My Own Private Idaho: A Boytoy Review

[TotallyOz]

My Own Private Idaho

My Own Private Idaho is a quirky independent film that occupies a strange space in film history. It remains an important, if flawed film that effectively chronicles a sort of coming of age, even if the outcome is more tragic than self-reflective.

Where this film really shines is in documenting just how far the world of male escorts has come over the past 20 years. Released in 1991 - well before the Internet would transform the escort world - the rent boys at the heart of this story live on the streets, barely scraping by, getting $20 a blow job and offering a second date free if the john will simply slip them an extra 10-spot.

The authenticity that director Gus Van Sant brings to the film cannot be questioned as several of the boys featured in the film were actual street rent boys at the time. In fact, the most moving and evocative scenes in the film are when the camera stops the plot to simply interview these boys and let them tell their heartbreaking stories.

Of course, the real tragedy here is that if these guys had only been born 20 years later they would have been able to go to the library, set up their own online profiles, find clients willing to pay them a reasonable amount, and have their own apartments rather than live on the streets.

To watch the film in 2013 and know that this is not how their world had to be is completely unsettling, in a good way (and a very good public service advertisement for legalized, or at least organized, prostitution).

The film's place in the history of cinema is fascinating. In 1978, Michael Cimino started a wave of introspective and dark independent films with his release of The Deer Hunter. That film's success would spawn a wide body of edgy, earnest and serious independent cinema that would last for more than a decade.

My Own Private Idaho is, perhaps, the last important and commercially successful of this cinematic wave. A year later Quentin Tarantino would release Reservoir Dogs, effectively putting a nail in the coffin of this genre of film. Ever since, the genre has been extroverted rather than introverted, self-aware, meta and ironic instead of serious and message-centered.

But there was no way for Van Sant to know that as he was shooting My Own Private Idaho. He was riding the success of Drugstore Cowboy a prophetic film arguing that junkies would turn away from street drugs and simply get high on prescription pharmaceuticals. This has certainly come true, as today we live in a world where Adderal, Xanax, Ambien and Oxy have replaced cocaine, pot, downs and heroin as the drugs of choice for the Millennial Generation.

Of course, Van Sant could not have predicted the Internet, Craigslist and escort sites when he made this film, so if it doesn't understand that things would get better for rent boys in the future, it wasn't his fault. He was documenting the male escort world as it was and how he saw it, and the film deserves lots of accolades for its brutal honesty about the physical, emotional and safety challenges these boys face.

At the heart of My Own Private Idaho are Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix, looking as beautiful as they ever will. As the years have gone by it's easy to forget how stunning both boys were in their youth. They were, to coin a phrase, prime in their prime. In fact, you could probably have a good time simply watching the movie with the sound off and staring at their beautiful faces and bodies.

The two actors play boyfriends of a sort and play off each other as outsiders in the male escort world. Neither seems to really belong there Keanu because he comes from a wealthy family, and River because he suffers narcolepsy that can cause him to literally fall asleep in the middle of sex.

River is in love with Keanu, who unfortunately is not in love with him. That Keanu, as soon as he turns 21 and his trust fund matures, will walk away from River and the rent boy lifestyle is inevitable. That River is too in love to realize this is also inevitable, but also heartbreaking.

Along the way they will have adventures robbing a group of escort muggers, flying to Italy, becoming stranded on a lonely highway in Idaho, etc.

The scenes where it is only River and Keanu on screen show Van Sant at the top of his game. They are intimate, powerful and authentic. This is the first time that Reeves would attempt serious acting (one could argue that it is perhaps the only time) and, at times, he shows some acting chops.

Unfortunately, the scenes that involve the pair interacting with the other rent boys and their Fagin-style leader, Bob, are nowhere near as effective and show that Van Sant still had some growing up to do as a director.

They are forced to belt out mock Shakespearean dialogue that would be much more at home in a stage adaptation of this story than it is on screen. It distracts from the authenticity of the film and become grating very, very quickly.

It also beggars belief that these hardened boys and men of the street don't see through Reeves's character and realize that he's just a rich kid pretending to be on the skids. In the real world, I suspect they would have hustled him, rather than let him be a hustler with them.

That said, it was the convention of this genre of indy film to do quirky things to set themselves apart from the dreck the studios were churning out. If Cimino can put an hour-long wedding scene at the start of The Deer Hunter, in counterpoint to the much shorter wedding that kicks off The Godfather, it stands to reason that Van Sant thought it reasonable to put iambic pentameter into the mouths of these youths in counterpoint to the hip slang that John Hughes was using for his coming of age teen films.

Van Sant would go on to do better work with Good Will Hunting and Milk. Reeves would go on to do more popular work in Speed and the Matrix, but as a transitional film for both of their careers My Own Private Idaho works in a quirky way. And, of course there are the beautiful boys at the center of the film and who hasn't put up with a young dude spouting pretentious bullshit simply because he was hot enough to get away with it?

cc boytoy.com 2013

[Theolover]

One of my favorite films...must have seen it at least 10 times when it was in the theater. Thanks for the great review!!

[Guest FourAces]

OZ I have to add a rare disagreement with you on this one. I felt the film was absent of any meaning or talent. Just two hot guys mumbling through 90 plus mins of total bland blah yuk.

[TotallyOz]

OZ I have to add a rare disagreement with you on this one. I felt the film was absent of any meaning or talent. Just two hot guys mumbling through 90 plus mins of total bland blah yuk.

It is OK for you to have your opinion. Even though you are wrong. LOL

jk

It was one of my first gay movies and I have a great fondness for it. I was also in love with River Phoenix which I did hear was gay by many friends.

[MsGuy]

. I was also in love with River Phoenix which I did hear was gay by many friends.

Ahhhh...I had such a crush on River!

[TotallyOz]

I just watched this again over the weekend. It was amazing.

[TropicalBeach]

*spoiler*  

 

 

I can never forget the ending, when River's so totally down & out physically and emotionally, lying on the side of a road, and someone shows up to steal his shoes/boots (forget which) and leave him there. 

[BigK]

I watch very few movies more than once.  My Own Private Idaho is one of the classic exemptions.  I will plan to watch it again.

It's fun to see an old thread and remember old members no longer with us.

 

 

[Theolover]

Thanks for bringing this up again.  I plan to watch it again too. One of my favorite movies!