đ§ Gus Van Sant: âYou Have To Be Obsessedâ
The Oscar-nominated director of âGood Will Huntingâ and âMilkâ is back with âDead Manâs Wire,â his first film in almost a decade
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Gus Van Sant loves to work under pressure â even though you might not expect that from the soft-spoken 73-year-old director behind such idiosyncratic films as 1991âs My Own Private Idaho, 1997âs Good Will Hunting and 2008âs Milk, none of which would easily qualify as âfrenetic.â
But when Van Santâs producer friend Cassian Elwes came to him with a project last year that absolutely had to go into production within a matter of months, the Oscar-nominated filmmaker took that tight deadline and ran with it.
âIt was so exciting to basically just leave where we were standing and go to Louisville, Kentucky, where we shot,â Van Sant told me and my colleague Christopher Rosen when we sat down with the director live onstage at the Denver Film Festival last week (Van Sant received the festivalâs Excellence in Directing Award following a screening of his latest film, Dead Manâs Wire).
Set in Indianapolis but filmed in Louisville, Dead Manâs Wire recounts the wild true story of Tony Kiritsis, who, in 1977, took his mortgage broker hostage with a shotgun and became a national TV celebrity in the process. (The film draws its title from the device Kiritsis fashioned for his weapon and tied around the neck of the broker, Richard Hall. If Kiritsis were killed at any point during the hostage standoff, the shotgun would discharge, killing Hall.) When Van Sant initially received Austin Kolodneyâs script, it included links to clips of Kiritsisâ actual 911 calls. Upon listening, the director was drawn in not just by the chaos of the situation but also by Kiritsisâ energy and surprising charisma.
âHe was upset and he was angry, but he was also cracking jokes,â Van Sant told us, as you can hear in todayâs episode of the Prestige Junkie podcast. When casting Bill SkarsgĂ„rd (the It franchise, Nosferatu), 35, to play Kiritsis, even though heâs a full 10 years younger than the real person, Van Sant kept coming back to the actorâs âmysteriousness, which you see in all his films.â The fact that Van Sant had directed SkarsgĂ„rdâs father, Stellan SkarsgĂ„rd, in Good Will Hunting, didnât hurt either.
In our wide-ranging conversation, Van Sant told us what keeps him coming back to movie sets after all these years (Dead Manâs Wire is his first feature since 2018), the deceptively simple primary job of a director and how he avoids âmutinyâ among the cast and crew. As a director, Van Sant says, âLeadership is kind of given to you â unless you start yelling at too many people and making enemies. Itâs not terribly hard. You just have to be obsessed with what you need to get. Everyone will share your obsession and wants to share your obsession. But you have to have the obsession.â
Hear much more from Van Sant on todayâs Prestige Junkie pod, which also includes my conversation with Vultureâs Joe Reid about the Oscar season underdogs weâre rooting for and why itâs worth keeping the faith even if nobody else is predicting the same thing â something Joe routinely tries to do as part of Prestige Junkie Pundits. (Joe currently has Train Dreams in first place for best picture, so itâs no wonder weâre good friends.)
As a reminder, you can now watch full episodes of the podcast on YouTube (including my conversation last week with Sydney Sweeney; has she been in the news lately?), and for even more of where all this came from, subscribe to Prestige Junkie After Party. For just $5 a month, youâll gain access to some great benefits, including the subscriber-only chat Iâm hosting today about our hot takes from Oscar seasons past and present. Plus, youâll also get to hear Fridayâs exclusive bonus episode, an actual all-star effort (Chris! Joe! Kara Warner! Sean McNulty!), linking the two things Americans love to obsess over most: the Oscars and the Super Bowl. Donât miss it!