Craig D. Lindsey
Welcome to Harvey’s Hellhole, a monthly column devoted to spotlighting the movies that were poorly marketed, mishandled, reshaped, neglected or just straight-up destroyed by Harvey Weinstein during his reign as one of the most powerful studio chiefs in Hollywood. This month, we once again go back to 1995, where Weinstein drops one more button-pushing acquisition before he completely goes Hollywood.
It begins with Telly (Leo Fitzpatrick), the main character and resident condom-despising lothario, seducing a tanned, virginal lass in her bedroom. Both in their undies, they start with some extreme tongue kissing before they smash-cut straight to the act. We hear Telly’s inner monologue during all the panting and moaning: “Virgins. I love ’em. No diseases, no loose-as-a-goose pussy, no skank. No nothin’. Just pure pleasure.”
And that’s Kids in a nutshell. This grungy bit of Gen-X teensploitation marked the directorial debut of Larry Clark, a then-middle-aged photographer who captured drug-addicted, reckless youth in the books Tulsa and Reckless Lust. He brought his fascination with hedonistic, self-destructive teens to the Big Apple, where he recruited Washington Square Park skateboarders and young, non-union actors to populate this teenage wasteland, written by a 19-year-old weirdo named Harmony Korine (who would go on to direct such cult curios as Gummo and Spring Breakers).
In Clark’s nasty, nihilistic version of New York, parents are nowhere to be found, and preteens and teenagers (every last one of them a gotdamn amoral delinquent) roam around the city looking for chaos. They smoke weed, drink forties, piss in public, harass gay couples, and – in one unsettling scene – collectively beat the living shit out of someone looking for a fight.
And, of course, there’s the sex. It’s all these little bastards think about; they’re either having it or talking about it or working their way to get it. Clark does establish the different perspectives both sexes have on the matter. Most of the first half hour is Clark cutting back and forth between boys talking about their conquests in a dirty apartment and girls giving their horror stories in the bedroom of very experienced teen Ruby (Rosario Dawson). Both powwows are verbally graphic, but while the guys talk about sex like it’s a bloodsport, the gals see it as a pleasurable time-waster boys often screw up with their machismo.
The girls are also sensible when it comes to their health. We see Ruby and her pal Jennie (Chloe Sevigny) getting tested for STDs, but Jennie is the one who gets bad news: She is HIV-positive, and Telly – the only guy she’s been with – gave it to her. Jenny spends the rest of the day trying to track down Telly, who is already on the hunt for another girl to deflower.
Even after 30 years, Kids is still an uncomfortable watch. Seeing these youngsters engage in simulated, intimate activity (one scene has teens watching a foursome of youngsters intensely make out in the back of a nightclub) and excessive, debaucherous partying may have even the most liberal of viewers clutching their pearls. Clark shoots this in a guerilla, fly-on-the-wall style that often slides into voyeurism. From the hella-homerotic shots of shirtless boys spraying themselves with water and lifting weights to a scene of underwear-clad girls making out in a pool, Kids is a filthy, punk-infused gumbo of underaged depravity. Of course, Harvey Weinstein had to have it.
Even though he initially turned down covering the movie’s $1.5 million budget, Weinstein later wanted Miramax to distribute the film after producer Cary Woods (in carrot-dangling mode) screened it for him. Weinstein was ready to go to bat for Kids. Unfortunately, he knew Disney wouldn’t. Still smarting from the Priest controversy earlier that year, Disney didn’t want to deal with any more wild acquisitions from the Weinsteins.
With Clark refusing to cut one frame (even for an R-rated version that could be available to rent at Blockbuster Video), Weinstein had an unrated bundle of trouble in his hands. But he had a plan B: buy the film back from Disney (he forked over $3.5 million) and release it under another studio. Kids remains the one-and-only theatrical release of Shining Excalibur Films, which secretly had Miramax employees handling the marketing and promotion.
With the film’s taboo subject matter predictably whipping up divisive reviews (Roger Ebert gave it three-and-a-half stars, while Desson Thomson called it “glossy exploitation”) and words of condemnation from conservative watchdogs (then-presidential candidate Bob Dole led the charge, going after Hollywood for releasing degenerate art he hadn’t seen), Kids went on to gross $7.4 million domestically and $20.4 million worldwide. It made rising ingenues out of Dawson and Sevigny (who briefly had a relationship with Korine after filming). Sadly, other castmates’ lives were cut short. Justin Pierce, who won Best Debut Performance at the 1996 Independent Spirit Awards for his performance of Telly’s lecherous pal Casper, hung himself in a Vegas hotel room in 2000. His pal Harold Hunter, who had a supporting role as sexually aggressive skater Harold, had a cocaine-induced heart attack six years later.
Kids wasn’t the only thing giving kiddie-porn chic back in the summer of ‘95. Calvin Klein Jeans caused a similar uproar when it dropped a suggestive ad campaign, shot and directed by photographer/frequent Madonna collaborator Steven Meisel. The commercials had an off-camera voice (not Meisel) creepily interviewing waifish, babyfaced models (including Kate Moss and Bijou Phillips, who later appeared in Bully, another frank teen drama from Clark) in what looks like a wood-paneled basement. Although the commercials were eventually yanked from TV after two weeks and the company was later investigated by the FBI and the Department of Justice for possible child pornography violations, Calvin Klein did sell a helluva lot of jeans.
As both Kids and the Calvin Klein ads proved, sex sells – and, unfortunately, so does sexy stuff with minors. Kids could’ve been about inner-city, NYC teens building a community where they could escape the urban squalor and personal traumas and be free, skateboarding spirits. But that’s not what Clark wanted. According to the 2021 documentary We Were Once Kids, Clark and Korine infiltrated these kids’ spaces, looking for hungry, wet-behind-the-ears juveniles to appear in their nightmarish coming-of-age story without adult supervision. They may have been smoking and drinking a lot, but they weren’t as sex-crazed as the movie makes them out to be. That bit of information now makes Kids look, if not disgusting (as one recent anniversary piece put it), then pitifully hollow.
Even though Kids has its fans (the late rapper Mac Miller’s 2010 mixtape K.I.D.S. includes audio snippets from the movie), I haven’t heard an outcry for a re-release. (As I mentioned in last month’s column, the woman who helped Kevin Smith get his religious satire Dogma back from Weinstein also has Kids.) It seems that even ardent supporters know something this disturbing and transgressive most likely wouldn’t fit well in our sensitive, culturally conservative times. If Kids ever did get the 4K digital-restoration treatment, I get the feeling younger, savvier audiences might dismiss it as a shameless, salacious, controversy-stirring relic. After all, it was brought into this world by Clark and Weinstein, two of the dirtiest old men ever to make independent movies.
Yeah, Kids isn’t available to stream, but that doesn’t mean it’s not out there.
