Film

This “utterly seminal, decade-defining punk of a movie” (The Village Voice) is an erotic American-road- movie-cum-Shakespeare-pastiche, partly adapted from  Henry IV and Henry V,  about two vagabond hustlers in the Pacific Northwest. Narcoleptic gay hustler Mike (a haunting Phoenix, in one of the best performances of the 90s) is a dreamer who passes out whenever he’s struck by memories of his long-lost mother. His best friend Scott (Reeves, riffing on Shakespeare’s Prince Hal) plays gay for pay in rebellion against his wealthy mayor father until his inheritance comes through. Together, they fall in with a cadre of rentboy street urchins led by a Falstaffian chickenhawk (Richert), and go in search of Mike’s mom. With startling visual poetry, Van Sant created one of the landmark films in American independent cinema, as well as one of the most sensitive, insightful explorations of family and the search for home ever made.