Kids (1995): A 30-Year Retrospective

Ahhh, the '90s.  When the tunes were good, the economy was boomin' & young people still had hope for the future.  Wait.  Scratch that last one.  Rich kids had hope, the rest of us had what is portrayed in Kids (1995), produced by Harmony Korine & directed by pedo-pornographer Larry Clark.  I re-watched it recently and BOY does it look different from an adult's-eye view in 2025.  It's now been 30 years since its release and, while it's a great time capsule of the clothing styles, music & lingo of its day, I have questions about the adults who wrote, produced & directed this borderline pornographic piece of NC-17 smut.  Serious questions.  

⚠  SPOILERS AHEAD!  ⚠

The plotline is thus:  We follow main male character Telly and his friend Casper, two latchkey kids from NYC on a quest to deflower virgins, get high & party.  In the process they show us how to shoplift, sneak into people's pools & do whippets.  We also follow main female character Jennie, played by Chloe Zevigny, who finds out that--despite only having one sexual partner & doing nothing freaky like her friends--she has HIV.  Her only sexual partner was Telly.  Womp womp.  (This was in the days before the antiviral meds so HIV was basically a death sentence).  Jennie then spends the rest of the film trying in vain to find Telly to break the bad news, meanwhile he continues his mission to have sex with young girls.  The filth comes full circle when Casper rapes Jennie in a drunken haze. 

How many of them have the virus?  The viewer is left to trace contacts between Telly & all the young, naive girls he's manipulated into sleeping with him & wonder who lives & who dies.  For context, 48,371 known AIDS deaths in the U.S. had occurred by 1995, including rapper Eazy-E who would pass suddenly that March.  This was also the year Olympic diver Greg Louganis disclosed his HIV+ status after hitting his head & bleeding into the pool.  Violent crime peaked in the U.S. in 1993 & had started to decline--albeit slowly--by '95, but was still much higher than today.  

Original Impressions

Starting young.

I was 10 when this movie came out and of course found a way to watch it as soon as possible.  The NC-17 rating only made it more appealing.  At the time I identified with the characters, who spent their days aimlessly wandering the city and looking for trouble to get into.  And why not?  I spent my days the same way.  It's a miracle I wasn't abducted or worse.  I spent my summers running the streets with 0 supervision starting at a very young age.  I had a friend whose parental figure would leave us at home alone all night on weekends to babysit her younger siblings starting when we were nine.  Said parental figure would threaten us not to open the door for ANYONE or go outside for ANYTHING, and we'd be outside under the streetlights until midnight the second her headlights disappeared.  She never did circle back to check on us.  This was after an exhausting day of sugar-powered shenanigans that started around 9 a.m & didn't stop until midnight.  We'd ride our bikes everywhere, pick fights with random kids our age, swim without sunscreen for 6-7 hours, throw eggs, commit random acts of vandalism & other fun.  We were closer to the ages of the 4 weed smoking boys pictured above than the main characters when the movie came out.

My parents may have been abusive assholes, but at least we had food to eat & they didn't abandon us to party all night.  I never found drugs in the house, our birthdays were celebrated & our mom didn't come home reeking of booze and raging from a hangover every Saturday/Sunday morning.  I didn't have to raise my younger siblings like many older sisters I knew, which is good because I wasn't very nice to them.  No strange or violent men came into our house (aside from my dad, badumptsssss).  I was very aware at the time that, no matter how bad I had it, other people had it worse.  Namely my bestie & her siblings.

Movies like Kids, Dangerous Minds, Boyz N the Hood, Higher Learning & American History X offered a dramatized-if-relatable reflection of my life in an odd way.  I wasn't from a city or even a suburb.  I was white, female, a CHILD & had never shot a gun or ridden a skateboard.  (Scratch that last bit:  I shot my 1st gun at 9 but not in the commission of a crime).  Yet none of that mattered.  If you're from a poor community & have dysfunctional parents, it's the VIBE you relate to.  The growing-up-too fast.  The creating your own family, turning to criminal activities just to stem the boredom.  The simmering rage that eventually supplants the boredom and of course, the feeling of being utterly alone in the world.  

(Things got exponentially worse in my teen years: I ended up ditching more class than I attended by my sophomore year--I even had a teacher who gave me an "attendance award" as a joke.  We had a good laugh.  I smoked as much weed as I could get my grubby little hands on & picked up hard liquor for a bit at 18.  I spent a big portion of my senior year in Alternative School, where I was the only white female besides the teacher.  SHE was awesome.  But I digress). 

Back in those days, I viewed Kids as a sort of lifestyle guide.  It featured a cool multicultural cast & was set in the big city, where I longed to be.  It definitely didn't have the intended effect of deterring bad behavior.  Sure, I'd avoid having sex with guys long past the age it was acceptable to do so (gay), but I still smoked weed daily, occasionally drank, stole stuff & cussed like a sailor.  Cops were called to the house several times; I was kicked out for a while and forcibly institutionalized at one point.  Miserable as I was, I thought all that shit was normal & had no serious plans to live beyond 21.




Modern Assessment

I replayed this scene a lot back in the day

And then I grew up, sorta.  The mood of country lightened (until 9/11 anyway); everything moved online & we all became highly offended experts in social justice.  However, you don't need a Social Justice degree to know that the dialogue and plot in Kids is unacceptable for any decade.   Now I look at movies like this and think, "What kind of twisted p3do dreamt up this script? " Lines like "I could tell she just entered pub3rty.  Oh shit, this girl's a baby...I wanna F*CK this little baby girl!" had to come from someone's REAL brain--a brain that likely had those real thoughts at some point or hung around scumbags who did.  (That's me generously assuming they were just thoughts & not actions).  

The film opens with Telly & some nameless (very young looking girl) half-nude on the bed in a sex scene.   What did the directing process look like on THAT?   (I imagine an old grey-headed creep telling the girl to arch her back or cry louder as she simulates losing her virginity to a psychopath).  Most importantly, how old are the real actors playing these "Kids"?  

Age in '95

Here's what I could dig up:

Leo Fitzpatrick (Telly):  "About 17"
Chloe Sevigny (Jennie):  About 21
Justin Pierce (Casper):  18.
Sarah Henderson (aka Girl #1/Telly's conquest):  17.
Rosario Dawson:  About 16.  
Michelle Lockwood & Carissa Gluckman (kissing girls in the pool): ?? & "About 18"
Harold Hunter (Harold):  21.  

A 20-year retrospective called "We Were Kids" takes a critical look at the film and was apparently almost shut down legally by unknown forces (likely Harmony Korine or Larry Clark, both of whom refused to participate).  Kinda chickenshit that the people who dreamed up this script/plotline & brought it to life onscreen are hiding their hand.  But honestly, I might too.  Times have changed immensely in terms of what's socially acceptable.  Back then the film was considered controversial for the drug use, language & sex depicted... not the fact that these were LITERAL kids being directed & produced by creepy old men.  They'd almost certainly be grilled on the cast's real ages & other uncomfy topics today.

I can attest that literally nobody cared at the time about the whole "underage" issue.  My 1st kiss at 12 was with an 18-year-old who said he was 16.  It just wasn't a concern where I grew up.  Seniors in high school routinely dated 12 and 13 year olds with the parents' blessing.  Boys gave girls alcohol with the express intent of getting them screwed up enough to fuck them, a practice now considered rape.  So we definitely have to view the film in the time period in which it was created.  None of these things was legal or moral, mind you, but socially they were accepted by most.  





Since the Film's Release

A young Rosario Dawson awaits her HIV test results

The actresses went on to do more professionally than the male actors in this film:  Rosario Dawson & Chloe Sevigny in particular.  On the contrary, 2 of the actors have since died:  Harold Hunter & Justin Pierce.  Both were IRL skateboarders so brain trauma likely contributed to their demise, the former of a cocaine OD & the latter a suicide.  We now know CTE tends to cause these downward spirals of erratic behavior, substance abuse & early death, which are often a result of overdose, dementia or suicide.  Skateboarder Dave Mirra died of suicide & was later diagnosed with CTE, and Tony Hawk has voiced concern.  But I'm sure past trauma, life stress & other things played a role for Hunter & Pierce, as they usually do.

As for my IRL friends from that era, things haven't gone much better.  My partner in adolescent crime was in some pretty high-profile trouble recently.  3 classmates have died, all of drug/alcohol-related causes.  Another childhood friend and neighbor did 10 years of a 30 year sentence after shooting a cop.  The saddest loss of all was that of my bestie's sibling, whom I helped raise essentially.  Despite not being an opioid user, he died of a heroin OD his first time trying the drug.  His "friends" shot him up after a night of drinking & laughed at his death rattle cough before leaving him alone to die.  Whether out of ignorance or sheer lack of caring, that's repulsive & barbaric.  Nobody spent a day in prison for it.  

I think that's the most frustrating part of living a life of poverty & disadvantage--not that crime happens but that the people paid to prevent and investigate it do nothing of the sort.  I know too many kids and young adults who were almost certainly murdered but their killers still walk the streets.  I don't mean after a judge/jury found them not guilty, I mean the crime scene was never taped off & no interrogations took place.  Suspicious deaths (two gunshots to the head, shot in the back of the head with a rifle, injected with drugs & left to die, etc) are routinely labeled "accidental" or "suicide" without any investigation whatsoever.  Grieving family members, often too grief-stricken & un-empowered to push the matter, end up hearing in great detail how their loved one died through second or third hand gossip.  One of the joys of small-town living, I guess.   

And that's the thing ALL poor people have in common:  the realization that nobody is coming to save you.  The cops are quick to profile & target you for minor shit but overlook major violent crime (when not  committing it themselves).  Innuendo, gossip & rumor supercede facts and evidence.  And while Kids doesn't really cover that aspect much, it does a great job of leaving you with a foul taste in your mouth about America's future.  This was pre-9/11 when you could still support a family on a single income, mind you.  But times have been pretty much the same for poor people forever. 

 

Ganging up on 1 guy at the park

"Kids" is clearly short for "The Kids Are NOT Alright".  Those of us whose only babysitters were Sega, Nickelodeon & Jenny Jones can only relate too much.  

Despite the constant pearl-clutching about crime and "superpredators," I've since realized the real damage to society is not done by those who shoplift, sell drugs & vandalize the city, but those who gentrify it.  The '90s might've had gangbanging, militias & trailer trash beatdowns on Jerry Springer, but the 21st Century has shown that the real criminals are the guys in fancy suits & nice offices who do their dirt on Wallstreet or in boardrooms.  The Martin Shkrelis, Brian Thompsons, Arthur Sacklers & other nameless villains responsible for outsourcing all our jobs, buying up all the real estate & raising rent, tanking the stock market & deploying enough lobbyists to ensure the game stays rigged. 

The NYC of Kids is long gone too--today, every block looks the same: full of skyscrapers, outrageously expensive claustrophobic apartments, no diversity.  It might've been dirty, smelly, gritty & violent back then, but it had soul and, most importantly, you could afford to live there without being a millionaire.

Kids did do a great job of portraying the ugly reality of how teen boys think & behave in private vs. the bullshit they tell girls to get in their pants.  The way they manipulate girls into life-ruining bad sex only to go brag in great detail about it to their friends & never speak to the girls again.  I already wasn't trying to sleep around in high school, but this movie strengthened my resolve.  I wish more adult women realized how differently men and women think but it's a lesson too few learn, and usually too late when they do.  While AIDS isn't as prevalent an issue since the advent of the antivirals, other STDs like HPV can cause cancer, infertility or other lifelong complications.  And unwanted pregnancy is a real risk.  While it was always risky to have casual sex before you're ready, doing so in the smartphone/revenge porn era is doubly dangerous.  

Siskel & Ebert review Kids

To its credit, Kids isn't preachy & doesn't beat the viewer over the head with the message like most of today's "art".  It was one of the first hyperreal films told from a "reality TV"/documentary perspective, weaving real dialogue & behavior from the cast into the plot.  It even impressed the notoriously snobbish Siskel & Ebert, who called it "absolutely authentic," "raw" and "shocking".  A film like this featuring real minors & all the explicit content could NOT be made today, and that's a good thing.  (Actually, Cuties features even younger kids and is disturbing in an entirely different way but that's another article for another day). 

For all its shortcomings, Kids stands the test of time as one of the most haunting films of its era.  At a time when Clueless, Toy Story, My Girl & Twister were all the rage, Kids offered a fearless portrayal of the realities of life for too many of us, warts & all.  I put it on par with Requiem for a Dream (2000), Thirteen (2003), Trainspotting (1996) & Spun (2003).  It definitely paved the way for that genre of gritty reality flick. 

So what is the overarching message of this controversial flick?  "What goes around comes around, often literally."  If you live your life for the moment, doing what feels good to YOU while taking advantage of anyone smaller/weaker than you, the bill comes due eventually.  And often it's more than you bargained for.  The inclusion of AIDS denial comments in the film is highly relevant today in the era of disease denialism.  The movie itself is still relevant because kids need parental guidance to avoid ending up this way, and too many parents are checked out due to overworking, drug abuse or other things.  Kids don't just stop being curious about things like drugs, sex, drinking, violence or other "bad things" because you refuse to educate them--they just turn to friends, porn, sketchy adults or other unreliable sources for that info.  

While I was a bad ass kid with a smartass mouth, I've never been to jail, had an unwanted pregnancy, OD'ed, been homeless or killed anyone, and I attribute that partially to the fact that my parents kept it real with me.  We weren't forced to go to church or fed propaganda about demons, Satan or other BS.  We knew not to play with guns or do other majorly stupid shit because we were told what could happen--go to jail?  I'm not bailing you out.  Get "knocked up" by the wrong person or before you're an adult?  You're on your own.  Etc.  Too many kids today are coddled, enabled to behave like psychopaths by their parents who then wonder why they've "failed to launch" at age 35 or similar.  It all starts in the home, as Kids so graphically shows us.

R.I.P Justin Pierce & Harold Hunter

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