Sonic Youth: An Interview with Larry Clark
Issue 205 / January 2006 More from this Issue
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BY DAVE MADDEN
From his early photography work (1971's Tulsa) to his film debut of Kids (1995) to his current film Wassup Rockers (premiering at Slamdance '06), 62-year-old Larry Clark is an artist who has always presented a raw, honest, oftentimes difficult-to-look-at vision of youth culture scaring everyone from parents to ratings boards. The other side to his artistry is his uncompromising vision and determination to finish what he wants without changing a single frame even if he has to wait ten years for the money and support to do so.
Clark premieres two movies this year in Park City: the aforementioned The O.C.-meets-Dogtown film, Wassup Rockers and a short (38 minutes) in the collection Destricted. After a morning of dealing with the NYC transit strike, Clark graciously spent the afternoon on the phone with me, speaking at length about his processes, inspiration and latest works.
SLUG: You were in London recently, is that right?
Larry Clark: I was in London over the weekend, as a matter of fact. I had an exhibition at a gallery with some of my photographs.
SLUG: How do you divide your time between photography and filmmaking? Is one an extension of the other, or do you find one as sort of a release?
LC: Well, they're different. I always take pictures. I've been taking a lot of photographs lately. But it's all the same well, it all makes sense to me (laughs).
SLUG: Like Matthew Barney's work, I see your films as a still image, but in motion. It's like Barney's work where a painting becomes an object in motion; yours is a photograph come to life.
LC: That's actually hard to explain too. It just happens. I think, probably what helps more than anything is that I have a clear vision. I know what I want. That really helps a lot, especially if you're making a film and you know exactly what you want it to look like, or what you want it to feel like and you're trying to translate what you're seeing into this reality so it feels real, so it feels like real life, so it feels like it's really happening, like it's very immediate. Like it's happening for the first time.
SLUG: It's extending an idea.
LC: My early photographs, like the Tulsa photographs for example, the Tulsa book is straight documentary.
SLUG: Yeah, definitely.
LC: When I started making films, like Kids, for example, it was a fiction film, but with a documentary look. A lot of people initially thought it was a documentary. I swear to God, people would walk out of the theatre really pissed off; if they had seen Leo (Fitzpatrick, "Telly" in Kids) walking down the street they would have probably lynched him or something. Wassup Rockers, the new film, starts out looking like a documentary of these kids' lives in the South Central (L.A.) ghetto and then I take them on this adventure.
SLUG: I read that you cite The Warriors as a reference point.
LC: One could make a really interesting and compelling documentary about these kids, but I don't make documentaries. I wanna make what I call "real movies." The truth is that I actually just sat down one day all alone in a coffee shop and said, "What can I do?" Paris Hilton and Nicki Richie were in the news then, a lot this is two years ago before the Paris Hilton sex tape or anything, right? Nicki and Paris were in the news just for going to clubs, if you remember. So I said, what if these kids went into Hollywood to skate Beverly Hills Highway, the famous skate spot, and Paris and Nicki drove by and saw them and like picked them up, right?
From his early photography work (1971's Tulsa) to his film debut of Kids (1995) to his current film Wassup Rockers (premiering at Slamdance '06), 62-year-old Larry Clark is an artist who has always presented a raw, honest, oftentimes difficult-to-look-at vision of youth culture scaring everyone from parents to ratings boards. The other side to his artistry is his uncompromising vision and determination to finish what he wants without changing a single frame even if he has to wait ten years for the money and support to do so.
Clark premieres two movies this year in Park City: the aforementioned The O.C.-meets-Dogtown film, Wassup Rockers and a short (38 minutes) in the collection Destricted. After a morning of dealing with the NYC transit strike, Clark graciously spent the afternoon on the phone with me, speaking at length about his processes, inspiration and latest works. SLUG: You were in London recently, is that right?
Larry Clark: I was in London over the weekend, as a matter of fact. I had an exhibition at a gallery with some of my photographs.
SLUG: How do you divide your time between photography and filmmaking? Is one an extension of the other, or do you find one as sort of a release?
LC: Well, they're different. I always take pictures. I've been taking a lot of photographs lately. But it's all the same well, it all makes sense to me (laughs).
SLUG: Like Matthew Barney's work, I see your films as a still image, but in motion. It's like Barney's work where a painting becomes an object in motion; yours is a photograph come to life.
LC: That's actually hard to explain too. It just happens. I think, probably what helps more than anything is that I have a clear vision. I know what I want. That really helps a lot, especially if you're making a film and you know exactly what you want it to look like, or what you want it to feel like and you're trying to translate what you're seeing into this reality so it feels real, so it feels like real life, so it feels like it's really happening, like it's very immediate. Like it's happening for the first time.
SLUG: It's extending an idea.
LC: My early photographs, like the Tulsa photographs for example, the Tulsa book is straight documentary.
SLUG: Yeah, definitely.
LC: When I started making films, like Kids, for example, it was a fiction film, but with a documentary look. A lot of people initially thought it was a documentary. I swear to God, people would walk out of the theatre really pissed off; if they had seen Leo (Fitzpatrick, "Telly" in Kids) walking down the street they would have probably lynched him or something. Wassup Rockers, the new film, starts out looking like a documentary of these kids' lives in the South Central (L.A.) ghetto and then I take them on this adventure.
SLUG: I read that you cite The Warriors as a reference point.
LC: One could make a really interesting and compelling documentary about these kids, but I don't make documentaries. I wanna make what I call "real movies." The truth is that I actually just sat down one day all alone in a coffee shop and said, "What can I do?" Paris Hilton and Nicki Richie were in the news then, a lot this is two years ago before the Paris Hilton sex tape or anything, right? Nicki and Paris were in the news just for going to clubs, if you remember. So I said, what if these kids went into Hollywood to skate Beverly Hills Highway, the famous skate spot, and Paris and Nicki drove by and saw them and like picked them up, right?
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