Larry Clark's interview with the A.V. Club
The Onion: How did you come to make Another Day In Paradise?
Larry Clark: Well, I had done a book in 1971 called Tulsa, a collection of my photographs. I photographed my friends over a nine-year period, and we all took a lot of drugs; my friends got into crime, and I was kind of an outlaw back in that period myself. People suggested I go back and do a movie based on Tulsa, and I didn't really want to do that. I didn't want to copy myself. But reading Eddie's manuscript, which was about the same kind of lifestyle, I felt I could go back to some familiar territory and blend some things I know about the lifestyle in with his book.
O: As a sort of grim coming-of-age story, Another Day In Paradise seems like a natural segue from Kids. Was this a conscious decision on your part?
LC: After I did Kids, I was offered a lot of films. People sent me a lot of screenplays, but they were all Kids rip-offs, kind of like "bad kids" movies. I didn't want to do that; I wanted to do something different. I wanted to challenge myself. After I read Eddie's manuscript, I decided that I wanted to make a Hollywood genre movie that was in debt to the outlaw road movie. I wanted to take this familiar genre and do it in a way that I thought it should be done, my take on it. I always felt that most of those films were filled with Hollywood stereotypes, and that they weren't very real. I also wanted to work with professional actors, which I'd never done before. It gave me a chance to go back to my early milieu and not repeat myself.
O: As a photographer, was it tough to reconcile the captured, naturalistic quality of your work with the more conventional demands of a genre picture?
LC: It was difficult, yeah. It's really hard to make a film, especially if you're working out of Hollywood, because they have certain ways of doing things. They have all these rules that I didn't know about. They would say, "This is how it's done," and I would say, "Well, I don't want to do it that way." So I was constantly kind of teaching people on the crew how I wanted things done, which was totally different from what they were used to doing. That was really a challenge. That was the toughest thing. Especially the lighting, because movies are so overlit: There are all these lights coming in that are unrealistic, and my whole thing is lighting to make it look exactly as it would if nobody was there�a normal, natural way things are lit. So that was quite an experience, trying to show these people how I wanted it done.
O: What was your approach in regard to the performances?
LC: First, we talked a lot about the characters. I talked to Jimmy Woods about Mel a lot, and about my experiences and my friends. I talked to all the actors, and we gave histories to each of the characters. Vincent Kartheiser, who plays Bobbie, he's just some kid from Apple Valley, Minnesota. He had done a lot of stage work when he was young, and he made some kids' movies. He made a movie called Alaska that he starred in with a polar bear. [Laughs.] But once the actors got a hold of the characters, I think they did an amazing job.
O: Is James Woods directable? Was it difficult to bring him into your way of doing things?
LC: I kept a real loose ship. I wanted a lot of improv. I wanted the performances to be immediate, to be right there, to be fresh. So we would change a lot of things. As we shot, I would tell stories and we would add dialogue, and we would usually shoot a scene pretty straight one time and then go off the charts from there. We would try to improv the whole scene. It's very hard for actors to improvise the same character over an extended period of time. Luckily, Jimmy's very good at it, and after we kept doing it, everybody got into the spirit. I think that really translates well to the screen. I'm always looking for the unexpected image, the unexpected action. So many movies are all storyboarded and plotted out so that everybody knows exactly what they're supposed to do. And I wanted to keep it to where nobody knew exactly what they were going to do. There was always that element that anything could happen. I think that works very well for the film.
O: The film suggests that a life of crime is not something you choose so much as slip into. Do you think that's true?
LC: Yeah. The thing about that kind of life, that outlaw life of drugs and crime, is that you make your own excitement. Life can be pretty boring, and there's a lot of excitement in that kind of lifestyle. I think that's one of the attractions to it. People get caught up in it and things happen very quickly and unplanned.
O: Why did you choose to set Another Day In Paradise in the '70s?
LC: Well, it's back to the period of [Tulsa], and also, Eddie's book was set back a little earlier. The story just didn't feel contemporary to me at all. I wanted to set it in 1971 and use the music of the day�the great singers like Otis Redding, Percy Sledge, Sam Moore, and Bobby Womack�because that was the music I was listening to at the time. I also wanted to use more obscure tunes and turn people on to them.
O: Your movies tend to avoid moralizing. Kids, in particular, was construed by some critics as conservative because of a perceived lack of moral perspective. How would you respond to that?
LC: Well, I'm just trying to show it like it is and make it as real as possible. I think there's a moral center in the work, and that's in the form of the consequences one pays for whatever life they lead. I think that maybe you don't see all the consequences in Kids, but you realize that there may be some down the road. I'm just trying to make it more like real life. Real life isn't all cut-and-dried.
O: It seems to me that people have different responses to photography and film in that one is a captured moment in time and the other deals with a larger perspective on the world. Perhaps that would explain some of the criticism.
LC: Yeah. I think people are just more used to film having a clear-cut message. When it gets too clear for me like that, then it's not real. I just hate the Hollywood message-movies where everything is wrapped up in a nice little package with a nice little bow on top of it at the end of the film. They always try to do that, and if they can't, they'll tag a line on at the end saying something like, "Twenty years later, these people were blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." It's ridiculous! I think the ending of [Another Day In Paradise] is ambiguous, because you don't really know what's going to happen to Bobbie. He could straighten up and have a different kind of life, or he could turn out to be just like Mel. There is some kind of hope there, but who knows what's going to happen to him?
O: What's coming up for you?
LC: Well, I'm reading screenplays now, and I've got a couple of ideas, but I'm not sure what I'm going to do next. I'd like to make a film that doesn't have drugs in it next time. Something different.
Courtesy of
The AV Club
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