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| Also Known As: | Gregg Y Araki | Died: | |
| Born: | December 17, 1959 | Cause of Death: | |
| Birth Place: | Los Angeles, California, USA | Profession: | screenwriter, director, director of photography, editor, producer |
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A self-styled "guerrilla filmmaker" (because he often makes films without permits and pays his actors very little), Gregg Araki's features are tinged with ironic nihilism and reflect the boredom, despair and inadequacy of segments of American youth who consider themselves outside the mainstream. The openly gay, Asian-American was born and raised in Southern California and made his first feature, "Three Bewildered People in the Night" (1987), on a budget of $5000. Shot in grainy black and white with a stationary camera, the film was a character study of a love triangle between an aspiring video artist, her gay male friend and her boyfriend. His second feature, "The Long Weekend (o' Despair)" (1989), shot in similar style on the same budget, depicted a reunion of college friends who come to realize that they cannot recapture the feelings of the recent past. Both films depicted disintegrating relationships in a starkly stylized, claustrophobic manner.
A self-styled "guerrilla filmmaker" (because he often makes films without permits and pays his actors very little), Gregg Araki's features are tinged with ironic nihilism and reflect the boredom, despair and inadequacy of segments of American youth who consider themselves outside the mainstream. The openly gay, Asian-American was born and raised in Southern California and made his first feature, "Three Bewildered People in the Night" (1987), on a budget of $5000. Shot in grainy black and white with a stationary camera, the film was a character study of a love triangle between an aspiring video artist, her gay male friend and her boyfriend. His second feature, "The Long Weekend (o' Despair)" (1989), shot in similar style on the same budget, depicted a reunion of college friends who come to realize that they cannot recapture the feelings of the recent past. Both films depicted disintegrating relationships in a starkly stylized, claustrophobic manner.
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Notes
Araki freely admits that his films frequently refer to Godard: "Totally F***ed Up" borrows the intertitle device and the lesbian leads Michele and Patricia are named after the characters played by Jean-Paul Belmando and Jean Seberg in "Breathless"; the male leads in "The Living End" are named John and Luc, etc. --Noted by Chris Chang in "Absorbing Alternative" in Film Comment, September-October 1994.
"I taught a class in independent film at my old school in Santa Barbara and we talked about this idea of 'the mainstream' versus ideas of 'the outside' and 'the edge'. We came up with this metaphor of an amoeba or giant blob absorbing everything. Punk culture, which starts way out there with The Sex Pistols ad safety pins through your nose, all becomes accountants driving around listening to Nirvana. Everything out there eventually comes around. Being on the outside, being a part of alternative culture, being gay and away from the middle of the road has always struck me as a very scary and hypocritical thing. I've always distrusted popular culture, Top 40, hit TV shows, and I don't like being in a huge faceless crowd, or a mob. I just feel more comfortable outside than inside but, at the same time, as the margins get pushed further and further, they're slowly drifting towards you." --Araki in Film Comment, September-October 1994.
"None of my films are autobiographical, [but] I make films about a very specific subculture or milieu which is directly related to my experience." --Araki in "Absorbing Alternative" in Film Comment, September-October 1994.
"I'm very interested in sex and violence. Not in a slasher, T&A way, but violence as bizarre action."--Araki quoted in Elle, December 1993.
"One thing I hate about contemporary movies is that most of them clearly lack any visual conception or style. They're flat, lifeless and predictable. A lot of things influence me visually besides other films -- magazines, photography, MTV, advertising." --Araki quoted in UGC News, February 1995.
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