Pink

I was drawn to this book because I'm a Gus Van Sant fan, and I knew it dealt with River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves and the filming of "My Own Private Idaho", one of my favorite films. I'm a shameless queer culture junkie, and anything suggesting salacious real-life happenings grabs my attention instantly. Van Sant takes us on an interesting trip through his attempts to cope with the loss of River, who was a close friend. There are characters based on River, Keanu, Kurt Cobain, Flea, and others, and it's fun to try to guess who's who, and how much of the backstory is true and how much is, as the book is classified, fiction. There's no doubt that Van Sant took liberties with his thinly-veiled characters, but if I had the chance to write about having a long-standing affair with Keanu Reeves, I probably would too, so I can't judge Gus too harshly for that self-indulgence. What's clear is that Van Sant cared a great deal about the people he's written about, and that facing a sudden, senseless death of a close friend makes for difficult times.

It's pretty rare to find something original, something that makes you think about something besides yourself (while providing insights into your own life), something that's worth reading again and again and again (1)...I think pink is like that. Like his movies, you have to let yourself get caught up in it...take Psycho, for example. It wasn;t scary, it didn;t really work, but that was the POINT: art that was brilliant a paltry three decades ago doesn't work now, even when recreated frame for frame, line for line. Maybe it's self-indulgent, but Pink does work. You get introduced to new...and you're missing out if you can't stop making yourself the center of everything you experience. I don;t know, I loved it, especially the end. (1) the footnotes are the best example of how good this book is

This book is remarkable for what it tries to do. Of course it won't appeal to fans of less experimental literature, but what do expect from Gus Van Sant? If you like anything he's ever been involved with before, you'll like the book.

That guy doesn't know what he's talking about. Really. It's awesome