The hype has not done the film any favors, and “Kids” has not exactly taken Cannes by storm. There were walkouts by some angry (or bored) viewers, and a press conference given by Clark was sparsely at-tended. Despite the incendiary subject matter, “Kids” seemed no more (and no less) than a promising first feature uneasily suspended between its gritty, faux-documentary style and its cautionary-tale moral-ism. The film is a grueling and disturbing account of a day in the life of Telly, a 17-year-old boy obsessed with seducing virgins, and his sensation-seeking friends. These kids–played by nonprofessionals-drink, smoke dope, steal, viciously beat up a skateboarder and stalk sex. Jennie, one of Telly’s conquests, tests HIV-positive. This gives the film a ghastly element of suspense: will she track Telly down with the news before he beds his next virgin victim?
Bluntly explicit: Parents are going to find all this unnerving. The language is bluntly explicit, the braggadocio of the boys depressing, the sight of 12-year-olds smoking joints bound to raise hackles. But this sure isn’t kiddie porn; rarely have sexual transactions seemed so depressingly mechanistic. Unlike Clark’s extraordinary books of black-and-white photography, “Kids” is stunningly anti-erotic, though not untainted by sensationalism. By condensing all this inflammatory material into a 24-hour time frame, Clark and 19-year-old screen-writer Harmony Korine create an overwrought narrative that’s sometimes tedious in its relentlesshess.
With all the fuss that will inevitably accompany its U.S. release this summer, “Kids” is destined to be denounced and proclaimed for reasons that have little to do with its quality as a film. In Cannes, it wasn’t the best movie and it certainly wasn’t the worst. Let the hype subside.
title: “On The Wild Side” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-02” author: “Lester Miceli”
The next night, on the same stage at the University of New Hampshire, George W. Bush was in the same position, only with the polarities reversed: Bush wasn’t about to be outflanked on his right. As governor of Texas, he’d pushed through $3 billion worth of tax cuts, the largest in state history. Now he was refusing to concede a single New Hampshire antitax vote. The goal was to finish off his rival, Sen. John McCain, slowed by new accusations that he’d done favors for contributors. So when Tim Russert asked about taxes, Bush swung for the fences. He hadn’t scripted the answer with aides, but here’s how it came out: Short of war, he’d never raise taxes. “Not only is it ‘No new taxes, so help me God,’ it’s ‘Cut the taxes, so help me God’.”
Back to back, the front runners gave sound bites that could bite them later. Gore marched into the quagmire that trapped his own boss, Bill Clinton, in the bleak first year of his presidency. The veep picked a fight with Colin Powell and Norman Schwarzkopf, both of whom oppose openly gay service, and undercut his claim, as a Vietnam vet, to a better understanding of military culture than his boss or Bradley. Bush was drawn to the flame of his own father’s broken promise at the GOP convention of 1988. Bush the Elder’s “read my lips” pledge helped him win the presidency, and then helped him lose it. Critics may play the promises side by side and ask: what kind of family tradition are we looking at here? “He may have gotten a little carried away the other night,” conceded a top adviser in Austin, Texas.
But in New Hampshire in January, the once presumptive nominees have a lot of business to conduct, and not a lot of time. The vice president leads Bradley in the polls, but the former New Jersey senator has raised more money ($27 million), has more cash on hand and has proved to be an implacable, shrewd foe. Gore, who has a sterling record on gay rights, has been counting on gay support. Gay voters now make up more than 5 percent of the electorate, about the same percentage as Hispanics and higher than Jews. Gay Democrats are especially numerous in New York and California, and Gore will need every vote. Bush is loaded with dough, rapidly learning to play in the Show and inching close to the nomination. He’d already outflanked McCain on the tax issue, forcing the Arizona senator to unveil a more generous tax-cut package. The Bush team also wants to stifle Steve Forbes, who launched a new ad attack on Bush’s tax-cut record in Texas. “My mind is laser-focused on the task at hand,” Bush told NEWSWEEK. “You watch what happens in this primary and then we’ll worry about the general election.”
But it’s risky for candidates to assume that they can walk on the wild side of their party, and then tiptoe back to the middle to appeal to the mainstream later on. Now they have to be multitaskers, simultaneously appealing to the extremists and the centrists even in the early primaries. One reason is the compressed primary schedule, which is likely to produce nominees by March. Most important is the rising role of independent voters, a growing force against constituency-group pandering in key states such as New Hampshire, South Carolina, Michigan and California. And since those moderate voters may form a base for Bradley and McCain, Gore and Bush are on particularly tricky terrain.
The vice president quickly learned just how tricky last week, inching back toward the center on gays in the military. His camp huddled, tried to blame the media but soon sent forth a spokesman to explain that the veep hadn’t been clear enough. Of course he’d never ask the brass about their personal views on this or other matters. “But Gore did not, and will not, change his position on the underlying issue,” one insider vowed. As for Bush, he amended his new tax credo the next day, in a slight but significant change. He does not “intend” to raise taxes if elected, Bush said, but does “intend” to cut them.
So far, the front runners are doing a fairly good job of multi-tasking. In the NEWSWEEK Poll, Gore has slightly extended his lead over Bradley among likely Democratic primary voters: from 49 percent to 27 percent in November to 50-25 last week. But Gore’s style of attack politics, grilling Bradley at every debate like a prosecuting attorney, is costing him. The vice president’s aides are concerned that his personal “negatives” in polls are high. There are other signs of weakness. In the NEWSWEEK Poll, Gore continues to trail Bush in test matchups, in this case 50-43. And he can do no more than reach a tie with McCain, 46-46. “We have no choice to do it this way, by exposing Bill Bradley,” said one top Gore adviser. “This is our only way home.”
On the campaign trail, Gore remains a quirky character, charmingly cheeky one minute, wooden the next. He bantered easily with a TV talking head from Washington, but froze up in front of a “Last Hurrah” audience in Massachusetts. When Ted Kennedy stepped forward to endorse him, Gore couldn’t wait for the right dramatic moment to come up to the front. When it came time to sing “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling,” Kennedy led, and Gore clearly didn’t know the lyrics. Bradley, by contrast, makes a virtue of necessity. Painfully professorial, he campaigns as if excitement is an affront to the democratic process. In New Hampshire, he turned out a raucous, chanting crowd for a rally at the town hall in Newmarket, N.H. He stood in silence while pro-choice hard-liners blasted Gore. Then Bradley made a few remarks, shook a few hands and was off. It was a classic event: leave ’em wanting more.
On the Republican side, George Bush is cruising everywhere but in New Hampshire. Bush’s lead over McCain in a six-way race nationally remains 63-13, according to the NEWSWEEK Poll, the same as it was almost three months ago. The governor has increased his lead over McCain to 75-20 in a two-way race. But the crowds in Iowa and New Hampshire that showed up at Bush’s events on his first swing of 2000 seemed tepid, more curious than enthusiastic. In Salem, N.H., for example, he gave a rousing, extended version of his stump speech to an investment-company forum. They barely applauded when he was done. “Oookay,” he said, like a nightclub comedian on a bad night. “Are there any questions?”
Still, the Bush operation is well funded, well thought out and moving into a higher gear. Seeking to do an end run around the media, the campaign is producing “crash” ads of what it considers good Bush moments on the trail–and putting them on the air with heavy buys in New Hampshire. In debates, the deer-in-the-headlights look has disappeared for now, replaced by the DKE president at the fraternity-chapter meeting. Asked in South Carolina to describe his worst mistake, Bush went for laughs. It was when he was running the Texas Rangers, he said, and signed off on trading hitter Sammy Sosa.
In the last GOP debate of the week Bush didn’t repeat his no-new-taxes pledge. At the Democrats’ final face-off, in Iowa, Bradley didn’t mention gays in the military–and Gore didn’t bring it up. But it was too late. The sound bites were already in the can and ready to roll.
