the audience applauded

Thanks for the memories!

Best movie ever!

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

Mr. Van Sant, I just watched your film "Mala Noche" and I found it really sad and appalling that such a spectacular piece of art was so blatantly racist and bigoted. I was at first enthralled by the dark images and experimental camera work, style, and transitions. I loved the way you played with space on the screen- forcing the viewers to search for the flickers of light that would break up the pitch black- searching for information, letting oneself be guided by the narration to make sense of the powerful images. I liked how the camera, like the viewer, would slowly pan and search the space for meaning, finally resting on a subject and slowly revealing meaning. However, no matter how great a piece of art, it could never justify racism and bigoted statements. I was deeply offended how the character of your film would spit out these horrible statements like 'The Mexicans were stupid, that's why they were there on the corner looking for work,' just to mention one example. I was really upset not just by the bigoted statements of the main character, but also how the characters were displayed as buffoons; constantly making fools of themselves; with no real character depth. All characters of color in your film were portrayed as sub-humans who's purpose in life was merely as distractions to Walt, the intellectual and the only responsible, reasonable and cultured person in the film. To justify the racism of film by saying that your character Walt is the racist and you were just trying to portray the reality of the time period in Organ is no excuse. It was no excuse for skin heads and the Nazi film makers in the 40's and it is no excuse today. The only way a film maker could legitimately portray the reality of racism in a film is to either provide feedback through other voices or through actions and behavior of other characters in the film to negate the racist statements and show the reality that the characters views are just racist views of the character and not statements made by the film. You do non of that in Male Noche, and the actions and behaviors of the characters of color only prove the racist statements of Walt as truth. I watched your interviews and searched online to find interviews where you would at least acknowledge or apologize for overt racism of the film, but I was further disappointed when I found nothing. Your film Mala Noche, in my book, will be remembered in film history as the first bigoted and racist gay film, and not as a true piece of art.

OK, granted: The movie was filmed in the early or mid 80's I think, and you might even claim that the latino talent pool was not as big back then as it is now. But C"MON! The guys who were cast as the young Mexican homeless boys were HORRIBLE! Spanish is my first language and I could tell that the actors who portrayed JOhny and Robert were not fluent at all in Spanish which for this film it is a MAJOR point since they re supposed not to speak English. I guess that explains the reason why when Johny had dialogue, the camera was not on him, and the times when he spoke and the camera was on him there was no sync. I am 100 percent sure that they used someone else's voice ( a bad actor's at that) to do the voice over for Johny. For someone who speaks Spanish it was PAINFUL to listen to the monotone, emotion-deprived delivery of the lines. I don't know under what circumstances these two horrible actors were cast but I am sure the director did not do a thorough audition process to get the best actors. The actor who played Robert was better at ATTEMPTING to sound better in Spanish. I still don't know if he was fluent in Spanish, which it sounds like he was. And if he was then he was just saying the grammatically incorrect lines given to him by the director without complaining about not being correct. One of the examples is when he is being harassed by the white guy. Roberto says:" Para. No me molesto". Translated that means: " Stop. It doesn't bother me".or " Stop. I don't get bothered". Im sure the intention of the writer was: " Stop. Don't bother me" which should've been: "Para. No me molestes". The only character that spoke good Spanish was the guy who was telling the story of how they crossed the border. And I could bet the reason that being is because probably he really went thru that and he was just being interviewed ( he did not NEED to act)I doubt that was scripted. That part when he's talking, it totally threw me out of the movie, because it had a documentary feel to it and then to go back into the bad acting was like, disconnected. Among other things,it was torture when they had the Spanish speakers dialogue on the background. They kept on repeating the same dialogue over and over and over again! same lines over and over! I guess it would work for non-Spanish speakers, because they just hear a foreign language and they have no idea whats being said. But when you understand the language you get so frustrated that you wanna throw a shoe at the TV and make it shut up. I really like Gus Van Sant's directing but I have no idea, and im very curious to know what pressed or forced Mr Gus Van Sant to cast these horrible actors. Was it pressure from the producers, or did he honestly think these guys were the BEST?

'Mala Noche': is it just me, or do these words sound beautiful together? As a native Portuguese speaker (English is my second language), it's funny for me to realize that those beautiful-sounding words mean, plainly, "bad night". I guess Gus Van Sant also thought they sounded much nicer in Spanish, and didn't call his debut film "Bad Night"."Mala Noche" is based on an autobiographical novel by Walt Curtis (played by Tim Streeter), the young manager of a liquor store who falls in love with a Mexican lad (Doug Cooyeate), an illegal immigrant who doesn't speak English. Shot in black-and-white 16MM for only $25,000, the film lacks the wholesomeness of Van Sant's following movies, more notably his masterpiece, "My Own Private Idaho" (1991). The acting varies from mediocre (Streeter) to plain bad (Cooyeate and most of the supporting cast), but in spite of the below par actors and the extremely low budget, Van Sant managed to create some beautiful scenes, already demonstrating his raw sense of street-life poetry. Creighton Lindsay is responsible for a sensitive music score. In spite of its flaws, "Mala Noche" deserves to be seen by those who admire the work of one of the most influential and daring American indie filmmakers. 8/10.

No budget film about a young man heavily attracted to some Mexican teenagers in Portland OR in 1977.The film is in black & white, the sound is (at times) incomprehensible and some of the acting is pretty bad. Also it has more than it's share of boring moments and no real ending. Still, it sticks with you.I originally saw the film in 1990 at a film festival. I was very impressed but it wasn't available in any form. A lot of the scenes were still fresh in my mind and the acting by Tim Streeter was superb. It was until this year (2002), that I was able to see it again and that's only because the director allowed his own private print to be shown.I still liked it a lot, but I had forgotten how bad the actors playing Mexicans were, and that there was really no ending. Still, the direction is great (very impressive considering the lack of budget) and , when it worked, it was fascinating. However it is very bleak and the subject matter may bother some people. Well worth catching...if you can.