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For a long time, after each new mass shooting, actor Alex Frost guiltily wondered if the first movie he appeared in might have motivated the perpetrators. Frost played one of the gunmen in Gus Van Sant’s unflinching look at teenage life. “Elephant,” when I was only 15 years old.
“The older I get and the more I understand about shootings, gun control and the public mental health system in America, the less I think it’s about inspiring people to do things,” Frost said during a recent video interview. “Movies don’t make people kill people.”
Released in American theaters 20 years ago this week, “Elephant” chronicles a tragic day at an American high school from the point of view of several students, including the killers. With a more experimental narrative, with an unemotional tone and a multi-perspective structure, it won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2003, Van Sant’s most notable award to date.
The film was one of three offbeat films inspired by real-life events that Van Sant made in the early 2000s, including “Last Days,” about Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, and “Gerry,” starring by Matt Damon and Casey Affleck as two walkers. “Elefante” continues to resonate.
“It’s less sympathetic to tell a story about Kurt being gone for three days or being lost in the desert, but everyone cares about school shootings,” Van Sant said in a video interview.
The sensationalism he witnessed in the media coverage of both Cobain’s death in 1994 and the Columbine High School massacre in 1999 pushed Van Sant to devise a dramatic vision different from the factual accounts.
Initially intended as a television movie, the project eventually landed at HBO Films. The director eschewed Hollywood actors and headed to Portland, Oregon, to find real teenagers with the help of casting director Mali Finn. He conducted interviews with the teenagers about their daily challenges, which served as a basis for the characters.
“The film was 100 percent improvised by the students,” Van Sant said. “The spoken words are their improvisations and some of their situations emerged from their own stories.”
Frost had been taking piano lessons for many years before the production came to town. His musical experience became part of his fictional role. And he said that during his initial audition for the film, he was open about the harassment he had faced.
Similarly, John Robinson, who plays the blonde character who shares his given name, had expressed during the casting process the difficulties of dealing with his father’s alcoholism. Van Sant later asked him to incorporate that vulnerable part of himself into his character.
“Twenty years later, it seems crazy that a principal would give these little kids that kind of freedom,” Robinson said by phone.
Robinson stole the already iconic yellow t-shirt with the silhouette of a bull from a friend who had bought it during a trip to Spain. In search of realism, Van Sant asked the cast to bring his own clothes.
“Looking back on it, the movie feels like a diary,” Frost said. “You get dragged into the daily life of a group of teenagers, and the only thing they can do is tell you their truth.”
Neither Frost nor Robinson had previously aspired to enter entertainment. But after the premiere of “Elephant” in Cannes, a new path emerged for them. Robinson, for example, got an agent and was cast in Catherine Hardwicke’s 2005 film, “Lords of Dogtown.”
Van Sant recalled that critics at the time said the film did not provide specific answers as to why violent incidents like Columbine occur.
“I didn’t imagine an endless number of shootings, which is how it happened. “It wasn’t even in my imagination,” Van Sant said. “We are still in a similar situation to 1999. I hope there can be a change.”
Popular media, such as video games, were blamed after Columbine. (The “Elephant” shooters are seen playing a game that features digital versions of the protagonists of Van Sant’s “Gerry.”) But the director believes that the root of the violence lies elsewhere.
“Society’s conformity is so oppressive (when it comes to getting good grades, playing sports and not being an outcast) that they are reacting very violently against it,” Van Sant said. “It’s impossible for children to understand that whatever they’re experiencing isn’t forever.”
Two decades later, Frost still admires Van Sant’s haunting lyrical vision for “Elephant,” a film he said would open viewers’ eyes to themes they wouldn’t normally want to see. His creative pride, however, feels intertwined with moral disappointment.
“Back then, we really thought, ‘This is a problem and it’s going to be solved.’ There’s no two ways about it,’” Frost recalled. “But seeing how the problem has been exposed and complicated by so many factors, it’s almost as if we’ve given up hope of trying to fix it.”