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The Leo Fitzpatrick character preying on younger girls was disturbing and disgusting. From the start, you see he's a pervert because he's obsessed with sex. The Justin Pierce character appears to be the more rational one until the last scene which I found contrived and gratuitous.
Some parts are cringy and come off as more of a fantasy from the director, young girls talking about swallowing semen?
The subplot I liked the most was Chloe Sevigny's, the girl who finds out she's HIV positive and goes searching for her ex, the Leo Fitzpatrick character, who's having unprotected sex with every girl he comes across.
Bully, Larry Clark's third film, is arguably a better take on the excesses of '90s adolescence, as it is grounded by being a true story. Leo Fitzpatrick is great in it as a teenage hitman.
People talk about Kids all the time but I always thought Bully was the more fucked up of the two, I watched it once probably 20+ years ago , will never watch it again, but will also never forget it.
Ken Park is the more fucked up of the 3.
Wassup Rockers was such a curve ball after those 3.
Also the most fun
Only Clark film I saw in theaters. Was actually nostalgic/hypnagogic as a one time Californian
Loved that movie as a kid cuz I was also a skater at the time. Watched it a few months ago and bro it was pretty cringe but still decent lol
))<>((
What does pooping back and forth have to do with it?
Another thing is that Bully was a real story. Sure, Kids could be a story applicable to real life, but Bully 100% happened and is a tale about messed up teenagers ruining their lives and so many other people's because they didn't handle a bad situation in a civil way. It's one of those movies that really hits after it ends, and it really stays with you for a bit.
I think it’s a better made movie but that maybe because it has a more clear narrative.
LOVE Bully. There were some odd scenes, but overall that movie was solid.
The kill scene and the build up to the kill were so well done. Michael Pitt and Brad Renfro (RIP) were excellent.
Bully is so good. I still get goosebumps when I think about the final card showing the sentences
Wasn't this based on actual events too?
Yea, the movie is about the real life murder of Bobby Kent. I read the book back in high school before I even knew there was a film, it was pretty wild.
Kids getting fucked up and spreading AIDS?
The movie Bully
I don’t know how I got mixed up but I agree it’s better.
I’ve been waiting to upgrade my DVD for years
Subplot? That's the plot.
I have no legs, I have no legs
That was a real beggar on the train 4/5/6 line would usually see him around union square. I remember him from my childhood.
He used to ride the N & F trains too
He was in Venice Beach in California for a while too
damn that was probably a long walk for him... ba dum tss
that little diddy never left my head
Diddy? Ditty?
What didn’t Diddy do?
He didn't stop
ha I didnt even think. maybe it is ditty!
Yep! Ditty means a short simple song.
god bless you
Justin Pierce (Casper) is dead from suicide. Guy Mariano fucked his wife/long term girlfriend and Pierce took his life shortly after. Harold Hunter is also dead from a heart attack at a very young age. A lot of what you saw with Hunter and Pierce (outside of the last scene) is very much how they lived
Immediately made me think of this song
I always think of basketball diaries for that one
I knew it was going to be that one.
Great song. Relevant even today.
Tragedy beyond the 4th wall.
Yeah it's really fucked up. Mariano's story as a whole is fucked up as well.
Oh for sure, heavy into drugs for a long time. When was his big comeback, Fully Flared?
Yeah, fully flared. One of arguably the greatest video parts of all time. I mean one of the greatest videos in general. But yeah he had a meeting with all the dudes from girl and they essentially were like yo man you got to get clean and you know you're welcome right back we want you to get sober and get back to skating and it seemed to work. He's been doing good ever since. It's a crazy story. But good that the man was able to pull himself out of the spiral, a lot of people aren't.
Man, I have that dvd hanging around somewhere. Honestly all I can remember is MJ’s three song part. “Good bye horses” lol
His and Marc Johnson's parts are so good. My wife knows I love skateboarding and once indulged me when she asked what some of my favorite videos were, so we watched those and a few others. I tried to keep it narrowed down to not overstay my welcome.
It kinda sucks sometimes because the average person can see someone jump down something big, or do a crazy flip in flip out grind or whatever - but unless you know more about tricks and skating in general you don't know how absolutely fucked up some of the clips are. Like how does one explain how gnarly a switch 360 hardflip to crooked grind is?? At the same time, my wife is really good at pole dancing and when I watch her or other people she follows on Instagram I have a hard time understanding how creative/difficult the moves are. I try to relate it to skating when I can, like switch/fakie being like inside/outside leg, different grips, etc.
Also Marc said on the 9 club (I think) that his Fully Flared part is kind of hard because he was drinking so much, had some head trauma, and doesn't remember a lot of it. He was going absolutely mental at the time (personally and skate related) and admits it came at the cost of being a good dad/husband at the time. Adds another layer to that insane part. One of my faves. Music totally slaps.
Goddamn skateboarding rules.
Was he the tall black kid in their crew right? Like was a legit semi-pro skater from what I remember.
I don’t know if he was tall but he was definitely pro for zoo York for a while. Into the 2000’s he was just sort of like a legacy personality type person for Zoo
That's right! I remember his Zoo York spots. Man that unlocked a memory for me.
I also just looked it up real quick, he was only 5'10" so pretty average. Not sure why I remember him being tall, maybe he was an early grower compared to the other KiDS so he looked taller to me.
There were stories about how Harold would ask random people he ran into if they saw Kids
Shockingly, yes, young girls do talk about swallowing cum. They also talk about anal, creampies, and everything else you can think of. Not all of them, but some of them. The most hilarious conversation I was ever present for was young girls talking about fanny farts, and then "what if youre full of cum and fanny fart?".
Also, leo is not fucking every girl he comes across, its worse. Hes fucking every virgin he comes across. The "nice guy" fucking Chloe at the end wasnt really contrived. It was true to life. A lot of "nice guys" stop being nice if they are horny enough. I knew a few growing up. It was never as bad as this movie mad it out to be, but my youth wasnt million miles away from it.
Yeah, I read OP’s objection to this and went, “Dude. Did you have any girl friends in high school?” The shit they would talk about would probably cause OP to keel over and die immediately.
"he's a pervert because he's obsessed with sex."
Uhh, have you ever met a 13 year old boy?
I’d love to see the movie Kids remade with OP’s point of view. It would be the most boring movie ever made, and half the lines would be, “Hey, hey, you can’t say that!”
Seriously, I learned more about sex and the female reproductive system from sitting at lunch with girls than I did from Health class. It also kept my weight down, because oh my god, did they go into detail. They really didn’t give a shit.
What is a fanny fart? British slang for queefing?
Bingo
Yes
I mean yeah you’re totally right. Just was always grossed by the whole Larry Clark/terry richardson/ kiddy porn esque angle that it felt so propped up by. Woulda way rather this been made by other kids you know?
“Hey it’s okay it’s me Casper”
continues with the raping
The dopest ghost
RIP Justin Pierce
I hate to break it to you but high school girls in the 90s had the most vile conversations I’ve ever heard.
90% of the weird and wild shit I am aware exists, I first learned about because some teenaged goth chick mentioned it to me in the 90s. I was also a teen, for the record. And 90% of that was online interactions, I'm no hero just a schlub like you. 90s were something. How did we exist without cellphones, I literally can't anymore.
We rawdogged every day.
Goth girls with tattoos... used to be guaranteed bj... nowadays you can't tell anything anymore based on looks
I actually was an extra in this movie and I was friends with Chloe Sevigny and actually Harold Hunter and crew were friends w our skate crew.
This movie is fairly accurate I got to be honest it’s actually a bit more tame than how shit really was.
It’s also a movie I hated makin because of the film crew and director included but also one of many of this time that I had a great time making too because I got to be with my friends just loosely following storylines that were familiar so we basically just got paid to do what we already did.
There were a lot of indie movies in the 90’s made in the village where they just picked us up off the street and said “don’t act” just be you like normal etc .
Funny that I did take acting classes at lee Strasberg hence knowing a lot of other actors that came from there too but so many of these movies get pushed aside as inaccurate because they are shocking but idk I mean look at what happened to Harold…RIP🛹🥲❤️
This right here. I don't think people understand that for the times yeah it's accurate, but a lot of it is sadly tamer than things were.
The '90s was just a different vibe altogether. And as much as people like to look back on it and be like it was better, they were better things, there was a lot of really dark and fucked up shit going on too. Same with any decade. But the movie does a very good job of capturing it. Same with Bully, as many have mentioned.
We did have commercials reminding our parents that they had children.
Soo true
What was your issue with Clark and crew?
Lol they just were obsessed with insurance issues like we were crazy fuckin kids and they wanted to police that for certain stuff like the pool they specifically told us in advance no climbing over fences etc I mean there are skate tricks more suitable for street skating that they would freak out about.
They also just took ALOT of footage more than any other movie I acted or was an extra in. Soooo it felt like two different msgs being sent.
I don’t remember getting paid for a long time too.
Whereas like 200 cigarettes I got paid everyday and fuck man TROMA films would rent us seedy hotel rooms let us do whatever and gave us cash and drugs and alcohol.
I also just remembered after I wrote my first comment how my friend who moved to nyc with Kids as a template for the type of scene she wanted to find lol…later on ended up dating Justin Pierce for a long time.
I remember him cooked up at a party on the bowery w Robin Williams kid (gratitude writer chill ) both high on coke just blasting the media takeover of Hollywood. He went on about how that role really messed w him he was a funny kid (see Friday sequel) and didn’t want to be defined by that role. He was askin like bout Robin Williams and homie just looked at him dead eyed and started laughing saying:
“not everything is like the movies… where you think the lines you’re snorting came from ?”
Justin clearly didn’t overcome any of that as we know.
On the other hand though she was on drugs constantly back then Chloe had Vincent at the time…..ppl took care of her. But that’s as much as I’ll say on her cuz her plus VG is some whole other topic I won’t touch with a ten foot pole 😂
…but it’s interesting I look at how the actors in the films personal lives turned out is pretty much more of a message than the film itself.
He tricked everyone into watching her glurg his plurg for no good reason idk I don't blame you for walking around whatever all was going on there lmao
Lol that’s a really great way to put it im gonna remember that.🤣🙏✌️
I don’t remember any tricking? I mean the movie sucked but we all knew that going in, and I even saw it in a theater. Everyone knew the movie was dogshit. In hindsight I don’t remember why anyone cared about seeing VG get his dick sucked but we definitely watched Brown Bunny just for that scene.
Robin William's kid? Zelda? I'm confused.
He has a son
I loved the soundtrack and they really captured the vibe of a really hot summer in New York City. Excellent film.
Folk Implosion and Lou Barlow
Plus the movie had some Beastie Boys instrumentals & A Tribe Called Quest songs that didn't show up on the official soundtrack.
I saw this movie way too young and it messed me up about sex for years. I still don't like to think about it.
I was the same age as the characters and it felt dead on for the time
Same here.
Because of the aids thing?
I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and graduated in the mid-90s.
I hung out in a skateboarding stoner crowd, and “Kids” wasn’t really that far off in my experience. I can remember watching it on VHS around the time I graduated high school and thinking, “holy shit, that’s us!” The only thing off was that we weren’t an overtly violent bunch, and we weren’t passing around HIV. But the drugs and the sex and the attitude and the overall unsupervised debauchery were spot on.
Some of us made it out. Some of us didn’t. Wild times! I’ve got my buzz on, so AMA if you’d like.
Does that mean you chilled at Embarcadero a lot? You were really lucky to witness a killer period of skating! Jealous
Tbh kids are doing way wilder shit today in terms of actual skating than they were back then. If the skating scene seems like it was good then it was comparative to how much everything else sucked at the time, lol.
Yes I know. GX1000 guys are incredible, Roll Up was an instant classic. And also t funk air over the bench at China banks is insane. It’s a ridiculously hot take that you think mid 90’s skating was shit though, it’s literally the beginning of the golden era of skating.
Edit: fixed word
I absolutely did not say mid 90’s skateboarding was shit, take a reading comprehension class dude. Life in the nineties as a whole sucked ass and the skating is remembered more fondly as a result. It was an escape from all the bullshit.
Now we have ten year olds doing 900’s, the fact is decades of developing the sport means skaters today are doing things skaters back then didn’t think was possible. Rodney Mullen had to teach everyone how to ollie before we could ever get here. Doesn’t mean skaters weren’t sick back then too, it just means they had to start building the sport up from zero and the people who came later already had an established foundation of knowledge to work off of because of their efforts.
Ya, kind of! I grew up in the East Bay, so it was hard to make it there a lot, but it was definitely a cool scene. The other replier is right, though; we sucked and it really wasn't that exciting compared to today, ha. (Rodney Mullen's influence had yet to really bloom and spread! Skating owes everything to that dude.) We all thought we were hot shit power sliding all over the place and doing 50-50 grinds on curbs :D
It was definitely an awesome and exciting time to be skating, though! So much changed so fast.
How can you say Bay Area skaters sucked with people like Mike Carrol, Lavar McBride, Lennie Kirk, Keith Hufnagel, and so many more coming out of there! You guys are too hard on yourselves haha
Oh, you're absolutely right! Tons of talented people came up through the Bay Area, for sure. By "we", I meant us amateur punks in my little skater clique, ha. We were not impressive, but our hearts were definitely there :D
I’m convinced you only read the wiki for Kids and didn’t watch the actual movie
Kids was a really weird "first date" movie. We watched it right after Requiem and Pi. We used The Emperor's New Groove" at the end as some brain bleach.
I miss people talking about Pi. What kind of future is this we have made. We could have done better.
Pi is great. I may prefer it to requiem
I never saw it, but I was working at a video store when that came out. So many people rented it thinking it was a kid’s movie. Haha
There was a PBS Frontline documentary called "The Lost Children of Rockdale County" which was released a few years after this film.
It is the same film.
Kinda proves movies are rarely visual archives of the past. How can they be when a movie made in 96 seems to be one of the realest portrays of the actual aesthetic in life. Most movies simulate a time/place but kids is one of the few movies that IS the time/place.