Drugstore Cowboy

Year: 1989 - Avenue Pictures Director: Gus Van Sant Jr. Screenplay: James Fogle, Gus Van Sant Jr., Daniel Yost Starring: Matt Dillon, Kelly Lynch, James LeGros, and Heather Graham Special appearance by: William S. Burroughs

We are treated to a much different image of a dope addict in this film than what is usually portrayed in the standard Hollywood fair. Bobby and his crew don't live on the street in squalor. Bobby is a good husband and provider. His success as a thief allows the crew to live in houses, nice apartments, and motels. They have cool looking clothes and drive big stolen cars. This is as much a family as it is a dope ring. Bobby and his wife look at the other two members, Nadine and Rick, as if they were their kids. In one scene Bobby and Nadine are complaining about the slightly younger members as being "TV Babies" with no values. Like a good father, Bobby is always teaching and correcting his novice crew members. Though Rick and Nadine are suppose to be a couple, Bobby treats Nadine as a unruly and rash teenager. Nadine's desire to be treated as an equal member of the group ultimately leads to her death by overdose.

Elements in Bobby and his crew's life will be familiar to anyone who has been in a rock band or similar endeavors. Delusion is the manna for people like this. To avoid the reality of his situation, Bobby inflates the importance of his junkie life. Trivial matters take on great significance. Everyday things become dramatic events. Stealing drugs and avoiding the cops is just a elaborate game to Bobby. When Bobby fools a detective into getting shot, the real seriousness of the situation is lost on Bobby. In his mind he has won the game. Subsequently, he is puzzled when the police don't realize it too. The only person who seems to share Bobby's obsession with the "cops and robbers" game is a Portland detective played by John Kelly. The detective seems to even like Bobby as a person.The reality of their life is pointed out to Diane by Bobby's mother when she tells Diane that they are grown up yet still live as children.

Bobby's drug induced paranoia causes him to create a cosmos built on superstitious omens. He believes that God or Whoever allows him to take from life what he wants for a while. He also believes there will be signs to indicate when the good times are over. Just like "reading the labels on the little bottles," Bobby is always on the look out for the signs that will tell him what the future will bring. Nadine, though not very bright, is more firmly rooted in the real world and flaunts Bobby and Diane's superstitious rules. When the crew discovers Nadine's overdosed and pale body, they also find she has committed the ultimate transgression; leaving a hat on a bed. To Bobby this is an indication of some very bad times ahead.

Bobby can attribute the badly botched burglary of the night of Nadine's death to the Hat on the Bed. As proof of the curse of the Hat, the crew finds the motel they are living in has become infested with sheriffs attending a convention. The crew must sneak Nadine's body and their cache of drugs out of the hotel without detection. Bobby feels as if all of the dark forces in his cosmos are converging on his family. He may feel he is responsible for bringing on the curse by his attraction to Nadine. Guilty in his mind of an incestuous lust, he takes it upon himself to do penance for his sin. He disposes of Nadine's body alone, although in a somewhat callous way, more concerned with hiding his crime than honoring Nadine. Bobby then exiles himself from his crew and tries to kick his drug habit.

Bobby goes back to Portland and enrolls in a twenty-one day methadone program. Without his drug trade to support him, Bobby gets his first straight job drilling holes at a machine shop. Bobby takes up residence in a squalid rooming house were his only diversions are books and his transistor radio. In the lobby of the home Bobby renews an acquaintance with an elderly junkie, Father Murphy, aptly played by William S. Burroughs. Father Murphy was at one time the most notorious junkie in Portland. Yet, as Bobby recalls, the priest was always willing to share any drugs he had with other junkies. Father Murphy, no longer with a congregation of his own, becomes Bobby's advisor and guide during his penance.

Many times during Bobby's quest to live a straight life he is tested and tempted. Like a former playmate, the detective who has been Bobby's adversary comes around for a visit. He advises Bobby to leave town because the cop that Bobby tricked into getting shot is looking for revenge. Bobby is unconcerned about this real physical threat, considering the imagined threat of the Hat's curse much greater. On his way home from work, Bobby reprimands a young drug dealer for his treatment of a customer. When Diane shows up with a bag of drugs as a gift from the crew, Bobby tries to convince her that he has gone straight. Even though his job is boring and he is very poor he tells her that the straight life is not so bad. He is very amorous toward his wife and wants her to stay with him. She rejects him having taken up with Rick. She ultimately chooses dope over the man she still loves. The bag of drugs is perhaps Bobby's greatest temptation. The bag contains his most coveted form of dope. Even if he refuses to partake of the drugs, Bobby could sell them for a lot of money. In an act of sacrifice, Bobby gives the bag of drugs to Father Murphy. In essence, he is giving an offering to a shaman. Immediately after giving the drugs away, Bobby is attacked in his room by two masked men. One is the young dealer he had reprimanded earlier. They are brandishing guns and are looking for drugs. Bobby professes that he has gone straight. They begin beating him and then threaten to kill him. Bobby could easily save himself by getting the drugs from Father Murphy, but he remains silent. Finally the young dealer shoots Bobby. By wearing masks, even though Bobby knows their true identity, they become, like the men who portray deities in religious rituals, to represent to Bobby the Spirit of the Hat on the Bed.  Bobby knows after the shooting his ordeal is over. He has been given a sign.

In the end we are left with Bobby being transported to the hospital by ambulance. Having paid his debt to the Hat, Bobby is free to pursue his old lifestyle if he survives. Even though he lived the straight life for awhile, he knows where his true nature lies. As he told a social worker at the drug clinic, "To begin with, nobody, and I mean nobody can talk a junkie out of usin'. You can talk to them for years, but sooner or later they're gonna get hold of somethin'. Maybe it's not dope, maybe it's booze, maybe it's glue, maybe it's gasoline. Maybe it's a gunshot in the head. But somethin'. Somethin' to release the pressures of their everyday life; like havin' to tie their shoes."

To Bobby, drugs aren't good or bad. The world isn't divided into Good and Evil. There is only Lucky and Unlucky. You just have to learn to read the signs.

The Internet Movie Database: 

Or get off line and go to the library and check out James Fogle's book, Drugstore Cowboy, 1990, Delta Books, ISBN: 038530224X. 

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