Movie Review – Drugstore Cowboy

Drugstore Cowboy (1989)
Written by Daniel Yost and Gus van Sant
Directed by Gus van Sant

Gus van Sant joins a growing list of directors who came to the forefront in the late 80s/early 90s, and I’m not sure how I feel about them. Previously, I’d discussed this about Steven Soderbergh and sex, lies, and videotape. On the most recent episode of the podcast, we reviewed Richard Linklater’s Hit Man, and I remarked how I’m very up and down with his body of work. For Van Sant, My Own Private Idaho will forever be an impossible film to beat. It is a full-fledged American cinematic masterpiece, so I was very interested in stepping back into the film just before and seeing what he had made. A considerable section of his fanbase declares this as their favorite of his movies.

Bob Hughes (Matt Dillon) is part of a nomadic quartet of junkies in 1971. His wife, Dianne (Kelly Lynch), his best friend, Rick (James Le Gros), and Rick’s girlfriend, Nadine (Heather Graham), fill out the ranks. Together, they rob pharmacies across the Pacific Northwest to maintain their high. After one successful outing in Portland, Bob realizes they have a whole bottle of Dilaudid, a powerful opioid. They must keep a stern eye on their stash as the local police and David, the low-life across the street, wait for them to slip up. Such a lifestyle can’t be maintained forever, and soon enough, reality crashes down hard, sending Bob on a journey to get clean, but that means abandoning this found family that has been both a blessing and a curse.

The seeds of My Own Private Idaho can be seen here through van Sant’s technique and incredible ability to bring performances out of his actors. This is, hands down, Matt Dillon’s strongest film performance, at least that I have ever seen. I don’t dislike him, but he’s been okay in most of the roles I’ve seen him in. There’s Something About Mary was my favorite because it was a different role for him, and he was genuinely funny. Drugstore Cowboy tops that because it plays to the strengths of Dillon as a former heartthrob by this time in the 1980s as he’s transitioning into even more complex roles. Parts in pictures like The Outsiders and Rumble Fish were good, but this is a whole other level.

Like most of van Sant’s work, the film meanders. Depending on the subject matter and the cast, that can be a blessing or a curse. Here, it is a delight because I don’t need hard & fast plot beats. The film’s first section takes its time unfolding the world of the PNW pill popper, with Bob explaining it all to the audience as they go through their series of diversions or break-ins to get their coveted doses. That procedural aspect, especially of a subculture we don’t often hear from, is fascinating. Due to the setting and subject matter, I couldn’t help but think about the heartrending documentary Streetwise, set on the streets of Seattle in the 1980s. Characters like Bob and Dianne were the same people who would be the parents of those children, caught up in addiction and sex work to make ends meet.

Van Sant sets up early on that, as tight-knit as these four people are, all it will take is one bad day for everything to fall apart. That’s often what it is like with some who are wrestling with an addiction. The logical parts of their brain and their empathy can get completely shut down by the drugs and their body’s never-ending hunger for more. Dianne is Bob’s wife, but the minute he says he’s going clean and sticks to his guns, that relationship doesn’t matter. Getting more pills that precedent. Bob’s journey to getting clean is also very hard because addiction never fades entirely; it just becomes managed. These elements reminded me of My Own Private Idaho, where we have characters who don’t have many options in the world, so your heart slowly breaks for them as the film plays on.

Drugstore Cowboy is a tense balancing act – finding the happy medium between the brutal nature of addiction and telling a story about human beings. It would have been very easy for the director to veer into sensationalist exploitation and produce scenes of extreme gore and body horror (see Requiem for a Dream). Instead, van Sant centers his film on Bob’s humanity, constantly reminding us addiction is only one part of this person’s life, not the totality of it. While the drugs are ever-present, there are moments of warmth between him and his friends. They do love each other, but there’s just the massive horrible thing in the way creating dysfunction. 

My Own Private Idaho is my favorite of van Sant’s works, but Drugstore Cowboy is an extremely close second. This was just as the independent film scene was about to explode in the States, and it made me wish we had something similar now. The state of films in the U.S., both Hollywood and indie, is very dodgy. We get the occasional burst of genius, but never something that feels as timeless as this. Many contemporary films coming out of the U.S. will age poorly due to technical reasons, such as the texture of shoddily done digital cinematography and a refusal to grapple with the truth of our moment. The young directors in the 1980s seemed very eager and willing to face the bad stuff because by talking about it, we learn important truths about ourselves. These days, we seem more like Bob and company, trying to numb ourselves to what’s happening all around.