Gus Van Sant still moving.
“I think a lot of the films I've made, even unintentionally, have been based on true events,” Van Sant says with his familiar mixture of understatement and curiosity. “I think it's a genre. I've always been fascinated by what makes people do what they do.”
In Wire a Dead Man, Van Sant's latest film, which premiered at the AFI Film Festival on Saturday, that fascination becomes electrifying. Based on Tony Kiritsis' real-life 1977 hostage case, the historical crime drama unfolds like a pressure cooker between despair and spectacle.
“When I read the script,” he recalls, “there were links embedded in it – you could click on them and hear real 911 calls. Tony talked as fast as Scorsese on cocaine, making jokes and losing his temper. I thought, 'This is an amazing character.'
There's a quiet awe in Van Sant's words, the voice of a filmmaker who's spent his career walking the line between compassion and danger. From Drugstore Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho to the Oscar-nominated Good Will Hunting and Milk, he's never been one to chase any one genre; only human behavior.
“There was a weird barn-storming energy to the story,” he shares. “We met at Soho House and the producer said, 'We need to start filming in Louisville in two months.' That was the most appealing thing, just going on the road like Huckleberry Finn.”
Now 73, Van Sant feels nostalgic when he talks about creative chaos. “The best thing about cinema is still the accident,” he says. “River Phoenix loved it when something unexpected happened on set. At those moments, he came to life – he could feel his character's reaction in real time.”
That memory remains, as does one of the fog machines at the 1998 Oscars that left him physically ill, while Good Will Hunting (1997) lost most of its awards to Titanic.
“Now I’m allergic to stage fog,” he says with a laugh. “That's why I never use it on set.”
It's been seven years since his last theatrical film (“Don't worry, he won't get far on foot”), but Van Sant is back with a story that echoes his fascination with real-life American tragedy and absurdity—the director, as always, straddling the jagged line between empathy and obsession.
In Wire a Dead Man, Van Sant delivers his most exciting and intense work since Milk. The film has the restless energy that characterized his early 1970s masterpieces, while demonstrating a heightened maturity in tone and control. Skarsgård gives the best performance of his career, backing up Tony Kiritsis's volatility with flashes of humor and heartbreak, while Dacre Montgomery and Colman Domingo deliver richly textured performances. Dark horses at the Oscars? Certainly. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't think about it. Van Sant's direction in particular is both intimate and explosive, framing the chaos with empathy, allowing viewers to feel the pulse of desperation behind every decision. The film's script, adapted from a true story by first-time screenwriter Austin Kolodny, is infused with humanism and dark wit and is considered one of the best of the year.
In an extensive interview with DiversityVan Sant talks about his past, present and future in the industry he's spent more than four decades mastering.
“Wiring a Dead Man”
Stefania Rosini SMPSP
Judging by your filmography, this matches your interest in real-life characters and crimes.
Yes, I think so. Many of my films, even feature films, are based on something from the real world – news or articles. “Drugstore Cowboy,” “Elephant” and “The Last Days” arose from this impulse. This is not “true crime” as on television, but a question of what makes a person act in a certain way – this question is within the crime.
How did you decide Bill Skarsgard for Tony and Dacre Montgomery for Richard?
The casting was probably just as important as the script. One weekend I was at the spa, listening to ambient music, and trying to decide if I should start immediately on this project that was supposed to start filming in November. I always wanted to work with Bill. I was offering him roles before that didn't happen. He has an amazing career – horror films, yes, but he's like Lon Chaney, the man of a thousand faces. He's also 10 years younger than the real Tony, which makes him interesting.
I knew Dacre from his audition tape for Stranger Things. It's one of those legendary tapes that actors give out – perfect lighting, perfect eye lines. At first I didn’t even watch the series, just its scenes. It felt new, unpredictable, and that was what the film needed.
And Colman Domingo as the radio DJ is such an inspired choice.
We actually modeled this character after DJ from Warriors. It was in the script. We had a few actors come through before Colman came on board. He was working with our producer Cassian Elwes on another project and said, “I’d love to work with Gus.” He was perfect – his presence defines the film.
Fans always ask if you'll ever return to Drugstore Cowboy.
In fact, there are scripts that were written by the same writer – James Fogle. There were four different films and one of them was called Satan's Sandbox, I think James Franco wanted to make it, but I preferred this one. The action takes place in San Quentin prison. And in fact, when we met him and made the film, he was in Walla Walla State Penitentiary in Washington state, and so he had some stories when they were out, like “Drugstore Cowboy,” where they were running around selling drugs and stealing drugs. So there are others, yes, there are others.
River Phoenix has been very instrumental in your film journey. He is definitely one of the main reasons why I fell in love with cinema myself. How often does it come to your mind?
I mean, I think about him all the time—there's a picture of him on the wall. You know, he was in some ways a very wonderful employee. And we only did that part, and we planned – he planned to participate in what later became “Milk.” But that happened later, before he died, so there was a project that we talked about. But yes, he was very spontaneous. He loved to improvise. This was his favorite pastime. And I don't think he necessarily needed, depending on who he was working with, to go off stage and improvise. This probably wasn't the type of film he was making – he was making traditional stuff that seemed to be reliably in Hollywood. You know, he played traditional plays, they offered it to him.
And in that environment, you don't make a film like – you know, like you mention Scorsese – where whole scenes are improvised. And when we did that, he found out that I liked it, you know that I would have been fine if he had just done something for five minutes that wasn't even in the script, because then he could really explore the material and could feel very open about what he was playing. So it was kind of magic, he liked it, but he couldn't do it. So he was really excited about it because he didn't usually do it.
I don't know, there's a lot of stuff there. His upbringing was such that he didn't have many movie stories in his memory banks. He was homeschooled, so he didn't have much knowledge about the war that he knew. His homeschooling did not exclude war. So characters like General MacArthur weren't in his world—he didn't know who they were. Conversely, he did not know what humor was. He said he didn't know what a quote-unquote joke was until he was nine years old.
He learned about this because he went to a traditional school—a public school—and the kids told jokes. This was an era when children loved jokes. He didn't know what it was; they were like something foreign to him. He also didn't have a smile, which people don't necessarily know about. He told me this – he said, “Well, I don't have a smile.” And I said, “You're kidding.” And then he smiled and showed me his smile, and I said, “Oh yeah, I don’t see that kind of smile in your films.”
So one interesting thing he had was that for a movie star it was interesting not to have such a huge smile. But he was also very funny, and his favorite thing to do was just laugh and tell stories.
You have been nominated for an Oscar twice. What do you remember about those mornings?
Mainly something I didn't realize when the announcements were made. I woke up to many phone calls. This is a big Hollywood prize – it's great. At the Good Will Hunting ceremony they unveiled this huge ship, the Titanic, and there was fog everywhere. I felt so bad sitting there that I swore I would never use fog on my set again.
There is a lot of talk about the “death” of cinema. Do you believe this?
Not at all. Cinema always follows technology – from Nickelodeons to iPhones. What's important is this gathering, this shared experience. The art form never dies; it just changes. The best films of the 1920s were miracles because no one yet knew what cinema was. We are living through another period of discovery.
Can we expect another movie soon? Or will we have to wait another seven years?
I hope so. I was working on the Gucci project and six hours of Feud, so I wasn't sitting idle. There are hundreds of ideas – digital files full of them. Some may take decades, as happened with Moloko. But they are here, waiting.
