Gus Van Sant Gets Paranoid
Indie maverick connects with teenage self in latest film
By David Sterritt
URL: http://www.moviemaker.com/directing/article/gus_van_sant_paranoid_park_20080307/
Gus Van Sant is the perfect picture of an American independent moviemaker. He grew up on both coasts—in Portland, Oregon and Darien, Connecticut—before earning a degree at the Rhode Island School of Design, and then settled in Portland, where he still lives and works. He made his first big impression in 1985 with Mala Noche, the slyly subversive story of a gay man with a crush on a Mexican immigrant who’s wrong for him in just about every way.