Robert Dean

I finished Drugstore Cowboy (🌟🌟🌟🌟) at 4 AM on a Saturday morning. How am I supposed to sleep after seeing this? What do you mean Matt Dillon is capable of this sort of performance? What are you talking about? It’s difficult right now for me to come up with the right words to describe not just what this film is about- but how this film makes me feel. Guns Van Sant’s filmmaking is really interesting here but Matt Dillon’s performance is an avalanche of greatness. It is undeniable. How?? All I can think about is this guy’s acting. There is a parallel world where Matt Dillon became the next Jack Nicholson. Those of you who’ve ridden this far with me - who’ve hung with me for this long- you know how important Jack Nicholson is to my life. So when I tell you Dillon has that same Jack DNA, you should believe me. Part of what Dillon has that Nicholson also had is that Dillon can hold the camera by himself. What a gift as a filmmaker to have Dillon’s face at your disposal: he can shape shift his mouth, his brow, his eyes from ecstatic to dejected at the snap of a finger. Dillon’s charisma pulsates through the screen. Like Nicholson- or even Cassavetes, who I’ve written so much about lately- I can’t picture Dillon in anyone’s skin but his own. His confidence is unshakeable. In Drugstore Cowboy, Dillon plays Bob Hughes, a lost leader of a band of misfits who make a living robbing drugstores around the country. Their life’s mission is bouncing from town to town & pharmacy to pharmacy so they can keep stealing drugs to keep feeding their addiction. Consider how sad such a lifestyle is- consider how empty that pursuant must really be. The crux of the film here is about 1/3rd through, Hughes decides it’s time to shape up, damn it! No more drugs. No more robberies. Life’s too short. He has to find his real purpose. The problem? His past & his entourage won’t let him leave that easily, which is the entire foundation of this story: abandoning your past & building something new is harder than we sometimes imagine. Gus Van Sant directed the hell out of this film. I wrote during my review of The Secret Agent that it never makes sense to me why more directors don’t use cutaway editing- it’s such a powerful storytelling tool. Van Sant busts out basically all the stops here- he cuts back and forth through different timelines, he uses different color tones, he uses different music- he does whatever the fuck he wants & all of it works. Fearless direction. Imagine giving this guy notes- good luck. You think you’re qualified? I think a lot of directors today are afraid to deploy the filmmaking techniques Van Sant uses in this film because it might “take the audience out of the film”. Ok. So? Forget the audience. Give me something real, damn it. Make me feel something. That’s what Van Sant does here. This is gorilla filmmaking at its finest in part because Van Sant probably realized the moment he started filming this that he was working with an acting savant. Van Sant saw an opening & he hit the hole in stride. The opening 15 minutes of this film is how every film should start. If you haven’t seen Drugstore Cowboy, I’m personally asking you to give this movie a shot.