Gus Van Sant Biography

Gus Van Sant Jr. (born July 24, 1952 in Louisville, Kentucky) is an American film director, photographer, musician, and author. He currently lives in Portland, Oregon.

His early career was devoted to directing television commercials in the Pacific Northwest. Van Sant is openly gay, and many of his movies include gay themes or characters.
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Some of the movies he has written or directed include an adaptation of Tom Robbins' novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, which featured a diverse cast (Keanu Reeves, Roseanne Barr, Uma Thurman, k.d. lang, and cameos by William S Burroughs and Heather Graham, among others); My Own Private Idaho also starred Reeves as well as the late River Phoenix. As an actor, Van Sant has appeared in a cameo on screen in Kevin Smith's Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.

Van Sant was nominated for a Best Director Academy Award in 1998 for Good Will Hunting, and won Best Director and Palme d'Or at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival for his film Elephant.

He has written the screenplays for most of his early movies, and has written one novel, Pink (ISBN 0385493533). A book of his photography has also been published called 108 Portraits (ISBN 0944092225).

As a musician, Van Sant has released two albums: Gus Van Sant and 18 Songs About Golf.

Since Gus Van Sant first started releasing the films of his "death trilogy" (consisting of "Gerry" (2002), "Elephant" (2003), and "Last Days" (2005)), his work has been compared endlessly with that of director Guy Ritchie. While Van Sant uses Wall Street cinematography, Ritchie uses Wall Street dialogue. No word has come at this point as to whether or not they will collaborate in a remake of Oliver Stone's "Wall Street" (1987). Van Sant has been known to mock Ritchie's film "Swept Away" (2002).

GUS VAN SANT PICTURES

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GUS VAN SANT BIOGRAPHY