Drugstore Cowboy 1989

 This was Gus Van Sant's second film after his startling black and white small independent film “Mala Noche” which told the story of a young liquor store clerk in Portland who gets amore and bent out of shape over a handsome young illegal Mexican immigrant sometime hustler. It was homoerotic and sexy. Drugstore is not homoerotic but it is sexy and stark. This is a great film and the new blu ray transfer from Criterion is lush and gorgeous. It tells the tale of 4 drugged out addicts living on the fringes of Portland, from hand to drug heist. The gang of 4 are made up of Bob who rules the roost along with his oversexed and fustrated wife Diane. The other two members of this botched team, is James LeGros who is a bit slow and low in intelligence and his girlfriend played by an impossibly young Heather Graham. They are also swell.

Matt Dillion who by the way is terrific plays Bob, the brains of the team and I use that term very loosely. Diane is played by the great Kelly Lynch who has one of the best lines in the history of cinema, the poor dish says to Bob who can't get it going in the sex department “You won't fuck me and I always have to drive ” There is very little sex and a lot of driving in the film.

Their MO is robbing drugstores of their pills and narcotics in stupid ways, but dumb luck generally works out well for them. The job they pull at the beginning of the movie is almost slapstick and screwball in its approach both from them and from Van Sant. This is a jaw dropping druggie movie, full of speed and outrage that really doesn't let up.

The gang start falling apart when Bob's paranoia about hexes, you know the a hat on bed thing is the main one, and the curse comes true for them when a heist at a hospital goes bad, and I mean very bad. Bob and the gang hightail it out of town and start a road trip to nowhere fast. Along the way there is a dead body that they have to get rid of, that brings the movie to dead end screwball level, you laugh on the other side of your face, as my mom liked to say when I misbehaved. “You will laugh on the other side of your face”, she would say to me as she stood glaring down at me in her housecoat and raven black hair doing her best Ruth Roman imitation in our film noir apartment that smelled of smoke from the fire we had and her unfiltered Raleigh cigarette dangling from her mouth. If my mom was a movie she would look like this one with a little Vertigo thrown in.

Drugstore is that kind of movie it brings up memories both good and bad. Van Sant has a nice visual imagination that he uses in Bob's drugged out hallucinations featuring tiny stuff flying by like in the Wizard of Oz, and in fact that no place like home classic figures nicely in this movie, their yellow brick road is a highway to no where fast. The cops are of course after them, and the head detective played by James Remar is taking no prisoners in his thirst to get them good with the goods.

There is also a treacherous drug dealer, a punk acted by the marvelous Max Perlich, and by the way what happened to him? Did he turn into Barry Keoghan when I wasn't looking? Also wonderful in a small part is the great Grace Zabriskie as Bob's fed up but loving mom. The film changes gears when Bob decides to go straight and enters into a rehab program to clean up his act and runs into an old acquaintance of his from his drug days. Tom the priest played by none other than William Burroughs who looks like death warmed over and sprinkles the film with words of wisdom. "There seems to be no more room in the church for an elderly drug-addicted priest” in his druggy way of looking at life. The look of the film is drenched in lush color cinematography by Robert Yeoman and has a great score with many songs spread here and there among the drugs and debris. Based on the autobiographical novel by James Fogle who was an addict and dealer. The best film, director, supporting actress, screenplay, cinematography of 1989. I love this movie.