Okay, I know I update this thing about as frequently as I cook a dinner for myself where the primary ingredients aren't cheese and pasta, but I thought this was noteworthy (I'm putting a ban on the word blogworthy for now, and I hope everyone else will do the same).
It looks like Gus Van Sant has signed on to adapt Tom Wolfe's novel The Electric Koolaid Acid Test, which is something I'm very curious to see take shape. For those not hip to the Portland scene, it's little wonder Van Sant took this on; Wolfe's novel follows the exploits of local OSU alum and outsider Ken Kesey and his posse of goggy drugsters across America, and if there is anything Van Sant is drawn to, it's tales of woebegone misfits and the Oregon region.
For me, Van Sant has been hit or miss, with the hit category mostly comprised of well-accepted, uncontroversial entries: hated Drug Store Cowboy, loved Finding Forrester and Goodwill Hunting, hated Elephant, and kinda turned off on what I heard about Gerry, Last Days, and Paranoid Park (I'm not a fan of "wandering around" movies, movies that really try to subvert the biopic trope, and movies that think using an entire cast of non-actors is a good idea). Fortunately, the material is pretty insane and its about a period of history that I always romanticize as being one of the most exciting times to live in (even more exciting than the internet age, can you believe?)
Speaking of Gus Van Sant, his new flick Milk is coming out soon (or has already come out in various markets), which makes me want to track down the documentary The Times of Harvey Milk, which was recommended to me by a criminology professor at WWU mainly for the end (spoiler!) where the assassin of Milk claims what is now famously referred to as the "Twinkie Defense", or that the amount of sugar in his blood-stream was responsible for his violent act.
Finally, as a cap to this, you can check out Rolling Stone's pretty informative piece on the last days of David Foster Wallace, an incredibly talented writer who hanged himself recently. It gives a pretty good idea of what made him tick, and delves into his personal life and history a little more in depth than most other eulogies have done. Even if you haven't heard or read him, or if you have and have been inundated with enough retrospectives to fill a book with, give it a look.
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