Pink - Hardcover

Van Sant, Gus

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385488289 ISBN 13: 9780385488280

Publisher: Nan A. Talese, 1997

Synopsis

Gus Van Sant is one of America's most original and celebrated filmmakers, whose credits include three films already considered classics: Drugstore Cowboy, which anticipated the current 90s revival; My Own Private Idaho, with River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves; and To Die For, a black comedy that was a critical and box-office success. With Pink, Gus Van Sant brings his unique and playful genius to the novel, and the result is both delirious and disarmingly tender.
In Sasquatch, Oregon, Spunky Davis, middle-aged maker of infomercials, is trying to find his next assignment, finish the screenplay that he hopes will bring him Hollywood glory, and deal with the death of his friend and favorite infomercial presenter, the teen idol Felix Arroyo. Enter two young aspiring filmmakers, Jack and Matt, who captivate Spunky--especially as Jack bears an uncanny resemblance to the late Felix. But Jack and Matt are not what they appear to be--and are about to take Spunky to the mysterious realm known as Pink, where time and loss can be recovered.
With its riot of typefaces, footnotes and drawings (by the author), its trenchant and ironic deconstruction of youth culture and filmmaking, and its charmingly innocent sensibility, Pink is an absolute delight.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

In the town of Sasquatch, Oregon, Spunky Davis, middle-aged maker of infomercials, is trying to find his next assignment, finish the screenplay that he hopes will bring him Hollywood glory, and deal with the death of his friend and favorite infomercial presenter, the teen idol Felix Arroyo. Enter two young aspiring filmmakers, Jack and Matt, whom Spunky finds strangely familiar - especially as Jack bears an uncanny resemblance to the late Felix. But Jack and Matt are not what they appear to be; they are messengers from a dimension beyond time known as Pink, and they invite Spunky to join them on their voyage of transcendence and recovery. Using every means the printed page offers to tell his tale - a delirious array of voices signified by different typefaces, a flip cartoon that animates the novel's action, footnotes, and drawings - Gus Van Sant turns the novel into an explosively visual experience, a captivating combination of texture and text.

From Kirkus Reviews:

The director of Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho, and To Die For turns to fiction with this self-indulgent fantasy about the horrors of Hollywood, the trials of filmmaking, and the sadness of young men dying. In a style most reminiscent of Tom Robbins (whose Even Cowgirls Get the Blues Van Sant brought ineptly to the screen), Van Sant indirectly mourns the deaths of Kurt Cobain and River Phoenix. In his whining, quasi-allegorical version, Phoenix is a young informmercial (sic) host named Felix Arroyo, who works for the narrator, a gay informmercial director called Spunky Davis. Davis, an ``overweight balding man'' from Sasquatch, Oregon, is working, in his spare time, on a screenplay (``$Great Skull Zero$'') about a bizarre sci-fi adventure that he hopes to see produced in Hollywood. ``Pink'' is the name of the alternate reality hyped by Spunky's two young friends, Jack and Matt, who remind him of his pal Blake, a rock star who eventually commits suicide, and Felix, who has also died. Jack and Matt insist that ``Pink'' is real, and that they have come from that alternate reality. They've traveled through time to reveal themselves to Spunky in a vaudeville routine involving nudity, a yellow bag, and lots of kittens. The two--who claim that they are in fact alternate, otherworldly forms of Felix and Blake--are full of New Age godtalk and general good vibes. Van Sant cheapens his offbeat effort to grieve his young friends (and imagine their lives on some other, happier plane of existence) with a number of gimmicky effects--amateurish line drawings, different typefaces, footnotes, and a cartoon flipbook in the corner of the pages. The grossest conceit is Van Sant's linkage of his own passing troubles and anxieties with filmmaking and the deaths of two young superstars--his rant against the tabloids seems particularly lame given his own exploitative tendencies here. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Nan A. Talese
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0385488289
• ISBN 13: 9780385488280
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272