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Paranoid Park - Preview

Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park

Preview by Jack Foley

ACCLAIMED director Gus Van Sant returned to Cannes with another winning film in Paranoid Park, an adaptation of Blake Nelson’s novel of the same name.

The story follows 16-year-old skateboarder Alex, who accidentally kills a security guard outside Paranoid Park, Portland’s most infamous skateboarding locale.

When he decides not to tell anyone, he takes on a crushing burden of guilt.

The film was shot in both super 8 and 35mm in Gus Van Sant’s hometown Portland, and features young amateur actors hired through the MySpace website.

Van Sant has long been known as a filmmaker who adopts different approaches to his films – but in the case of Paranoid Park the risk appears to have paid off. The Cannes reception was very enthusiastic and the film was one of the stronger contenders for the Palme d’Or.

Commenting on this decision to use unknown, untrained actors, the director said: “I think this is how all the casting agencies would go about casting high schoolers, especially now when MySpace is so prevalent.

“We were like the others, just trying to figure out ways to get the word out to non professional people to play in the film.”

Despite missing out on the Palme d’Or, Van Sant was recognised with the 60th Anniversary Prize and immediately paid tribute to the judges for backing his film.

In explaining his continued fascination for stories centred on youth, he told a press conference: “Yes, I’ve been attracted to characters that were young; it’s my calling I guess. (…)

“But I really like working with non professionals, because I think in doing that I try to bring out things that are natural to them, sort of filming that side of them rather than creating from scratch an imaginary piece or having the actor build it.

“I’ve done both through the different films… I think I was working backwards because I was working with some professionals early on and have become more and more attracted to non-professionals… There are great things to both sides…

“When you’re casting below a certain age, say 20, you start to need to go the non professional route; there are only certain areas of the world where kids are professional actors.”