Passing Strangers (1974)

Arthur J. Bressan Jr. and Richard Locke

Robert (Robert Adams), a 28 year-old man places a personal ad in the Bay Area Reporter in San Francisco. He uses Walt Whitman's "To a Stranger" poem as his message. It's answered by 18 year-old Tom (Richard Camagey), living at home with his parents. Parts of the film are narrated (Bob Middleton and Edward Guthman) by their correspondence until they finally meet. Robert becomes Tom's mentor. There are vintage lingering shots of "the scene" on Polk St. in the early 1970's, some great shots of Gay Freedom Day, a trippy hippie scene with a young Richard Locke in a bath house, and director Arthur J. Bressan Jr. has a non-sexual role early in the film as the projectionist. On Polk Street the actors are: Grant Ditxler, Patrick Lee, Leon McGraw, and Darrell Mascall. The bubble sequence features: David Dehr, Terry Hunter, Chuck Feil, John Thompson, Richard Klingerman, Ralph Osborn, and Wayne Woodcock. Richard Locke, Ralph Osborn, Wayne Woodcock, and Eddie Cadena appear in the bath house.

In Walt Whitman’s 1855 “The Leaves of Grass” there is a series of 45 poems called "Calamus", which celebrate and promote the theme of love. In “To a Stranger” Whitman expresses a general sense of longing directed at the world in general and he not only alludes to the love between a man and a woman but to the beautiful and sane affection between a man and a man. It reveals Whitman’s inner conflicts with his sexuality and his yearning to want to express his sexuality openly without restrictions imposed by society.

To a Stranger

PASSING stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you,
You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me, as of a dream,)
I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,
All is recall’d as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured,
You grew up with me, were a boy with me, or a girl with me,
I ate with you, and slept with you--your body has become not yours only, nor left my body mine only,
You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass--you take of my beard, breast, hands, in return,
I am not to speak to you--I am to think of you when I sit alone, or wake at night alone,
I am to wait--I do not doubt I am to meet you again,
I am to see to it that I do not lose you.

"Passing Strangers" is completely unavailable. You cannot watch it, and I have not seen it, so I cannot evaluate its merits. But it did win first prize at San Francisco's Erotic Film Festival, and one reviewer regards it as a "great film". Jeffrey Olmstead composed the music score, and Arthur J. Bressan Jr. directed.

Colegas (1982)

"Colegas" is a candid study of contemporary teen friendships set in Spain, specifically the suburbs of Madrid. Antonio (Antonio Flores) and José (José Luis Manzano) have been best friends for most of their 18 years. They've drifted into a jobless lifestyle of the young, waiting for a future. Rosario (Rosario Flores) is Antonio's sister and José's girlfriend. The three are inseparable and all three face a tough job search. When Rosario discovers that she is pregnant by José, a chain of events is set in motion. While she's trying to decide her options of keeping the child, abortion, or adoption sale, the two best friends are forced into street hustling and an ever-expanding life of crime, drug running to raise money to pay for her decision. This is all balanced against their relationships with their respective families--mostly with José's brother's open sexuality and his parent's disapproval of his friends. As problems develop it seems that it will cost them much more than just money. José and Antonio decide to engage in prostitution in a gay bath house. The ending has a good and a tragic outcome for both friends.

This buddy film about lost teenagers in modern Madrid examines drug abuse, unplanned pregnacies, and awkward homosexual feelings in an unflinching and erotic style. Directed and co-authored by Spain's most outspoken filmmaker, the movie features fast pacing, sympathetic characters, harsh language, and abundant male nudity. Its believable, sympathetic, and draws parallels to American culture. Miguel Botafogo composed the music score. The screenplay was written by Gonzalo Goicoechea and Eloy de la Iglesia, who also directed. In Spanish with English subtitles. The English title is "Pals".

Я люблю тебя (2004)

In Moscow Timofei Pechorin (Evgenii Koriakovskii), a talented and upwardly mobile creator of advertising campaigns, begins a romance with Vera Kirillova (Lyubov Tolkalina), a TV news anchor with celebrity status. Their personal and professional successes are shown in the film with an artificial glossiness that suggests their happiness may be defined by their media work. Before they have time to work out their relationship, Timofei's well-ordered world is thrown into turmoil by the sudden arrival of the young Kalmyk Uloomji (Damir Badmaev), who falls on Timofei's moving car and is slightly injured. Timofei is forced to take in the unregistered migrant to avoid complications with the police. In a remarkably short time, the Asian youth uses his mysterious and mystical Eastern power to seduce his host, thus setting up an uncomfortable but inevitable ménage a trois. Vera struggles to comprehend their bond and her boyfriend's erratic behavior. She is dragged reluctantly into a bizarre love triangle. Before long, all three lives unravel, with a visit to a Buddhist healer, a three-way in the bathroom of a gay bar, a faked death, and a kidnapping.

"Ya lyublyu tebya" was more than five years in the making. It's a fable about an unusual love triangle, sweet, luscious, charming, delightful, and almost-psychedelic. The film is structured as a hodgepodge of contrasts and themes that do not seem to form any coherent artistic whole. It becomes more far-fetched with each twist of romantic fate. The artificiality of contemporary life in Moscow is juxtaposed with the more natural lifestyle of Uloomji, who seems to have a spiritual bond with the animal kingdom but can make no sense of an ATM machine. Particularly funny are two cabbies' sly references to "you know who," a certain someone high up in the government purported to be secretly gay. Overall, the film is well acted, has a good fast and choppy story, and is sometimes deliberately cheesy. Richardas Norvila composed the music score. Olga Stolpovskaja, Alisa Tanskaya, and Dmitry Troitsky wrote the screenplay. Olga Stolpovskaja and Dmitry Troitsky directed. In Russian with English subtitles. The English title is "You I Love".

Wittgenstein (1993)

Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (Clancy Chassay) is shown as a boy living a repressive upbringing, with his family wearing Roman togas. When the grown-up Wittgenstein (Karl Johnson) leaves to study under Bertrand Russell (Michael Gough) at the University of Cambridge, he begins to investigate the nature and limits of language. Wittgenstein's homosexuality is depicted when, after World War I, he falls in love with a poor philosophy student, Johnny (Kevin Collins).

His friends Bertrand Russell and Lady Ottoline Morrell (Tilda Swinton) lounge in silly costumes as they discuss the correspondence of Wittgenstein (Karl Johnson). An alien dwarf (Nabil Shaban), painted green and decorated with antennae and a xylophone, engages Wittgenstein in debates that illustrate some of the philosopher's thinking. When the young Wittgenstein conducts experiments in aeronautics, he is seen wielding two lawn sprinklers and angelic white wings. Wittgenstein's love for movies in general and Carmen Miranda in particular is explained with the image of a young boy wearing 3-D glasses, sucking on sweet ices and staring at a projector's beam in an empty theater.

Although the film explains itself now and then, director Derek Jarman seems to presume his audience is familiar with the obscure philosopher's life and times. The filmmaker devotes far more to three of the principals carrying colored balls to illustrate the paths of the sun, moon and earth, than he does to delivering information more directly. Wittgenstein is portrayed in dynamic terms, engaging in stunts and conversations that define his thinking rather than serving as the subject of a portrait. Every so often the film's dark wit works, as when the dying Wittgenstein tells John Maynard Keynes (John Quentin), "I'd quite like to have composed a philosophical work that consisted only of jokes."
"Why didn't you do it?" Keynes inquires.
"Sadly, I had no sense of humor," Wittgenstein says.

The film is emotional only when it describes Wittgenstein's relationships with his male lovers, and it reverberates with echoes of the present. "Philosophy is a sickness of the mind," says the worried Wittgenstein, who at one point finds himself in a birdcage, accompanied by a caged parrot. "I shouldn't infect too many young men." At its conclusion, the film's playful and more heartfelt aspects are fused in morbidly beautiful imagery representing the philosopher's death. The dwarf has his place in the last moments of "Wittgenstein" too. Finally, Wittgenstein's death at an early age from prostate cancer is shown.

"Wittgenstein" is a humorous portrait and series of sketches of Austrian-born British philosopher Ludwig Josef Johan Wittgenstein (1889-1951), a homosexual, and an intuitive, eccentric, moody, proud, and perfectionist thinker generally regarded as a genius. This dramatization of a philosophical giant shows a fascinating personality of a gay man who was ashamed of his sexuality. It's not played out in a traditional setting, but against a black backdrop where the actors and props are placed, as if in a theater setting. The film is visually beautiful and surreal, stylish, with perfect lighting, wild colors, and elegant music. Terry Eagleton's original screenplay was heavily rewritten by director Derek Jarman, radically altering the style and structure, although retaining much of Eagleton's dialogue. Jan Latham-Koenig composed the music score. Ken Butler, Terry Eagleton, and Derek Jarman wrote the screenplay.

A Un Dios Desconocido (1978)

Most of this film is the contemporary memoir of a middle-aged homosexual magician named José (Héctor Alterio). It opens in Granada in 1936 when José as a small boy is seduced by an older boy who is living in the elegant old house where poet Garcia Lorca is murdered. Fast forward. José is an actor and magician, a discreet homosexual who lives alone and has an occasional affair with Miguel (Xabier Elorriaga), a young politician who finds it more convenient in Madrid's high society to marry than assert his homosexuality. José is a man romantically possessed and obsessed by his childhood in Granada during the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in the spring of 1936.

Now in his 50s, José returns to Granada and relives his childhood there. He recalls the time when he fell in love with Garcia Lorca and had an affair with one of Lorca's own lovers. Memories come flooding back to him, of youthful sexual conquest, of Lorca's murder at the hands of Francos' agents, and his own early homosexual affairs. José's entire life is colored by his obsessions with Garcia Lorca, his unknown God, to whom the film is dedicated.

José travels twice to Granada. First, he revisits a woman who is also obsessed with Garcia Lorca's memory, and steals a photograph of the boy with whom he had his first sexual encounter. Later, José returns to Madrid to a party in search of his youth, and meets a pianist with whom he had sexual relations many years before but now does not remember. In Madrid, he is a man tormented by his past and in search of peace. Listening to a taped recording of Garcia Lorca's famous "Ode to Walt Whitman", he desires nothing more than to face the rest of his life in loneliness, although his recent lover, Miguel has returned to his bed and wants to continue their affair. José realizes that he is really all alone in their world, alone with his God.

This film is a complex memoir about an aging man coming to terms with his homosexuality and mortality. It was a pioneer in its frank and mature examination of homosexuality. In fact, it astonished some European critics for its candid, unhysterical treatment of homosexuality, but the movie seems self-interested, even arrogant. It's lovely to look at, highly cultivated and poised, but very difficult to get to know. A handsome, densely packed, evocative movie, it makes a lot of demands on anyone who views it and it has to be prepared for.

The film is full of secret signs and mysterious associations. Over it all hangs the ghost of Federico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936), the Spanish poet, playwright, and political activist who was murdered in 1936 by the Falangists who hated his homosexuality as much as his left-wing politics. Luis de Pablo composed the music. The screenplay was written by Elias Querejeta and Jaime Chavarri based on a script by Francisco J. Lucio. Jaime Chavarri directed. In Spanish with English subtitiles. For some reason subtitles are missing in two key sequences in which José plays a tape of himself speaking Garcia Lorca's poetry. Possibly the director thought it would be a sacrilege to translate the poet's lines as mere subtitles. The English title is "To an Unknown God".

Schatten der Engel (1976)

Lily Brest (Ingrid Craven) is a beautiful, consumptive streetwalker with few clients, who are intimidated by her beauty. She loves her sadistic gay pimp Raoul (Rainer Werner Fassbinder) who gambles away what little she earns. Lily is so depressed that she strangles a kitten, and the pimp is so glum that when Lily returns home, she finds him lying on the floor playing with the kitten's corpse. Tired of her lonely life, she looks for a way out. Even that act serves the local corrupt powers. Then, after one special encounter, she begins talking to them, rather than sleeping with them--and becomes very successful.

The town's power broker, the "Rich Jew" real-estate speculator (Klaus Löwitsch), discovers she is a good listener, so she's soon busy. Raoul imagines grotesque sex scenes between Lily and the Jew, then he leaves her for a male lover. Her parents, bitter ex-Nazi father Herr Müller (Adrian Hoven) a cabaret singer in drag and her wheelchair-bound mother Luise (Annemarie Düringer), offer no refuge. Even though all have a philosophical bent, the other whores reject Lily because she tolerates everyone, including men. However, Lily ultimately realizes that there's a high price to pay for being privy to the dark secrets of others. She learns that Raoul has been gravely wounded in a barroom brawl. "He'll live," Lily's father assures her. "Does he want to?" Lily inquires. She and Raoul are caught up in an emotional hurricane which results in their deaths.

This is the film version of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's suicidally grim stage play, "Der Müll, die Stadt und der Tod" ("The Garbage, the City and Death"). The anguish and suffering of a trio of outcasts is shown in the movie, based on Fassbinder's controversial and possibly anti-Semitic play. Unfortunately, the sardonically stereotypical characters are basically flat, and the film is quite stagebound with actors staring into the distance as they recite the aphorisms that constitute Fassbinder's dialogue. Some examples: "Where there is no contempt, there is no love." "Ugly persons despise the sweat on beauty's forehead." "When no one sings, silence reigns." "The thought of death makes me smile. What else can one do?"

Controversy surrounded the Jewish businessman, who is always referred to as "the Rich Jew". Ultimately, the story is more concerned with the outsider status of this businessman and the prostitute he hires to listen to him and occasionally perform in a mock wedding ceremony. Both find themselves out of place in an environment dominated by prostitutes, pimps, corrupt policemen, and perverse businessmen. Gottfried Hüngsberg and Peer Raben composed the music score. Daniel Schmid and Rainer Werner Fassbinder wrote the screenplay. Daniel Schmid directed. This Swiss/German production is in German with English subtitles. The English title is "Shadow of Angels".

Los Placeres Ocultos (1977)

Eduardo (Simón Andreu) is a middle-aged successful banker and closeted homosexual who falls for Miguel (Tony Fuentes) a poor handsome 18 year-old Spanish boy who's heterosexual. Eduardo brings Miguel into his life although the physical attraction is only one way. Miguel is accepting of the situation and Eduardo manages to get himself involved in his life through a series of manipulative moves. The boy is thankful for his new job and motorcycle, but once he realizes the gifts are an attempt to get inside his pants, the friendship is brought to a halt--that is until some "fag-bashers" rob the banker and Miguel realizes that he cares. The two then agree to a Platonic, father and son-like relationship, which proves beneficial to all involved. Miguel even brings his hot tempered girlfriend into the arrangement. Local gossip and prejudice make it a bit hard to maintain, though. The three seem to be working it out when the realities of the outside world intrude. It's tragic with devastating consequences for the young man.

This complex updating of "Death in Venice" was the first gay film to be released in post-Franco Spain. It's a compelling drama, an intelligent and insightful look at cross-generational love and a doomed relationship. Director Eloy de la Iglesia links sexual power to financial power by implying that Eduardo’s influence as a bank manager allows him to corrupt boys. There is also a Marxist sentiment when Miguel tells an activist that he won’t let anyone take advantage of him, and the activist responds that he basically has more things to worry about than the gays: “Maybe you’ve been selling more important things and don’t even know it.” Carmelo A. Bernaola composed the music score, and the screenplay was written by director Eloy de la Iglesia and Rafael Sánchez Campoy. In Spanish with no subtitles. The English title is ”Hidden Pleasures”.

Echte Kerle (1996)

Christoph Schwenk (Christoph M. Ohrt) is a macho homophobic plainclothes police detective in Frankfurt who does stakeouts spying on criminals with his partners Mike (Oliver Stokowski) and Helen (Carin C. Tietze). One night Christoph finds his fiancée with another lover, a bodybuilder. He loses her, along with all of his belongings, and his home, and is thrown out of their apartment. After a massive car wreck, he gets very drunk in a gay bar and wakes up in the morning in the bed of the cute and naked Edgar (Tim Bergmann), a gay auto mechanic. The big question that torments Christoph is did he or didn't he. Confused at what led him to Edgar's bed and what he may have done, the straight but homeless Christoph takes up Edgar’s offer and moves in with him.

Edgar deals in stolen cars, and Christoph is not pleased that Edgar has fallen in love with him. Working with the beautiful, self-confident Helen, but living with a gay guy makes him uncertain about his sexuality and his job as a cop. Helen is also attracted to him. But rumors fly at the office because he has been seen with the gay car-dealer. The best scene in the movie takes place at the police station, when two other officers try to out Christoph as gay. He answers, "In this funhouse where one is beating his wife, the next one is blackmailing thieves, and the third is having sex with illegal immigrant girls. In this funhouse, I will play the gay one from now on." Edgar's weekend lover Marco (Andreas Pietschmann) causes Christoph to question his surprising jealousy. The three police officers become friendly with Edgar and Marco and when it seems they may be involved in the car theft ring under stakeout, they each find it easier to look the other way and support each other.

Though Edgar's mother expresses the motto of the film ("These days, everything is possible isn't it?"), the end is not a happy one for gay viewers hoping that Christoph will fall in love with Edgar. On the contrary, the sudden ending pairs off the various members of this story in a warm and funny way in a manner some may find predictable. Christoph gets Helen, and Edgar goes off with a guy who had been only a minor character in the film.

This lively romantic comedy of sexual errors is witty, funny, light, entertaining, insightful, well-paced, and features good acting with a message. It's filled with humor and sensitivity, is slickly creative, and the characters are not stereotypes. Peter W. Schmitt composed the music score. The screenplay was written by Rudolf Bergmann and Rolf Silber, who also directed. In German with English subtitles. The English title is "Regular Guys".

Նռան գույնը (1968)

One of the greatest masterpieces of the 20th century, Sergei Parajanov's "Nran Guyne" is a biography of the Armenian poet and troubadour Aratiun Sajadian (1712-1795), known as Sayat Nova (the "King of Song"). The film reveals his life more through his poetry than a conventional narration of important events in his life. We see the poet grow up, fall in love, enter a monastery and die. But his rise from carpet weaver to archbishop and martyr is depicted in the context of images from Parajanov's imagination and Sayat Nova's poems, poems that are seen and rarely heard. Sofiko Chiaureli plays 6 roles, both male and female, and Sergei Parajanov wrote, directed, edited, choreographed, worked on costumes, design and decor, and virtually every aspect of this revolutionary work with no dialogue or camera movement. The film relies very little on a storyline, plot, drama, or acting.

Quotes from the film (mostly from Sayat Nova's poetry):

* "I am the man whose life and soul are torture."
* "From the colors and aromas of this world, my childhood made a poet's lyre and offered it to me."
* "We were searching for ourselves in each other."

Parajanov said his inspiration was "the Armenian illuminated miniatures. I wanted to create that inner dynamic that comes from inside the picture, the forms and the dramaturgy of color." He also said, "It wasn't the established canons of the fate of the poet-conflict with the tsar, conflict at court, the banishing of the poet from the palace, worldly life, the monastery--these were not the point of my scenario, but the colors, the accessories, the details of daily life that accompanied the poetry, the art in life...The world that accompanied the poet." Once he made a speech in Minsk in which he asserted that the Armenian public very likely did not understand "Sayat Nova", but then said that people "are going to this picture as to a holiday."

This is an absolutely extraordinary film, especially considering the conditions under which Paradjanov made it. Regarded as a masterpiece by Federico Fellini, Jean-Luc Godard, and Michelangelo Antonioni, it is a feast of color, human beauty, abstract design, and music. It was censored, refused an export license, and banned in the former USSR but made the Top 10 list in Cahiers du Cinéma in 1982 and Top 100 in Time Out. Is this a gay film? "Nran Guyne" pushed Soviet authorities to imprison Sergei Paradjanov for homosexuality. In 1974 he was convicted and sentenced to 6 years in a hard labor prison camp in the Ukraine. He admitted in court that he was "partially homosexual" and his crime was "homosexuality and illegal trafficking in religious icons". The VHS version of this film has much better video quality. The DVD seems to be from an old print that was left in the sun for the last 25 years. Tigran Mansuryan composed the music, and Sofiko Chiaureli provides the narration. The language is Armenian, and versions with English subtitles can be found with difficulty. The Armenian title is "Nran Guyne" (originally "Sayat Nova"), and the English title is "The Colour of Pomegranates" while the American title is "Red Pomegranates".

My Own Private Idaho (1991)

Mike Waters (River Phoenix) is a gay hustler standing alone on a deserted stretch of highway somewhere in Idaho. He starts talking to himself and notices that the road looks “like someone’s face, like a f**ked-up face.” He suffers from narcolepsy, experiences an episode and dreams of his mother comforting him as he replays home movies of his childhood in his mind. Mike wakes up to being fellated by a client. After his hotel encounter, he returns to his favorite spots to pick up potential clients. A wealthy older woman Alena (Grace Zabriskie) takes him to her mansion where he meets two fellow hustlers she also hired. One of them is Scott Favor (Keanu Reeves), Mike’s best friend. Mike is in love with Scott, who insists he is straight and his hustling on the streets is only temporary. While preparing to have sex with the woman, Mike experiences another narcoleptic fit and awakens the next day with Scott in Portland, Oregon.

Scott: I never thought I could be a real model, you know fashion-s**t, cause I'm better at full body stuff. It's okay so long as the photographer doesn't come on to you and expect something for no pay I'm trying to make a living, you know, and I like to be professional 'Course if the guy wants to pay me, then s**t-yeah. Here I am for him. I'll sell my ass, I do it on the street all the time for cash. And I'll be on the cover of a book. It's when you start doing things for free, that you start to grow wings. Isn't that right, Mike.
Mike: What?
Scott: Wings, Michael. You grow wings, and become a fairy.

Mike: (in a coffee shop) How'd we get home?
Scott: That German guy. Hans. He brought you downtown, you were passed out. He said he was heading to Portland, so I asked him for a ride.
Mike: For some reason I'm forgetting a German guy named Hans.
Scott: Well. You were sleeping.
Mike: How much do you make off me while I'm sleeping?
Scott: Just a ride, Mike. I don't make anything. What, you think that I sell your body while you are asleep?
Mike: Yeah.
Scott: No, Mike. I'm on your side.

Mike and Scott are soon reunited with their mentor Bob Pigeon (William Richert), a middle-aged man and father figure to a gang of street kids and hustlers who live in an abandoned apartment building. Scott, the son of the mayor of Portland, admits to Bob in private that when he turns 21, he will inherit his father’s fortune and reject the street hustler lifestyle. Mike yearns to find his mother and he and Scott leave Portland for Idaho to visit Mike’s older brother Richard (James Russo), who lives in an old trailer. Richard tries to tell Mike who his real father is but Mike says that he knows it is Richard. He tells Mike that their mother works as a hotel maid and when Mike and Scott visit the hotel they find out that she went to Italy to find her own family.

Bob: Scott. When you inherit your fortune, on your twenty-first birthday, let's see... how far away is this?
Scott: One week away, Bob, just one more week.
Bob: Let's not call ourselves robbers, but Diana's foresters. Gentlemen of the shade. Minions of the Moon. Men of good government.
Scott: When I turn twenty-one, I don't want any more of this life. My mother and father will be surprised at the incredible change. It will impress them more when such a f**k-up like me turns good than if I had been a good son all along. All the past years I will think of as one big vacation. At least it wasn't as boring as schoolwork. All my bad behavior I'm going to throw away to pay my debt. I will change when everybody expects it the least.

Richard: That guy. He was your real dad, Mike.
Mike: Don't f**k me in the head anymore man! I know the f**king truth! I know who my f**king real dad is!
Richard: Who?... Who?
Mike: Dick, you. Richard, you're my dad. I know that.
Richard: You know too much.

Mike: What do I mean to you?
Scott: What do you mean to me? Mike, you're my best friend.
Mike: I know, man, I know... I know... I know I'm your friend. We're good friends, and that's good to be, you know, good friends. That's a good thing.
Scott: So...
Mike: So I just...(pauses) That's okay. We're going to be friends.
Scott: I only have sex with a guy for money.
Mike: Yeah, I know, I mean...
Scott: And two guys can't love each other.
Mike: Yeah. Well, I don't know, I mean, I mean for me, I could love someone even if I, you know, wasn't paid for it. I love you, and... you don't pay me.
Scott: Mike...
Mike: I really wanna kiss you, man. (pauses) Well goodnight man. (pauses again) I love you, though. (pauses again) You know that. I do love you.
Scott: (moves some things out of his way) Alright, come here, Mike. (pats the ground) Let's just see. It could be fun. Just gonna see, come on.
(Mike moves over towards Scott and lowers his head. They presumably start to kiss)

In Italy, Mike and Scott find the country farmhouse where Mike’s mother worked as a maid and an English tutor. The young woman Carmella (Chiara Caselli) who lives there tells Mike that his mother returned to the US months ago. Carmella and Scott fall in love and return to the US leaving Mike to return home on his own. Back in Portland, Bob and his gang confront a newly reformed Scott at a posh restaurant but he rejects them. That night, Bob has a fatal heart attack. The next day, the hustlers hold a rowdy funeral for Bob while in the same cemetery, a few yards away, Scott attends a solemn funeral for his recently deceased father.

Mike is back on a deserted stretch of Idaho highway. He falls into another narcoleptic stupor and two strangers pull up in a truck, steal Mike’s belongings and drive away. Moments later, a car pulls up and a driver picks Mike up, places him in the vehicle and drives off.

(last lines)
Mike: I'm a connoisseur of roads. I've been tasting roads my whole life. This road will never end. It probably goes all around the world.

This melancholy film loosely based on Shakespeare's "Henry IV", Part 1, is a dreamlike, eerie, haunting, engaging, and often surreal masterpiece. The plot is loose, cinematography is lush, and River Phoenix gives one of the best performances of his tragically short career. It's a marvelous balancing act: the movie feels grungy and and as transcendent as poetry at the same time. There is a lot of vulgar language, nudity and simulated sex. Strangely, at no point the film is AIDS mentioned. The omission must be deliberate. It's not enough to assume that these guys practice safe-sex because Mike is seen carrying a condom at one point. Whatever the explanation, AIDS simply does not exist in MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO.

Film critic Roger Ebert wrote, "The achievement of this film is that it wants to evoke that state of drifting need, and it does. There is no mechanical plot that has to grind to a Hollywood conclusion, and no contrived test for the heroes to pass." The origins of "My Own Private Idaho" come from John Rechy's 1963 novel "City of Night", which features characters who are street hustlers that do not admit to being gay.

The cast also includes: Rodney Harvey (Gary), Michael Parker (Digger), Jessie Thomas (Denise), Flea (Budd), Tom Troupe (Jack Favor), Udo Kier (Hans), Sally Curtice (Jane Lightwork), Robert Lee Pitchlynn (Walt), Mickey Cottrell (Daddy Carroll), Wade Evans (Wade), Matthew Ebert (Coverboy), Scott Patrick Green (Coverboy / Cafe Kid), Tom Cramer (Coverboy), Vana O'Brien (Sharon Waters), (Shaun Jordan (Cafe Kid), Shawn Jones (Cafe Kid), George Conner (Bad George), Oliver Kirk (Indian Cop), Stanley Hainsworth (Dirtman), Joshua Halladay (Baby Mike), Douglas Tollenen (Little Richard), Steven Clark Pachosa (Hotel Manager), Lannie Swerdlow (Disco Manager), Wally Gaarsland (Rock Promoter), Brian Wilson (Rock Promoter), Mark Weaver (Rock Promoter), Conrad "Bud" Montgomery (Rock Promoter), Pat Patterson (Cop), Steve Vernelson (Cop), Mike Cascadden (Cop), Eric Hull (Mayor's Aide), James A. Arling (Minister), James Caviezel (Airline Clerk), Ana Cavinato (Stewardess), Melanie Mosely (Lounge Hostess), Greg Murphy (Carl), David Reppinhagen (Yuppie at Jake's), Tiger Warren (Himself), Massimo Di Cataldo (Italian Street Boy), Pao Pei Andreoli (Italian Street Boy), Robert Egon (Italian Street Boy), Paolo Baiocco (Italian Street Boy), Mario Stracciarolo (Mike's Italian Client), Heather J. Braden (Yuppie at Jakes), Kirsten Kuppenbender (Portland Street Girl), Jesse Merz (Mean Kid #2), Tom Peterson, Eli Swenson (Street Hustler), and Gus Van Sant (Man behind hotel counter). Bill Stafford composed the incidental music. Gus Van Sant wrote the screenplay derived from William Shakespeare's stage play "Henry IV". He wrote the original screenplay in the 1970s when he was living in Hollywood. Directed by Gus Van Sant.

This milestone independent film is now available on DVD from the Criterion Collection. It includes a two-hour interview with Van Sant (audio only), a new making-of retrospective, interviews galore, deleted scenes, and an impressive booklet with essays and printed interviews.