Books, Arts & Manners: Spaced Out

KIDS was to be released by Miramax, which is part of Disney. But Disney boggled at the finished film, so Miramax created Excalibur, to release it, as it were, pseudonymously on its own. It is the first film of the 52-year-old still photographer Larry Clark, author of three controversial picture books, the second of them Teenage Lust (1983), all unknown to me. It has been the longtime ambition of Larry Clark to make a film about how teenagers really are, which, according to him, has never been captured on screen.

Enthralled by the freedom and “culture” of skateboarders, Clark learned skateboarding along with his 9-year-old son; he also hung out in Washington Square Park photographing them, which attracted the attention of a 19year-old high-school dropout, Harmony Korine, who claims to be the grandson of Huntz Hall of the Dead-End Kids and Bowery Boys. Asked by Clark to write him a screenplay, Korine delivered it in three weeks. The film was made with amateur actors, many of them skateboarders, though skateboarding is seen only fleetingly in the film. “I think all my work has been cinematic-like,” says the Tulsa-born, subliterate-like Clark, “and my whole life was preparation for making this film.”

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John Simon

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KIDS was to be released by Miramax, which is part of Disney. But Disney boggled at the finished film, so Miramax created Excalibur, to release it, as it were, pseudonymously on its own. It is the first film of the 52-year-old still photographer Larry Clark, author of three controversial picture books, the second of them Teenage Lust (1983), all unknown to me. It has been the longtime ambition of Larry Clark to make a film about how teenagers really are, which, according to him, has never been captured on screen.

Enthralled by the freedom and “culture” of skateboarders, Clark learned skateboarding along with his 9-year-old son; he also hung out in Washington Square Park photographing them, which attracted the attention of a 19year-old high-school dropout, Harmony Korine, who claims to be the grandson of Huntz Hall of the Dead-End Kids and Bowery Boys. Asked by Clark to write him a screenplay, Korine delivered it in three weeks. The film was made with amateur actors, many of them skateboarders, though skateboarding is seen only fleetingly in the film. “I think all my work has been cinematic-like,” says the Tulsa-born, subliterate-like Clark, “and my whole life was preparation for making this film.”