Interview

Indie filmmaker goes somewhere

USC School of Cinema graduate Gregg Araki talks about his philosophy, his inspiration and his films

By Jin Whang
Staff Writer

Like George Lucas, Gregg Araki has a film trilogy of his own. But unlike Lucas, Araki isn't making giant box-office productions.
"I pretty much wasn't gonna go through the mainstream route," said Araki, who graduated from the School of Cinema-Television with a master's degree in production in 1985.
"(Cinema school) at USC was a very Hollywood-oriented school, at least during the time I was there," Araki said, explaining how he was the black sheep of the crowd in the production program because, unlike his colleagues, he didn't move on to join major Hollywood production studios. "I was always much more interested in the artistic elements," he said.
Eventually, Araki's true calling was to go the independent route.
It's safe to say Araki has now earned a reputation in the independent film circuit as an auteur; the auteur of psychadellic films about lost youth.
Araki's latest feature "Nowhere," which opened May 9 in Los Angeles, is the grand finale of what Araki calls his "Teen Apocalyspe" trilogy, which began with "Totally Fucked Up" (1994) and "The Doom Generation"(1995).
Different from John Hughes' teen angst epics like "Sixteen Candles" and "The Breakfast Club," Araki's films revolve around the hyper-accentuated, zany and perverse lives of the young, the beautiful and the doomed of the MTV generation. The lead character is no Molly Ringwald type in a cool jean jacket but rather the average messed up, lost and confused 18-year-old in torn jeans and a t-shirt bearing rock band insignias.
Like the Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro director-actor tandem, Araki cast James Duval ("Independence Day") in all three films. In essence, Duval becomes the center of the trilogy. "He's like the `every teen' kind of character," Araki says.
The teenagers in Araki's films are like the folks from "Beverly Hills 90210 but on acid," Araki said. With purple hair, colored retainers, bad-ass tattoos, exaggerated but realistic Valley girl accents with the 90s colloquial vocab, Araki constructs an interwoven network of libidinous teens who will likely have a cigarette hanging on swearing lips, some of them pierced.
Araki said that his "mitigated characters" comprise the chaotic world of his movies. "It's part of the culture that I'm sensitive to as an artist. I see that this kind of world does exist, perhaps not consciously," he said.
Adding that the inceptions for "The Doom Generation" and "Nowhere" developed around the same time as the O.J. Simpson case. Araki said that media sensationalism and the violence attached becomes very much the perception of the world he sees.
"(They were) written with a specific thread ... a cycle of genre about the lost generation like `Rebel Without A Cause.' It's a genre that really affected the way youth deal with the world," Araki said about creating a genre in his own style.
However, Araki doesn't believe that his films should be pigeon-holed as "violent," not like what some Hollywood films contain.
"I can't even handle violence in movies," he said. "I just saw `Donnie Brasco,' and that was, like, super violent. But violence in my own movies come from a more ... it's different. It's that violence exists in the world and I'm just portraying some of that."
Some of that violence includes teenagers being abducted by an alien with the zap of the green slimy monster's bazooka watergun in "Nowhere." Three Valley girls, played by guest stars Shannen Doherty, Traci Lords and "The Doom Generation" star, Rose McGowen, are instantly sizzled down from their gaudy contempo garb to their colored retainers.
In "Doom Generation," a young and rebelling threesome are on the road from murdering encounters at each of their stops where blood, jizz and guts consume the screen.
However, the violence and the stories are not autobiographies, Araki claims.
"But I empathize and can relate to it. It's not a specific teenage movie but rather a genre-movie. I'm sensitive about issues of young people and seeing it on film. It's extreme stuff but nothing that young people can't handle. They (today's youth) are much smarter, much more sophisticated and super savvy."
Ultimately Araki said that his filmic style is a reflection of reality "taken to a higher plane." This is visually apparent through the use of color, lighting and costume that brings a superluscious packaging of mise-en-scene in Araki's films.
Araki said that his inspiration to make films about lost youth is related to the youth of the `60s, as in renowned French auteur Jean Luc Godard's "Masculine-Feminine." Araki admits he is a big fan of Godard next to Buster Keaton, Howard Hawks and Alfred Hitchcock. Even two characters in "Totally Fucked Up" are named Patricia and Michelle after the leads in Godard's "Breathless".
"I'm very interested in Godard," he said explaining that this stems from his interests in film theory, history and criticism. Even while a production student at film school, Araki was a Teachers Assistant for the Critical Studies program. After all, his background in undergraduate studies is in the same field. Araki earned his bachelor's degree in film history, theory and criticism from UC Santa Barbara before coming to USC.
"I loved film school. I got a good education. It helped me (learn) a lot about survival."
"Nowhere" marks Araki's sixth film among "Three Bewildered People in the Night"(1987),"Long Weekend"(1989), "The Living End" (1992) and the first two films of the trilogy.
Araki more or less disdains being a Hollywood filmmaker and prefers that black sheep position that came out of film school making films for $5,000 a piece and entering them in film festivals in Europe. And now involved in five other film projects, Araki credits his education and experience to having brought him to a different kind of success.
"I've been very, very lucky," Araki says as he sighs with relief and a hint of joy.



"Nowhere" is now playing in limited release.