Larry Clark

 Something about Clark creeps me out... I don't think I'd want to hang out with him. But he probably doesn't want to hang out with me, so that works out.

Hanging out aside, Larry Clark is a first-rate artist. Like many obsessed artists he often flirts unknowingly with self-parody, but usually manages to avoid  mawkish sentiment, depicting his youthful subjects (portrayed by adult actors) as an almost feral alien sub-strata of society. It's a powerful and disturbing vision. He reminds me of Zola; a brutal collision of romanticism and naturalism.

Listed Chronologically

Gummo (DVD)    1997
New Line DVD / Region 1 (USA)
 $24.39 Add to Cart
This is not directed by Larry Clark, but it's written and directed by KIDS screenwriter Harmony Korine, and deals with the same subjects, so it makes sense to categorize it with Clark. Plotless, dream/nightmare excursion through the lives of animalistic and rootless children and teens in Xenia, Ohio, some time after big killer tornado took the life out of the town. Sure-fire antidote to cloying sentimentality about "The Heartland." We found it deeply disorienting, being fortunate enough to have few points of reference when thrust into this landscape of deformity, loss, cruelty and perversion. Many of the post-civilzation white-trash antics depicted here are so extreme they might be cruelly funny were it not for Korine's other-worldly dream-walk style, which left us feeling calm but afraid. We follow two boys who support themselves slaughtering neighborhood cats for a $1/cat bounty, until they get enough money to visit a guy who pimps his obese mentally disturbed sister, and so on. Chloe Sevigny plays one of a pair of near-albino sisters who depilate (or try to enlarge?) their areolas with electrical tape. Drunken rednecks methodically demolish every stick of furniture in their kitchen after one of them loses an arm-wrestling match with a macro-cephalic dwarf. Three girls get a ride with a comically horrible out-of-town pervert. Trying to describe GUMMO, we keep thinking it's the closest thing to an American LAND WITHOUT BREAD-a disturbing 1933 landmark Bunuel faux documentary about sub-human conditions in rural Spain. Ms. Sevigny has a surprising costume design credit, and may be responsible for the incongruent pathetic boy wearing oversized pink rabbit ears who appears throughout the film.

Widescreen

 

Julien Donkey-Boy (DVD)    1999
New Line DVD / Region 1 (USA)
 $26.39 Add to Cart
This isn't directed by Larry Clark, but by Clark collaborator writer/director Harmony Korine. In his second feature Korine embraces the naturalism of Lars Von Trier's Dogma 95 film movement, which mandates handheld photography, available lighting, no special effects, etc..

As in the controversial Gummo (1997), Korine fashions a series of vignettes about bizarre characters. Julien (Ewen Bremner), is a schizophrenic who works in a school for the blind and lives at home with pregnant sister Pearl (Chloe Sevigny) . wrestler brother Chris (Evan Neumann), and their violent father (Werner Herzog), who slaps his children around, hoses them down with water, and offers to pay Chris ten dollars to dress up in his late mother's clothes and dance. Later Julien escapes from his house and interacts with (a kind phrase for "freaks out") people on the street, including some real people who had no idea they were part of a movie production.

DVD FEATURES: Confessions of Julien Donkey-Boy . deleted scenes . widescreen

 

Teenage Caveman (DVD)    2001
MGM DVD / Region 1 (USA)
 $10.39 Add to Cart
Larry Clark's most serious artistic works are hopelessly sleazy, so you can imagine what a Larry Clark B-movie is like. Is this self-parody or madness?

When Showtime ordered a package of R-rated remakes of 6 Samuel Z. Arkoff 1950s sci-fi movies with new with Stan Winston fx somehow Larry Clark got one of the jobs. Clark choose to remake-what else? -TEENAGE CAVEMAN. (Originally directed by Roger Corman in 1958 starring Robert Vaughn.)

Clark simply transferred his standard 1990s foul-mouthed horny naked crazy teens to a tribe of post-apocalyptic cave people. It's a wonderful sleaze melt-down that plays like a pervert's idea of the Flintstones.

The age-inappropriate predations of the tribe's leader drive six attractive teenagers out on their own in a barren world where rain storms are poisonous. When they seek shelter in a strange cave they all mysteriously pass out. Next thing you know they are all lying around unconscious in a disco era bachelor-pad wearing nothing but fancy 1990's underwear, looking like one of Clark's banned Calvin Klein ads.

It seems they were discovered by a super-powered teen couple (played by Richard Hillman and Clark's real-life girlfriend Tiffany Limos) left-over from medical experiments done before the nuclear holocaust. From that point on everyone is nude and stoned in a non-stop cocaine and sex party. Clark even re-did the AIDS bit from KIDS, introducing a sex and needle spread contagion that makes people explode.

Stan Winston had to do something, so some of he kids turn into monsters and fight. On balance this is a horrible excuse for sci-fi but a first-rate nudie exploitation type movie, which is all Clark seems to have shooting for.

MGM hilariously promotes this as if it was somehow a real science-fiction movie, including featurettes about the fx work and such.

 

Bully (Unrated Version) (DVD)    2001
Trimark DVD / Region 1 (USA)
 $14.89 Add to Cart
Directed by Larry Clark. There is no point watching this film except in this unrated form. The R-rated edit just doesn't pack the same punch.

Clark seems to be the real deal. KIDS was powerful, ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE was superb, and BULLY, is an overwhelming body-blow that sticks with you for days.

Grueling true story of how Bobby Kent, a bossy Florida teenager came to be beaten to death by a group of his peers; aimless, stoned, pathologically amoral white Floridians. The post-moral sub-society depicted is bewildering and shocking. like watching a troop of monkeys. Violence erupts casually and is forgotten in moments, and sexual pairings are equally random and volatile.

Bully stars Brad Renfro, Nick Stahl, Bijou Phillips, Rachel Miner and Leo Fitzpatrick

DVD FEATURES: Widescreen anamorphic - 1.85:1 . Audio: English (Dolby Digital 5.1) . subtitles: English, Spanish

This following comment is not to detract from this movie (which is marvelous): No mainstream American film has ever contained more nudity and sexual behavior than BULLY, and, like most sexually daring mainstream films, it's stark and pathological. Can't anyone, just once, make a light romantic American film with this much sex and nudity? It's a bad sign when crime stories always contain more sex than love stories.

 
Browse Directors