Shakespeare on Film: My Own Private Idaho
Gus Van Sant challenges classicists with My Own Private Idaho in MM's ninth week of Shakespeare on Film
By Daniel Rosenthal
URL: http://www.moviemaker.com/screenwriting/article/shakespeare_on_film_my_own_private_idaho_20080723/
In the 1980s, Gus Van Sant was already writing a screenplay about gay hustlers in Portland, Oregon, when he saw Welles’ Chimes at Midnight and was inspired to make My Own Private Idaho double as a partial, modern-day adaptation of Henry IV. Together with River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves, the writer-director created a not especially engaging seventy-minute feature: Part love story, part road movie.