Henry IV gets a gritty update in Van Sant's follow-up to his breakthrough Drugstore Cowboy. Mike (Phoenix) and Scott (Reeves) are two street hustlers dealing with familial issues. Scott has a tumultuous relationship with his father, the mayor of Portland, Oregon. Mike, a narcoleptic, was abandoned as a  child. Mike is desperately in love with Scott, who considers his own homosexual behavior to be merely a phase through which he is passing before collecting his substantial inheritance. Together they travel to Rome in search of Mike’s birth mother. Van Sant directs with the sensitivity and visual poetry that characterizes his early work, and Reeves and Phoenix anchor the film with powerful, heartfelt performances.