I thought Bully was absolutely brilliant. I think the label of "pervert" is just too easy in Clark's case. If this was true he'd just go work in porno, make a load of cash, and get to film raunchy sex all day long.
Instead he struggles to make independant films, and I don't think he's swimming in dough. If you watch the behind the scenes "making of" special on the Bully DVD, all the actors are joking about how they had sex with Larry to get the part, etc. But it's plainly evident that it's a professional film set and he goes out of his way to make the raunchier scenes comfortable for the actors.
I think his films are some of the only films brave enough to portray a certain segment of the American teenage population as they really are: sometimes cunning and smart, sometimes stupid, definitely promiscuous, occasionally violent, bored, restless, understimulated, isolated, disenfranchised, etc.
The reason you SEE kids having sex in his movies is because kids in fact DO have sex. Yes, that's right. Teenagers are fucking as we speak, even though the Bible thumpers in the White House don't want to hear about it.
This is why we have such a high teen pregnancy rate in the U.S. Sex is a completely taboo subject and when it's approached frankly by a filmmaker, he's labeled a "pervert", meanwhile a big action movie director can make a film showing hundreds of people being chewed to pieces by machine gun fire and he's on the cover of all the magazines.
I always laugh when people attack a movie like Bully, which tackles very tough subjects, claiming it's exploitation - meanwhile, Hollywood churns out films that relentlessly insult the intelligence of not only teen characters but teen audiences and nobody sees anything wrong with it. Every American Pie ripoff and sub-sub-sub C-grade slasher movie.
Look at the trailer for the pointless remake of Chainsaw Massacre - what's her name from Seventh Heavan (no less) is running around half naked. If Clark directed it at least it would have something to say about the real world.
I am looking forward to Ken Park.
