CHRIS NEUMER: When you were shooting scenes like that, the sort of stereotypical Beverly Hills cop, was there a sense that you didn’t want to make him too white? You know you hear standup comedians imitating white people and there’s always a sort of hyperbolic sense of being white. Did you ever shy away from that or encourage people to go towards that when you were shooting?
LARRY CLARK: In the case of the cop he was building. I had him building and building and he got really nasty in the end. And it worked that way. You know I felt sense I was there when that happened that it was a totally racist incident. It was so obvious that he wouldn’t let the kids go because they were Latino and from South Central. It was totally like that. I didn’t make that up. I wasn’t shying away from that. And it got to the point where I was goofing on white people. It was kind of funny that way, because in film you normally wouldn’t see these kids. If you saw these kids they’d be stereotyped as drug addicts or gang-bangers or something. Not just good kids. Really good kids who were punk rockers like these kids. So it kind of got funny in Beverly Hills where I am goofing on white people and I’m thinking, “Who would be in their backyard?” It was really a little over the top in a lot of cases where these over-the-hill actresses who are alcoholic, maybe agoraphobic, that get up and get dressed up.
CHRIS NEUMER: They don’t even have to be over-the-hill.
LARRY CLARK: They dress up to the nines in full hair and makeup and never leave the house. They just drink all day. And I’d heard about that through the years so… It was funny when I realized I had them trapped in Beverly Hills it was kind of like The Warriors. They’re trapped somewhere and they have to get back home where it’s safe.
CHRIS NEUMER: I picked up on that too, but more because the haircuts kind of reminded me of some of The Furies.
LARRY CLARK: [laughs] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
CHRIS NEUMER: One of the guys, I don’t know if he was wearing a baseball hat or just a little beanie…
LARRY CLARK: Yeah. And you know I always liked that film, it was one of my favorite films, just a fun, fun film, which was based on a Greek myth. It’s kind of like Ulysses.
CHRIS NEUMER: Either The Odyssey or The Iliad.
LARRY CLARK: One of those.
CHRIS NEUMER: I’ll figure out which the right one is and credit you with that.
LARRY CLARK: With the Sirens, trying to draw the boys in and it’s the Beverly Hills girls as the Sirens. I wasn’t constantly figuring this all out but it’s all in there. And then after I wrote it, the second half, I realized that The Swimmer was one of my favorite films, and in The Swimmer Burt Lancaster is going to swim across Beverly Hills pool by pool and so he goes through yards and he interacts with people so it’s kind of like Walter Hill meets John Cheever.
CHRIS NEUMER: That’s an interesting combo to say the least.
LARRY CLARK: So it’s all mixed up in there. It’s kind of stream-of-consciousness.
CHRIS NEUMER: It came off as such, in terms of that it felt effortless watching it. It just went. It sort of meandered.
LARRY CLARK: I’m really mixing genres. Thank you very much. Thank you. It was fun as a filmmaker to do that because I’m not really a writer and so the structure of the film is kind of screwed up because I don’t follow in three acts so it was interesting that it turned out at all.
CHRIS NEUMER: Was it they type of thing in any manner where it’s like—you know how you meet women who say, “I have to spend an hour putting on makeup so it doesn’t seem like I’m wearing makeup.” I was curious to know if in any way, was this like, “I have to spend so much time making it look like I didn’t spend any time,” and I was wondering with you if you had to spend a lot of time making it look effortless?
LARRY CLARK: Yes. A lot. It was really, really hard and hard work. And the kids were wild and untrained and I was tough on the crew because you cannot just pick up kids off the street, wild kids, and say, “Sit down and shut up while we set up and now we’re ready, come over and be yourself.” These kids had to be themselves the whole time. Making a film is a discipline and it’s hard. And the crew worked hard. Just getting the kids to do anything and to round them up for each scene, each shot, was crazy. It was like herding cats as the DP said. I actually kind of lost my crew, not even halfway through. They had no idea what I was doing and I was kind of dragging my crew along and getting the kids going and now that they’ve seen the film they go, “My God, Larry, we had no idea what you were doing.” Yeah motherfuckers, I had to drag you along. But I understood that the kids had to be themselves the whole time.
CHRIS NEUMER: Sort of like reverse method acting?
LARRY CLARK: Exactly.
CHRIS NEUMER: Don’t get into character. Don’t even think about getting into character ‘cause I need you.
LARRY CLARK: Exactly and the method—well I’m a method director, I think, so it was difficult. And we worked fast.
CHRIS NEUMER: For Bully, I think you said you started with 40 days and got it cut down to 23 so I’m assuming this was worse.
LARRY CLARK: This assignment was really crazy and I don’t know how I pulled it off but I did. It was totally nuts. Shooting so many scenes in one day sometimes.
CHRIS NEUMER: Do you know how many setups you averaged?
LARRY CLARK: Oh God, I don’t know, but it was a lot. It was really, really hard.
CHRIS NEUMER: Like in Rodriguez territory, probably?
LARRY CLARK: I don’t know what he does.
CHRIS NEUMER: They say that the designation of ‘a lot’ in the studio system is twenty setups in a day and Rodriguez said, “Please, if I do under eighty then I’m upset.”
LARRY CLARK: Wow. Well, we did a lot. But anyway, it’s whole story to make it look effortless is really hard work, but I’m really happy and they did a great job. And they’re like 14 year old school girls that take acting classes after school and we cast them.
CHRIS NEUMER: After you cast them? Because I know Rosario took acting classes after you cast her.
LARRY CLARK: No, these were girls taking acting classes so they hadn’t really had experience except that they wanted to be actresses. And they were terrific. The kids liked them.
CHRIS NEUMER: Let me ask you this on a completely different tack. One question I had for Chan-wook Park, the South Korean filmmaker who made Oldboy…
LARRY CLARK: Oldboy, yeah, I saw Oldboy…
CHRIS NEUMER: I was talking to him in sort of a fantasy film kind of sense, like fantasy football. In the sinkhole that is my mind I was trying to figure out what it would have been like if he had made the film Sweet Home Alabama. He doesn’t understand American culture that well, but it would be interesting to see this from another perspective. Now here you are and you have this… it’s funny how you make films about urban kids but they’re all sort of different in their own way, but I started thinking about putting you on Sweet Home Alabama or Sweet Home Alabama 2 and, for starters is this something, in the most generic terms imaginable, that you’d even be tempted to do?
LARRY CLARK: What is Sweet Home Alabama?
CHRIS NEUMER: It’s like the most sappy formulaic, romantic studio comedy you can imagine.
LARRY CLARK: Who’s in it?
CHRIS NEUMER: Reese Witherspoon. It was released four or five years ago. It was the first film to make her big.
LARRY CLARK: I have no idea what film that is.
CHRIS NEUMER: Take any very sappy romantic comedy, could you put your own
LARRY CLARK stink on it?
LARRY CLARK: Absolutely, absolutely. But you know, those things are so unrealistic, I used to take my daughter, who just turned twenty, to those movies because—I would take her to go see all those romantic comedies with Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant. We’d see all those and they’re so unrealistic and I would wonder sometimes, “What would happen if I’d made this?” If I really made it the way… I could do anything, I could make any kind of film.
CHRIS NEUMER: Well that’s the one that I would like to see. I’d like to put you on it.
LARRY CLARK: I will rent the movie and watch it.
CHRIS NEUMER: Oh no, don’t. It’s horrible. It’s awful. It’s the kind of thing that’s just bad, bad, bad.
LARRY CLARK: But Sweet Home Alabama 2?
CHRIS NEUMER: I’m saying, if you made it, I’d go and see it. I’d go, “This is different enough to work.”
Chris Neumer
