwardly declares his unrequited love for Scott is a marvel of delicacy. In this, and every scene, Phoenix immerses himself so deeply inside his character you almost forget you've seen him before: it's a stunningly sensitive performance, poignant and comic at once.”

J. Hoberman, in his review for the Village Voice, wrote, "While Phoenix vanishes with reckless triumph into his role, Reeves stands, or occasionally struts, uneasily beside his, unable to project even the self-mocking wit of Matt Dillon's star turn in Drugstore Cowboy.” However, Time magazine's Richard Schickel wrote, "What plot it has is borrowed, improbably, from Henry IV, and whenever anyone manages to speak an entire paragraph, it is usually a Shakespearean paraphrase. But this is a desperate imposition on an essentially inert film.” In his review for The New Yorker, Terrence Rafferty wrote, "Van Sant has stranded the actor in a movie full of flat characters and bad ideas, but Phoenix walks through the picture, down the road after road after road, as if he were surrounded by glorious phantoms.”

My Own Private Idaho didn't break any box office records or win any Academy Awards, but it has endured. For a film that made so many studio executives nervous, Idaho doesn't go for the shock value of its subject matter. Van Sant presents his hustlers as real, three-dimensional characters with humanity and the capacity for tenderness and humor. What could have become exploitive trash in the hands of a lesser talent, becomes a touching, poetic quest for family and identity that aspires to a level that most films only dream of attaining.

Here's the trailer:

Also, this is a fantastic fan site dedicate to the film.

Aren't You Even Gonna Kiss Me Goodbye? (aka A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon)

Every once in awhile you hear about how a Hollywood studio tried to sabotage one of their big budget efforts when it came in conflict with the film’s director and their vision. Case in point: Dune (1984) and Brazil (1985). However, studios also mess with small, independent films because they have much more leverage in which to bully the filmmaker. This is exactly what happened to William Richert’s adaptation of his autobiographical novel, Aren’t You Even Gonna Kiss Me Goodbye?, first published in 1963 when the author was 19-years-old. It was subsequently manipulated by 20th Century Fox from a serious film for adults into a sex comedy for teenagers and called A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon (1988). Richert has resurrected his original cut and released it through his own personal website to finally set the record straight, letting people decide for themselves which version of the film they prefer.

The 1980s saw several nostalgic stories of adult protagonists looking back at their misspent youth. Some, like Stand By Me (1986), were well-received. Others, like Stealing Home (1988), were not. Richert’s original film is definitely in the same vein as these motion pictures with a voiceover narration by the protagonist as an adult, reminiscing about a pivotal moment in his life spent in Evanston, Illinois. Johnny Mathis’ original song, “I’m Not Afraid to Say Goodbye,” plays hauntingly over the opening credits with a shot of a lonely janitor sweeping an elevated train platform. The film is set in 1962 Chicago and concerns a 17-year-old teenager named Jimmy Reardon (River Phoenix) who is trying to get money for college. He enlists the help of his best friend Fred (Matthew Perry).

Jimmy fancies himself a poet of the beatnik variety and is something of a shrewd-ish Lothario, making the moves on a college girl intended for Fred. Jimmy hangs out with wealthy teenagers definitely on the snobby side with too much time on their hands. He is also in conflict with his parents who want him to either go to an all-boys business school or stay at home – not a great choice for a teenager with a raging libido.

Jimmy has a girlfriend (sort of) named Lisa (Meredith Salenger) who likes to make-out with him but doesn’t like it to go much beyond that. They see other people but are obviously strongly attracted to each other. She is scared of losing control of herself around him and succumbing to his charms. Meredith Salenger is adorable as Lisa and I remember having a big crush on her character as a teen watching the film when it first came out. She has an innocent vulnerability that is endearing and sexy. She also has genuine chemistry with her co-star, River Phoenix. Their first scene together has a playful, sexual tension to it that has a ring of honesty for anyone who’s tried to make it with a girl like that. There’s an adolescent awkwardness that is authentic. Unfortunately, the studio version of the film played the sexual episodes for laughs and cheapened them with hit tunes from the ‘60s but this new cut has Elmer Bernstein’s original, elegant score playing over Jimmy and Lisa’s first encounter.

When Jimmy finds out that Lisa is going to college in Hawaii, he sees this as his way out of Evanston. All he needs is $88 for a plane ticket. Jimmy meets one of his mother’s friends, a sophisticated woman named Joyce (a surprisingly sexy Ann Magnuson) and she invites him for a drink at her place. She’s a seductive, independent woman who turns the tables on Jimmy, making all the first moves instead of him being the aggressor and this obviously appeals to him after having to do all the work with Lisa. It’s amazing what a difference music makes to a scene as Bernstein’s smoky jazz that plays over the seduction scene between Jimmy and Joyce gives it genuine heat where the studio cut played it much lighter in tone. Ann Magnuson, with her sexy, long legs and short red hair, resembles a young Shirley MacLaine except more alluring – she’s infinitely more interesting than the bland Lisa and you can see why Jimmy is attracted to her.

The omission of Richert’s narration in the studio cut makes Jimmy a more unlikable character. Its presence in this new version not only gives the film a more literary feel, but also puts us inside Jimmy’s head, providing motivation for what he does in the film and how he feels about it now, after all these years. His fatal character flaw is that he’s controlled by his libido and it gets him into all kinds of trouble. Lisa has romantic aspirations while all he wants to do is have sex with her. This was Phoenix’s first starring role and he is excellent as the contradictory Jimmy. His character writes poetry and yet he lacks sensitivity and empathy towards others. Phoenix expertly conveys Jimmy’s conflicted nature: the intelligent poet and the self-destructive womanizer.

A new scene included in this director’s cut has Jimmy showing compassion for his friend Suzie (Louanne) and also lost in a nightmarish part of Chicago that plays out like a condensed version of After Hours (1985). Louanne plays Suzie, the sarcastic best friend role, and the most interesting woman in Jimmy’s life. She’s funny, honest and not afraid to tell it like it is. If Jimmy was smart, he would go out with her. Louanne has little screen-time but she makes every moment count.

William Richert finished principal photography on his film in 1986 and after editing it, he screened the motion picture for Island Pictures, the financial backers. According to Richert, they liked it so much that it was felt that the film could succeed beyond the art house circuit. While filming, Phoenix had become a popular teen idol with the success of Stand By Me, which definitely played a factor in the decision to go for a wider release. Cary Brokaw was the original producer and financier of the film at Island only to be replaced by Russell Schwartz who took away Brokaw’s executive producer credit while simultaneously selling the distribution rights to 20th Century Fox. The film had a score composed by the great Elmer Bernstein, a new song performed by Johnny Mathis, and an original, end-credit song written and performed by River Phoenix – all of which were removed and replaced by the studio.

Fox decided to do a new advertising campaign. Richert says that he liked the existing campaign and did not want to delay the film’s release. Richert also claims that Schwartz told him that Island was filing for bankruptcy and had to sell the rights to Fox. Studio President Leonard Goldberg screened a copy of the film and felt that it had the wrong “tone” and was a “downer.” According to Richert, Goldberg told him that he was going to screen it for the publicity and marketing team to get their recommendations. Marketing Chief Cynthia Wick, the publicists and Goldberg called Schwartz and told him to get rid of Richert’s narration, Bernstein’s score, and turn it into what Richert cites as a “teen exploitation picture.” He says that they told him that Bernstein’s score was old-fashioned and would be a turn-off to audiences. They replaced it with a new score by Bill Conti and bunch of songs from the ‘60s.

According to Richert, the publicity division spent two years making changes and during this time, Phoenix had garnered great acclaim in films like Stand By Me and The Mosquito Coast (1986) The director claims that the young actor’s agent and mother told him not to talk to much about Jimmy Reardon to the press. For example, at the time of the film’s release, Phoenix told the Globe and Mail newspaper that, “morally, I have problems with it,” and that the motion picture, “wasn’t meant to be a teenage film.” His parents also wanted Richert to remove the line, “Jimmy, I want to fuck you,” that Joyce says to Jimmy as she seduces him. According to the director, they were worried that it would offend their son’s fans. Richert argued that his fans wouldn’t be allowed in theaters because of the film’s rating and that the line was integral to the film. Phoenix’s parents said that they would not allow their son to promote the film with the line in it and Richert finally agreed to silence the line but not remove it. He thought that this would appease them but the actor’s mother still refused to have her son do interviews for the film.

Schwartz wanted to replace Richert’s narration with the actor son of Phoenix’s agent, but after hearing his voice on the phone, Richert asked Phoenix to do it and he agreed. The director defends his narration as being “designed to sound like the older novelist I was, remembering his youth...having an older voice provided a frame for River’s performance.” Richert remembers being invited, along with Island executives, to a screening room at Fox where a movie soundtrack expert presented various songs from the ‘60s that would be used in the film. Richert says that he was shocked and angered. Afterwards, he wrote an angry letter to executives at Fox. Richert claims that Chris Blackwell, owner of Island Pictures, called and told him not to protest in public or write any more letters as the studio would cancel the theatrical release and send it straight to video. However, if Richert played ball, Blackwell would keep the director’s version out of the Fox contract and he could release it after five years. Richert agreed and worked with the studio in an attempt to salvage his vision for two agonizing years.

The marketing department changed the name of the film to A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon because they claimed that nobody had ever heard of anyone named, “Jimmy Reardon.” Fox decided not to screen the film for critics in advance, which is generally perceived as a lack of faith the studio has in the film. According to Richert, Sheila Benson of the Los Angeles Times called the studio and insisted on seeing the film. When she was denied, she got a copy from someone at Island and gave it a positive review. Richert claims that Fox tried to discredit Benson and in response, she wrote an even more positive article. After the opening weekend, a Times reporter interviewed Richert and Fox delayed the article and then killed it.

Jimmy Reardon was not well-received by several mainstream critics, including the Washington Post which wrote, “This is a case where the voice of the writer and the unexpectedness of the details he’s collected allow you to overlook the shoddy mechanics – even to consider them as part of the movie’s odd appeal.” Janet Maslin, in the New York Times, wrote that Richert “has done what he can to make this a more or less conventional coming-of-age story. In that he fails miserably, since conventionality is not his strong suit.” However, Rick Groen in the Globe and Mail praised Richert’s casting choices as “subtle as everything else in this intricate picture...Phoenix seems like a pint-sized Mickey Rourke, aping his elders.”

Aren’t You Even Gonna Kiss Me Goodbye? exposes the class struggle that exists in the United States. Jimmy comes from a blue collar family and hangs out with teenagers from an affluent neighborhood in Chicago. Lisa thinks its “cute” when Jimmy takes her to the No Exit, a Beatnik café, because she is slumming. For him, it’s a place where he can recite his poetry. She is going to a rich college in an exotic place (Hawaii) while he is going to a mundane business school that his father also went to. Jimmy’s rich friends never have to worry about money and don’t have a care in the world while Jimmy spends the entire film hustling for $88. Initially, he fits seamlessly with this crowd but as the film progresses, he gradually drifts away from them until his big confrontation with Lisa where he exposes her as a hypocrite and a phony right out of a J.D. Salinger story while also reconnecting with his hard-working father.

In the end, Richert went along with all of the studio’s changes so that his film would at least receive a theatrical release but in doing so gave the world a compromised version of his film that was very different than the one he had originally made. Fortunately, his version has now seen the light of the day and is available for anyone to see. Bernstein’s score and Richert’s original voiceover narration completely changes the tone and feel of the film, giving it a much more wistful, melancholic tone instead of the annoying teen sex romp vibe of the studio cut. Aren’t You Even Gonna Kiss Me Goodbye? is a smart, engaging film filled with excellent performances by the entire cast under the rock solid direction of Richert who has crafted an excellent ode to a specific period in his past.

Ann Magnuson offers her views of the director's cut.

Here's the trailer for the director's cut: