The Columbine Movie

It’s been a month of vampires, slugs, and biddies with episodes on The Hunger, Night of the Creeps and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? This week, however, Trace and I are getting serious as we tackle gun violence, school shootings, and queerness in gay director Gus Van Sant‘s enthralling film, Elephant (2003).

The second film in Van Sant’s so-called “Death Trilogy,” Elephant is “the Columbine movie”: it’s a loose recreation of the 1999 school shooting that claimed the lives of 13 people. Van Sant adopts a pseudo-documentary filming style and the cast is almost exclusively composed of non-professional teen actors who improvised their scenes and characterizations.

The slice of life film is quiet, filmed primarily in long takes and is presented in a non-linear fashion. It’s also a powerful, under seen film that encourages discussion due to its staunch refusal to offer answers or solutions. Give it a watch and tell us what stands out to you!

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Episode 230 – Elephant (2003)

Just in time for its 20th Cannes anniversary, we’re talking about gay director Gus Van Sant’s Elephant (2003) which takes a fictional docuseries approach to the Columbine massacre. C/W for anyone involved in a (school) shooting.

Expect a lot of talk about the film’s technical elements: the long takes, the dispassionate violence, the use of non-professional actors in a real school, and the lack of a conventional beginning/middle/end.

Plus: nuanced queer inclusion, debate about Gus Van Sant’s “message”, praise for Ebert’s review, and Trace’s thoughts on Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine.

Cross out Elephant!

Coming up on Wednesday: We’re suiting up to check out the Shimmer with Alex Garland’s all-female sci-fi/horror film, Annihilation (2018).

P.S. Subscribe to our Patreon for more than 241 hours of additional content! This month we’re going all in on Evil Dead with an episode on  Evil Dead Rise, our thoughts on the whole Evil Dead franchise, and an audio commentary on the original 1981 film.  Plus: we’ll have episodes on Amazon Prime’s queer as fuck Dead Ringers series, and the Lulu Wilson-starring The Wrath of Becky.