Free Republic

Barack Obama's victory could turn Gus Van Sant into a boring filmmaker. The "Milk" director tells The Times of London that a Democratic administration has traditionally coincided with a less adventurous artistic tenor. "Art tends to get quite good when the regime is oppressive. The films I've made under friendlier leaders, like Clinton, have become less challenging...."

Gus Van Sant's "Elephant" Examines the Tiny, or Tragic, Terrors Of High Schoolby Peter Brunette IndyWIRE5/21/2003 The first 45 minutes of Gus Van Sant's new film, "Elephant," is self-assured, formally adroit, and profoundly illuminating. Exploring the Littleton, Colo., school massacre of 1999, the film displays such a clear and sympathetic understanding of the banality and tiny terrors of ordinary high school life that the viewer is left wondering not why this tragedy ever happened, but why it hasn't happened more often. Van Sant is perhaps the gutsiest filmmaker working in American independent cinema today and consequently his filmography is jammed...