The Gus Van Sant Podcast 2: Lisa Purse on EVEN COWGIRLS GET THE BLUES (1993)

https://notesonfilm1.com/2024/10/28/the-gus-van-sant-podcast-no-4-lisa-purse-on-even-cowgirls-get-the-blues-1993/ Lisa Purse on EVEN COWGIRLS GET THE BLUES (Gus Van Sant, 1993) I was truly delighted when Lisa Purse agreed to talk to me about EVEN COWGIRLS GET THE BLUES. Lisa is a Professor of Film Studies at Reading University, one of the most brilliant scholars on action movies, and a nuanced thinker on questions of mediations, conflicts, identities. I wanted to have her on the podcast because I thought she might expand my thinking on EVEN COWGIRLS GET THE BLUES, and she did. In the podcast we discuss seeing the film when it was first released, seeing it now, and explore the hows and whys of changing responses. We note the context of ‘New Queer Cinema’ and the different kinds of experiments that were then taking place. EVEN COWGIRLS GET THE BLUES is a film that refuses seriousness and we speculate that maybe neither of us was then in a place where we could recognise the value of that. We discuss how the film continues Van Sant’s interest in ‘The Road’, and discuss movement and flow, as rhythm, narrative device, formal strategy, and condensed ideation. Is it a film that’s trying to do much? B. Ruby Rich wrote on how the film contains references to forms of collective action. Is it more of its time than we first realised? We discuss the film as a form of active allyship that is not to be sneezed at, and note the hostility of its initial reception, refencing B. Ruby Rich’s contention that with this film Van Sant fell into the category of a female director (at least for some) and therefore got treated as one.