Dan's Papers - September 21, 2007 - preview: wassup rockers

Well-known photographer Larry Clark is known for films that feature the dark side of teenage culture. Remember Kids, his controversial look at middleclass, sexually active teens in New York?

People got very upset at this supposed expose because they thought it was a documentary.

Real life, that is. In fact, it was a fiction film after all, but with enough truth and directorial brilliance that few people could tell the difference. One begins to wonder if Clark's photographs of teenage outcasts, especially in places like Oklahoma City, are manipulated reality as well. No matter. Clark is allowed his creative worldview, as was someone like Wage who took pictures of Manhattan's "underbelly" where we may also wonder if his images followed the tenet, "What you see is what you get." Clark's latest film, Wassup Rocker, has a sufficient degree of documentary touches to position it in familiar territory: the on-location shooting where it's Los Angeles this time which becomes a character itself; the authentic acting; the hand-held camera; the real life situations facing working class South Central teenagers.

Even so, there's more lyricism in Wassup Rocker; the editing is often crisp and evocative (especially in the initial scene) despite the shots where long takes predominate. The opening sequence, where we see a split screen of a single protagonist, is nothing short of an intriguing experimental device.

This juxtaposition between a documentary approach and a Hollywood slickness is fascinating as well. But it's the theme that's the most positive aspect of the film. Like the cult classic, The Warriors, this "gang of outsiders" are not killers or thieves or druggies. Or even particularly sexually precocious. They're just a group of skateboarders who wear their pants very tight and have long hair.

And they have the misfortune of landing in foreign terrain, Beverly Hills, where they aren't wanted except to entertain residents seeking sexual thrills. The boys' journey home, like in The Warriors, is a salient and potent rite of passage proving that Southern California culture is as prejudicial as anywhere else.

- Marion Wolberg Weiss

Wassup Rockers is part of the series, "Artists Make Movies," sponsored by the Pollock-Krasner House. It will be screened on Thursday, September 20 at 7 p.m. at Stony Brook Southampton Campus, Chancellors Hall. Admission charge. Call 631-324-4929 for information.