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| Drugstore Cowboy |
Set in Portland and the Pacific Northwest in 1971, Matt Dillon, in a career-defining performance, plays Bob, a "shameless, full-time dope fiend" who'd rather hit a drugstore than cosy up to his (dissatisfied) wife (Kelly Lynch).
When he and his on-the-lam 'crew' (James LeGros and Heather Graham) unwittingly check into a motel hosting a sheriffs' convention, Bob reads the signs and decides it might be time to turn over a new 'leaf'.
Key Van Sant motifs - dryly self-aware yet spiritually exiled first person narrators, time-lapse photography, trippy point-of-view shots, Super 8 'inserts' - are all on show in the director's break-out indie hit.
A brilliantly caustic William Burroughs appears as a philosophising priest with patently unsanctioned views on the role of narcotics in society.
