The mediative David Bowie song that inspired a young Gus Van Sant
As one of the most essential auteurs in the new queer cinema movement, Gus Van Sant‘s movies have a cultural and societal significance that most famous filmmakers fail to achieve with their expansive blockbusters. While several common aspects comprise his efforts, there has always been a dream-like quality to some of his most important ones.
Another aspect that has made some of Van Sant’s most vital works so culturally resonant aside from the central themes is the soundtracks, which are seamlessly compiled to mirror and heighten the profundity at play. From the late Elliott Smith cementing Good Will Hunting as a classic with the arresting power of his maudlin sounds to the unsettling Drugstore Cowboy featuring a collection of avant-garde palettes, the director knows full well the power of the audio-visual partnership and has weaponised it fully.
Naturally, this aspect of his approach emerges from his nature as a music lover and musician. Like his library of movies, his record collection is vast and encompasses everyone from Muddy Waters to The Carpenters. Yet, according to Van Sant, the dream-like nature of his films was inspired by his early steps as an auteur, which, due to a combination of putting himself out there and luck, were incredibly heady.
Fittingly, during this period when he was just another 20-something straight out of university dreaming of making it big as a creative, Van Sant’s fantastic first experiences in the industry were soundtracked by a musician whose life was markedly extraordinary, David Bowie. After leaving school in Rhode Island and moving to the promised land of Los Angeles to live in the pool house of the director he was working for, Bowie’s ‘Moss Garden’, an instrumental from Heroes co-written by Brian Eno, provided the ideal spiritual backdrop to him making his way in such an environment.
After leaving school and travelling Europe, Van Sant moved to Los Angeles in 1976 and lived in the pool house of director Ken Shapiro, for whom he worked. Not only was he helping The Groove Tube filmmaker bring a project to life, but he would also lend a hand in other areas of his life, such as picking his daughters up from school. However, the future auteur knew this was not the career for him and was also writing scripts for potential films of his own.
Speaking to The Line of Best Fit, Van Sant reflected on the period and how ‘Moss Garden’ soundtracked it. According to him, the Beverly Hills home Shapiro inhabited was old and remote, built in the 1920s in a Spanish style that had been constantly renovated and had several different incarnations over the years. A storied place stretching back to the city’s Golden Age, it was originally lived in by the theatrical titan Lionel Barrymore.
It was a sprawling property. The pool house was at the bottom of a ravine and had a Funicular that took people across the valley. The secluded dwelling also gave Van Sant an obscured view into the lives of the stars who lived in the vicinity, including Fred Astaire and Anthony Newley, who appeared ant-sized from his abode. Accordingly, it’s easy to understand how he would start to form a fascination with the city’s dark underbelly. It was far removed from the supposed ideal of the rich and famous that he was barred from analysing in detail from his abode.
Regarding the role of ‘Moss Garden’ during this formative period, Van Sant said: “When I woke up in the morning, I would play this side of Heroes. I think this is the first song on that B side of the record, and there’s a couple of environmental, almost Musique concrète-type creations. Eno was making music through systems of recording and through philosophies. It was very restful sounding, very contemplative. That time was a very dreamy period of my life.”
It makes sense that the ambient ‘Moss Garden’ should be the song that stands out from this consequential period for Van Sant. You can imagine him opening the curtains on a balmy morning, peering across the palm tree-strewn hills dotted with white buildings, recalling the area’s gilded past, as the serene Kyoto-inspired character of the music conveyed a sense of promise and intrigue at the strange city in front of him. It must also be said that the profoundly visual meditative nature of the track is something that he would later render in titles such as My Own Private Idaho.
Listen to ‘Moss Garden’ below.
