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Back in the dizzay, Holly used to brag to her friends about this up-and-coming director named Gus Van Sant. Director of at least four fine films--Midnight Cowboy (1989), My Own Private Idaho (1991), To Die For (1995) and his Academy Award winning megahit Good Will Hunting (1997)--Van Sant's movies were rich with dazzling cinematography, esoteric performances and gay themes that weren't the stereotypical Queer Eye dribble. He even made some cool music in collaboration with William S. Burroughs.

After Good Will Hunting, though, that all changed.

Holly has made a vow to never again watch one of his films.

"Why?" you ask.

Van Sant has now attempted to ruin two things I love: 1) Psycho, my favorite film; and, 2) Kurt Cobain, my imaginary husband when I was in high school.

His remake of Hitchcock's Psycho (1998) was a color-by-numbers exercise/exorcism if there ever was one. His casting is terrible (Vince Vaughan is awful as Norman Bates, and Anne Heche, who is awful in everything, is nauseating as Marion Crane), and he eliminates most of the subtext from the original. It is no longer a frightening piece of psychological drama--it is now a silly, awkward, fumbling melo-comedy.

Last week, I finally got around to watching Last Days (2005), Van Sant's interpretation of Kurt Cobain's last days before committing suicide in April 1994. Even without the allegorical connection to Cobain, this film is unwatchable. The main character, Blake (played by Michael Pitt), stumbles through the woods, mumbling, vomiting, then hides out at his mansion--and we don't really know who he's hiding from. His friends, at least they seem to be friends, are protecting him from some outside menace that is never identified. Blake is apparently a musician, but we can't really tell. Kim Gordon, bassist and vocalist from Sonic Youth, appears in the film as a character, and asks Blake, "Do you tell your daughter you've become a rock and roll cliche?" Wow. How deep. Blake doesn't really talk so much as mumble. You wonder how anybody could have been friends with this guy. Then he kills himself and we, as viewers, are supposed to care about him.

The fact that Cobain provided the template for this boring, pointless film has proven to be the final straw for Holly's cameled hunchback. Van Sant, who made Sean Connery laughingly say, "You're the man now, Dawg!" in Finding Forrester (2000), should now be considered among the ranks of failed directors like William Friedkin, Michael Cimino and George Lucas.

But what concerns me now more than this Van Sant douche is the disappearance of P. Kitty. Where's ma cat at these days? He just might've taken this serial dating thing a bit too far.