Van Sant, Phoenix reunite for biopic
Gus Van Sant already has carved his own place in film history, but there’s one aspect of his distinguished career that no other feature film director can claim: He is the only one to direct both Joaquin Phoenix and his brother, the late River Phoenix.
Van Sant coaxed River Phoenix into his bravest and most complete performance in “My Own Private Idaho,” a 1991 film about street hustlers that co-starred Keanu Reeves. River’s career seemed to have no limit, but in 1993 he died at age 23 of a drug overdose.
Like River, Joaquin Phoenix
Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot: Opens Friday, July 20, at Bay Area theaters.
had been a child actor (then known as Leaf Phoenix), but with River’s ascendance, Joaquin suddenly quit acting. After River’s death, Van Sant offered him a meaty role in the black comedy “To Die For,” co-starring Nicole Kidman and Matt Dillon. It was Joaquin’s first role in four years.
Twenty-three years later, Van Sant and Joaquin Phoenix are together again in “Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot,” a film about the late
quadriplegic cartoonist John Callahan, who lived in Van Sant’s hometown of Portland, Ore.
This time, Phoenix is one of the top actors in the world.
“He’s grown up, he’s an adult now,” said Van Sant, 65, during a visit to San Francisco in April, where the film closed the SFFilm Festival. “Back then, he was quite young, and he hadn’t done a film for a while. He had done ‘SpaceCamp,’ he had done ‘Parenthood,’ but he was really young, and he stopped because I think River was the actor. Then when River died, things changed, he was able to act. I think ‘To Die For’ was the first thing he did do after his brother died. So he was quite green.
“In the 2000s, he was my next-door neighbor and surprisingly, he told me he wanted to be one of the greats. It took a while, but he managed to get there.”
Phoenix portrays Callahan, a longtime cartoonist for Willamette Week, whose distinctive work covered controversial subjects, including disabilities, with a dark, politically incorrect humor that drew wide attention (and often scorn) — his work was internationally syndicated and was profiled on “60 Minutes.”
(One example of his humor: An instructor at an aerobics class for quadriplegics says: “OK, let’s get those eyeballs moving.”
In another, a female customer stares down male cashier: “This is a feminist bookstore! There is no humor section!”)
But it is his backstory that is most fascinating to Van Sant in “Don’t Worry.” Callahan was disabled in a car accident in Los Angeles after a night of heavy drinking, barhopping with a friend ( Jack Black) who wasn’t seriously injured. He was 21. He continued to drink heavily until rediscovering his love of drawing, and he entered Alcoholics Anonymous at age 27.
Van Sant sets much of the film in the 1970s and ’80s. Callahan has a casual love interest — a Swedish flight attendant (Rooney Mara) who was his former caregiver, has switched careers, and jets in and out of his life. But the real relationship is the bromance between Callahan and his AA group leader, Donnie ( Jonah Hill).
Callahan’s fame really flowered in the 1980s. Around the same time in Portland, a young filmmaker was trying to make his way — Van Sant shot his first film, “Mala Noche,” in the mid-1980s on black-and-white 16mm for $25,000.
“I knew him in Portland, but not very well, he was a local character,” Van Sant said. “He was someone who was very visible around town . ... He would go very fast in his wheelchair. I would see him now and then and say hello. I got to know him later as we were developing (the film).”
The project originated in the 1990s with Robin Williams, who bought the film rights to Callahan’s 1989 book, “Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot: The Autobiography of a Dangerous Man.” Williams brought on Van Sant after the director had guided the actor to his only Academy Award in 1997’s “Good Will Hunting.”
But after years of preproduction work and working closely with Callahan, who died in 2010 at age 59, Williams, who was producing, couldn’t put together the proper financing.
After Williams’ death in 2014, Van Sant revived the project. In his hour of grief — Williams was a close friend — he turned to Phoenix, who he thought would be perfect for the role, in part because his instinctual approach reminds him of Williams.
“I think John (Callahan) was quite serious and quite hilarious, simultaneously. Irreverent, at times. Angry, at times. Playing with fire, at times,” Van Sant said. “With a lot of things I work on, I encourage the actors to go off the page and go to a new place, add things, take things away, and I think in the case of Joaquin, he does that anyway, takes the initiative to do whatever he wants . ... He’s super experimental.”
One wonders, of course, what course River Phoenix’s talent would have taken these past 25 years. River would be 48 now. Joaquin is 43.
“One of the main differences between River and Joaquin is that River had to watch the dailies. He absolutely had to,” Van Sant said. “Keanu (Reeves) was a little iffy about whether he wanted to see the dailies, but River insisted, ‘I have to see the dailies. That’s how I make the movie, because I watch the progress.’ He acts and reacts to what he sees. And then Joaquin’s version is a little more like Keanu’s. He can’t take it. It’s too hard for him.
“His and his brother’s talents were like: They could just do it. They had some secret — throwing themselves into the moment, and just being in that moment. And I don’t know where that comes from.”