“ Cowgirls has been directed by Gus Van Sant, whose most recent features were Drugstore Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho, both fine, strong-minded, creative films.” Caryn James of The New York Times called it “one of the more intriguing failures of its day.” “Missing from Cowgirls is the poetry of yearning and desperation running through Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho,” wrote Deborah Young of Variety.
In living amongst the cowgirls and falling for the captivating Bonanza Jellybean (Rain Phoenix), Sissy comes to find new and queerer understandings of herself, love, and home. Upon arriving at the “beauty” ranch, Sissy meets a group of radical cowgirls squatting on the land, protecting the endangered mating grounds of whooping cranes. Suddenly, a call from an eccentric former employer ( John Hurt as “The Countess”) sets us out on the main story of how she came to be at The Rubber Rose Ranch. We glimpse Sissy’s life from passenger seat to passenger seat as she passes through towns and the lives of the people in them. This Western road folktale, adapted from Tom Robbins’ 1976 novel, tells the cross-country travels of one Sissy Hankshaw ( Uma Thurman), a free-spirited model/hitchhiker blessed with enormous thumbs.
This wasn’t My Own Private Idaho! How offensive! In his review, Roger Ebert recalled, “I remember the hush that descended upon the theater during the screening it was not so much an absence of noise as the palpable presence of stunned silence.” Critics were gagged.
When Gus Van Sant‘s Even Cowgirls Get The Blues first premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 1993, there was a heavy sense of disappointment in the air.
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