Brandon Judell
When A Kiss Is Not Just A Kiss: Gus Van Sant and Diane Keaton on Smooching in Elephant
If you're into films that probe the problems of young men and boys, you're probably into the cinema of Gus Van Sant. From Mala Noche (1985) to Drugstore Cowboy (1989), and from My Own Private Idaho (1991) to Good Will Hunting (1997) and Finding Forrester (2000), Van Sant has dissected the passions, sorrows, and needs of youthful gents with surging hormones.
With Elephant (currently playing at the Angelika), which is now nominated for best direction and best cinematography by the Independent Spirit Awards, Van Sant once again takes hold of his favorite subject: kids with dilemmas. His goal: to recreate a Columbine-like scenario and explore why two youngsters decided to shoot up their high school.
What Van Sant includes in his take on the subject——episodes
that other directors would not even have thought of——are an unattractive
girl too
self-conscious to change in her gym class plus a Gay/Straight Alliance meeting
where students chat about what it means to look gay, and if that is even
possible. There are also several characters whom you know are gay, even
if they aren't aware of it yet. But most controversial, and what everyone
who's seen Elephant is talking about, is the kiss the two boys, who turn
out be the mass murderers, have while taking a shower together. Are they
queer? Are they experimenting? It seems to come out of left field, but is
that any reason to complain about it? And if Van Sant wasn't openly gay,
would the kiss be considered homophobic?
I asked these and other questions of Mr. Van Sant and Diane
Keaton, who produced the film, at the Regency Hotel where he showed up to
promote this
masterful film.
After Mr. Van Sant took a seat, I asked if he would explain the controversial smooch. He could and did: "The kiss was a way to explain the boys' intimacy. It's not supposed to be that they are gay kids or that they have ever kissed each other before, but they're going some place where they're not going to return from. Things don't really matter any more. So this particular moment comes up, and one guy had never kissed anybody. It was a spontaneous thing that I think just came up imaginatively to describe something that I thought could be within their world. Just an incident that might be within their world."
NYTW: Did the two young actors understand why?
Van Sant: They probably understood the point
without me explaining. I don't remember explaining the point. I was explaining
that it was a kiss. That was
the big thing for them. They didn't want to do it. To them, it was like
the only negative thing in this perfect project. They got to play in a movie
but they
had to do this one scene. But they got kind of used to it, and they never
really asked why. I think maybe they knew why. (Turning to Keaton) Did you
read the first outline? There was an outline of about 20 pages I sent to
you and HBO, and everything was okay.
Keaton: Oh, God! I remember that.
Van Sant: There was one fear on HBO's part which was the kiss, which was a one sentence thing.
Keaton: Yeah, I don't understand that. I don't
understand the issue at all. Because in my feeling about this movie is that
the point is to raise questions,
and it's not to answer. By doing that you allow people to think of all kinds
of things. They can cram their heads with all kinds of thoughts. They can
come
to their own conclusions or ask their own questions. I think that's just
another point along the path. A very complex issue. A very haunting problem
that
we have with our own selves. All of us. There are films of violence we all
carry within us, so why do people in this particular instance go so far?
Why? Why? is the important question, and that's what is so great about Gus'
movie. My opinion is that it asks those questions. It doesn't give you the
answers, and that's something we really need more than ever now when people
are just ramming answers down our throats all the time. These answers are
frequently very simple-minded, and they beg no questions. They just sort
of go "Okay, that's it. That's it." So with Elephant, I feel like
thank God! It's like refreshing to have something like this around. We need
it. It's not even refreshing, That's the wrong word. It's something we need.
Something we really need desperately. So that's what I think.
NYTW: Will the public get it?
Van Sant: Yes, now there's the issue with showing
it to the public. But pretty much everybody I showed the film to, I would
ask about that one scene, and they always came up with the reasons for not
including it, but always ten of the wrong reasons such as fear of not being
politically correct by people misunderstanding it. I don't think that the
kiss is particularly like a gay kiss. But if you have like a very basic
knee-jerk reaction, the audience could
conceive it as a gay kiss, or as the filmmaker saying that these guys should
be in the Gay/Straight Alliance. If they were, maybe they wouldn't have
carried
through their plan. But I never really thought of it like that. When I was
in high school, the kids that kissed in the showers were always the straight
kids. The
boys that kissed each other at a party would be the two most popular boys
because they could do whatever they wanted. Nobody was challenging them.
Nowadays it might be different.
NYTW: Elephant was first screened in Europe to raves. Why have the folks over there embraced it so?
Van Sant: I always thought that the international
audience, maybe inspired by action films and westerns, liked to see Americans
shoot each other. I think
more so because of the style of Elephant, it would be perhaps easier to
take in Europe than in the United States." [Judell]
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