THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September 8, 1995 TAG: 9509080057
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: TEENOLOGY
LENGTH: Long : 144 lines
``Kids.'' Now playing at the Naro Expanded Cinema in Ghent. Now getting publicity everywhere because it's either (a) a pornographic, profanity-ridden obscenity or (b) a work of art that should serve as a warning to teenagers and parents alike.
At least those are the views of the news media. But what do kids think about the movie? Well, most kids can't go see it, because no one under 18 is admitted without an adult, and a lot of people think adults would be crazy to take a child to a flick like this.
But some almost-kids went to see it on opening night last weekend.
``Please don't use my name. I don't want anybody to know I saw this movie. Goodness gracious,'' said an 18-year-old woman who attends Old Dominion University. ``I wouldn't say it wasn't realistic. I would just say it's extreme.''
So we pretty much know where she stands.
``There's no reason a kid should see that movie,'' said Carin Prescott, 20, a senior at Virginia Wesleyan College. ``That was too much. That was way too much.
``That's gonna scare a lot of people that see it, especially people that have small kids. They'll be petrified. People are scared enough as it is with all the problems their children are gonna have. That was like every reason thrown into one.''
Kids.''
Director Larry Clark opens what he considers a cautionary tale with a long, sloppy, slurping French kiss between his anti-hero, 17-year-old Telly, and Telly's conquest of the moment, a girl who looks roughly 14.
Looooong kiss.
``Come up for air, man,'' said a lay critic in the Naro's balcony.
For the next 90 minutes, the ``Kids'' have sex with each other, guzzle malt liquor, kick a cat, have sex with even younger kids, smoke dope, urinate on the street, bash a guy in the face with skateboards, talk leeringly of having sex, swim in their underwear, shoplift, steal money from one's mom, make a quest of having sex with virgins, share HIV and have sex with more kids.
And that's just in one day.
Telly and his cohorts romp through the movie sans parents, morals, virtues or conscience.
That bothered 20-year-old Jed Dow, a Wesleyan student from Maine. ``Where were the parents?'' he asked. ``The boy came home at 4:30 in the morning and he was, like, 15 years old. My parents wouldn't let me do that.''
But coming home at dawn rang truer for the anonymous 18-year-old. ``I know there are still some parents who don't care what their child does,'' she said.
These ``Kids'' make drug deals in the park, smoke joints all day and all night, inhale nitrous oxide from balloons and steal money to finance the lifestyle because none of them has a job.
``They did an awful lot of drugs for not having any money. Weird,'' Prescott said. ``They let those kids into a club. Did you catch that thing with the balloons? And a capsule or something.''
``Is it nitrous?'' Dow asked. ``The high only lasts 15 seconds or something. I went to a concert this summer. After it was over, there must have been hundreds of balloons in the parking lot. . . . I do think those things are coming around younger and younger. The drugs and sex, it's all younger and younger.''
The 18-year-old said she knew that sex and drugs were out there among kids, but never had she seen anything like the daylong orgy of ``Kids.''
``I'm a young person and I'm not anti-social,'' she said. ``That's not what I see.
``I know that it's happening, but it's not like you meet people like that every day. Older people already think kids are crazy; this probably just added fire to the flame. It was just so disgusting.''
Telly likes having sex with younger girls. One of his virgins, Jennie, discovers she is HIV-positive, courtesy of Telly, and spends the rest of the movie hunting for him.
She also spends some time chatting with her girlfriends about having sex, in graphic detail. The bottom line, no pun intended, is that they like it. A lot. And they don't have a problem with being unmarried or having multiple partners.
That dialogue, the 18-year-old said, rang true.
``Last year, in school, I was listening to three juniors talk just like that,'' she said. ``I had never heard it before in my life. They were going into all this detail. Do people have any privacy these days?''
Prescott found it amazing that the ``Kids'' didn't talk about anything other than having sex.
``I've never had a conversation like that,'' she said. ``Like their reputation wasn't important at all. It was disgusting. What is locker room talk like, Jed?''
``It's not like that,'' Dow responded.
For some reason, the ``Kids'' decide to beat up an older guy in the park. A confrontation between the guy and one kid ends with a roiling mass of kids smashing the hapless guy until he collapses. As a postscript, the mass lifts the guy off the ground so a kid can smash him, one more time, in the face with a skateboard.
``They're really strange people,'' Dow opined.
``I've seen people get in fights over something that stupid, but not 300 guys comin' in on it. Maybe it just showed how stupid they were, how one did something and everyone followed,'' Prescott suggested.
``I don't want anybody to know I saw this movie,'' the 18-year-old said again. ``To me, that movie was so bad it shouldn't even be considered as anything. It's not unrealistic. It's out there. There are people out there like that, but it's not like you see it every day.''
Jennie visits a health clinic, where she learns the bad news and gets a pamphlet, but the nurses never give her any more than that. No condoms, no advice.
Dow said it still surprised him how many people, like the ``Kids,'' have unprotected sex.
Prescott agreed, saying: ``I was in one of the residence halls one day and I saw this girl and I said, `Hi, how ya doing'' and she said, `I'm just waiting for my pregnancy results.' I was surprised none of those girls (in the movie) were pregnant.''
The 18-year-old also found that strange. ``My sister, she got pregnant when she was young. I plan to be a virgin until I'm married,'' she said.
We're giving away the ending here, so if you're planning to see the movie, you might want to skip this part. Jennie ultimately finds Telly having sex with another young virgin and passes out on the couch, where she is raped by another kid. The rapist-kid later wakes up from his drugged stupor and asks, ``Jesus Christ, what happened?''
Bang. Roll credits.
``People might have been a little bit disgusted,'' Prescott noted. ``Like the people behind me, one said, `It's almost over,' and the other said, `Good.' It was like, holy cow, what could possibly be next?''
``They didn't,'' said the 18-year-old, ``have any morals at all. I know there are people out there with no morals whatsoever. They know what's right and wrong, but they do it anyway. It just seems like it doesn't bother them at all. Oh, man. It's just . . . it's just disgusting.''
Sheesh. ``Kids.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photos]
Diane Tennant Photos
Jed Dow
Carin Prescott
EXCALIBUR FILMS
Teens wonder the streets, living a life filled with sex and drugs,
in the movie ``Kids.''
by CNB