How ‘Kids’ Avoided Pornography Charges, and More Revelations About 1995’s Most Controversial Film

The 1995 film Kids was so daring that producers weren’t just afraid of critical backlash; they were afraid of going to jail. Larry Clark’s gritty drama follows a group of young New York City teenagers — played by actual urban teens, including first-time actors Chloë Sevigny and Rosario Dawson — whose daily lives include casual sex, drug and alcohol abuse, and the occasional burst of extreme violence. Written by 19-year-old skateboarder Harmony Korine and directed by 52-year-old Clark, the movie was shot in a realistic vérité style, with no moral comeuppances or happy endings for its characters. It was a project built for controversy, and was met with accusations of pornography, exploitation, and child endangerment, as well as an NC-17 rating from the MPAA. How did this film ever get released? A new oral history of Kids published on Rolling Stone’s website describes the unusual way the film got distributed — and the lengths producers went to in order to stay out of legal trouble.

Related: A Timeline of the NC-17 Rating

Originally, Kids producer Cary Woods intended to screen the film at the Sundance Film Festival, then sell it to the highest bidder. However, Miramax co-founder Harvey Weinstein wrangled an early screening of the movie and became determined to acquire it. There was just one problem: Miramax was owned by Disney, which would never agree to distribute a film about kids using drugs and having sex. Weinstein’s solution was to launch an entirely new production company, Shining Excalibur Films, for the purpose of distributing Kids. (Weinstein originally suggested just “Excalibur Films,” until he realized it was the name of an existing adult-film studio.)

Related: NC-17 Flashback: Inside ‘Blue Valentine’s’ Fight for an R Rating

“It’s difficult to remember now exactly how fraught with peril the whole release was,” says Eamonn Bowles, the former Miramax exec who headed up Shining Excalibur.  “There were these strong intimations of child pornography, legal battles. In general it was a movie that freaked people out.”

Watch a trailer for ‘Kids.’

When Kids was slapped with an NC-17 rating, Weinstein, Bowles, and Woods lobbied hard to have it changed to an R. A whole team of lawyers was hired to consult on Kids, including Alan Dershowitz (who spearheaded the MPAA appeal) and an attorney Bowles describes as “the preeminent child pornography lawyer in the country.”

“There was some law that you cannot show a nipple if [the actress] is under 18, and if you did, it was like a criminal offense,” says Woods. “So we had to have some special effects house smooth it over. It was more expensive than anything else we did on the movie.”

In spite of producers’ efforts, the NC-17 rating stuck, and Weinstein elected to release the film unrated. By the time they were ready to go to Sundance, they were so concerned about backlash that they refused to put the movie in competition. “I was like, ‘It’s gonna show one time, at midnight, at the Egyptian. Then I’m getting the print right out of there,’” recalls Woods.  “It’s in Utah, and I’m not having this f—ing print rolling around and have somebody seize it. They agreed to that, and [the screening] sold out in an hour.”

Kids went on to generate huge controversy and make $7 million at the box office, as well as launch the film careers of Clark, Korine, Sevigny, and Dawson. Here are some more revelations from Rolling Stone’s oral history. Read the full article here.

Clark and Korine thought Kids would win them an Oscar. “When they accepted their Oscar they were going to walk to the podium to this Slint song “Good Morning Captain.” They had it all mapped out,” says composer Lou Barlow. (The movie did not receive any nominations.)

Martin Scorsese was briefly attached as a producer. Woods says that Scorsese’s producing partner Barbara De Fina wanted too much control over the film. They parted ways before shooting began.

The real kids were relatively innocent. Rosario Dawson had just graduated eighth grade when Korine spotted her on New York’s Avenue C and cast her; she rode to the first day of production on the back of her father’s bicycle, and she had her first kiss during shooting. Leo Fitzpatrick, who played the serial virgin-seducer Telly, admits, “I had had sex once, maybe. Maybe not even real sex. I didn’t know what the f— I was doing.” Sevigny says she was “more promiscuous” than Dawson, but her sex life at the time was mainly “dry humping” with “a lot of skate boarders.”

The drugs onscreen were real. “Obviously those kids were smoking dope in the park. There’s no illusion about that,” says cinematographer Eric Allen Edwards. “So at some point that became a thing: Can we legally show kids smoking dope? And what does that mean?”

One of the kids was arrested during shooting. Justin Pierce, who played the despicable rapist Casper, reportedly got into a drunken fight and was arrested right before the film wrapped. “He actually fought the cops and broke his wrist, and ended up in jail for a day or two,” says Fitzpatrick. “I’ve always been curious if that wasn’t on purpose. He wanted to keep that film going.” Pierce struggled with substance abuse throughout his life and committed suicide in 2000.