Drugstore Cowboy · reception & legacy
1989 · Gus Van Sant
How Drugstore Cowboy has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
A critics' darling on release — it swept the 1989 National Society of Film Critics awards for film, director, and screenplay — and time has only firmed up its status as the movie that launched Gus Van Sant and helped kick off the '90s American indie wave.
What's debated
Fans still argue over whether it's the great honest American drug movie — neither anti-drug PSA nor glamorization — or whether Matt Dillon's sheer cool means it can't help romanticizing the life it depicts.
Its footprint
William S. Burroughs' cameo as a junkie ex-priest is one of the great literary-icon appearances in film, and the crew's superstitions — never put a hat on the bed — have become shorthand cinephiles love to quote.
Where it stands
A cornerstone of the Van Sant filmography and a fixture on best-addiction-movie and best-of-the-80s-indie lists — the 'you must have seen this' entry point before My Own Private Idaho.