Gus Van Sant: 'I used to be super-negative'

Gus Van Sant has claimed that his work used to be "super-negative" before Good Will Hunting.

Speaking at the Cannes press conference for Restless, the director admitted that the 1997 movie marked a turning point for him.

Van Sant said: "It was seemingly a script written about super positivity and something I'd never tried, being more super-negative or negative.

"I thought that it was something that I wouldn't be able to do, so I tried it to see what would happen. Now I've done a few other positive stories too - so it's a wing of myself."

Of the continued theme of death in his recent movies, he added: "Films like Gerry, and Elephant or Last Days were really open-ended pieces about things I had read in the news, and in all three cases they were in dispute.

"In this case it's quite different. It's not an investigation into a journalistic story. It's a love story. It has death as its theme and it's asking questions and it's triumphing over a lot of those questions in the will of the characters, but it's really quite separate."

> Read our review of Restless here
> Gus Van Sant's Restless: In Pictures
> Van Sant: 'Henry Hopper is like dad Dennis'

Watch the Restless trailer below: