My opinion of Gus Van Sant has dropped to nothing. This man isn't fit to direct manure out of the bowels of a cow. He, at one time, glorified the arena of independent film with "Good Will Hunting," but he sadly kills the indie spirit with his latest DVD "Elephant."

This picture is now a top contender for my opinion of worse movie ever made.

"Elephant" is a completely storyless picture about two young gay high schoolers who are treated poorly by their peers and in turn, storm the school on a shooting rampage. Sounds like Columbine High School shootings, doesn't it? That's because it's exactly what was intended, except Van Sant, who wrote and directed this total pile of Gorilla spore, based it fictitiously in Oregon.

In "Elephant," we are introduced to a series of one name students who live their lives normally on one day. One student, named John, passes our gay terrorists heading to his car, where his drunk father waits for him. He is told by the assailants to stay away cause "there's some s**t going down." He is the only character we meet who survives this total crap fest, including the audience.

If you are unfortunate enough to witness this unfortunate picture, and not fall asleep, you will see series of long pointless shots which SteadyCam behind these doomed characters until the shooting begins.

Eventually, the action starts and Van Sant attempts to add in facts about Eric and Dylan--the names of the actual Columbine assailants--into his own retarded puppet show, i.e. they bought guns from the Internet, they had a predilection for first-person PC killing games and Adolf Hitler news reels. However, the gay aspect of their characters was completely new.

Van Sant, a professed flaming homosexual, always likes throwing in homosexual material into his pictures. However, this use was tasteless and as pointless at the movie itself. I respect other people's lifestyles, but making the characters gay was a completely unthoughtful move. It was as if Van Sant said, "I'm gonna make them kiss in the shower, cause I wanna shoot a scene where two teenage actors are naked in the shower kissing. Then, I'll go home and rub my crotch. It'll have nothing to do with my movie, but at least I get to exploit some child actors, cause I'm a little f**king pervert."

In MY lifestyle, I have a personal relationship with cookies, but if I were to direct a similar picture, I would not have characters eating cookies just cause I get off on seeing cookies being eaten. The homosexuality aspect of Van Sant's Alex and Eric characters was just as unintelligent.

My biggest problem with the film is the fact that Van Sant took a very important and solemn event like Columbine and used it to create such an embarrassing, skid-mark of a film. It makes me furious he would turn an event, which we as parents, educators and Americans could learn from, into a message boiling down to, "All these kids deserved to die by the hands of these young gay boys."

All kidding aside, Van Sant's work is mean spirited, since it shows NO consequence on the part of the assailants. Nor does it show anything being learned by ANY of those who attended school with them. Why not? Almost all of the "bullying" characters got killed thoughtlessly. If I meet Van Sant at any point in my career, he will not enjoy what I have to say to his face regarding how worthless he is in a medium like film production.

I would not show this picture to ANY YOUNG PERSON who may harbor ideas about people picking on them too much. This movie glorifies the assailants efforts and goes well out of its way to show how "cool" Alex and Eric were in their planning and attack.

I challenge Van Sant to meet ANY family members, parents, siblings who lost loved ones in the actual Columbine massacre. I challenge him to sit them down, show them this movie and hear what they have to say. I'm sure there would be an extremely upset grieved father who wanted to take a baseball bat to this director. If I was Van Sant--but with a conscience, I'd take what was coming. Why? Siding with the kids who did this, putting them into a movie where they are almost heroes, means you deserve what you get from those you've offended in the process. Van Sant has no conscience and obviously no moral structure.

This movie goes to show filmmaking is a huge responsibility, not to fall into the hands of just anyone like Gus Van Sant. Van Sant is a little boy waving daddy's powerful gun around. Hopefully, this director will accidentally shoot himself. F**k him.

Rent this "Elephant" DVD just to take it out and p**s on it.

Benn - Where's the Humanity?