In 1995, Rosario Dawson had just finished eighth grade and was living in a squat. Chloë Sevigny was dry humping a lot of skateboarders. Pixar was about to put out its first feature, Toy Story. And a 52 year old man and a teenage skateboarder had just released Kids, a movie still being dissected 20 years later.
The story about the unlikely collaboration between a middle aged director and 19-year-old first-time screenwriter makes for a compelling oral history over on Rolling Stone. It’s a surprisingly emotional read. Not all of the film’s stars survived their 20s; others felt abandoned by the film’s producers once the film was released.
From Harmony Korine’s perspective, though, everything went exactly as planned. As he puts it, “You can’t discount how excited I was, and we were, with the idea of making people—and grown-ups specifically—angry.”