Out in the Mountains

What is Family? A Review of My Own Private Idaho

Richard Cornwall

What is queer family? This has been
looked at by several gay writers re-
cently, ranging from Paul Monette to
David Leavitt. Gus van Sant, Jr., joins
them in playing with this question in My
Own Private Idaho. He starts by build-
ing on Shakespeare’s picture of Prince
Hal, his partner in dissolute ribaldry,
Falstaff, and his father, King Henry IV:

King Henry IV: 0 that it
could be proved

That some night-tripping
fairy had exchanged

In cradle-clothes our chil-
dren where they lay,

And call'd mine Percy, his
Plantagenet!

Then would I have his Har-
ry, and he mine.

Falstaff: Indeed, you come
near me now, Hal ,' for we
that take purses go by the
moon and the seven stars,
and not by Phoebus, he,
‘that wandering knight so
fair.’ And, I prithee, sweet
wag, when thou art king, as,
god save thy grace, - ma-
jesty I should say, for grace
thou wilt have none, -

Hal: What none?

F alstafi’: No, by my troth, not
so much as will serve to be
prologue to an egg and
butter.

Hal: Well, how then? come,
roundly, roundly,

Falstafi’: Marry, then, sweet
wag, when thou art king, let
not us that are squires of the
night’s body be called
thieves of the day's beauty . .

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BY APPOINTMENT

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Hal: Thou sayest well, and it
holds well too,‘ for the fortune
of us that are the moon's men
doth ebb and flow like the
sea, being governed, as the
sea is, by the moon.

This excerpt from the start of Henry IV,
Part I, by Shakespeare, a part congenial
to us who see other men as sweet and so
fair, captures well the plot of My Own
Private Idaho. Indeed, Gus van Sant
makes this connection explicit in the
Portland scenes in the film when Bob,
who is repeatedly referred to as very
round, prominently drinks Falstaff beer
and all the merry thieves/hustlers speak
like modern day transplants from Shake-
speare’s England.

Idaho shows Scott (Keanu Reeves and
“Prince Hal”) fleeing the smothering con-
trol of his father, Jack Favor (“Henry
IV”) by joining a loose group of hustlers,
especially Mike Waters (River Phoenix -
a nice pun van Sant got away with) and
the group of thieves centered on the
“whoring round man,” Bob Pigeon (Wil-
liam Richert, who is also a film director).
Scott’s father, the mayor of Portland, be-
moans his effeminate son and sends “his”
police out to track down “his” son. As in
Drugstore Cowboy, van Sant delights us
with his vivid ingenuity and sheer humor,
as of the police breaking in the old build-
ing where the thieves live their thespian
lives. There is a mad chase round stairs
and halls ending in the room where Scott
is simulating fucking Mike and, as the
police chief peers in the room, gradually
revealing more and repeatedly, casually
pulling the hairs on Mike’s nipple and
having Mike repeatedly slap his hand
away, to the clear discomfort of the pro-
tectors of the status quo and servants of
the father of the Prince on the bed.

So Idaho shows Scott Favor running
from his father, Mr. Status Quo, but mak-

ing clear right from the start that when
his 21st birthday comes “in a week,‘
then he will want no more of this de
generate life and that he stands to inherir
a fortune. Both Bob (who had a “real
heavy thing” with Scott earlier) and
Mike hang their hopes for future ease or
getting a ride off Scott’s very handsome
prospects. Mike spends the movie run-
ning toward the fantasy of his mother,
which is his private idaho. This fantasy
frequently overwhelms him — he be.
comes catatonic, rigid, falling and lying
wherever he is as he fantasizes the wide
open spaces of North by Northwest,
with an undulating, two-lane road lead-
ing over the rolling hayfields toward the
spectacular snowcapped mountains of
Idaho. These frequent episodes of nar-
colepsy, of deep sleep, are his device for
coping with the enormous isolation of
his life as a queer kid without parents,
hustling to survive. They are also the ad-
dictively erotic peaks in his life, a cin-
ematographic perception which van
Sant captures brilliantly. The scene of
Mike’s cuming with a trick at the start
certainly rivals my best ejaculatory
peaks.

The adventure of Bill and Ted, or rather
Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix, starts
on this pastoral road with Mike savoring
dreams of his absent mother (as clouds
rush overhead, van Sant’s sign thata
dream attack is starting and which re-
calls the floating objects and clouds he
used to signal an altered mindstate in
Drugstore Cowboy, and salmon futilely
jumping upstream against an enormous
falls). It quickly jumps to Seattle to sa-
vor Mike’s life as a hustler. While there
it has a wonderful sketch of a clean-
liness fetishist who loves arithmetic and
little dutch boys. It follows an unknown
cowboy into an erotic male bookstore
and gets caught on the rack of friction
fiction featuring “Homo on the Range"
and “lVlale Cal1” where the fetching

Lynn Goyette, M.S.Ed., M.A.C.P.
Feminist Counseling and Psychotherapy

Lesbian & Gay Affirmative
Individual - Couple - Group Work

Rm. 3E 2 Church St.
Richardson Place Burlington, VT
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