My Own Private Idaho - Plot

Plot

Mike (River Phoenix), a gay street hustler, is standing alone on a deserted stretch of highway somewhere in Idaho. He starts talking to himself and notices that the road looks “like someone’s face, like a messed-up face.” He experiences a narcoleptic episode and dreams of his mother comforting him as he replays home movies of his childhood in his mind.

Later, after being fellated by a client in Seattle, Washington, Mike returns to his favorite spots to pick up potential clients. He is picked up by a wealthy older woman (Grace Zabriskie) who takes him to her mansion where he meets two fellow hustlers also hired by the woman. One of them is Scott Favor (Keanu Reeves), Mike’s best friend and the other is Gary (Rodney Harvey). While preparing to have sex with the woman, Mike experiences another narcoleptic fit and awakens the next day with Scott in Portland, Oregon.

Mike and Scott are soon reunited with Bob Pigeon (William Richert), a middle-aged man and mentor to a gang of street kids and hustlers who live in an abandoned apartment building. Scott, the son of the mayor of Portland, admits to Bob in private that when he turns 21, he will inherit his father’s fortune and retire from street hustling. Mike yearns to find his mother, and he and Scott leave Portland for Idaho to visit Mike’s older brother Richard (James Russo), who lives in a run-down trailer. Along this journey Mike confesses that he is in love with Scott. Richard tries to tell Mike who his real father is, but Mike says that he knows it is Richard. Richard tells Mike that their mother works as a hotel maid; when Mike and Scott visit the hotel, they find she has gone to Italy in search of her own family.

Mike and Scott travel to Italy where they find the country farmhouse where Mike’s mother worked, as a maid and as an English tutor. The young woman, Carmella (Chiara Caselli), who lives there tells Mike that his mother returned to the United States months ago. Carmella and Scott fall in love and return to the U.S., leaving Mike to return home on his own, facing heartache over Scott's leaving him. Scott inherits his fortune.

Back in Portland, Bob and his gang confront a newly reformed Scott at a fashionable restaurant, but he rejects them. That night Bob has a fatal heart attack. The next day the hustlers hold a rowdy funeral for Bob, while in the same cemetery, a few yards away, Scott attends a solemn funeral for his recently deceased father. Mike is back on a deserted stretch of Idaho highway. He falls into another narcoleptic stupor and two strangers pull up in a truck, steal Mike’s backpack and shoes and drive away. Moments later, an unidentified figure pulls up in a car, picks Mike up, places him in the vehicle and drives off.