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Rosario Dawson: I had just turned 15, and I was hanging out on my stoop. My dad had actually told me to go downstairs and get discovered because they were shooting a commercial on the block and they were looking for people to dance. And me, I'm not dancing, I kind of just hovered around for the weekend downstairs while they were shooting. That's when Larry (Clark), Harmony, and the VP, and a few other crew members spotted me. They were scouting for locations in the neighborhood.I was talking to someone, and I guess I was so loud that the whole crew of people all turned and looked at me. I remembered in that moment that they had said they were recording sound that day. I was like, "Aw, man, I'm going to get in trouble. They're going to tell me to be quiet." Instead they all said, "Oh my god! I'm making this movie, we're trying to scout locations right now, you're perfect"—literally jumping up and down going—"We wrote this role for you, you're perfect for this role. I haven't even seen you or know you, but you're perfect for this role, I wrote it for you." And [Harmony] kind of just told me all about it. I leaned over and was like, "Daaad, people are talking to me about quote-on-quote making a movie." I was in shorts and a T-shirt like, Why are you talking to me?
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When Ruby and Jennie and their friends are just sitting around smoking and talking, there is so much posturing. The girls are so young and naïve, and yet they claim to have all this knowledge about being able to differentiate between what constitutes "sex" and "making love" and "fucking." What kinds of conversations were you really having with your female friends in real life about what sex really even was like?I grew up around a bunch of girls, who at 13 or 14 were having sex with their boyfriends, who were usually drug dealers, and they were usually not using condoms, because the boyfriend preferred to do it "raw dog" because it felt better.
I didn't even have sex until I was 20, so for me it was very far away from most of the reality of what I was talking about. I grew up around a bunch of girls, who at 13 or 14 were having sex with their boyfriends, who were usually drug dealers, and they were usually not using condoms, because the boyfriend preferred to do it "raw dog" because it felt better. I was just looking at these girls, going, "You are literally setting yourself up for the same cycle of violence and poverty that you're growing up in and that you're saying you want to be away from." The reality was really interesting because these girls went from 13 to 14 and after that summer break all of a sudden those girls went from liking TV shows and stickers to suddenly only wanting to talk about the sex that they were having. It wasn't that they had wanted to do these things, per se; it was sort of a by-product of the fact that they just developed too quickly, and I was a slow bloomer kind-of-thing. These girls suddenly had breasts and full tits. When they were walking down the street, even though they were young teenage girls, everyone treated them like they were women, and they were trying to acclimate to that. They were trying to normalize what was happening around them and the fact that grown men were giving them attention.
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A conversation that the girls in Kids aren't having at all is about the line between what is consensual and what isn't. We can look at someone like Telly, who preys on these pubescent virgins, and we know these girls haven't though about consent.My grandmother was watching it, going, 'Rosario, you know, I wish you had warned be before I went in,' and I said, 'Sorry, if I offended you.' She responded, 'You didn't offend me. There's not anything that's in this that anyone who's being honest can't connect to. I just wish you would have told me before I told all my church friends to go.'
Even the girls I knew at the time who were having sex, it was because they were really pressuring each other because they all wanted to stay in the crew. It was as if because your body changed you had to change with it. There was so much attention that was being given to them, and they had to strut, they had to be tough, they had to be cool. They were giving hand-jobs in homeroom and blowjobs and I would think, What are you getting out of that? You're just being completely used and manipulated. Do you even know these guys? Do you even like this person? Do you like the way that they treat you? You could ask these questions and they'd get like a deer in headlights, like they'd never even considered it.
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Regardless of the fact that it was scripted and that a lot of people were non-actors, it just felt so raw. It was seamless between anything that was improv and anything that was scripted, because we were all just non-actors.But I think both the girls and boys have aspects of posturing by a lot, and kind of being pushed. You've got kids teaching kids. They think they're never going to die, they're always going to stay young forever, they fight and they bounce back up after each scar. That's how fallible they are. Both were just really misleading in the fact that they sounded like they had a lot of experience or they sounded like they knew what they were talking about, and they really didn't.
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I think that's what makes the film still hold up today, regardless of how outdated it is. We used a payphone at one point. There were no cell phones in the movie. The premise doesn't even work today, considering how connected everybody is. Everybody's got a geo-locator on them. The whole idea of having to spend the entire day to look for someone doesn't even really work feasibly.But there's a real connection to that moment in time, when you're trying to explore and figure out that next phase of life. You don't necessarily have the best mentors around you. You've got kids teaching kids. It's a moment in your life when you think you're never going to die, you're always going to stay young forever, you fought and you bounced back up after each scar, but that's actually not the reality—you can get pregnant, you can die, you can get a disease. That's how fallible and vulnerable we really are. I'm sharing that with my kids now. They can [bring up the sex conversation] whenever they want to. There's still just a lot of ignorance, silliness, provocation, curiosity, and adventure. It's just a lot of hormones.BAM will be hosting a screening of Kids followed by a Q+A with director Larry Clark, co-writer Harmony Korine, actors Rosario Dawson, Chloë Sevigny, and Leo Fitzpatrick on Thursday, June 25, at 7 PM, and an additional screening at 8 PM, without special guests.Follow Rebecca on Twitter.