Richard Kern

New York University
February 26, 2004

Filmmaker-photographer Richard Kern appeared at New York University on the afternoon of February 26, 2004 through the joint sponsorship of the Colloquium Committee of the Department of Cinema Studies and the Department of Film and Television. He spoke and answered questions before approximately 50 students and faculty members gathered in Room 006 of the Tisch School of the Arts. The event was proposed and organized by Michael Bowen, a second year Ph.D. student in the Department of Cinema Studies. After a screening of Kern's films X is Y, Horoscope, Submit to Me and The Evil Cameraman, a short interview was conducted before the assembled audience by Michael Bowen, during which a small sample of Richard Kern's recent photographic work was also presented as a Power Point presentation. The floor was then opened up for questions.

Q: Michael Bowen
RK: Richard Kern

Q: Could you tell people about your creative background before you came to New York and explain what originally brought you to Manhattan?

RK: I went to school in North Carolina at UNC [The University of North Carolina] where I studied art. This was in the Seventies. And to do anything in the art world at that time, you had to go to New York. This was the center of the art world then - maybe it still is. It's the only place you can go where you can do whatever you want and nobody cares.

Q: And what specifically did you study at UNC?

RK: Art and Philosophy. I studied sculpture, conceptual art and...I guess it was Existentialism [laughs]. I think that's what it was at the time.

Q: Could you tell us a little about the art and culture scene you found when you arrived in New York, particularly on the Lower East Side...

RK: Back then there were galleries all over the East Village - little storefront galleries. They had moved over from Soho and were all over the Lower East Side and the East Village: there was a big art boom in New York at that time. But I hated that entire scene. When I'd gone to school, I'd had this very naive view of what 'art' was supposed to be. I didn't realize it was supposed to be a commodity. [laughs] I thought it was supposed to be 'pure' and all that stuff, you know? So I hated the art scene because it just seemed like you were either on the 'outside' or on the 'inside'. Once you were on the inside, you could get somewhere, but if you were on the outside, you weren't going anywhere. But that's how it really is.

Q: So how did you break into the art scene yourself?

RK: Well, before the films I was doing fanzines for a long time. And you just tried to find some other people who kind of thought like you and to get some kind of group together. So then I hooked up with [filmmaker and Cinema of Transgression propagandist] Nick Zedd. And Nick said, 'We've got to put a label on this stuff, because if you don't have a label, nobody is going to pay any attention. So he invented this whole 'Cinema of Transgression' thing - it was totally an invention. He wrote this manifesto and these articles, all under assumed names: and he would send them to people and they started publishing it. The concept was very Warholian, I guess you could say, to identify ourselves as some kind of a group. But all of a sudden, people started noticing us, so I guess it actually worked.

Q: So, identifying the Cinema of Transgression as a 'scene', as an actual movement, was something that was done very self-consciously...

RK: Yes. If you think in art terms, there's, like, the Young British Artists, there's the Minimalists... You always have to have some kind of label.

Q: And how did you get involved with filmmaking, then, if you were working with fanzines and graphic arts and things like that originally ?

RK: I grew up in a small town in North Carolina and I started working in a movie theater when I was about eight years old - you know, selling popcorn. So I'd always wanted to make movies. I'd made a few when I was in high school - these kind of French surrealist things [laughs] But then I got to a point where - I guess I was like 28 or something - I said to myself, 'If I'm ever going to make movies, I just have to go ahead and do it.' So I got a camera and I made a 3-minute movie about 42nd Street [Goodbye 42nd Street]. And the first time I tried to show it it, I brought it to this open screening and they wouldn't play it. They rejected it from the screening saying it 'promoted the wrong moral values' or something - and, I mean, this was supposed to be an open screening! [laughter]. That was at ABC No Rio, which was supposedly a very cutting-edge kind of place at that time. So that really... well, it gave me a lot of drive, for one thing, but I also couldn't understand their reaction. Then I showed it to other people and they thought it was great, so I guess all it took was for somebody to tell me 'No, you can't do that' and I just said to myself, 'OK, I'm gonna do it.'

Q: Say some more about what the Cinema of Transgression was about.

RK: Well, as I said, it was Zedd's idea. Right before us there was this movement - I guess they were called the 'No Wave' filmmakers - filmmakers like Beth B., Scott B., Amos Poe, all these guys. And most of their movies were really boring. I mean, even though something was happening, it wasn't happening very fast. There would be a story, but it would all be at this snail's pace. So we tried to make everything go a lot faster. And we always tried to put some titillation in there - some violence or something - the stuff that we felt you never saw in underground movies or - for that matter - that you didn't even really see it in regular movies at that time. The whole idea was to find the fastest way to get somewhere as 'underground' filmmakers using ideas from straight exploitation.

Q: Were you familiar with other avant-garde film work at that time?

RK: Yeah. I'd seen a lot of films in school. I'd seen all these films by Michael Snow, Stan Brakhage, anything that was available to see where ever I was living at the time. Of course, back then, they didn't have video, so you couldn't see stuff like that unless you actually lived near a place where they screened it. But a lot of that stuff was really boring too.

Q: Where were your films screened?

RK: There were places all over... quite a few [night] clubs. Even the big clubs would have screening nights. At the time it seemed like they were big events: I don't know how big they actually were. But the East Village was loaded with places. And I used to tour with bands. I'd show my film Fingered before the band came on stage. And Sonic Youth would play and I'd be showing films behind them while they played. This movie you just screened - Submit to Me - used to be the opening for a musician known as 'Scraping Foetus Off the Wheel' [J. G. Thirlwell]. Video was just getting into clubs at that time too and it was like a new thing. You'd go into a club and they'd have this giant video monitor: there was a club on 14th Street that had like 50 of these big monitors all over the place. And there were a lot of 'acid parties' at the time, so I made a lot of these movies strictly to mess with people's heads while they were on drugs [laughter]. In the clubs, everyone was on drugs, and they'd be sitting there looking at my movies like [makes a shocked face] [laughter]. And I showed Submit to Me Now at a Sonic Youth show once and in between songs there was, like, dead silence because everyone was just standing there staring at the film. [laughter]

Q: Talk about what it meant for you to work in Super-8.

RK: Super-8's become kind of like putting actual film into a still camera these days [as opposed to digital cameras]. It's basically a dead technology. I guess it was the 'video' of my generation: it was cheap...like three bucks a roll, maybe another three bucks for processing, and then you got three minutes of film. But even when I came into it, it was already all over. There was only one lab still processing Super-8 film in New York at that time...

Q: It was associated with home movies as well...

RK: Yeah, 'home movies' were Super-8. And people use it now for effect, to get a 'Super-8' look. But it's become super expensive to work with.

Q: So the basic reason you used Super-8 was for economy...

RK: Yes. And the cameras were very small compared to a big 16 thing.

Q: Was 16mm inaccessible? Too expensive to fool around with?

RK: Well, I'll put it this way. I bought all the equipment I needed to make Super-8 films for about $400. So, yeah, it was pretty cheap.

Q: And Super-8 cameras generally produce a camera positive, so I'm assuming that each of your films is an absolutely original object...

RK: Yes, one original print, that's all you'd get. But I never show that stuff anymore. It's all been transferred to video for screenings or whatever.

Q: How was your stuff critically received at the time? If at all. Did you and the other Cinema of Transgression filmmakers get any critical recognition from people in the established media...film critics, etc.?

RK: It was usually the same kind of comments that I got the very first time I tried to screen one of my films at ABC No Rio. I showed my movie The Right Side of My Brain at The Kitchen - which was like a legitimate performance space at that time - and the Village Voice gave it a horrible review: they said it was 'pornography' and all that stuff. And that was pretty much the case over and over again. But some of the same people who wrote horrible reviews - like [Super-8 filmmaker] Bruce LaBruce - who used to be a film critic in Canada - came and took it all back later.

Q: So there was some critical recognition, but it was pretty negative...

RK: Definitely negative.

Q: Has that changed in recent years?

RK: I don't know if it's changed, but it does seem like whatever bothers people in the past, you know, eventually gets to be accepted. And things have definitely changed in mainstream cinema since back then. I mean, The Passion of the Christ is kind of like one of my movies now. [laughter]

Q: Tell us a little about the films we screened here today. X is Y?

RK: Well, I had just got off drugs at that time, so I had all these...paranoid fantasies... [laughs] Maybe we should talk about something else. [laughter]

Q: Well...what were you thinking at the time...?

RK: I don't know. I guess I thought it would be empowering to women if they were holding guns. Maybe? [laughter] But I honestly don't know...

Q: What about Submit to Me?

RK: Submit to Me was just what it says. All of these people came to me and said 'I'll do anything in a movie'. And Submit to Me Now is more of the same, but it goes a little further, I think. So I would just get people to do whatever I could get them to do. That would be the requirement. And they'd get paid $15. I think it was $15 and one hit of ecstasy. [laughter]

Q: How about The Evil Cameraman?

RK: Well, the 'dark' part - the beginning part - was when I was on drugs. And the 'light' part - the second part - was when I was off drugs. I kept getting all these people saying to me, 'Oh, you're that evil guy,' or I'd go places and they'd say, 'Don't bring that guy in here.' And I was just me - like I'm sitting here right now - I wasn't much different. But people really put a lot of weight on the stuff they saw in the films, I guess.

Q: So, does the title of the film reflect the way you were seen by other people at that time or is it a product, so to speak, of how you actually felt?

RK: The title was how I felt that people were looking at me. I still get it now because of the photography work. But it's a total misconception. Or maybe it isn't...I don't know. But I don't feel that I'm 'evil'. I mean, in those films, I was pushing it a little bit, but it was all basically just a joke...

Q: A joke...?

RK: Yeah, it was all a joke.

Q: Who was the joke on?

RK: It wasn't that...but it's just, like, everything was tongue in cheek. I saw them all as, kind of, comedies. You didn't show the one that I had the most trouble with, my movie Fingered. I got so much trouble for that one. I mean, the initial thing is pretty shocking, but if you watch it more than once, you realize that it's just a big joke. At least it was suppose to be...

Q: But not too many people got the joke...?

RK: Lots of people get it now; but back then, they didn't.

Q: The only other film that we showed that we haven't touched on yet is your film Horoscope. Is there any story behind that one?

RK: Only that the girl in the film [Holly Adams] read her horoscope every morning and planned her whole day by it. I just thought that was funny.

Q: So the actress herself was kind of the inspiration for the film...?

RK: Yes, definitely.

Q: Since we only had a limited time in which to show your films, I decided to screen a group of films that I like to think of as your 'portrait films'...

RK: Yeah.

Q: Do you see these films - films like Submit to Me and Submit to Me Now - as portraits of the people who are portrayed in them?

RK: Submit to Me, definitely. Maybe Evil Cameraman. But I had other films - like Fingered - that were like a million times more popular than these.

Q: And can you talk a little bit about music also? It seems that it's very carefully chosen and contributes a lot to your films. Where were you getting this music from and how much did the music itself inspire you?

RK: Sometimes the music became the film. But a lot of times, the music was just whatever you could get a hold of. I was really lucky when I hooked up with Sonic Youth because they just let me use whatever I wanted and that carried some incredible weight down the road. Then there were people like.... Well, there was one song called 'King of Sex' [around which Kern made a film with Nick Zedd] that this group let me use, and then their label called me up and said, 'We know you're making millions of dollars with that movie.' Which I wasn't! But it's basically whatever you can get.

Q: A lot of underground filmmakers have found themselves in trouble in recent years because they have unlicensed music that they've been playing with their films all these years and now they can't release them...

RK: That's right. But I still have a little agreement for all of mine that says, 'Yes, you can use this music.' So no one can sue me! [laughter]

Q: Why did you stop making films and switch to still photography?

RK: It seems like, if you're making films, you've got to have something to say. And I don't really have much to say anymore. I feel like at the time I was making films, I was very angry and aggressive; but I don't know what I'd even make one about these days. And I would have to go to another level - like 35mm - and spend a lot of money. So anyway, photography for me is much more immediate and with one photo you only have to make one little statement and that's it. And photography is what I started with anyway. Also, it's much harder to make a living making films unless you've really got the touch. I've been really lucky with the films I made because for some reason I still sell, like, tons of them on DVD. But I was also lucky in that, right when we started with the Cinema of Transgression, there was really nothing available on video except big movies. So I started selling them myself on video and having them on video just got them everywhere. Much more so than if I went to a place and showed them in a theater.

[A short collection of Richard Kern's recent photographs are shown.]

[The Power Point presentation of these photographs has been preserved and submitted to the Study Center of the Department of Cinema Studies, NYU.]

Q: You obviously shoot women a lot. Any reason for that?

RK: What can I say, it's more fun for me to shoot women. [laughter] I shoot men too, but it's definitely more fun to shoot women. I was making rock videos during the early '90s and a friend of mine, who was an editor for Hustler [magazine], said 'We're starting a new magazine called Barely Legal. Why don't you send us some stuff.' And I did and I found that I could make more money in three hours on one of those shoots than I made in a month working on a rock video. So it just decided: 'no more rock videos, go do this'. Because I'm trying to do my own stuff all the time too, but the main thing is trying to fund yourself. So you've got to come up with some scam, it seems, to pay for everything else you want to do. So my thing for the longest time was selling to all these girlie magazines. I shot for gay mags too...

Q: And then in addition to the commercial work you're doing, your own work is currently exhibited in galleries and places like that as well...?

RK: Yes.

Q: And is there a sharp division between these two bodies of work? Do you feel like the commercial work you're doing - for 'girlie' magazines, etc. - is comparable in some way to your other, more personal work?

RK: No. It's really like hack work. Like cookie cutter stuff. But sometimes I do manage to get some of my own shots out of those porn sessions.

Q & A with Audience

AUD: Can you talk about what it means to be making images of sex - its social implications and how it effects people, etc.?

RK: To be honest, I try not to think about that kind of stuff. I just try to do what I do and most of it's trying to come up with new ideas. I feel like that's the main thing that I have to do. And I don't even know if I'm coming up with new ideas or not - it could all just be the same old crap...
I have a book coming out in the fall and it's all soft stuff - very soft. At first I was very adverse to this, but now I'm kind of warming up to it. Because it's... more subtle. Back in the film days, I was always saying 'I'm gonna show them.' But now I really don't think that way. I just try to think of how I can come up with some excuse to have someone look sexy while doing something interesting without it appearing too ridiculous; and to have it look like it's really happening. And, for me, to also really like the model.

AUD: When you were making films, what was your process? For instance, did you choose the music first and then shoot, or choose the music after you shot? And did you have an idea about how you wanted it to look?

RK: I would shoot everything and then look for the music. Or there would be some song I was into at the time and I would just start playing it with the film. Like my film Goodbye 42nd Street used to be set to a Def Leopard song. But I couldn't use that anymore because I didn't have the rights, so I decided to get someone to make some music. But I was fortunate in that I knew a lot of people who were musicians - especially Jim Thirlwell, who did the soundtracks for a lot of my films. Musicians love that kind of stuff - giving them something and saying 'Make this look good.' And I feel the music definitely is a driving force in a lot of the films. I mean, when you see these films without music, it's a totally different kind of experience.

AUD: A lot of your movies don't have dialogue. But in your narrative films, like Fingered, Marty Nation [one of the stars] has some great one-liners. I wondering if you and Lydia Lunch [the star] wrote that stuff?

RK: Every night while we were filming that movie, I would tell Lydia and Marty what the scene was going to be the next day and they would go home and work out the dialogue between themselves. And the same with my movie You Killed Me First. Immediately before the scene, I would say to the actors 'This is what's supposed to happen. You do this and you do this.' But I wasn't big on writing things down: so I would draw pictures sometimes to show what was going to happen, then the actors were basically responsible for coming up with the actual dialogue themselves.

AUD: Two questions: First, what is your relationship right now with the people from the Cinema of Transgression? And secondly, have you lost relationships and friendships as a result of the kind of work you do?

RK: Yes. But usually not so much because of the films as much as because of things I did myself [laughter]. But that was the case one time when I was involved with someone for years and I was terrified to tell them that I had done all this stuff. But I also should say that my work has to come first. In terms of the people from that time period, I still talk to Lydia [Lunch] occasionally. Lung Leg I haven't heard from in years: she really was a kind of a split personality type. And Zedd I see at the post office occasionally. A lot of the people from that period are dead now. It's really like another lifetime, basically. I've basically lived a whole other lifetime since then.

AUD: Some feminist artists use photography and their own bodies to make kind of an ironic comment, but they're always in danger of actually slipping into some sort of eroticization within their own work. As I was watching your films I was wondering if you were making some kind of ironic comment yourself? You said before they were meant to be jokes...

RK: Whenever there's naked people around, there's always the danger of something else happening... But honestly, I'm not sitting there like a philosopher saying to myself 'By doing this, I am going to achieve this.' I'm thinking more along the lines of, 'OK, I've got a model coming over, let's shoot some photos and hopefully something will come out good.' It's a very traditional approach, just like when a painter works with his model. I know plenty of female photographers who work exactly the same way. The same kind of thing is going on in their heads - just acting out all of their voyeurism. You're in a safe situation - you can't get any safer than that - and it feeds all of his stuff in your head without any of the 'bad stuff' that sometimes goes along with being around people who are naked. [laughter]

AUD: There's obviously a lot of sex and humor mixed in your work. Is this your main goal, to bring these two things together?

RK: That's basically my main interest: it has to be funny. Beauty is one thing, but I'm more into creating a kind of an inside joke.

AUD: How do you find your models?

RK: Either they contact me or I meet them through somebody else. But I never go up to anyone and say, 'Can I shoot you.' Cuz it's just too... I'm basically considered to be seedy enough, you know? [laughter].

AUD: Are there any other photographers who have influenced you?

RK: Right now there are a lot of obvious guys from the fashion world, like Terry Richardson, Wolfgang Tillmans, Jurgen Teller, Helmut Newton. Just tons of people because there are, like, a million photographers out there.

AUD: How would you describe the difference between your own stuff - your art photography - and the work you do for 'girlie' magazines?

RK: Well, for me, if I'm shooting it for a porn magazine, then it's porn.

AUD: But if somebody said that your art pictures were porn...?

RK: Well, that's for them to decide. I'm not going to argue one way or the other. That's not my job. But it is good to be sitting on the fence: as long as there's discussion about my work, any kind of discussion is good.

AUD: And it's probably profitable...

RK: Well, not as profitable as, say, being Cindy Sherman, or any art photographer who uses sex in their work and hits it big - that's profitable. They can basically do whatever they want and there's a big payday at the end. But I'm still hustling all the time. I've been hustling since the '70s.

[End of Richard Kern Event]