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Gerry (2002)
Starring Matt Damon and Casey Affleck. Cinematography by Harris Savides. Edited by Matt Damon, Casey Affleck, and Gus Van Sant. Produced by Dany Wolf. Written by Matt Damon, Casey Affleck, and Gus Van Sant. Directed by Gus Van Sant.
Two young men, referred to as Gerry and Gerry, drive though the desert in hopes of seeing a “thing”. After a short hike the two Gerry’s decide that they can not find the “thing” and turn back towards the car. But somewhere along the faint path they become disoriented and soon end up lost in the seemingly endless desert. They wander aimlessly for hours, and then days, as they search for some sign of civilization.
Gus Van Sant is a raw independent filmmaker who has tasted both the highs and lows of Hollywood. After years of producing films just outside of the system, he found both critical and financial success with larger projects like To Die For and Good Will Hunting. He then completely baffled cinematic purists with a remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, and despite his good intentions his critical stock dropped significantly. Finding Forrester helped him recover to some extent, but after a few years of big budget filmmaking Van Sant was ready for a break.
What he wanted to do was make a film that didn’t carry any financial obligations with it because it wouldn’t cost anything to make. What he wanted was a film that would allow him to utilize the smallest crew possible. What he wanted was a film that would stretch his imagination and challenge the audiences who have grown accustomed to a highly charged, MTV style of filmmaking. That film would be Gerry.
Gerry was inspired by a true story about two young men who got lost in the desert. Van Sant took the story, as it was reported in the news, and along with his neighbor Casey Affleck, and their mutual friend Matt Damon, developed a fictitious outline of the incident. Fearing that the pending SAG strike would shut them down, Van Sant took his production down to the Valle de la Luna National Park in Argentina. In the five days before shooting began, Van Sant, Affleck, and Damon hashed out a loose script that provided them a simple guideline to their tale.
The minimized crew shot in Argentina for two weeks before needing to relocate back to the United States because of an extreme winter storm. They wrapped photography after spending another couple weeks in California’s Death Valley and Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats. Being built mostly out of long coverage shots made Gerry an easy edit and in just under a month it was fully assembled. The film premiered at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival to mixed reactions.
It was similarly greeted at the Toronto Film Festival. Gerry was undoubtedly a success at reinventing Van Sant’s image, but with long, long shots of Affleck and Damon just wandering through the desert (one take lasts over seven minutes), the film is a bit hard to get worked up about. Gerry is a respectable picture, but perhaps best suited for the most hardcore of independent cinema fans.
Budget: $3,500,000
Total US Gross: $254,683
Genre: Drama
Runtime: 103 Minutes
US Release Date: 2/14/03
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Awards: none
Tagline: none
Quote: “How do you think the hike’s going so far?”
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