Kids opens with a graphic sex scene between two of-age actors, who barely look 14. Both the boy and the girl are incredibly emaciated. Clark’s 1997 film Another Day in Paradise featured two actors, Vincent Kartheiser and Natasha Gregson Wagner, who looked like they came right off the cover of Heroin Chic magazine.

My biggest worries about Clark’s “Is it a wake up call or a fetish?” art were confirmed with 2001’s Bully, which was actually based on a true story and again has many similarities to River’s Edge. If you excised all the graphic sex scenes from Bully, you wouldn’t have enough material left to post something meaningful on YouTube.

Macaulay Culkin’s ex Rachel Miner (21 but looking about 16) is about a razor’s edge away from becoming a hardcore porn actress in the film. Clark even manages to film her in the nude as she uses the bathroom. The real life character Miner portrays was actually noted to be quite overweight, but of course you can't be overweight and be in a Larry Clark movie.

The film also features stick-figure-thin Bijou Phillips, who is similarly shown in numerous graphic sex scenes, usually hopped up on whatever drug happens to be available.

So how did I finally decide that Clark wasn’t a concerned provocateur but just a sick dude with a creepy fetish for filming sex scenes with pre-pubescent-looking actors? It comes down to one scene in Bully that I consider the most gratuitous shot I’ve ever seen onscreen.

Bijou Philips is talking on the phone, which apparently bores Larry Clark’s camera, because it soon decides that this is a great time to pan down, gander up her mini-skirt, and give us a close-up. What exactly was he trying to say there? That even though Bijou is willing to fellate a boy she just met in the back seat of a moving car, she amazingly still often wears panties while talking on the phone?

There’s literally no artistic reason that I can imagine to justify this shot. Was Clark supposed to be warning me that Bijou was potentially giving the family’s cat or dog a really tantalizing view? There is just no way to witness this scene without completely reevaluating the tons of footage he’s produced that were extremely creepy to begin with.

So what’s the point? Perhaps just that if you and I ever find ourselves in a discussion about modern-day censorship, and you bring up Clark, I’ll have to defend him, but I’ll be upfront about it the whole way. There is without a doubt no other artist in the history of the world that makes my stomach churn quite like Larry Clark.