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Make art, not politics Gregg Araki on going Nowhere by MATTHEW HAYS
Mirror: How was this film received at the Sundance Film Festival?
M: Do you ever want to step away from the editing process and let someone take that over? GA: I personally really like it. It's one of my favourite elements in making the film. I'd like to step away from the production--it's just always so chaotic, so many people. The writing and the editing are my favourite parts, because they're the most purely creative. I can do it literally by myself in the middle of the night and not have to deal with assistants, people or whatever. M: So I guess the big news around Sundance was when you turned the festival on its head by walking in with a woman on your arm (Kathleen Robertson, who plays Claire on Beverly Hills 90210, no less...) GA: I don't really talk about that. It's all just rumours. I will confirm that that is true. But all the articles that have been written about that, they've not really talked to me. M: It's all been speculation? GA: Eyewitness accounts, I guess. The Advocate did a huge cover story on bisexuality which I didn't even participate in and there were huge colour photos of me. Why does anybody care? For me, I'm interested in talking about my movies, not who I'm dating. I don't know what that has to do with anything. M: And yet your films are this really intriguing fluid take on sexuality and the human condition. And so some would say it's interesting to look at your personal life and how that's reflected in your work... GA: [laughs] Some would say that, yes. But as for someone who's not examining my personal life, but living it, I'm just trying to be happy, that's all. M: Are you being successful at that? GA: Yeah. The Doom Generation is my darkest movie. It's a sort of a fuck-you, in-your-face kind of movie. Nowhere manages to have its subversive cake and eat it too. Its surface is very pop, supersaturated colour, like Clueless. But in its soul, it has a lot more on its mind. I didn't want to make an ugly, gritty movie like Kids. I wanted to talk about these kids living on the edge of oblivion, but I wanted to do it in an MTV language. I wanted it to mesmerize. M: Aside from the recent news about your personal life, you've always seemed terribly ambivalent about this 'gay filmmaker' title. You tagged The Doom Generation as 'a heterosexual movie.' Would you rather people just stop referring to you that way? GA: I like to be thought of without any kind of adjective attached to it. A gay filmmaker, a Gen-X filmmaker, an Asian-American filmmaker--I'd just like to be thought of as a filmmaker. I don't make films to be thought of as a spokesperson or to toe any politically correct line. I approach films in the way a musician approaches music. It's just my means of expression, my chosen medium. I'm not out to produce propaganda for any sort of movement or political agenda. I think at some point that's when people get frustrated, because I don't have their political agendas in mind. I have my own agenda, which is to express myself via the medium of film. I'm an artist, not a politician. M: The press kit for Nowhere includes one article in which the reviewer writes that the film "just basically blows." Are you ever surprised by the polarized responses to your films? GA: I haven't actually read that review. It's in the press kit? And it says that the movie blows? M: It's in Film Journal International. GA: I don't even know what that is. It completely shocks me sometimes how nasty the reviews of my movies can get. What bothers me about a lot of those articles is that they basically become personal attacks on me. It really has nothing to do with what the film is about. It's an unfortunate side-effect of doing too many interviews. Being in Details magazine. I would prefer people talk about what the film is about, the way it looks, the acting, the camera work, what it's trying to do--coming from film school, from a film theory background, my films are super dense with stuff. It's really insulting and annoying when people talk about Gregg Araki and his fucking haircut. I don't make movies for people to talk about me, I make them for people to talk about the movies. It's sort of a catch-22; I do interviews to promote the movies. I do interviews solely to get people to see the movies. It's a backward sort of thing, because eventually people resent me and piss on the movies because who does Gregg Araki think he is? M: Do you have a Brady Bunch fixation? GA: [laughs] I wouldn't say I have a fixation, but I have a real interest in the whole dreamlike universe of this generation. The cameos in my films are not supposed to be like 'Oh, there's Peter from the Brady Bunch,' it has more to do with the way the cameos have this unsettling quality about them. They're in your dream, the same way that your mom and dad can be in your dream, or Charlotte Rae from The Facts of Life can be in your dream. For this generation, the Brady Bunch are as much a part of your psyche as your mom and dad. Nowhere opens this Friday, July 18 at Cinéma du Parc. See repertory listings for showtimes Fant-Asia update You read it here first: Montrealers really can't get enough of Asian cinema. The two screenings of the Jackie Chan movie Drunken Master 2 were sold out last week; in fact, literally hundreds of eager fans had to be turned away (one usher described the scene as "a near-riot."). Fant-Asia organizers have responded with two additional screenings of Drunken Master 2: Thursday, July 17 at 5 p.m. and Saturday, July 19 at 1 p.m. They were also sad to announce that Hong Kong movie star Donnie Yen will not be attending this year's festival, as previously planned. All screenings at the Imperial. Additional Fant-Asia info: 982-1707. |
Gregg Araki, the hyper cool filmmaker behind such existentialist MTV movies as The Doom Generation and The Living End, has become a bit weary about all the questions surrounding his personal life. He is, after all, trying to promote his latest film, Nowhere, the final instalment in his Teen Apocalypse trilogy (after Totally F***ed Up and The Doom Generation). Nowhere takes a confused group of L.A.-based teenagers and throws in some date rape, S/M, suicide, rampant drug use, alien abduction and copious cameos by refugees from '70s TV (The Brady Bunch, The Facts of Life, Three's Company etc.) Araki spoke with the Mirror from his girlfriend's home in L.A.
Gregg Araki: It was really good. It was a really great screening and it was a world premiere. I get very funny with my movies because I edit them myself, so I sort of forget what they are--because I've seen them literally 500 times. I forget the impact of what's going on. It's funny to see them for the first time with an audience and see the reactions.