Sex On Film : THE PUNK REBEL
Promiscuous Sex, Graphic Language, Drug Abuse And Some Violence. The reason behind the NC-17 rating that was slapped on Larry Clark's groundbreaking Kids (starring 20-year old Chloë Sevigny) sums up the popular perception that has met Clark's work. Following a career in photography, Clark crossed over to film by directing a Chris Isaac video. But it was his collaboration with Harmony Korine that led to Kids (1995) and confirmed his notoriety.
Undaunted by the criticism that Kids was exploitative and borderline kiddy porn, Clark again pushed the envelope with Ken Park, another unflinching look at teenage drug use and sexual exploration, this time with controversial scenes including autoerotic asphyxiation, incest and onscreen ejaculation. Destricted, a collection of shorts from some of the world's most provocative cinematic artists and directors, includes Clark's Impaled, an investigation into the sexual fantasies of Generation Y kids who have from a young age had access to porn through DVDs and the internet.
The Sexessentials: Kids, Ken Park, Wassup Rockers, Impaled (segment of Destricted)
You are regarded as being in the forefront of real sex in films...
I've been working for a long time, and I really started because I wanted to see things I couldn't see anywhere else. I came from the '50s, which was so repressed. There were so many things that couldn't be seen.
Why can't everybody see this?
We're all human. And that was one of the reasons I started. If I could have seen that work in other places I wouldn't have had to make it. Ken Park was supposed to be my first film, and it took a long time to get it made. So it's out there; you can go on eBay in America and get it from many different countries. And it will always be out there because of the Internet and DVDs. You can download it from the Internet.
Do you like any of today's porn?
I really do not like porn much at all — it's so overlit. If I was gonna make a porn I'd at least light the goddamn thing. Often the people who really watch porn are so influenced by it. Like Terry Richardson, the fashion photographer. He does work to make it look like porn. It's all overlit. It's awful. I know Terry. I like Terry. But the work is overlit. Aesthetically I don't like it. I'm not a big fan of porn just because you just see too much. Especially now, you see all the pimples and the reds spots, the razor burns where they've shaved themselves. It's just so unerotic for me, but I guess if you grow up with it, it becomes erotic for these kids. But that's just me. I'm an old guy.
Do you like any older porn then, '70s stuff?
The first porn I ever saw was when I was a kid. Once in a while somebody would have an 8mm projector and a loop, a 4 or 5 minute loop. That was the first porn I ever saw, which was amazing to see. And as a matter of fact, when I was a kid they had these things called 8-page Tijuana bibles, which were cartoons. You'd see Popeye or other cartoon characters fucking. You know, like Superman. When Deep Throat and The Devil in Miss Jones and those original '70s porns came out, it was quite interesting because you'd never seen anything like that, and it wasn't overlit like it is now. But it was more interesting aesthetically that way, and today it's people fucking on the sand and you see sand in the dick and going into the cunt and everybody's shaved and it's just so unerotic for me.
On one hand we see a lot more porn than we used to, but on the other the climate seems to be stricter. What is that about?
That's about our fucking Republicans and our fucking President and the fucking government and the Administration. That's about the climate in America, which in my lifetime, I mean, you've seen Eisenhower and Truman, who were very, very conservative: white picket fences and mom's apple pie. And then it was so restricted. So conservative. And then the '60s it swung a whole 'nother way. The pendulum starts here and goes all the way back. Everybody thought the '60s, that was it, but that turned out to be an aberration, and then it started swinging back, and now we're at the worst point. And then it's hopefully it'll swing back because this guy in the White House is the biggest jerk... it's ridiculous.
With Destricted, what were you aiming to show and did it meet your expectations?
Everything in the film is exactly what I wanted. The premise was that anybody born after 1980 has complete access to pornography. It's everywhere. You can't escape it, kids at a very early age see it — how does this effect what they think about sex when it's way too early? What do they think sex is, and how does pornography shapes [their ideas]? And then everything else was documentary and an educational film for me because I didn't know. I had no idea this was going on.
What did you want to show about the mindset of the guy in Impaled?
At the end, he seems shattered by his experience.I don't think he was shattered or disturbed. I think he was just thinking about it. At the end he just realizes the reality of it — which is quite different from his fantasies. People watch porn and they fantasize about these porn actresses and then the reality is different. But I had no idea — I swear to God. I set it up and this is what happened. I was seeing it too for the first time. I didn't try to do anything except set the premise, and of course the prize was you get to have sex with a porn actress.
Do you think the difference from those early porn films is that they looked as though they were really enjoying it, really having fun. But do you get the sense that they are commodities now?
Nancy Vee [in Destricted] is just incredible. She was a big porno actress, I guess, 20 years ago. Very famous. Robert Lombard, the line producer on Destricted, brought in the porn actresses. He brought in Nancy too. [She] really [got] into it; she's really got it down. It really is erotic, the sounds she's making, the way she's acting. She's a great little actress. He's fucking her like crazy and then she just says: "Can I have some lube?" And then gets the lube and is immediately back into it. It was just so real. [But] the reality of doing it as opposed to fantasizing about it all the time [is not the same]. I find a lot of kids now are fantasizing about anal. I saw Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle on TV the other night, and there's such a great line in it that I fell out of my chair and laughed for ten minutes. They meet this girl and she says "You can both do me," and Kumar says, "Shotgun anal!" — because kids say "shotgun" meaning dibs or first. The funniest fucking line of all time!
Do you think this film is a qualification of the teenage male psyche?
It was a bunch of kids. They were all different. I don't know if this reflects a wide, wide spectrum or not. An American critic has said that maybe a more appropriate title would have been Coming of Age in Southern California, [like the] Margaret Mead book [Coming of Age in Samoa].
Do you think Destricted was an extension of Ken Park, which was pushing cinematic boundaries?
That was sex in a different way. Those kids were not getting anything from adults. None of their needs were filled by the adult world, and so they had nothing — the only thing they had was each other, their peers. And when you're a young teenager and adults don't understand and the world doesn't understand that you're not getting what you need — if you don't have your friends you might commit suicide. And so the idea was to have these kids come together and maybe have sex in the best way and maybe have redemption or temporary salvation. And it really works in the film because people come out of Ken Park saying that the scene at the end of the three kids having sex is uplifting and makes them feel good and maybe these kids will be okay. That was my idea to end the film, and the problem making it work. And it really works. Destricted is totally different. This film is about pornography and the effect on children.
Were you irritated by the way that Ken Park was distributed?
I'll tell you what happened. The film was released all over the world and was very successful, except in the UK and America. We had a producer, Kees Kasander, who said everything was released and it was not released. There was music that wasn't cleared. There was some other stuff that wasn't cleared that he had guaranteed us that would clear. I have e-mails and everything. It was almost impossible to clear but I got cleared, and then the son of a bitch didn't pay for it. And so then after 6 or 8 months the deal was off. So this son of a bitch fucked up getting the film released in America and the UK... The guy fucked up the film and everybody should know that this guy can't be trusted. He's a fucking liar. And that's what happened to Ken Park. It wasn't a question of censorship. Now having said that, if everything was cleared then maybe there would have been big censorship problems, but we never got that far. No one can ever cut a frame out of Ken Park. If a country has to edit it to show it, then they can't show it. Tough shit. No one can edit. I'm a final-cut director, and nobody can ever change my films.
Are you discouraged by the fact that the audience you're trying to reach is the youth audience, which is made difficult by prohibitive U.S. laws?
It is a frustration, but with DVDs, everybody sees it anyway. And especially if you tell kids they can't see something, they're gonna see it. They see pornography, as you see in Destricted. Kids [should've been] an R-rated movie. There's nothing in that film that isn't R-rated, but because it portrays kids, we didn't get a rating. That was unrated. We got a NC-17, which we didn't accept, so it was unrated. So kids can't see that film, [but] every kid in America has seen that film — every generation.
How do you feel about what all these guys in Destricted said in your interviews?
I was shocked, man, extremely shocked. And I wonder if teenagers will see that and then be influenced by them. It was interesting — especially the thing about pulling out. If kids see that they think that's the way to do it. It's as simple as that. That's what you do: you fuck and you pull out and you cum on the girl. That's the way to have sex, and if you think that's the way then you start doing that, and then you get used to doing that way and these kids got used to it, and now that's the way they do it. To me, that's totally amazing. It's so weird. And the thing about shaving your pubic hair is amazing to me, too, because when you're a kid pubic hair is the greatest thing in the world. Everybody loves their pubic hair. You can't wait to get pubic hair, and these kids, very young kids, are shaving their pubic hair. But that's the effect of pornography. I don't know. Life imitates art. Or life imitates pornography.
So where is the tipping point between art and pornography?
I can tell the difference. But it's an interesting question because artists can take pornography and turn it into [art]. I mean, look what Richard Prince does. He was the guy that started appropriating in the '80s. Richard take '80s porn and appropriates it and does things with it. So you can make art out of anything. It's all about the artist doing it.
But could pornography be art?
Yeah, I would consider my film is art because I'm an artist and I made it and it works.
Karl RozemeyerPremiere MagazineApril 10, 2008
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