Black Sheep interviews Gus Van Sant
Meeting celebrated auteur, Gus Van Sant, to discuss his fourteenth feature film, RESTLESS , at the Toronto International Film Festival, certainly had my nerves on edge, given that I’m a bit of an admirer of his. It didn’t help matters much when he would pause and stare at me blankly for five or ten seconds after almost every question I asked. Fortunately, I realized very quickly that I was not the problem. “You can definitely become overworked talking to the press,” Van Sant admits to me of the whirlwind that is the contemporary festival experience. “When I hit the five-hour mark, I start to get pretty spaced out.” Our interview was his last before lunch so that explained a lot. The 59-year-old director returns to cinemas this fall with his first film since his 2008 masterpiece, MILK , which earned eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture as well as a second Best Director nod for Van Sant. (His first was for 1997’s GOOD WILL HUNTING .) And while RESTLESS is nowhere near...
