A film by Gregg Araki
USA 1995, 83 min
When they inadvertently team up with a dangerously seductive drifter (Johnathon Schaech), a laid-back Cali-Bro (James Duval) and his prickly girlfriend (Rose McGowan) find themselves on an increasingly violent, perverse and darkly comic journey where the erotic tension mounts as much as the body count. Working with a significant budget for the first time, Araki relies on stylised lighting and a sophisticated production design to create an intense sense of unreality. A shocking chronicle, accompanied by countless indie songs, of an attitude to life that is doomed to destruction.
Director & screenplay: Gregg Araki – Director of photography: Jim Fealy – Editing: Gregg Hale – With songs by: Nine Inch Nails, Slowdive, Cocteau Twins, Belly, The Verve and others – With James Duval, Rose McGowan, Johnathon Schaech, Margaret Cho, Parker Posey, Perry Farrell and others. – German distribution: Camera Obscura Filmdistribution, cameraobscurafilms.de
Gregg Araki
Gregg Araki was born in Los Angeles in 1959 to Japanese-American parents. In the early 1980s, Araki enrolled at USC Film School, where his student projects were inspired by new wave music, DIY underground art culture, and filmmakers such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Jim Jarmusch, and John Waters. Since his cinematic breakthrough with The Living End at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival, Araki has been at the forefront of the New Queer Cinema movement alongside Isaac Julien and Todd Haynes. Araki’s three subsequent feature films, which form his highly influential Teen Apocalypse Trilogy, inspired an entire generation of outcasts and queer people to accept themselves and give the middle finger to anyone who dared to judge them.
