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50-434: Lawrence Donald Clark (born January 19, 1943) is an American film director, photographer, writer and film producer who is best known for his controversial teen film Kids (1995) and his photography book Tulsa (1971). His work focuses primarily on youth who casually engage in illegal drug use, underage sex, and violence, and who are part of a specific subculture , such as surfing , punk rock , or skateboarding . Clark

100-406: A Nuclear Assault shirt who gives her drugs, though the part is credited to his brother Avi. Korine reportedly wrote the film's screenplay in 1993, at the age of 18, and principal photography took place during the summer of 1994. Contrary to the perception of many viewers, the film, according to Korine, was almost entirely scripted, with the only exception being the scene with Casper on the couch at

150-444: A boy named Fidget, who shoves a depressant into her mouth; she then learns Telly is at Steven's house. When Jennie arrives, Darcy and Telly have already begun having sex, which turns into rape, exposing Darcy to HIV. Jennie cries and passes out among the other partygoers. The morning after, a drunk Casper rapes Jennie unprotected as she sleeps, unwittingly exposing himself to HIV. After a montage shows homeless people and drug users in

200-737: A collection of decks, T-shirts, and sweatshirts that feature stills from the iconic film. The collection was released on May 21, 2015, in Supreme's New York, Los Angeles, and London locations and on May 23 in its Japan location. Clark has won the top prizes at the Cognac Festival du Film Policier (for Another Day in Paradise ), the Stockholm Film Festival (for Bully ) and the Rome Film Festival (for Marfa Girl ). He has also competed for

250-506: A conservative take on gender, on race, on the politics of HIV." In a 2016 retrospective essay about the film, writer Moira Weigel discussed the film's impact at the time of its release and legacy. She acknowledged that the film "nails many of the ethnographic details of teen life in New York in the Nineties". However, she commented on the film's depiction of HIV, writing: "Watching it today, I

300-413: A few friends and, together, taunt a gay couple passing by. As Casper rides on a skateboard, he carelessly bumps into a man who angrily threatens and pushes him. The man is struck in the back of the head with a skateboard by Casper's friend Harold, causing him to collapse. Several other skaters join in, beating the man until he is rendered unconscious by a final blow to the head by Casper. Telly and some of

350-601: A group of teenagers in New York City. They are characterized as hedonists , who engage in sexual acts and substance abuse, over the course of a single day. Ben Detrick of the New York Times has described the film as " Lord of the Flies with skateboards, nitrous oxide and hip-hop... There is no thunderous moral reckoning, only observational detachment." The film caused controversy upon its release in 1995 over its treatment of

400-526: A kind of elliptical narrative, I wanted to deconstruct some stories. At that point, it was written literally right after I wrote Kids." Clark ultimately used most of Korine's script, but rewrote the ending. The arrangement was to film using digital video, but Clark and Lachman used 35mm film instead. Although it was sold for distribution to some 30 countries, the film was not shown in the United Kingdom after director Larry Clark assaulted Hamish McAlpine,

450-405: A local store, where Casper shoplifts a bottle of malt liquor . Looking for drugs, food, and a place to hang out, they head to their friend Paul's apartment despite disliking him. They join the other boys in boasting about their sexual prowess and nonchalant attitudes to unprotected sex and venereal diseases. Across the city, a group of girls are talking about sex. Their attitudes contradict that of

500-742: A one-off company, to release the film, due to Disney's policy, that at the time, forbid the release of NC-17 rated films, and the fact their appeal to the MPAA to lower it to R was denied. Eamonn Bowles was hired to be the chief operating officer of Shining Excalibur Films. The film, which cost $ 1.5 million to produce, grossed $ 7.4 million in the North American box office and $ 20 million worldwide. According to Peter Biskind 's book Down and Dirty Pictures , Eamonn Bowles had stated that Harvey and Bob Weinstein might have personally profited up to $ 2 million each. The film received mixed reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes ,

550-648: A photographic essay titled "The Perfect Childhood" that examined the effect of media in youth culture. His photographs are part of public collections at several art museums including the Whitney Museum of American Art , Museum of Photographic Arts , and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston . In 1993, Clark directed Chris Isaak 's music video " Solitary Man ". This experience developed into an interest in film direction. After publishing other photographic collections, Clark met Harmony Korine in New York City and asked Korine to write

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600-559: A police cell after punching and trying to strangle Hamish McAlpine, the head of Metro Tartan, the UK distributor for Ken Park . According to McAlpine, who was left with a broken nose, the incident arose from an argument about Israel and the Middle East, and he claims that he did not provoke Clark. In a 2016 interview, Clark discussed his lifelong struggle with drug abuse, although stating he maintained total sobriety while filmmaking. He confessed that

650-413: A rating when Disney bought Miramax. Ken Park is a more sexually and violently graphic film than Kids , including a scene of auto-erotic asphyxiation and ejaculation by an emotionally rattled high-school boy (portrayed by James Ransone , then in his early 20s). In Australia, Ken Park was banned for its graphic sexual content and a protest screening held in response was immediately shut down by

700-399: A small role as one of the girls in the swimming pool. She was given the leading role of Jennie after Mia Kirshner , the original actress cast, was deemed not the right fit to work with first-time actors. Sevigny and Korine went on to make Gummo (1997) and Julien Donkey-Boy (1999) together. Korine makes a cameo in the club scene with Jennie, as the kid wearing Coke-bottle glasses and

750-467: A thousand trite radio and television talk shows." Feminist scholar bell hooks spoke extensively about the film in Cultural Criticism and Transformation : " Kids fascinated me as a film precisely because when you heard about it, it seemed like the perfect embodiment of the kind of postmodern, notions of journeying and dislocation and fragmentation and yet when you go to see it, it has simply such

800-473: A video of a woman playing tennis. He eventually kills his grandparents , in retaliation for petty grievances, and finds that it arouses him sexually. He records himself on his tape recorder so that the police will know how and why he did it, puts his grandfather's dentures in his mouth, lies naked in his bed, and falls asleep; eventually being found and promptly arrested. The film cuts frequently between these subplots, with no overlap of characters or events until

850-545: Is a girl who lives alone with her obsessive and highly-religious father, who fixates on her as the innocent embodiment of her deceased mother. When he catches her having sex with her boyfriend Curtis – whom she has playfully tied to her bed – he beats the boy and savagely disciplines her, then forces her to participate in a quasi- incestuous wedding ritual with him. Tate is an unstable and sadistic adolescent living with his grandparents, whom he resents and abuses verbally. He engages in autoerotic asphyxiation while masturbating to

900-573: Is a teenager skateboarding across Visalia, California . He arrives at a skate park, where he casually sets up a camcorder , smiles, and shoots himself in the temple with a handgun. His death is used to bookend the film, which follows the lives of four other teenagers who knew him. Shawn is the most stable of the four main characters. Throughout the story, he has an ongoing sexual relationship with his girlfriend's mother Rhonda, whom he tells that he fantasizes about being with while having sex with her daughter, Hannah. He casually socializes with their family,

950-404: Is glad his mother did not abort him; he does not answer. Clark attempted to write the first script for Ken Park , basing it on personal experiences and people with whom he had grown up. Dissatisfied with his own draft, he hired Harmony Korine to pen the screenplay. Korine explained the writing of the film in a 2005 interview: "Ken Park was written right after Kids , before we had gotten

1000-460: Is played by an actor credited as "Dr. Henry". Screenwriter Harmony Korine has an uncredited appearance as Fidget. I wanted to present the way kids see things, but without all this baggage, this morality that these old middle aged Hollywood guys bring to it. Kids don't think that way...they're living in the moment not thinking about anything beyond that and that's what I wanted to catch. – Larry Clark Larry Clark said that he wanted to "make

1050-537: Is that life has given him nothing that interests him, except for sex, drugs and skateboards. His life is a kind of hell, briefly interrupted by orgasms." Janet Maslin of The New York Times called the film a "wake-up call to the modern world" about the nature of present-day youth in urban life. She added it is also "an extremely difficult film to sit through, with an emphasis on societal disintegration and adolescent selfishness at its most sordid", and that some viewers will find issue with Clark's lack of judgement on

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1100-507: The Golden Palm ( Kids ) and Golden Lion ( Bully ). Kids (film) Kids is a 1995 American drama film directed by Larry Clark in his directorial debut and written by Harmony Korine in his screenwriting debut. It stars Leo Fitzpatrick , Justin Pierce and Chloë Sevigny in their film debuts. Fitzpatrick, Pierce, Sevigny, and other newcomers including Rosario Dawson portray

1150-700: The Great American Teenage Movie, like the Great American Novel." The film is shot in a quasi-documentary style, although all of its scenes are scripted. In Kids , Clark cast New York City "street" kids with no previous acting experience, notably Leo Fitzpatrick (Telly) and Justin Pierce (Casper). Clark originally decided he wanted to cast Fitzpatrick in a film after watching him skateboard in New York, and cursing when he could not land certain tricks. Korine had met Chloë Sevigny in New York before production began on Kids , and initially cast her in

1200-764: The United States since its initial showing at the Telluride Film Festival in 2002. Clark says that this is because of the producer's failure to get copyright releases for the music used. The film was banned in Australia due to its graphic sexual content and portrayals of underage sexual activity after it was refused a classification by the Australian Classification Board in 2003. A protest screening held in Sydney , hosted by film critic Margaret Pomeranz ,

1250-433: The aura of transgression. While it manages to capture the sense, instilled in us by our health teachers, that disease and death would be the price of desire, it does little more than that. Instead of examining the myths that loomed over the teen minds of that era, it enlarges them". AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains The documentary We Were Once Kids was released in 2021. Directed by Eddie Martin, it explores

1300-535: The band composed of Lou Barlow and John Davis, released Music For Kids , a compilation of songs from the film, many of which had never been released for streaming, and others that had since become unavailable due to licensing issues. The album included songs that did not make the final cut, and alternate versions of the material present in the film. Creation of the film's soundtrack was overseen by Barlow. Ken Park The title character Ken Park (nicknamed "Krap Nek": his name spelled and pronounced backward ),

1350-623: The boys on many topics, particularly fellatio and the significance of the individuals to whom they lost their virginity. Two of the girls, Ruby and Jennie, mention that they were recently tested for sexually transmitted disease : Ruby tests negative, even though she has had multiple sexual encounters, and Jennie tests positive for HIV . She tells the nurse that she has had sex only once, with Telly. Distraught, she tries to find him to prevent him from passing HIV on to another girl. Meanwhile, Telly and Casper walk to Telly's house and steal money from his mother. After purchasing marijuana, they gather with

1400-411: The end, when Shawn, Claude, and Peaches meet and have a threesome . In a game of "who am I?" afterward, they refer to an unnamed person they know who is now dead. The film cuts to a title screen , followed by a flashback to before the opening scene. Ken has impregnated his girlfriend and taken a menial job. At the skate park, they discuss whether to abort the pregnancy, and she asks Ken rhetorically if he

1450-422: The end, which was improvised. Gus Van Sant had been attached to the film as a producer. After insufficient interest had been generated in the film, he left the project. Under incoming producer Cary Woods , the project found sufficient independent funding for the film. Harvey Weinstein of Miramax , wary of parent The Walt Disney Company 's opinion of the risky screenplay, declined to involve Disney in funding

1500-489: The events depicted. Some critics labeled it exploitative, describing it as borderline " child pornography ". Other critics derided the film, with the most common criticism relating to the perceived lack of artistic merit. The Washington Post ' s Desson Thomson said, "Ostensibly about the banality of youthful evil, 'Kids' is simply about its own banality. At best, it's a misplaced aesthetic experiment. At worst, it's glossy exploitation—with enough controversy to launch

1550-454: The film "is about people lost in a haze of contempt and despair, trying to wrest some love or relief out of the situation." Michael Rechtshaffen of The Hollywood Reporter described it as "a ragingly controversial feature that makes it very tricky to distinguish between insightful and incite-ful." Todd McCarthy of Variety described it as "Beautifully crafted but emotionally dispiriting and alienating in its insistence on spotlighting only

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1600-441: The film has an approval rating of 47% based on 58 critic's reviews, with an average rating of 5.70/10. The site's consensus reads, " Kids isn't afraid to test viewers' limits, but the point of its nearly non-stop provocation is likely to be lost in all the repellent characters and unpleasant imagery". On Metacritic , the film has a score of 63/100 based on reviews from 18 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". The film

1650-533: The film's production, as well as the post-film lives of some of the cast. At the time of filming Kids , most of the participating teenagers signed a contract without knowledge about their rights and were left on their own after filming ended. The documentary was awarded for Best Editing at the Tribeca Film Festival . In August 2010, American rapper Mac Miller released the mixtape K.I.D.S. , and its cover art, title, and some musical themes pay homage to

1700-446: The film. Some audio clips from the film are also part of the mixtape in between songs. On the film's twentieth anniversary in 2015, skateboarding brand Supreme launched a capsule collection commemorating the film. Actors Justin Pierce and Harold Hunter had been involved with Supreme since its incarnation and were part of the brand's original skate team. The soundtrack was released in 1995. In September 2023, Folk Implosion,

1750-433: The financing for Kids . Larry Clark realized I could write pretty well and that I understood a certain type of vernacular, the teenage vernacular. So he wrote down five things he wanted to see on a napkin in red ink. [...] They were things that he wanted to see. Five images that he wanted to see, and with those images he wanted me to construct a basic narrative, like a certain kind of narrative. I wasn't interested in telling

1800-403: The group then pick up a 13-year-old girl named Darcy—the virginal younger sister of an acquaintance—with whom Telly wants to have sex, but Darcy shows restraint. Afterward, the group goes to an unsupervised party at the house of their friend Steven. Jennie meets Misha, a girl who dislikes Casper and notes Telly's possible whereabouts at The Shelter . When Jennie arrives at the club, she runs into

1850-466: The head of the UK distributor for the film, Metro-Tartan . Clark alleged that McAlpine had said the September 11 attacks were "the best thing to ever happened to America" and that Israeli victims of Palestinian suicide bombers "deserved to die." McAlpine denied the accusations. Clark was arrested and spent several hours in custody, and McAlpine was left with a broken nose. The film has not been released in

1900-416: The only exception made to his practice of abstinence while filming was Marfa Girl . Clark explained that while filming that movie he used opiates for pain due to double knee replacement surgery. In Kids (1995), his most widely known film, boys portrayed as being as young as 12 are shown to be casually drinking alcohol and using other drugs. The film received an NC-17 rating, and was later released without

1950-473: The police. Australian film critic Margaret Pomeranz , co-host of At the Movies , was almost arrested for screening the film at a hall. The film was not released in the United States, but Clark says that it was because of the producer's failure to get releases for the music used. In 2015, Clark collaborated alongside notable skateboard and clothing brand, Supreme , to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Kids with

2000-426: The production of the film. After Woods showed him the final cut, Miramax paid $ 3.5 million to buy the worldwide distribution rights of this film. Miramax Films , which was owned by The Walt Disney Company , paid $ 3.5 million to buy the worldwide distribution rights. Later, Harvey and Bob Weinstein , the co-chairmen of Miramax Films, were forced to buy back the film from Disney and created Shining Excalibur Films,

2050-527: The reality of American suburban life at the fringe and ... shattering long-held mythical conventions that drugs and violence were an experience solely indicative of the urban landscape." His follow-up was Teenage Lust (1983), an "autobiography" of his teen past through the images of others. It included his family photos, more teenage drug use, graphic pictures of teenage sexual activity, and young male hustlers in Times Square , New York City. Clark constructed

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2100-418: The rest of whom are completely unaware of the affair. Claude fends off physical and emotional abuse from his alcoholic father, who detests him for not being masculine enough, all while he tries to care for his pregnant mother, who makes little to no attempt at defending him. However, after coming home drunk one night, he attempts to perform oral sex on Claude, prompting the boy to run away from home. Peaches

2150-464: The screenplay for his first feature film Kids , which was released to controversy and mixed critical reception in 1995. Clark continued directing, filming a handful of additional independent feature films in the several years after this. In 2001, Clark shot three features — Bully , Ken Park and Teenage Caveman — over a span of nine months. As of 2017, they are his last films to feature professional actors. In 2002, Clark spent several hours in

2200-616: The subject matter. It received an NC-17 rating from the MPAA , but was released without a rating. Critical response was mixed, and the film grossed $ 20.4 million on a $ 1.5 million budget. It is now considered a cult classic . In an encounter that starts out consensually, a 17-year-old boy named Telly roughly has sex with a teen girl, despite her pleas for him to stop and be more gentle. Afterward, Telly meets with his best friend, Casper, and they discuss his sexual experience. He vocalizes his desire to keep having sex with virginal girls. They then enter

2250-410: The waking New York City, a voiceover by Telly says that sex is the only worthwhile thing in his life. A naked Casper says, "Jesus Christ, what happened?". Sarah Henderson portrays the first girl Telly is seen having sex with. Tony Morales and Walter Youngblood portray the gay couple. Julie Stebe-Glorius and Christina Stebe-Glorious appear as Telly's mother and younger brother, respectively. The Rastafari

2300-590: Was drafted within two months into the United States Army . From 1964 to 1965, he served in the Vietnam War in a unit that supplied ammunition to units fighting in the north. His experiences there led him to publish the 1971 book Tulsa , a photo documentary illustrating his young friends' drug use in black and white. Routinely carrying a camera, from 1963 to 1971 Clark produced pictures of his drug-shooting coterie that have been described by critics as "exposing

2350-784: Was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma . He learned photography at an early age. His mother was an itinerant baby photographer, and he was enlisted in the family business from the age of 14. His father was a traveling sales manager for the Reader Service Bureau, selling books and magazines door-to-door, and was rarely home. In 1959, Clark began injecting amphetamines with his friends. Clark attended the Layton School of Art in Milwaukee, Wisconsin , where he studied under Walter Sheffer and Gerhard Bakker . In 1964, he moved to New York City to freelance, but

2400-489: Was championed by some prominent critics, including Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times , who gave the film three and a half out of four stars. " Kids is the kind of movie that needs to be talked about afterward. It doesn't tell us what it means. Sure, it has a 'message', involving safe sex. But safe sex is not going to civilize these kids, make them into curious, capable citizens. What you realize, thinking about Telly,

2450-442: Was hoping for an account of the ways that the fear of AIDS shaped how young people in that time and place learned about desire. Instead the film recasts the virus into the threat lurking in the background of a kind of nightmare fairy tale...Rather than exploring how it shaped, and unmade, lives, it reduces the disease to one more slick bit of style, something to add suspense where the film might otherwise risk aimlessness and to heighten

2500-427: Was shut down by the police. Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reports a 46% approval rating with an average score of 4.80/10 based on 13 reviews. Ed Gonzales of Slant Magazine noted some redeeming elements in an "otherwise familiar Kids procedural" in which "the parents are all monsters of some kind and there's an excuse for every teenager's bad behavior". Rob Gonsalves of eFilmCritic , wrote that

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