Larry Clark

It was people I knew but it also all comes from my artwork. The photos, collages and video installations I've done. All of these stories come from that and the people I know.

I had been a documentary photographer and there were things I couldn't document so I was trying to figure out a way to explore these subjects. For example if you want to do a story on teenage suicide you can't go out and find someone who is going to commit suicide and photograph them. So obviously you have to fictionalize and film seemed to be the way to do it. I tried to do some photographs of scenarios I set up but I always wanted to make film. I always thought like a filmmaker even my early photographs [from his book Tulsa] were very cinematic. I wanted to be making movies so I photographed as if I was making a movie. I was thinking more of telling a story rather than just make a photo.

Finally I decided I was going to make films and Ken Park was going to be my first film. So subsequently it took all this time, I've made five films now to get to Ken Park.

I didn't have a screenplay for Ken Park. I had met Ed Lachman and he was a cinematographer for films. I met him and I said I always wanted to make film. He said that I should. I asked him how to get into that and get the money. He kind of knew the ropes because he was in that world. He said he knew some people that would give us some money. We needed a screenplay so we set out to find a screenwriter. Then Ed went off to go work on more films. All I wanted to do was this project. So a couple of years past and in the meantime I came up with the idea for Kids [released in 1995]. I had that story and I know what I want to do but I don't have a screenplay. I'm not really a writer, I don't have the discipline to sit down and do that even though I am now. That's when I met Harmony [Korine] who was of the skate kids in New York City. He was in his last week in high school and that he wanted to be a screenwriter. About a year later I got the idea for Kids. I wished that there was a kid who could write because it needs to be written from the inside, someone who knows these kids.

I remembered Harmony and called him up. I said I wanted to talk to him and he sent this short screenplay of his and I thought it was pretty good. I told him the story of Kids and he wrote it. Then it took a year to get the financing. So in that year I was trying to keep everyone together because Harmony had no money. I was giving him a $100 a week or something. I was paying the kids rent while we were waiting for the money. Also in that period I talked to Ed and said that we should give Harmony a shot at writing Ken Park. Ed had also found a writer and I flew out to California with all my materials. I met this guy who seemed good and gave him everything. As I was coming back to New York on the plane I thought "Gee maybe I should have given all that to Harmony". So I called Ed and told him we should give Harmony a shot and he agreed. I told him he had to go back to his writer and get all the stuff back and tell him thanks but no thanks.

When I told Harmony what I wanted him to do, he read everything and told me he didn't know this world. He knew the world of Kids but not Ken Park. He said he would try. He did this brilliant screenplay. Then we got the money for Kids and made that.

So I had this first draft of Ken Park for years. After Kids I tried to raise the money for Ken Park because it was always going to be an unrated film like my photographs. I didn't know there was all these fucking rules in film that when you get money you have to agree to all this stuff. We couldn't get the money and a lot of other stuff happened over the years. At one point Ed and I had a conflict and didn't speak for a while.

It was just a personal conflict between Ed and I. Then I just called Ed one day and said that I'm not going to be mad anymore, lets get this made. I was going to get Ken Park made. I'm not going to die with this one thing that made me get into film not get made. We then really tried to get the money. Ed met this producer Kees Kasander [producer of 8_ Women and The Pillow Book] who found the guys who gave us $1.3 million. It was a digital video budget. Ed and I were never going to shoot it on video. We made the deal saying we would but then we said we were going to shoot on 35mm film. We're filmmakers, we're not going to fucken make this on video. It was really a struggle. It looks like a $12 million movie because we called in every favor known to man. Ed knew everybody, all the labs, all the camera companies and called in every favor. Including favors he didn't even have. We got film for free, discounts, we gave back our fees, worked with a very small crew and got it made. It was a real collaboration.

I had to. It was my reason for getting into all of this. These were the stories I wanted to tell and you don't get to see these stories get told. The moral of the story is never give up.

Probably not as good and if I hadn't been working with Ed Lachman it wouldn't have been as good either. Who knows what it would have been like? But it definitely would have been different. I have film under my belt when I made it. Making film is a collaboration and when you're a photographer like I was you're used to working alone. When you make film you have to collaborate with all these people. You have to know everyone's job and you keep learning for as long as you're working. I thought my brain couldn't learn anything else. When you start making film you're like a kid you soak up all this information. It's an amazing experience to go into a something brand new and see what happens.

Well this is America and we're a very rich country. Our kids have the luxury to be bored. In the suburbs what else is there to do but hang out, smoke pot, drink beer, listen to music, have sex and really live in your own little world. Bully could have happened in a third world country because there it's all about struggle and putting food on the table. The family hanging together as a unit just to survive. Bully is a very American film I think whereas Ken Park is universal. Ken Park is about children and their parents. These things happen in all cultures and societies everywhere. It's not just America at all. There is so much going on in Ken Park. Everything that happens with families happens behind closed doors. Not until recently I think everybody thought that what happened between them and their family was unique because it wasn't spoken of. Now things are coming more out into the open, just about everything is discussed and talked about. People realize that they are not alone. In some cases it happens to a lot of people.

No I'm a parent. I have a 16 year old daughter and a son, Matt Clark, who just turned nineteen who did the music for Ken Park. I picked the country tunes and he picked the rest. I do relate as a parent.

I certainly hope so [laughs].

I think that there is a lot of stuff going on. There is no easy solution and there's not one clear reason. That's not what life is about, life is life and it's about the unexpected. You can't control it. Everybody has a unique situation and that's what makes it interesting.

Ken Park is about the parents using their children to fulfill up their own emotional emptiness. It's in the most inappropriate and selfish way. At the end of the day the kids don't get anything from the adults that they need. So consequently they only have each other.

When the whole world is on your head and you can't relate at all to the adults and you only have your friends, which saves you and keeps you from killing yourself. That was my idea of the end of Ken Park [with the three way sex scene between the kids]. Most films that I see when kids are so devastated and they have no hope and they're just fucked. I wanted to show that they kids are ok and have each other. They have sex in the purest, most innocent and most appropriate way as kind of a redemption. Uplifting scene where you find that everything is going to be okay. Its one thing to get an idea and another way to pull it off. But I think we pulled it off. Also I was told that if you show certain things it's automatically pornography and I said “No its not.” Its part of life and it makes sense because it's in the context of the story. I had some things I wanted to prove and one of them was that it's not pornography. People tell me that they find the last scene uplifting and that's its not dirty. The say the dirty scene is where Peaches' father kisses her. The inappropriate things are what some of the parents do.

We went to all these different film festivals and people are really responding to it. It's interesting because when people come out of the theatres of my other films they are kind of down because it's depressing. It's kind of like I beat them up a bit. They do get beat up a bit in Ken Park but they come out feeling good. I think that's why Ken Park will be successful.

When Ed and I finished the film the people who gave us the money and our producer Kees Kasander said the film will never get shown. It is undistributable. Kees called me like 50 fucken times saying that my film will be shown in museums a couple of times but then it will get shelved. It's a good film but it will never get seen unless you cut it. I said we will never cut a frame of it. That was why we waited all these years to make it. Fuck you we're not going to cut it. We made sure we had total control so that no one could ever cut it. If this film is shown in other countries where it's against to show this kind of thing then they can't show it there unless we tell them they can and we never will.

We knew that if we could show this film to one audience it would happen. We got it into the Venice Film Festival and then the film got bought. It's going to be shown in America by American Cinemateque. It's nice to show people that their wrong and I'm here to tell everybody that it doesn't have to be done their way.

Well the idea was to always use real kids as actors and mix them with seasoned professional actors. There is a trust. They do things for me because we trust each other. I deal with them with honesty and that honesty comes out in their performances.

It was very tough on the actor [laughs]. It's an emotionally devastating piece of work. To talk about doing it is one thing but to do it is another. You pay a price for that. It's just an incredible performance.

I think the toughest scene for me and the actors was the scene where Claude's father comes in and molests him in the middle of the night. We had no idea how to shoot that because we had no references for that. We had to work it out. That was difficult. I paid a big emotional price for that and I felt really fucked from that. The actors and I had to put ourselves in that place to do the scene.

All the sex scenes are difficult. It's not real but you have to make it look real which is definitely a trick.

Very clear. That's why I can make these films and they work. I know what I want and what I am doing. I also stay very loose. I'm always changing and always up for improvising. If you plan something you want to do, it comes up and everything goes wrong. That's when it gets really exciting because then you are in a place where you never would have been unless everything had fucked up. Its brand new territory and its what you do then that's important. You can pack up and go home or you can work.

I've always been an outsider. Haven't I? [laughs]. I've never been part of the establishment. I'm always fighting. This film has been a battle all the way through it.

I'm just an artist trying to do my work. I'm not really trying to be controversial, radical and trying to upset people and cause trouble. But this is America and we're free and this is what I've always seen all my life. I think I started making work because I come out of the fifties when everyone was repressed. Nothing was seen and everything was supposed to be like Leave it to Beaver, white picket fences and mom's apple pie. There wasn't supposed to be parents who were alcoholics, drug addicts and kids who were molested. But I saw this all happen. I knew kids whose parents beat them and no one ever said anything. I knew another girl who had five brothers and they were all fucking her. Everyone knew it and probably her father was fucking her too. I always thought why can't we talk about everything. Why must it all be a secret? That's kind of why I started making work. I want to see this.

So much of my early photographs were stuff I wish I had seen in other places. Then I wouldn't have had to make the images. Don't tell me there are certain parts of life that can and can't be seen.

I think it's going to scare a lot of people, it's like Kids. So many people said it was my fantasy and that this stuff doesn't happen. Kids aren't like that. Then all you had to do was read the newspaper and see that it was all true.

I've been working in that area for a long time. People seem to respond and I think I do it well. Its just part of life. Its part of the characters I am making work about.

Everything in America is sex and everything is sold with sex. Look at advertising, fashion, magazines, TV and everything man. I do it and people get upset. You can make comedies and jokes about but the minute you take it seriously people tend to jump on you.

by Daniel Robert Epstein