Today’s mail consisted of packages from France and Japan, each containing a quartet of titles. Among the French arrivals were one new addition to the shop’s inventory, Robert Zemeckis’s “Beowulf 3D,” and a trio of restocks: Milos Forman’s “Taking Off,” Michael Haneke’s “Funny Games” (the original one, not the American remake), and “The Trial” by Orson Welles. As for the Japanese quartet, all restocks, their ranks included Woody Allen’s “Everyone Says I Love You,” “Mighty Aphrodite,” and “Small Time Crooks,” as well as Gus Van Sant’s “Drugstore Cowboy.”
“Drugstore Cowboy” was Van Sant’s 2nd feature length picture, and unlike his debut “Mala Noche” — which was made with black & white 16mm film — it was shot on 35mm color stock. “Drugstore Cowboy” was also Van Sant’s first film featuring a bona fide movie star in Matt Dillon, who would return for a starring role in the director’s “To Die For” six years later after starring here as Bob, the leader of a crew of drug addicts who get their fix by holding up pharmacies and hospitals. The film also included a small role for countercultural icon William S. Burroughs, who played Tom the Priest, an elderly man of the cloth with a decades-long drug habit. On the other hand, like “Mala Noche” (and his next two features, “My Own Private Idaho” and “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues”) “Drugstore Cowboy” was shot in the Pacific Northwest, primarily in Portland, Oregon. While Van Sant may still be the director most closely associated with the Pacific Northwest, Florida native Kelly Reichardt (who’s made four of her last five movies in Oregon and her latest, “Certain Women,” was shot in Montana, which some consider part of the Pacific Northwest) certainly seems to be gaining on him.