Drugstore Cowboy (1989)

User Rating:

7.3/10   

Director:

Gus Van Sant

Writers:

James Fogle (novel)
Gus Van Sant (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

October 1989 (USA)

Genre:

Crime | Drama

Plot:

A realistic road movie about a drug addict, his 'family', and their inevitable decline into crime.

Plot Keywords:

Drug | Motel | 1970s | Drugstore | Drug Addict

Awards:

10 wins & 4 nominations

Cast

Matt Dillon	...	Bob
Kelly Lynch	...	Dianne
James LeGros	...	Rick (as James Le Gros)
Heather Graham	...	Nadine
Eric Hull	...	Druggist
Max Perlich	...	David
James Remar	...	Gentry
John Kelly	...	Cop
Grace Zabriskie	...	Bob's Mother
George Catalano	...	Trousinski
Janet Baumhover	...	Neighbor Lady
Ted D'Arms	...	Neighbor Man
Neal Thomas	...	Halamer
Stephen Rutledge	...	Motel Manager
Beah Richards	...	Drug Counselor

Runtime:

102 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Ultra Stereo

Certification:

Norway:15 | South Korea:18 | New Zealand:R16 | Australia:M | Finland:K-16 | France:-12 | Portugal:M/18 | Sweden:15 | UK:18 | USA:R | West Germany:12

Filming Locations:

Beacon Rock, Oregon, USA

Company:

Avenue Pictures Productions

Trivia:

Dianne (Kelly Lynch) can be seen in the first drugstore robbery scene stealing a copy of Erich Segal's "Love Story". Other books in the shelf are "Dialogues with the Devil" and "Great Lion of God" both by Taylor Caldwell, "Goodbye, Columbus" by Philip Roth, "Thirteen Days" by Robert F. Kennedy, "Search" by Diane Kennedy Pike, "The Angel Inside Went Soar", "Heart of the High Country" by Elizabeth Gowans and "The Psychic Reader" by Martin Ebon.

Goofs:

Continuity: When Bob returns to his apartment, having given Father Tom the drugs Dianne brought him, it is clear that, as he walks the corridor, his apartment's door is open and light comes from inside. In the next shot, he opens the door to a dark apartment.

Quotes:

[first lines]
Bob: I was once a shameless full-time dope fiend.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Over the Hedge (2006)

Soundtrack:

Put a Little Love in Your Heart

not the best film about the pains of heroin addiction, but imbued with imaginative film-making, strong acting

One of Gus Van Sant's early features was Drugstore Cowboy, and look at the lives of a "gang" of junkies, led by Matt Dillon's Bob Hughes and tagging along his wife Diane (Lynch), partner Rick (James LeGros) and his girl the innocent Nadine (Graham), who go around pilfering through drug stores whenever they can get the chance - which also means whenever bad luck doesn't pervade Bob's consciousness, which can happen if simply a hat is on a bed. It's provocative not because it teaches us something new about heroin with its characters, that junk is bad and people should get off of it, but because of its soulful, honest and piercingly original film-making. Many trademarks of Van Sant's style are present here (time-lapse photography, surreal photography with to objects done matted over other images), plus a really groovy jazz score that puts things in a 50s beatnik era even as it's set in 1971. Even William S. Burroughs, the patron saint of junkie writing from the beat era, plays a character.

It's also a triumph for Matt Dillon, who etches out a very memorable performance as Bob. He's proud and can have a quick temper, but he's also quick on his toes, cunning and conniving when he needs to be (i.e. the trick played on the cop who climbs up the ladder), but also is hiding something underneath. He has all of these superstitions, and he believes in them, fully, as he does God, and finds it not to be just some kind of crazy coincidence when, after a terrible tragedy occurs at a motel room, a sheriff's convention happens to be coming to the motel he and Diane and Rick are staying at (an echo of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas came to me in that scene, with a different, more sober result). I totally believed Dillon in this role just as much as I believed him as a young punk in Rumble Fish or a crooked cop in Crash. He's such a great emotional anchor that he makes the picture worth seeing alone.

Not that his other fellow actors are dead fish, since they very much aren't (Graham especially, in her pre-Boogie Nights indie breakthrough, is terrific as the one real innocence in the story). It's also a lot of fun, and also in the context of the picture and his real life very haunting and poetic, to see Burroughs as the priest who was a junkie even when Bob was a kid at his church. There's a lot to read into there, which I'm sure Van Sant is intending. But he's also making a statement overall with the picture that the junkie lifestyle is pervasive. It's something that is near impossible to escape, especially if you ever try to go home to do the right thing. It has that special quality of a road movie, and while it has some imperfections (the last third, as Bob cleans up, slows down a little from the momentum that is building in the first two, which isn't entirely a bad thing), the film understands this way of life as did Trainspotting or to an extent Requiem for a Dream.

Drugstore Cowboy, among many other films of its ilk, is rich in the quality of its direction, its dramatic nerve and its moments of eccentricity that delight, and one or two moments of dark humor don't hurt either, but it's really a dark, harrowing trip into the junkie world. 9.5/10