Directed by Gus Van Sant. Screenplay by Daniel Yost and Gus Van Sant, based on a novel by James Fogle. Cinematography by Robert Yeoman . Music by Elliot Goldenthal. Starring: Matt Dillon, Kelly Lynch, James LeGros, Heather Graham, Max Perlich, James Remar, Grace Zabriskie, William S. Burroughs. Rated: R -- language, drugs.
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Drugstore Cowboy (1989)
The first shot fixes us inside the consciousness of Bob Hughes (Matt Dillon, in a perfectly modulated performance), the 26-year-old leader of a scruffy, four-person pharmaceutical burglary ring. Staring semi-catatonically into the camera from his mattress, with hallucinatory lights playing across over his cold-sweat-glistened face, Bob appears to be either high or dying. Or both. He's fully aware of what is happening to him, and how he got here, but he doesn't (or can't) move. For the moment, he's just along for the ride. And he takes us with him, down a convoluted and dope-sodden memory lane. "I was once a shameless, full-time drug fiend," Bob recalls in voiceover as he reminisces about his druggie days of not so long ago, when his family circle included his loyal partner/girlfriend Dianne (Kelly Lynch), his earnestly dense, Saint Bernard-like buddy Rick (James Le Gross) and Rick's restive teenage girlfriend Nadine (Heather Graham). All of these terrific performers -- along with William S. Burroughs as a defrocked, zoned-out junkie priest, James Remar as Bob's cop nemesis, Grace Zabriskie as Bob's scolding mom and Max Perlich as a neighborhood weasel -- inhabit their roles organically, never betraying any sense of superiority to their characters. We first see Bob's crew in grainy, shaky 8mm home-movie memories, self-consciously goofy images of youthful, stoned innocence. These compulsive outlaws aren't greedy career criminals; they're benumbed rather than hardened. As they see it, they're just trying to make a living the best way they know how. And living, for them, means forever scrambling from one fix to the next, searching to sustain that elusive chemical high. Bob can't even wait until he gets home after pulling a job. He shoots up in the backseat of the getaway car and slumps against the window as little silhouetted, refrigerator-magnet images of cowboy hats and syringes slide down the glass, like shadowy floaters gliding across the surface of your eyeballs.While the rest of the gang provides distraction, Bob trusts only himself to do the hands-on work, rifling through behind-the-counter pharmacy drawers for prime pills and injectables. He's ecstatic after a score, bragging about the street value of the loot, but he never gets around to selling any of it because of the insatiable habits of his consumer household. Dianne gets a sexual thrill from the drugs, but like the impotent Joe in Andy Warhol's Trash (one of this movie's funny, dopey ancestors), Bob isn't interested. He's already planning the next job, the next challenge. Looking for that imaginary pot of pharmeceuticals at the end of the rainbow, Bob gets as big a kick from stealing as he does from the illegally obtained substances themselves. Bob and Dianne, who have settled into their roles as old man and old lady to the childlike Rick and Nadine, take their parental responsibilities seriously. In one hilarious living-room family conference, the stoned "parents" give the "kids" a wacked-out lesson in survival, solemnly explaining the oblique but somehow uncontestable reasons behind such superstitious house rules as No Dogs and Never Put a Hat on the Bed.There's so much going on here: Bob and Dianne, intent upon impressing Rick and Nadine with the gravity of the matters at hand, seem to be talking themselves into believing their own implausible explanations, recalling the tragi-comic tale of a beloved housepet as if it were a nearly forgotten bad dream they once shared. Gullible Rick sincerely wants to believe them, but is surprised to find himself mildly skeptical. Still, he's good-natured enough to give Bob the benefit of any doubt. And Nadine -- like a brattly little girl who's always spoiling illusions by asking 'Why?' -- doesn't swallow a word of it, though she's too scared and insecure to admit it. She's tired of being Bob's scapegoat, the source of the hex he claims is bringing them bad luck. Needless to say, this is not a movie about the "Just Say No" generation, although it does reveal some of the glibness behind that specious motto. "Just Say No" may make a fine slogan for a publicity campaign aimed at schoolchildren, but for junkies already driven by the desperate (and inevitably doomed) need to string out a perpetual chemical high, it's simply not a realistic option. Bob eventually decides to "Just Say No" -- but it takes a junkie's full-blown nightmare come true (smuggling a corpse out of a motel room during a sherriff's convention) to turn him around. Rather than face a lifetime hex, he decides trade in his illegal habit for an authorized methadone maintainence program and a regular job, even though he knows it means breaking up the family.Bob's conversion isn't a triumph for sobriety, just another manifestation of his innate integrity. For Bob, the straight life proves scarcely any different from the high life -- you just trade one form of lucidity for another, one form of numbness for another. Drugs, he reasons (without irony), are just things people use "to relieve the pressures of everyday life, like tying their shoelaces." The toughest thing is learning to live with the uncertainty: "Most people don't know how they're gonna feel from one moment to the next. But dope fiends have a pretty good idea. All you gotta do is look at the labels on the little bottles..." Back to screening room
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