Literary tie

I know no one has time to do this, but if you want to greatly enhance your Own Private Idaho experience, I recommend reading John Rechy's 1963 novel "City of Night," which, along with Shakespeare, was Gus Van Sant's inspiration for his film. Apparently Van Sant gave copies of the book to River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves to model their gay hustlers on. River just skimmed the first page or so, Van Sant says in the DVD extras, but Keanu went on to read all of Rechy's books.

I'm reading it now, and it's beautiful and addictive. It was named one of the 25 all time "best gay novels" and is widely taught in literature courses. Rechy himself was a gay prostitute and hid the fact that he was also a really brilliant writer; apparently, men buying boys off the street like them to be pretty dumb. Anyway, Rechy, pictured at right, hustled and wrote himself into a professorship at USC.