I was late to the party on My Own Private Idaho. When it first came onto my radar River Phoenix had already tragically passed due to an overdose, Keanu Reeves was just about to introduce the world to The Matrix, and Gus Van Sant was an Academy Award nominated director thanks to Good Will Hunting. This movie was full of people I adored thanks to Stand By Me and Bill and Ted, but I wasn’t prepared to see them in this light.
Small town Maine doesn’t really have too many male hustlers. I certainly knew that sex workers existed, mostly thanks to other movies, but the idea of people who were gay for pay or engaged in sex for a place to stay was completely foreign to me. For me, anything dealing with a private Idaho was a song by the B-52’s and nothing more.
When I finally got to see the movie it shook my world. River Phoenix always had a special place for me thanks to his work as Chris Chambers and Young Indiana Jones, but he had always challenged himself with tough adult work. Movies such as The Mosquito Coast, Running on Empty, Little Nikita, and Sneakers gave him a cinematic profile that was unparalleled by most actors his age, and because of that skill, his character, Mike Waters, is the true heart of this film.
Mike, along with his best friend Scott Favor (Keanu Reeves), are two street hustlers living on the streets of Portland, doing what is necessary to survive, having sex with anyone who can put money in their hand. While Scott could return home at any time and live a privileged life, he prefers to rebel at every chance and part of that is watching over Mike, who suffers from narcolepsy. Mike has no family to fall back on and barely scrapes by in the world, so for him, personal connections are what matters. For most of the film he’s doing what he can so that he can afford to seek out his biological mother, who has been largely absent from his life, instead of thinking about or planning for the future. His life is about the here and now.
Gus Van Sant paints a harrowing portrait of a life on the edges of society. Most of the sets revolve around abandoned spaces and crowded rooms, places where men like Mike and Scott can exist in relative obscurity and still feel mostly safe. And while it’s a gorgeous film to look at, it is Van Sant’s screenplay that carries the weight. Despite not knowing anything about their way of life, I felt completely absorbed by it, felt their fears and anxieties, along with their briefest moments of joy and triumph. I wanted so badly for Mike to find everything he wanted in this world, knowing that it was mostly just beyond his grasp. It’s a heartbreaking film and it’s dreamlike quality at times leaves you hoping for the best, that Mike will suddenly wake up from a situation and find himself surrounded by happiness.
I hope that when Phoenix is remembered, it is for this film, because it is obvious that he gave everything he had on screen and his Mike Waters is one of cinemas truly unforgettable characters.
Rated 4 out of 5 Stars
