These “kids” make the amoral drugged-out youth of River’s Edge look like Harvard Business School graduates. Its final scene, where a drugged up, barely conscious, HIV positive Chloe Sevigny gets raped at a party by another teen is perhaps the single most disturbing and repulsive thing I’ve ever seen in a movie.
I’ve now seen three of Clark’s movies, and I’m completely convinced that he isn’t a voice out to warn us about the dangerous youth we’re spawning, but just a creepy guy who has a fetish for filming graphically sexual material featuring heroin-thin, barely pubescent teens - and I haven’t even seen Ken Park, which apparently makes the rest of his work look like Romper Room.
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.
Article comments
1 - El Bicho
So you think Clark is a sick man and the film has one of the worst scenes ever, yet you advertise the DVD on Amazon? Kind of a mixed message, don't you think?
There are kids like the ones in "Kids" and that final scene was supposed to disturb and repulse you.
2 - Jon Sobel
I'm with you. Speaking of ridiculous censorship, did you hear about the BBC censoring Fairytale of New York?
3 - Phillip Winn
I passionately dislike the idea of censorship, but I've seen plenty of things I wish didn't exist, and managed to avoid many more.
There's probably a line, possibly an ever-changing, but it's hard to define, so I'd rather err on the side of no censorship at all combined with warning -- like this one -- so that people know when to steer clear.
4 - Colin
The Fairy Tale is no-longer being censored, and there has been much debate over and attention on the cutting of the words Faggot and Slut from the lyrics... There's a good and lively debate at The Guardian's comment is free site. With gay rights activist Peter Tatchell (who's Britain's most famous of that ilk) arguing not in favour of the ban but for a consistent policy from the BEEB on 'hate words'... I enjoyed your thoughtful piece Brad - isn't the eyeball slice in Chien Andalous (sic? probably) completely and deliberately gratuitous? I've never seen a Clark film so I can't add much - I bought the soundtrack CD and that's pretty disturbing.
In MOST Western societies there are limits and checks on freespeech but it's always a tricky line to draw.
5 - V. Smith
A great example of defending unpopular freedom of expression. Yep, larry Clark's a creep. No doubt that he's not "normal" whatever that means.
Still, Kids, I think, can still be a brutal wake-up call for teenagers who think that they're the first to be rebellious or sexually promiscuous. Unlike Ken Park, which didn't really have a message other than "How can you get your movie banned in the US?" Kids is one of his best works. If it makes you vomit, OK, but it's not like he's making kids do naughty things just for the hell of it in that movie.
Now, Brad, how do you feel about Don Imus?
6 - Brad Laidman
I can actually rarely understand a word Imus says - I listen to Howard Stern and he's been saying that Imus was a racist for years so it appears at least slightly true - Stern actually fascinates me because he gets humor from retarded people and angry midgets which seems all king of wrong. You should be mocking the strong, but Stern is sort of empathetic in his retard mocking - as if he were "there but for the grace of god go I"