Araki Tee

PRINTED ON LAA GD1801 WHITE TEES.

This item ships immediately. You will always receive your item unless otherwise contacted. All items are final sale. We are not responsible for lost, stolen, or misplaced packages. 

It’s impossible to talk about New Queer Cinema without talking about Gregg Araki, whose low-fi, erotic, playfully surreal style still feels one of a kind. He is perhaps most known for his ‘Teen Apocalypse’ trilogy: “Totally F**ked Up” (1993), “The Doom Generation” (1995) and “Nowhere” (1997). Each of these films stars James Duval in a different but spiritually similar role, surrounded by other attractive young queer people coming of age in an increasingly strange world. “Totally F**ked Up” is somewhat grounded in reality, while “The Doom Generation” and “Nowhere” feature more heightened strangeness and violence, which only enhance their beauty. Together, the films paint a complicated picture of social unrest in the modern age.

In the early ‘90s, Araki had previously made three low-budget films: “Three Bewildered People in the Night” (1987), “The Long Weekend (O’ Despair)” (1989), and most prominently, “The Living End” (1992). Meeting me to discuss the restorations and Criterion box set, Araki describes his fourth feature, provocatively titled “Totally F**ked Up,” as the gay version of Jean-Luc Godard’s “Masculin Feminin” (1966). “It seemed like a very challenging time to be young and be gay, so I really wanted to make that movie,” he explains. The film follows a group of gay teens coming of age in Los Angeles, dealing with problems of life and love. With confessional asides to the camera mixed with its narrative sequences, the movie is a diary for alienated ’90s kids seeking some semblance of stability and understanding. 

When casting “Totally F**ked Up,” Araki found a muse through a classic LA encounter. “Jimmy Duval was this kid that would come into the coffee shop I used to write my scripts in. I remember seeing him one day, and he was showing pictures to his friends like he was a model or actor,” he recounts fondly. “I just walked up to him and said, ‘We’re casting this movie, would you like to audition?’ Then it was kind of history from there.” “Totally F**ked Up” had a sporadic shooting schedule spanning 4 to 6 months, with no one in the cast of actors older than 20, all bursting with energy. The film was shot on 16mm for the low, low price of 25 grand by just Araki, producer Andrea Sperling, and a handful of crew members. Araki compares the experience to making a student film, but the result was enough to change the trajectory of his and Duval’s careers. “Making that movie inspired me to do a trilogy, and I wrote ‘The Doom Generation’ and ‘Nowhere’ for Jimmy,” he says. “He’s the center.” 

Duval’s three characters in the trilogy–Andy, Jordan White, and Dark–are spiritually one. “He represented to me this kind of earnest romantic soul caught in this world of chaos and violence and surrealism. He’s very sensitive and open to the world. He’s kind of a forerunner in a way to the entire ‘babygirl’-type thing, you know what I mean?” Araki explains with a laugh. “These men who are not alpha men, but a different kind of sex symbol—the sensitive guy, the emotional guy, not the macho dickhead guy. The opposite of toxic masculinity.” 

This distinction is most pronounced in “The Doom Generation,” where Jordan White is contrasted with Xavier Red, played by Jonathon Schaech. Jordan is by far the most innocent of the love triangle he’s stuck in with Xavier and the foul-mouthed, authoritative Amy Blue (Rose McGowan). He loves Amy but doesn’t mind sharing her with the boorish, violent Xavier; he just wants her to be happy. But in this trilogy, things always come to a tragic end. Each time, Araki’s screenplay frontloads comedy and absurdity before a final gut punch changes everything. 

This seems fitting for a film that often feels like a slow descent into Hell, as Amy, Andy, and Xavier are followed by violence everywhere they go. Among the most visually arresting works of Araki’s filmography, “The Doom Generation” attempts to reveal the ugliness of America and how harshly society judges anyone different. “My movies have always been about the weirdos and outsiders and the people who don’t usually fit in,” Araki says with a smile. 

This mission is cemented in the final film in the trilogy, “Nowhere.” “It originally came about because of ‘Twin Peaks’. David Lynch is such a giant icon to me and an idol of mine,” Araki says dreamily. “The pilot of ‘Twin Peaks’ was released as a feature in Europe, so I had this idea of making a feature that was basically a pilot.” With its bright colors and funny cast, it’s easy to imagine “Nowhere” leading to a TV show. The film follows Duval’s Dark, a lovesick puppy who resents having to share his girlfriend Mel (Rachel True) with Lucifer (Kathleen Robertson)—this was long before queer poly culture was much more normalized. Dark yearns for a more traditional, stable connection in a increasingly chaotic world. Surrounding this love triangle is a loosely connected community of outsiders with names like Egg, Cowboy, Zero, and Handjob. “Nowhere” has by far the largest cast of any of Araki’s films, with Christina Applegate, Heather Graham, Debi Mazar, Denise Richards, Beverly D’Angelo, and even John Ritter having small roles, all of them weaved into the drama.

Though “Nowhere” is by far the most bizarre installment of the trilogy, it’s also the one that most represents Araki’s point of view. He says the trilogy is meant to “hold the promise of a chosen family.” Despite all the darkness of his work, he wants to give queer audiences light: “There is a world for you out there. Maybe you don’t see it right now, maybe you’re living in some shithole town in Missouri, but there is a whole world out there. The trilogy opens the door to that world. It’s here. You just have to get through your shitty teenage years, graduate, go to college, and find it. It’s so hard to feel so isolated and different.” Growing emotional, he says, “I think that’s one of the things for me as a filmmaker that’s so special about the trilogy. When people share stories, saying, ‘This movie literally saved my life,’ that means a lot to me.”

Araki embraces how polarizing his work is: “There are people that get my movies and love them. It speaks to them, to their heart, and it’s so gratifying to me. And then there are people that don’t get my movies. I’m used to my movies having these very passionate and sometimes divisive reactions, and honestly, I don’t really care. If you get my movies, they’re for you. If you don’t get them, they aren’t for you. That’s why I make these indie movies. My movies aren’t meant to be all things for all people. They’re not fucking four-quadrant Marvel movies or like ‘Star Wars’. They’re not for everybody. They have a very strong point of view. And I’m so gratified that somebody likes them. I love them.”