Movie depicting a gritty side of Portland named to the National Film Registry

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The late River Phoenix portrayed Mike, a narcoleptic street hustler in Portland who was trying to generate enough money to survive by pulling tricks in the 1991 film My Own Private Idaho. Mike’s friend Scott, played by Keanu Reeves, was also a trickster, but he did it as a kind of rebellion against his father, the Portland mayor, rather than out of financial need.

Despite its realistic portrayal of Portland, My Own Private Idaho has been recognized with a distinguished award and added to the Library of Congress National Film Registry.According to the Library of Congress website, the 25 films chosen for the 2024 list are valued for their cultural, historic, or artistic significance in preserving the country’s film legacy.

Gus Van Sant, who spent years in Portland and filmed a number of films, including My Own Private Idaho, Drugstore Cowboy, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, and Elephant in Oregon, was the director of My Own Private Idaho.

My Own Private Idaho is a radically imaginative rendition of Shakespeare’s Henry IV, according to the Library of Congress website. In an iconic performance of poignant vulnerability, River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves play street hustlers in the Northwest. One, Phoenix, does this to survive, while Reeves does it to embarrass his politician father, who sets out on a multi-state and then international quest for Phoenix’s wayward mother as well as for identity and meaning. The voyage, as crafted by director Van Sant, is emotionally charged and haunted, with equal parts of brutal realism and dreamlike vision.

The following 25 titles were selected to be added to the National Film collection for 2024, increasing the total number of works in the collection to 900:


  • Annabelle Serpentine Dance (1895)

  • KoKo s Earth Control (1928)

  • Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)

  • Pride of the Yankees (1942)

  • Invaders from Mars (1953)

  • The Miracle Worker (1962)

  • The Chelsea Girls (1966)

  • Ganja and Hess (1973)

  • Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

  • Uptown Saturday Night (1974)

  • Zora Lathan Student Films (1975-76)

  • Up in Smoke (1978)

  • Will (1981)

  • Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan (1982)

  • Beverly Hills Cop (1984)

  • Dirty Dancing (1987)

  • Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt (1989)

  • Powwow Highway (1989)

  • My Own Private Idaho (1991)

  • American Me (1992)

  • Mi Familia (1995)

  • Compensation (1999)

  • Spy Kids (2001)

  • No Country for Old Men (2007)

  • The Social Network (2010)
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This year, the Library of Congress received 6,744 titles from the public for review. On the Library’s website, nominations are accepted all year long. The deadline for next year’s nominations is August 15.

On December 18, Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden and Jacqueline Stewart, a host of Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and chair of the National Film Preservation Board, will discuss the films and show a few of the 2024 picks on the TCM program.

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