Below left, Director Gus Van Sant (Photo, Gus Van Sant); Right, Doug Cooeyate as Johnny (Photo, Eric Edwards) occasional homosexual prostitution that scantily supports both Johnny and himself. The short book reels through Walt’s lustful affair with Pepper as a surrogate for Johnny, and his growing sympathy for the boys’ situation as illegal immigrants harassed by the law, speaking very little English, and unable to work in any job outside the fields. It is a dramatic, controversial tale of Walt’s shafting or wanting to shaft the boys, the boys shafting or wanting to shaft Walt, the boys being shafted by the laws and the complacent indifference of American society, and they, in turn, doing their best to return the favor. What on the surface is an occasionally pornographic saga of pederastic opportunism, develops into a continuously shifting daisy chain of exploitation with victims and villains switching roles with dizzying randomness. Mala Noche is, also and always, a strangely powerful, sometimes hideously honest, love story. The thing that happens when a book is “made” into a movie is always strange. It is not the same thing that happens when a violinist plays Mozart, or a jazz singer improvises on “Summertime.” In the original author’s mind it is often more akin to a painter interpreting a piece of music in colors and forms on canvas. The filmmaker freezes the work in his own specific visualization, excluding all other interpretations by all other readers, including the author. The film is the dream of the filmmaker. The original novel or story is sometimes reduced to little more than the indigestible irritant that triggered the dream. The film is an entirely new and separate entity, responsible for its own success or failure on totally different terms than is its written source. It is sometimes disappointing for the reader who sees the film to discover that his personal picture of characters or events has been replaced by someone else’s idea of the same things. It is always shocking to the writer to see his beloved infant transformed into a fish that swims away. Thirty-two-year-old Gus Van Sant started out, and continues, as a painter. A native of Connecticut, Van Sant moved to Portland when his father became president of White Stag, Inc. A graduate of Catlin Gabel School, wnere he made his first film in collaboration with awardwinning cinematographer Eric Edwards, Van Sant went on to study at the Rhode Island School of Design. Heading for Los Angeles after graduation, he snagged a job as right-hand man and general drudge for writer-director Ken Shapiro (Groove Tube), and began making short films of his own on the side. In LA, Gus wrote and directed his first feature-length film before he was 30. The ironic comedy, called Alice in Hollywood, Van Sant now sees as a failure. Viewer enthusiasm for the many strong points of this deftly-sketched satire leaves Van Sant pleased but dubious. His reaction to praise or laughter is a mild “Really?” with raised eyebrows. Dedicated to the idea of small-budget films—most of his films have cost less than $500 to make—Van Sant decided to save enough money to make another feature. “I wanted to come back to Portland to make a movie. I always liked it here. I seem to have more fun here than anywhere else.” Van Sant went to work on Madison Avenue producing television commercials and saving money. ‘Tve never been satisfied with my own writing skills," he says, “I think that was the major flaw in Alice in Hollywood." His most successful film so far is an ironic and precise adaptation of William Burroughs’ story, The Discipline of D.E. With the cooperation of Burroughs, Van Sant created seven minutes of grey-lit, black and white that is filled with strangely disconcerting wit. Shown at the New York Film Festival, the film’s rental fees bring Van Sant a small but regular income. In a discussion of Van Sant’s filmmaking style, Willamette Week quoted him as saying, “My stuff is funny and frightenClinton St. Quarterly 7
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