INTERVIEW: Larry Clark – “Pataphysics Magazine Interviews Larry Clark”

(2003)
Larry Clark

Still from Ken Park, 2002

Pataphysics Magazine Interview with Larry Clark

(From the Holiday Resort issue, 2003. Brought to ASX by Yanni Florence and
Pataphysics Magazine)

Pataphysics: They’re all recent these images aren’t they?

Larry Clark: They’re not so old – some are, I don’t know exactly, but they’re
done within the last few years. I’m working on a new book which should be
ready maybe in a couple of months.

P: That’s the limited edition?

LC: Yeah, it’ll be a thousand books, and it’s going to be four hundred pages. I
have all the material and it’s going to cover photographs from the last few years
and old writings and everything I could possibly find to put in it, I’m putting in it.

P: Your first work in film emerged out of a book you did, was it 1992? You were
also making videos…

LC: I was doing collages – newspapers and magazines collaged with my

photographs to tell stories. And I was also doing video installations.

P: What were they?

LC: The installations were stuff that I’d taped off television – teenagers telling
stories. There were some talk shows where they would have guests and I would
tape those and edit them down. They had one show where this kid had killed his
father, and it was an hour show, and he was being interviewed and they brought
on other people who were involved. I edited it down to just him, so it came down
to thirteen or fourteen minutes. I think most of them came off Donahue. There
was one where a thirteen-year-old kid had had a two or three year affair with a
thirty-five-year-old woman, who was a neighbor. I taped that, it was an hour.
And they had all these people telling him that he was now really emotionally
fucked-up because of this affair because he was thirteen and she was thirty-
five. They were telling him how wrong it was and he was saying, ‘I don’t really
feel like I’m all fucked-up.’ But they kept having psychologists and all these
people on, telling him how screwed-up he was. So I edited that down to about a
ten minute thing that was just all of the kid and what the kid had to say.

P: Was it quite fragmented?

LC: Yeah, but it all made sense. I just cut out all the other stuff. It was
fragmented but it was really interesting to work with. There was another kid
who’d been raped. And then I taped something of a kid who was being
interviewed by Bryant Gumbel on Today. I edited it so you don’t really know why
he’s there. They’re talking about his story and things like that – he had like a
very inspirational, heroic story. He’s overcome all these odds, but you don’t
know why he’s there. I did an installation where I had four or five monitors in a
gallery facing the wall at different corners of the gallery and one in the middle
and you went in and leaned against the wall and were kind of trapped in the
space with this monitor. It was very confrontational, because the content of
each video was so powerful – very strong and disturbing content. They were
interesting on different levels. But that really is a part of what’s become Ken
Park, the new film. This film comes from these stories in the videos and a
couple of stories of friends of mine – plus the collages, and everything is in the
book A Perfect Childhood really. There’s the kid who kills his parents – there
was an article in a newspaper and I did a collage from it. He got naked so he
wouldn’t get blood on his clothes and he stabbed his parents. And then I told
Harmony Korine all these stories. When I met Harmony I told him this story for
Kids. He was one of the kids hanging around, so he knew the kids, so he wrote
Kids, and then it took a year to raise the money for it. During that year I gave
him all these stories for Ken Park, and I said, ‘Look, I’ve got like these different
stories that could be three or four different movies, could you put them all
together in one screenplay?’ And so I told the stories of the characters and what
happened to them, and he said, ‘You know, when I wrote Kids, I’d know these
kids, but these people I don’t know at all, but I’ll try.’ So he did it, and he
structured this brilliant thing, but anyway, when it came to the story of the kid
killing his parents, Harmony changed it to a kid killing his grandparents, and
Harmony was living with his grandmother then, so I thought it was funny that
Harmony killed his grandmother!

Larry Clark

Stills from Ken Park, 2002

P: When making the videos did you just find the TV programs by chance?

LC: Well, I’d look for these shows about teenagers and I would wait for them.
They would advertise – they’d usually advertise the show in the TV guide or
something. Or someone who watched those afternoon shows would hear about
it. Once in a while they’d call me and say, ‘Turn on the TV!’ So I’d turn on the TV
and throw a tape in.

P: The videos were quite roughly done were they?

LC: Very, very roughly done, yeah. And then I did another one that was on
cable access. It was called G-Street Live, which is a cable access show, some
show that I happened to be channel checking, and I ran into the free channel,
where anybody can get a TV show. It was like some guys from Brooklyn, who
were probably thirty years old or something, and they would just sit there and
talk about baseball or heavy metal music – they were like old head-bangers, I
think. But one show – and it turned out that this was a very odd show, because
I’d watch it quite a few more times after I’d happened to come across it and it
was different – but this one night that I first saw it they had invited these kids on,
these teenagers who were like younger brothers or some kids they knew from
the neighborhood, and they had them as their guests. They were just kind of
sitting there, these kids, fourteen-, fifteen-, sixteen-year-olds. And so
consequently all these other kids would call in and say shit to these teenagers,
right, because it was like you could call in and say anything you wanted to,
because it was cable access. So they would call in and say, ‘I’m fucking your
mother, right now,’ and ‘You know, you look like a faggot.’ And they just went on
and on and on. Just constant, I mean constant, it was like these constant phone
calls. The phone just kept ringing, and every time they’d pick it up there’d be
some kid saying something. The show went on for about an hour. So I edited it
down to just the phone calls. Then I took the tape into a studio and there’s a
machine where you can go in and you can blow up parts of the tape and I put it
on one kid, and I followed him no matter where he went in the frame, so if it
went to a wide shot of all eight people he’d be very small, but I would blow him
up so he would always be in the frame. If there was a close-up of him – and
there were probably only two shots in the whole show – but he would come into
focus and be very sharp and at other times he would be in different stages of
resolution. Anyway, it was very visual and there was all this sound and all these
kids saying things. That was one of them.

P: Do you think those kinds of very loose techniques have influenced the way
you’ve made films more recently?

LC: I think it just pointed me towards film. I was so bored with photography – I’d
been making photographs since 1962, or before that, but the earliest
photographs that you’ve seen come from like 1962, the early Tulsa
photographs. And I’d done the books and all that stuff, but I was always a
storyteller, and I became very bored with like a double spread, doing books. So
then I was just trying to tell stories in different ways, and I started doing the
collages. I was taking my photographs and collaging them with all kinds of stuff
– magazines and newspapers and all kinds of stuff that seemed to fit in. Then it
went into the video installations where I was telling stories also. I was telling
stories, but appropriating materials and then changing them around and then
making them into the story I wanted to tell, and then shaping the story and the
visual aspects of it by taking the images and either enlarging or doing different
things with them. So I think that was all pointing towards making film. I really
wanted to make a film because that seemed to be the best way to tell stories.
It’s such a bigger canvas because then you’re dealing with something where
you can make it look like real life. Hence Kids was the first one.

P: Did you think of making films in the ’60s and ’70s?

LC: Yeah, Tulsa was actually supposed to be a film. I went down in 1971 with a
camera and a tape recorder and I was going to make a one-man movie,
because the Tulsa scene, you know, I couldn’t bring anybody in. You couldn’t
bring a crew of people, it was just my scene. But I felt it was impossible to do.
And so then I thought, well I’ve got to finish this, so I took the Leica. Tulsa is
done like a film but it’s done with a camera – that was because there was no
way to make a film, but I wanted to do a film then because the way that I saw
was like cinema, I think. Then, you know, just through the years I got so into the
lifestyle – the outlaw lifestyle – and so into drugs and everything like that, I
certainly couldn’t have made a film, I was just too fucked-up. So I had to get
myself together to be able to make a film, and I kind of rehabilitated myself –
one of the two or three times I’ve done it, although the first time that I’ve
rehabilitated myself to be able to make a film!

P: What did that involve, rehabilitating?

LC: That involved trying to figure out a way to live without drugs and alcohol. I
went to rehab, and I did different things, but it would last for a period of time and
then it wouldn’t last anymore. I couldn’t quite get a handle on it, but I always
made work. But finally I got together enough so I could do it. It takes a
tremendous amount of energy, and a tremendous amount of work, to make a
film. You have to have an incredible desire, because I’m jumping in to make a
film and it’s a big business and you need a lot of money and you have to
convince people to give you money and then you have to really do it, and I knew
I could do it. It was difficult…

P: Did the Morrissey/Warhol films influence you? Morrissey spoke of making

films primarily about personalities rather than the emphasis being on themes
and directors and statements…

LC: Well, I saw those films and I liked them. What was interesting was when I
did Tulsa it was like, innocent – nobody really knew the ramifications of the kind
of pictures I was taking – it was such a secret world and I was one of the guys, I
was an insider. I was photographing it from the inside, and I was just making
photographs – there was an innocence there. I remember coming to New York
and seeing Chelsea Girls, and being upset by it. The first time I saw it my
reaction was – which is interesting – my reaction was, they know better.
Because they were actually acting for the camera, right. They were like aware of
the camera and acting for the camera and doing those things for the camera.
That was the difference I think between Tulsa and that work – all of a sudden
people became aware. There was a time with those Warhol movies when
people became aware of the camera and acting for the camera. Whereas Tulsa
was the other side of the line. In Tulsa people weren’t acting for the camera, it
was really like life.

P: Were they aware of the camera?

LC: They were aware of me, but I had always been around and always had a
camera. So it wasn’t like anybody coming in and making photographs, it was
just Larry with his camera practising his photography, because he’d always had
a camera, because I worked for my mother who was a baby photographer, and
so from the time I was fourteen years old I had a camera, because I would go
and photograph babies for my mother. I’d go with my mother or carry her
equipment with her, so there were always cameras. So if I didn’t have my
camera they’d say, ‘Larry, where’s your camera?’ So when I started
photographing my friends it was just like a natural thing. It wasn’t like okay now
we’re going to make photographs and make a book or make a movie and
people are going to see this. There was really never a thought given that
anybody was going to see these images, it just never came up. It was just kind
of part of the scene because it was like organic and totally natural, and I wasn’t
thinking about doing anything with the photographs or showing them or doing a
book or anything, it just wasn’t in the consciousness until later. Then it became
– well, I have all this stuff, it’s like visual anthropology, you know, it should all be
put together. When I went back in ’71, I knew what I was doing. I was going to
do a film first and then I was going to do a book. Then of course I was totally
aware – I knew what I was doing, and I’d actually laid out the first half of the
book, and then I knew that certain things were going to happen. I didn’t know
how they would happen or when they would happen, but I knew the life so well
that I knew certain things would happen and I was going to be there to
photograph them. But the point I’m making is, when you say Morrissey and
Warhol and those people, there’s a line there I think, that around that time it
became something like acting for the camera, and people being aware of the
camera.

P: Maybe that, to some extent, reflects the state of the culture at the time.

LC: I think so, yeah

P: That sense of contrivance…

LC: Right. But it’s interesting that my reaction was that it was so far out to me
that people would do that on purpose for the camera.

P: Did you think those films were exploitative? Sometimes they’re talked about
in those terms, the actors being exploited etc.

LC: I’m not sure they were exploited, I mean, they were part of it. They were
like, you know, showing off.

P: But what you’re saying is the work you were doing was really about people
just doing what they did.

LC: Exactly, right. No-one was showing off, it was a different thing.
P: Now the Morrissey/Warhol films seem slightly innocent when you look at the
way there’s a continual flow of psychological material on TV.

Larry Clark

Stills from Kids, 1995

LC: Right. Now it’s all about ‘I’ll do anything to be on TV or to be filmed – I’ll be
humiliated, I’ll do anything.’ Which brings us into like The Jerry Springer Show
and all those kind of things, and the reality shows. I just saw a preview last night
of a new show where they put hidden cameras in the whorehouses in Vegas,
and then at some point I guess the people have to sign a release that allows the
hidden camera footage to be shown. That’s the next thing, so it’s like on and on
and on. And now every aspect of our lives is photographed and documented,
specially all the kids. I mean, I go out into a club and I talk to kids and seventy,
eighty percent if you ask them what they do they’ll say, ‘I’m a photographer.’
Two skaters will go out to skate and one has a video camera and he’ll video the
one skating, and then the one skating will take the camera and video the other
one skating, and then they’ll go home after school after skating for a couple of
hours and then spend a couple of hours watching what they’ve done. So
everything is documented and everything is seen. And there are so many
photographers now. There’s a whole group of photographers that I meet who
tell me that I’ve been some form of inspiration for them, who now photograph
everything – all the sex and the drugs and the fighting. There are some really
good photographers out now that I’ve met in New York who party and are doing
drugs and doing everything and just living, right, just living with drugs and sex
and music. But everything is photographed and they all have cameras. It’s not
like one person photographing them, they’re all photographing each other doing
it, and it’s almost like if it’s not documented did it even happen?! They’re making
evidence all the time, constantly – at this moment everybody is making
evidence of everything they do, and also on the level we were talking about a
second ago, on TV. It’s pretty interesting where it’s going.

P: Can you go further with photographs, or do you feel more committed at the
moment to just continuing primarily with film?

LC: Well, no, I want to make photographs. I’ve been thinking a lot about this
lately, that I should get out there and make some photographs and just see
what I would do now.

P: Does censorship affect your films?

LC: They’re always trying to affect it. Ken Park is totally uncensored, explicit,
everything that I wanted to show is being shown. The stories in Ken Park and
the characters were supposed to be my first film. So I was coming straight from
the artworld into film, but then it didn’t work out that way. So it’s taken all this
time and then by making Kids and by making the other films. Then you find out
that there are all these rules and censorship, and what you can show and can’t
show if you want to get the film shown. Most of the time you have to make some
kind of deal that you will promise a certain rating, and I was told that if you show
certain things it’s automatically pornography, that there are certain images that
are automatically pornography, and I said, ‘No it’s not!’ I said, ‘I’m going to
prove to you that it’s not. I can do this and it’s not pornography!’ If it’s in the
story and it makes sense and if it’s part of life and it’s done right you know that it
won’t be pornography, and I’ve done that in this film. I think there’s a lot of stuff I
can do. Even though everything is documented now, everything is
photographed, I think there’s still a place for me to make work.

P: Your films often seem to have something irreversible happen to someone at

some point – whether it’s in Kids or Bully – in some ways that’s a critique of the
‘happiness’ that’s sold to people. There’s been a kind of contraction of film as a
medium, and maybe what you’re saying is that you’re attempting to split this
open.

LC: Well, my idea for Ken Park was to tell these stories about families, because
we’re all from fucked-up families in some way or another – whether they’re good
families or bad families, we all have to survive our families. So this film is about
survival, it’s about surviving the family. And what I’ve done is taken one of these
stories of these kids and their families and made it into a film. But I have a
tendency to cram everything into one film, because I want to make it visually
exciting and strong and I want everything in there, so I’m putting four families in.
And the kids are abused physically and abused emotionally and fucked-up, and
the adults are using the children to try and fulfill their own emotional emptiness,
and at the end of the day the kids are getting none of their emotional needs
fulfilled. So when it’s over, the kids – it’s like devastation – the kids have really
been put through it. Normally I think in this film you would just show how broken
all the kids were, but in Ken Park I had this idea that I wanted to have a scene
that showed some kind of temporary redemption – maybe some kind of
temporary salvation, maybe something uplifting, where some of the kids will be
able to survive or have a chance to survive because they have each other. They
don’t have anything else but they do have each other, and my idea was to say,
well, I’m going to do this by the kids coming together and having sex. And as an
idea it sounds like, you know, how are you going to make that work?

P: That last scene in Ken Park – was it something you were unsure of? Was it a
risk that it wasn’t going to work?

LC: It’s just a risky thing, just thinking about it, it’s a risky thing to have people
that get it – and people get it. People come out of the film, and they’re saying,
‘You know, that last scene really works, it’s not pornography, it really works, and
I thought it was like the cleanest scene in the movie.’

P: You’re pushing the boundaries…

LC: I know that we pushed the boundaries. Then there are some other scenes
in the film that I don’t think are shocking – I think they’re startling, but it’s all real,
it’s all real life and it’s all part of it, and nothing is there just to be there. And
that’s why it works, because it’s obvious that it’s not like, okay now we’re going
to do this, and then we’re going to shock you with this image. None of that
comes into play. It’s all supposed to be there, and if it wasn’t there we’re not just
going to turn the camera away, we’re not going to close the door, we’re not
going to go to the close-up, we’re just going to do it, which in art no-one would
ever think twice about – I mean, you can do anything. People go to art shows
and galleries and no-one blinks, but boy man, you put something on the screen
and it’s like…! And I guess that’s because it’s so accessible.

P: There’s this idea that film will really be art when it’s able to be made by a lot
people relatively inexpensively, and that era’s almost here.

LC: I think it’s close to being here, because now with a DV anybody can do it,
and obviously that’s the future.

P: Are you interested in films being distributed and shown in other ways?

LC: I think you’re going to be able to get anything. You’ll be able to access
anything. It’s going to be interesting. I don’t really know, but obviously it’s all
going to happen. It’s a good thing, I guess. That’s just the way it’s going to be.

P: You’re still working with 35mm…

LC: Yeah, well, I’m old school you know, and light goes through film and there’s
this beauty that you’re never going to get with electronic images. But what’s
going to happen is they’re going to figure out how to make electronic images
and video look like film – to get all that magic stuff that you get when light goes
through film. And nobody will be using film anymore. But I’m old school. I’ll work
for twenty more years – I’ll keep making films probably. I’m pretty much into film
at the moment. I don’t know where I’m going to go with it, but I’m a pretty basic
storyteller, pretty classical, pretty straight ahead.

P: Fassbinder spoke of making films that were both radical and melodramatic –
maybe that’s related to what you’re talking about – a radicality within a classical,
linear story…

LC: Yeah, I’m trying to use film, and probably the best way is to try to get a
realism – try to get it so when you’re watching it that it’s all about feeling – it
touches you, it’s real life. Maybe the actors and the cameraman and the director
and everybody at one point do something – it just feels so real, and this is
something that you relate to so strongly as a human being, as part of the human
experience, as part of life, that you’re moved by it. It’s pretty simple, and that’s
really hard to do. It’s really hard to get that.
WWW.LARRYCLARK.COM

ASX CHANNEL: LARRY CLARK

(All rights reserved. Text @ Pataphysics Magazine, Images @ Larry Clark)

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