Larry Clark: The Mr. Skin Interview

You're in this bizarre place between respected indie filmmaker and exploitation figure. How do you see yourself nowadays?
I don't know, man. I just make the work. It doesn't feel exploitive to me. I want my films to be social commentary. I've been a visual artist for over forty years, and it's always been about needing to make the work.

You changed a lot of young lives in the aftermath of Kids--specifically with the debuts of Chlo?evigny (Picture: 1) and Rosario Dawson. That could happen again with Wassup Rockers.
Yeah, it's definitely another turn where I'm taking kids off the street and making movies with them and telling their stories. Kids was all about realness, you know, and showing what the kids were all about. Wassup Rockers is about Latin kids from South Central living in a gang-infested neighborhood where they could always be shot and killed. They just want to be themselves, but there's enormous peer pressure to conform.

Did you think much about their impending fame while you were casting the film?
It's not so much that I cast the film. I met these kids and wanted to make a film about them. Certainly this opens up the world for these kids. It opens up some possibilities for them and a sense of self-worth. A couple of these kids had zero self-worth, and I had to convince them that I wanted them for a film. I watched them open up and blossom and gain confidence. It's all good, so far. What happens next, I have no idea.

We're also big fans of Teenage Caveman, which you made for cable as part of a series of remakes of old Roger Corman movies. It was probably work-for-hire, but you made it into a very personal and chilling sci-fi film.
Nobody ever brings that up, but I like that film. It was basically a screenplay that was already written, and I invited the writer on the set. We dreamed up this collaboration, and he wrote it while I was shooting. He was there every day. We changed everything and basically made it up as we went along over a--I think it was a nineteen-day shoot. It was an amazing feat.

Was HBO ready for what you gave them in the end?
The film that was shown on HBO was exactly the film I wanted to make. As it turned out, it was the DVD that had to be edited. The problem was the sex sequences and one line that had to be taken out--much to my chagrin. You can still see my original film on some of the HBO channels. It was the only movie in that series that was really successful for them. I had to do an interview for them that ran with the film, because HBO was nervous about it. They were showing it around 3 a.m. The interview had me talking about how I was a final-cut director.

So the DVD ended up being cut?
I made Teenage Caveman so I wouldn't have to deal with the rating system of the MPAA [Motion Picture Association of America]--but when it went to DVD, I found out that it still had to be rated. HBO required an R rating for the DVD release. The censorship on that film started because I had an orgy--I had stopped the movie in the middle of the fucking film just to shoot that orgy--and we had to edit out some of the close-up shots where the characters were humping. Then they really drove me crazy when it came to that one line.

What was the line?
I was on the phone with the MPAA because we couldn't get an R if I didn't take this out: "I squirted." It's the scene where the country bumpkin is seduced by Judith [played by Tiffany Limos (Picture: 1 - 2)]. His innocence is taken by Judith. He's fucking her, and at the moment he comes, I had him say, "Ah squirted!" That was in character. He was a bumpkin. So we took it out to get an R.

That may be the stupidest moment in the history of the ratings board.
That's what I said! "Wait a minute--you're not going to give us an R because 'Ah squirted'?" So on the DVD, the scene just ends. That shows how the fucking MPAA works. Everything else is forgotten, and it comes down to two words. I wanted to take my name off the film, so I explored that. I found out to take your name off a film, I'd have to go before the board of the Director's Guild and convince them that--because they took out "Ah squirted!"--that it significantly changed my directorial vision. I don't know how I would have won that.

You must have all the best stories about struggling with the MPAA.
I wanted to take the MPAA to court over the rating for Kids. Look at it today. Now you can make a film in Hollywood that has everything that's in Kids. You can make a movie with sex and violence and dope and everything else possible--as long as it's a comedy. They don't care. If it's social commentary, they freak out. Man, you really got me started here.

We didn't know Teenage Caveman would get you going.
I'd like to leave with this: [MPAA head]Jack Valenti is a fucking drunk. There's my closing line.