Meanwhile, Keanu Reeves’ character in My Own Private Idaho came from Shakespeare. Mala Noche was like an autobiography except its writer, Walt Curtis, was a poet-he didn’t usually write prose. They were people the writer of the novel had lived with that he wrote about. Well, in Drugstore Cowboy, for instance, they were real people, but it’s a fictional story. What appeals to you about making movies about real people’s lives? Those characters would all have been on the streets at the same time, which is kinda cool.Ī lot of your films have been biographical films, in one way or another. All those stories were happening in the mid-’70s. The My Own Private Idaho, Mala Noche and Drugstore Cowboy characters were also Portland street characters. We don’t really show that part of John’s life so much, but he was a street character.
Van Sant: Yes, I do, because a lot of the characters in my stories have been Portland street characters. Observer: Do you see a connection between John Callahan’s story and the stories you’ve told in your previous films?
