ARTIST INTERVIEW: Gregg Araki
Gregg Araki
Few filmmakers have achieved cult success the way Gregg Araki has. Heavily associated with the New Queer Cinema movement of the ’90s, Araki’s movies, which often interrogate unapologetically queer themes, have alternately been labeled nihilistic, anarchic, hilarious, and life-affirming, though they’ve always retained his signature aesthetic and emotional stamp. The most notorious of his films, aptly titled the Teen Apocalypse Trilogy, which consists of Totally Fucked Up (1993), The Doom Generation (1995), and Nowhere (1997), have long been inaccessible to viewers, until now.
This year, Araki and his long-time distributor Strand Releasing have put out stunning 4K restorations of The Doom Generation and Nowhere, which not only means they’ll reach more eyeballs than ever before, but that they will finally be available in the forms Araki always meant for them to be seen in. Ahead of Nowhere coming to SCA’s Outside the Box [Office] screening series in its newly restored form, KXSC got the opportunity to sit down and chat with the auteur and USC alumnus.
How does it feel to have this movie coming to USC, your alma mater, with the restoration screening?
I'm super, super excited about it. Both [The Doom Generation] and Nowhere have this intense following amongst young people like yourself, and it's on the basis of the shittiest copies. Nowhere was never released on DVD in the U.S., just on VHS, and the copies that exist are crazy bootlegs of a VHS on a Russian torrent. They're just so terrible. It really makes me cringe to think about people watching them. For Nowhere, we were able to go back to the original negative, and we recolor-timed the whole thing. It's just a completely different movie. We remixed all the sound, you can hear all the music now. We also were able to restore a bunch of scenes that got cut out of the original release because of the MPAA. There’s finally a version of Nowhere that is approved [by me]. I’m happy for audiences to be able to see it in this form because it's not been viewable in its true state for a long, long time.
[The Teen Apocalypse Trilogy] just recently screened at the Academy [Museum]. Obviously, that is one of the biggest, most monolithic institutions in the film industry. How does it feel to get that institutional validation, to see your stuff on that huge screen in the theater at the Academy [Museum]?
I remember when I was talking to my distributor about screenings, they were originally going to put us in the Mann Theater, which is the [Museum’s] smaller theater. And I said for the premiere of Nowhere, can we be in the big theater because I don't care how many people are in the audience, I just want to see the remastered version of the movie on that giant screen. It's one of the most beautiful theaters in the world. Just the idea of Nowhere screening there was a bucket list thing for me. And they said sure. Then Doom and Totally Fucked Up sold out the smaller theater, so they bumped [those] up to the big theater too, and all three movies were screened on that amazing screen. So that was fantastic. It was just such an honor and so incredible. And kind of an out-of-body experience. It was super cool.
Do the Teen Apocalypse Trilogy movies still resonate with you just as much as they did when you made them?
They resonate with me in a different way. My movies are all super personal and they're all what I was going through at that time, so that's very much what I was like in the early to mid-’90s, all three of those movies. They’re a snapshot of where my head was at, what I was feeling. Everything in my world at that time was expressed in those movies. Looking back on it now that I'm in my 60s, I have such fond memories of that time in my life, but I'm definitely in a more grounded place than I was when I made [them]. I really appreciate the rawness and the purity of the emotions in those movies, but my perspective on it is a little bit different. I’m a little bit older, a little bit wiser, it's a good thing.
Did any experiences you had at USC influence anything that made it into Nowhere or any of your other films?
I have a ton of super fond memories of USC, where I did my MFA in the film school, and also my undergraduate film studies at UC Santa Barbara. College is such a special time in your life, it's a period of growth and change. I did my undergrad from ’78 to ’82 and I did my grad from ’82 to ’85, and that was an amazing time in the culture because it was right when punk rock and new wave music [were] exploding. I remember my friends and [I] went to so many shows and saw so many bands, and there was such inspiration there. That kind of music, the birth of the alternative music scene, [had] a profound influence on my sensibilities and my aesthetic. Punk rock was always DIY, about doing your own thing, marching to your own drum. It wasn't ‘Oh, I've got to be a huge mainstream success,’ it was always about expressing yourself and being your own thing. That was a big influence on me and it's what carried over into my movies. I was just fortunate to be born at the exact right time as all that stuff was happening.
How did your education at USC influence and form your filmmaking sensibilities?
When I went [to USC], it was very much an industry school. It was set in Steven Spielberg and George Lucas’ mold and there wasn't really room for somebody like me, this artsy, punky kid who had a funny haircut and used to dress weird. I was very into [Jean-Luc] Godard—I had taken a Godard class as an undergraduate, so I was very radical and experimental, and I remember teachers saying ‘This does not fly here’ and ‘We're gonna flunk you.’ I actually appreciated that because it made me strong and it made me find my place. I carved out my own space in the underground, on the artsy side of the tracks. But I learned so much in terms of how to make a movie. When I did my first two black-and-white movies, I had no money and I did everything myself. I used all the techniques [I learned]—how to cut negative, how to make sound, and how to do everything, straight out of [CTPR] 310. There was a film lab [at USC] that did black-and-white stock and I actually developed my first two movies [there]. That was the only way I was able to make those. My USC years definitely carried over into my indie years.
Are there any other movies of yours that you'd like to restore in the future or are you satisfied with Doom and Nowhere?
It’s been a lot of work. Doom and Nowhere have been like being in post[-production] on a movie all over again, going to the lab and doing the color timing and doing the sound mixing and then going to check the prints. It’s been a lot. Maybe, it’s a point. Doom and Nowhere were really the ones that were totally not available because the masters are so old and they’re not up to technical snuff. Mysterious Skin, Smiley Face, and I think Splendor all have 2K masters at least, as do The Living End and Totally Fucked Up, so at least they’re available. But Doom and Nowhere, so many people had been asking about them, so they were definitely first on the list. But, at some point, [I may] go back and do them. I have my day job trying to do my next thing, and it’s just me doing it, so I need to hunker down and focus.
Is there anything you want to share that you’re working on or something you're particularly excited about?
Another movie, I'm working on a TV thing, and it's just fingers crossed. It's the same as it's been since the ’90s when I made Doom and Nowhere—it's always a crapshoot. Finance your next thing, two irons in the fire. So we'll see.
- Chris Turino