6 Filmmaking Tips From Gus Van Sant

Advice from the eclectic auteur behind films such as ‘Good Will Hunting,’ ‘Elephant,’ and ‘Milk.’

Perhaps the most enigmatic member of the wave of American independent filmmakers that broke out onto the scene in the late ’80s and early ’90s, Gus Van Sant is no easier to pin down today than he was when his debut feature premiered more than 30 years ago. His directorial career since then has covered everything from crowd-pleasing feel-good dramas (Finding Forrester, Good Will Hunting) to biopics (Milk, Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot) to the rather costly and controversial “experiment” that was his shot-for-shot remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.

Van Sant, born in Louisville, Kentucky, and raised in upper-middle-class suburbia, attended the Rhode Island School of Design with the intention of pursuing painting before switching to the more “moneyed” world of filmmaking as a “safety bailout” (everything is truly relative). After making short films for several years, he premiered his feature debut Mala Noche in 1986, followed by the back-to-back critical successes of Drugstore Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho. His path from there has featured some flops (Even Cowgirls Get The Blues) and plenty of award winners (the Palme d’Or winning school shooting drama Elephant and Oscar winners Good Will Hunting and Milk, which each took home two trophies).

All things considered, Van Sant’s career has been full of as many twists and turns as a good thriller, and shows no signs of stopping any time soon. Here are six lessons he’s learned along the way:

You Have To Con People

In a 1993 interview with BOMB magazine, Van Sant responded to the question of what a director does by answering:

“You have to con people. A lot of directing is trying to orchestrate a magic trick, to give the appearance of something happening that isn’t actually happening. That’s the drama.”

He goes on to elaborate: “The responsibility of the director orchestrating this — ultimately it’s like a magic show where you saw the girl in half, it looks like she’s really in half, and she’s not, hopefully. As a director, you’ve gone through experiences where it didn’t work, where the audience didn’t fall for the sawing the girl in half routine, so you watch for the things that are going to show up, where you go: ‘Wait a minute! We can’t do that, because the last time I did that it didn’t work.’ You watch out for these things coming at you that are going to blow the whole effect. Sometimes it’s the screenplay not being ready, that could be a signal for the director to say, the magic trick at the end isn’t going to work. The script isn’t in the right proportions, things aren’t happening at the right pace. The protagonists aren’t being challenged, they aren’t coming to life…

“Orson Welles was an amateur magician. I always found that significant I think as a theater producer/director, he was putting on a magic show that extended into dramatics. In the same way, his films were attended to by a sleight of hand artist. Making things seem a certain way when the things he had weren’t really the things he was showing you. All storytelling is based on that. It’s all related to the guy telling a story around a campfire. Stanley Kubrick says people who make bad movies get bad reviews and get drummed out of the business, but if a caveman told a bad story, he’d probably have been stoned to death. He’s the same guy, an entertainer.”

Gus Van Sant directing ‘Elephant’ (New Line Cinema)

Keep It Real

“Even if you’re a brilliant writer,” Van Sant says in a 2003 interview with Film Comment:

“Real people talking is always better. And actors can make up the lines as they go along.

“Doing Elephant, it was interesting to see that energy that you get from people who are great actors but have never really done it before, so they really don’t know their limitations. I cast real high school kids, and most of them play themselves. The Italian neorealists cast real people, and they were getting the same stuff back then. So if you go about it this way, you reap the reward of this heightened reality that you don’t ever get in a dramatic piece working with experienced people.”

Gus Van Sant directing ‘Promised Land’ (Focus Features)

Make Your Own Decisions

Talking with fellow director Kevin Smith earlier this year at the IMDb Studio at Sundance, Van Sant said that the best advice he could give filmmakers was as follows:

“I think for young filmmakers, it’s like[…] what Robert Towne said, ‘Nobody knows anything.’ It’s sort of like, what you’re thinking yourself — make your own decisions and try not to listen too hard to everyone’s advice, because you’ll go crazy.”

You can watch the full interview clip here:

The post 6 Filmmaking Tips From Gus Van Sant appeared first on Film School Rejects.