Our Portland Story
Ariel Frager – published 2008-2010
Portland’s big fish in a small sea
It was the late 1980s and Portland still had that gritty feeling, before they scrubbed the artist lofts and drug users clean from Downtown and called it the Pearl District. I used to feel like I needed a shower after extended trips to the city center, the air of Podunk regionalism clinging to my clothes. But not this night. It was a clear cold winter evening, the wet streets glistening reflected light from the surrounding buildings. My friend Seth and I had left a late night showing of some art film at the Guild Theatre and as we crossed the near-empty parking lot, we noticed a man standing outside in the crisp night with a movie camera pointed at the stunning Jackson Building Clock Tower.
“What are you doing,” I naively asked.
“Shooting pick up shots for Gus Van Sant’s new movie, My Own Private Idaho.” Starstruck, Seth and I said in unison, “Wow! Gus Van Sant, we are big fans.” And indeed we were, the previous year having waited for hours at one of Portland’s art film venues, the Koin Center Theatre, to see his previous movie, Drugstore Cowboy.
Fumbling, Seth asked the cinematographer if we could someday meet Gus Van Sant, since we were such big fans. “Sure,” he said and knocked on the window of the dark car next to him. “Gus is right here.”
Never leaving his place in the back seat, we chatted with Gus Van Sant for several minutes. “We would love it if you came up to Lewis and Clark, where we go to college, to talk to the film production program we started.”
“Yeah, no problem,” Gus said. “I’d be happy to. Give me a call, I’m
in the book.” We raced back to school, flipped open the first phonebook we could find and sure enough, Gus Van Sant had a listed number.