Reeves does Shakespeare.

Alright friends, now that we’ve dipped our toes into the waters of modern queer cinema lets talk about our heartbreaking choice. Today we’re looking at Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho, a strange film in every way, but also a beautiful and breathtaking work.

Author

Tyler Clark
May 30, 2023

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My Own Private Idaho (1991)

Alright friends, now that we’ve dipped our toes into the waters of modern queer cinema lets talk about our heartbreaking choice.

Today we’re looking at Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho, a strange film in every way, but also a beautiful and breathtaking work.

It’s Van Sant doing a loose adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry IV, with a modern aesthetic and a postmodern take on the material. It’s stunning, heartbreaking and, at times, very difficult to wrestle with.

However, it’s definitely worth taking a look at and understanding how it affected queer cinema of the time.

Adaptation for a Postmodern World

As mentioned before, My Own Private Idaho is loosely based on Henry IV. But how exactly does the Good Will Hunting director explore this idea?

Well, in the Shakespearean play the story is told from the perspective of the chorus, a sort of storyteller who introduces characters and helps push plot along.

In the film, the chorus is switched for Mike, played by the late great River Phoenix who pals around with Keanu Reeves’ Scott, our Prince Hal analog. We also are introduced to our Halstaff type in Bob Pigeon and King Henry in the form of Scott’s father Mayor Favor.

Throughout the film we will also hear the characters directly lift dialogue from the stage show.

Apart from those elements, the film is uniquely its own. It's quite impressive to see Van Sant stretch himself as a writer to update Shakespeare’s text into a postmodernist queer drama, featuring a narcoleptic sex worker as the (unreliable) narrator.

Normalization Through Empathy

Today’s scene showcases one of the most honest pieces of acting from Phoenix that I think I have ever seen out of any performer.The writing, too, feels like it just poured out of Gus Van Sant’s heart through the steady hand with which it is directed.

The scene is even more profound knowing that Van Sant is an openly gay filmmaker. The pain that comes from the words Mike says to Scott, as if he doesn’t want to talk about it but he simply can’t hold it back anymore, seems lived and personal. Then Scott fires with absolutely brutal words, followed by a loving embrace and leaves the audience in an uneasy state of guessing where they now stand.

Phoenix and Reeves initially met on the set of Parenthood when River was going to see his brother Joaqiun who shared many scenes with Reeves. After that first connection they became friends and worked together briefly on the Kevin Klien comedy I Love You to Death.  

They each agreed to do this movie because the other would be in. That love and connection they had shows up in spades in this film, but especially in this scene. It’s so emotionally uncomfortable that at times you wonder how the film didn’t just burn up in the camera as they were shooting it.

Today’s Scene

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If you want to watch My Own Private Idaho at home, you can find it here.

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