FILM Low Friends in High Places in ‘Drugstore’

The plot for “Drugstore Cowboy” is not much. A crew of four drug fiends, led by the laconic Bob, rip off as many drugstores as they can to keep their habits in check. The cops are lurking around, but are more of an annoyance than a threat. Not much happens; at least nothing big happens.

Director Gus Van Sant Jr. favors the barely grinning approach of someone telling an inside joke. He is a filmmaker with knowledge of the streets (his earlier “Mala Noche” was nothing if not streetwise) and he understands that most things happen there in predictably mundane ways, even to junkies. What makes it all exceptional are the details.

The details are striking, and very funny, in “Drugstore Cowboy,” which screens Friday night at Cal State Fullerton in a double bill with Van Sant’s “My Own Private Idaho.” They let you know what Bob, played so resourcefully by Matt Dillon, and his girlfriend Diane (Kelly Lynch) and their cohorts Rick (James Le Gross) and Nadine (Heather Graham) are about.

Mainly, they are about speed, uppers, downers and assorted other chemical substances, but they are also about pointlessness.

The characters are so washed-out that even when it is sad, it is amusing, simply because they do not seem to care. Set in 1971, the movie makes no mention of the Vietnam War, Nixon or protest marches. The characters’ only concern is what high is best.

The one virtue that sets “Drugstore Cowboy” apart is how Van Sant does not beat home any “Just Say No” rhetoric or make any obvious moral judgments about Bob and his clan--even when Bob gets fed up with his dead-end lifestyle, dumps his old friends, cleans up his act and gets a decent, if mundane, job as a drill-press operator. There is almost a documentary coolness to Van Sant’s open-minded approach. The opening frames show Bob and the rest cavorting on a downtown Portland street, the apparent stars of some home movie. It’s crude, joyous stuff (everybody is obviously stoned) that soon shifts as Van Sant resorts to more sophisticated cinematography, but retains the anything-goes quality of these initial shots.

Now, we see Bob organizing a drugstore heist. While his accomplices create a diversion (Nadine is at the center, flopping on the floor in a fake seizure), Bob rifles the drug cabinets for anything they can use. The job done, they all get high in a seedy hotel room and think about the future, which is basically thinking about the source of more dope.

Amid all this banality, Van Sant, who wrote the screenplay with Daniel Yost based on a novel by James Fogle, reveals things about each of characters, especially Bob and Diane. Drugs have left Bob impotent, and that really burns Diane up. One of the funniest scenes has Diane doing a mini-striptease while Bob watches her worriedly, afraid of any haphazard intimacy that might (but does not) come.

Later, Bob recites some of the gang’s ground rules. Wildly superstitious (the main result of his drug paranoia), he mentions the big one: that nobody, but nobody, can ever put a hat on a bed. Bob thinks that’s the worst hex of all, and when Nadine, uncharacteristically defiant, does it, bad luck indeed comes down heavily. For starters, they find themselves staying in a hotel that’s hosting a police convention.

“Drugstore Cowboy” has the right tone, of being high but blank-headed because of that high. The slowly deliberate pace is a little like a junkie trying to maneuver through a bedroom crowded with too much furniture. That doesn’t create an attention problem with the audience, though; it makes us focus on the characters and the details.

There are also a few inspired passages where Van Sant and cinematographer Robert Yeoman try to capture the mind-bending aura of drug-taking. When Bob gets really high, the images in his head fill the screen. Animals, trees and houses float through the cloudy sky, dipping here and spinning there. They’re whimsical, euphoric and stupid, just the way drugs are suppose to be, but when the camera pans to Bob’s disappointed face, we realize that he knows what a waste of time it all really is.

What: Gus Van Sant Jr.’s “Drugstore Cowboy.”

When: Friday, May 15, at 8 p.m. (“My Own Private Idaho” screens at 6 and 10 p.m.)

Where: Cal State Fullerton’s Student Center Theater, 800 N. State College Blvd., Fullerton.

Whereabouts: Take the Riverside (91) Freeway to State College Boulevard and head north.

Wherewithal: Admission is free.

Where to Call: (714) 773-3501.