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Four years later Van Sant published a novel, Pink (1997), which explored his grief over Phoenix's death. So why not bring that story to the silver screen instead of Cobain’s? "It was an idea I had when it happened," he said. "My idea was to track the missing days. In the case of River, there was lots of info. and blow-by-blow accounts. But the whole missing thing creates a lot of question marks, and the only way you can fill those in is by making it up yourself."

To gain an understanding of the loss that words alone cannot describe, the film peels away unnecessary story-telling to get to the essence of a troubled young musician approaching his own demise.

To this effect, Van Sant utilizes sound, image and little dialogue to create a more emotional, psychological film to affect the viewer’s subconscious.

"You can be confused, because the information is oblique," he said. "A lot of the film instills a series of things in one's own imagination, fostering an emotional journey like a song would.

So it's not specific intellectual information, but poetic information, notes and chords. The intent is partially for everyone to have a different reaction and that reaction is based on their own personal information at play. In the same sense, you're going somewhere where it's not an arrival in a particular place unless it happens in one's own experience."

Famous for making off-the-wall indie films about hustlers, junkies and psychos, Van Sant grew up in Louisville, Kentucky before his cinematic aspirations took him to Hollywood in the early 1980's. There, his fascination for the seedy section of society was born. Many of these characters would figure into his films, beginning with Mala Noche.

Funding the black-and-white picture himself, the tale of a gay liquor store clerk’s affection for a hispanic immigrant did not showcase homosexuality as judgment-worthy. It was just present. Unlike some gay filmmakers, Van Sant--who had long been out, refused to use gay relationships as a means to make political statements.

"There was a time when Hollywood was very closeted,” he said. “But I started my career with Mala Noche, a gay film that played the gay film festival, so I was out in the first place.”

The film fared well on the festival circuit, earning the director the Los Angeles Film Critics Award for "Best Independent/Experimental Film" of 1987, not to mention Hollywood interest.

But when Hollywood backed off, Van Sant moved to Portland, OR., to produce the critically acclaimed, award-winning film Drugstore Cowboy (1989), about four drug addicts who rob pharmacies to support their habits, and My Own Private Idaho about two male hustlers (played by River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves).

Although his next project Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1993) fared poorly, Van Sant would recapture his former glory and a Golden Globe award, directing Nicole Kidman in the dark comedy To Die For (1995).

1997 brought the director global success with Good Will Hunting. Starring and penned by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, the film--about a troubled, working-class wunderkind--was a huge critical and commercial success, receiving a number of Academy Award nominations, including a Best Director nod for Van Sant, and winning two awards.

Van Sant followed with the controversial, shot-for-shot remake of the classic Hitchcock thriller, Psycho (1998) and the literary drama Finding Forrester (2000), before returning to indie filmmaking with the improvisational Gerry (2002), which informed the making of Van Sant's highly-acclaimed Elephant, a meditation on the Columbine shooting, which garnered the Palme d'Or and Best Director prizes at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival.

While Van Sant continues to dot his films with gay-leaning characters and scenes, he admitted that making an entirely gay film in Hollywood is still difficult--even today. "The subjects of movies are influenced by the decisions of what the public will buy,” he said. “Hollywood is still not the most open, or out of the closet. If gay movies made money, producers would be more pro-gay filmmaking, but there is still a hesitance, no back-up.

"It seems to be changing, but there will always be a huge amount of action movies.”

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