Dylan and The Drugstore Cowboy

“I wouldn’t advise anybody to use drugs – certainly not the hard drugs. Drugs are medicine. But opium and hash and pot – now, those things aren’t drugs. They just bend your mind a little. I think everybody’s mind should be bent once in a while.”

Bob Dylan

The Playboy Interview by Nat Hentoff, March 1966

 

Matt Dillon (as Bob) and Kelly Lynch (as Dianne) in Drugstore Cowboy (Gus Van Sant, 1989)

 

Reportedly, the roles of Bob and Dianne were offered to Bob Dylan and Patti Smith. Bob and Patti had been friends since 1975

Tom the Priest’s Prediction

“Narcotics have been systematically scapegoated and demonized. The idea that anyone can use drugs and escape a horrible fate is an anathema to these idiots. I predict in the near future right-wingers will use drug hysteria as a pretext to set up an international police apparatus. I’m an old man and I may not live to see a solution to the drug problem.”

Line from Drugstore Cowboy (Gus Van Sant, 1989)

 
 

William S. Burroughs (as Tom the Priest) and Matt Dillon (as Bob Hughes) in Van Sant’s breakthrough picture Drugstore Cowboy, based on an autobiographical novel by James Fogle.