"Kids at 30: How a Role in Larry Clark’s Cult Film Changed One Actor’s Life" by Violet Conroy

It’s been nearly 30 years since Leo Fitzpatrick graced the screen in Kids as Telly, a foul-mouthed, horny teenage skateboarder stalking the streets of New York City in search of girls to have sex with (his preference is clear from the film’s unforgettable opening scene: virgins). Directed by American photographer Larry Clark and written by a young Harmony Korine, the film caused a sensation upon its release in 1995 thanks to its raw and unflinching depiction of casual misogyny, drug use, rape and the HIV epidemic. “I always wanted to make the teenage movie that I felt America never made,” Clark told New York Magazine at the time of the film’s release. “The Great Teenage Movie, like the Great American Novel … I wanted to go against all that Hollywood bullshit.”

As well as launching the career of a young, doe-eyed Chloë Sevigny, the film thrust Fitzpatrick – then a 16-year-old skateboarder from New Jersey – unwittingly into the spotlight. “I think Larry thought I was a very real, genuine teenager, not a Hollywood version of a teenager,” he says today. “He was going for that kind of realness, which would mess us up later because nobody knew if it was real or fake.”

Kids changed the young skateboarder’s life in more ways than one; meeting Clark also meant an induction into the world of art, something Fitzpatrick would then dedicate his life to as an artist (alongside contemporaries Ryan McGinley and Dash Snow) and gallerist on the downtown scene. As an homage to his artistic mentor, Fitzpatrick has now curated a show at New York’s Ruttkowski;68 gallery of Clark’s photographs of the vibrant skateboarding scene in early 90s New York.

Taken at the city’s popular skateboarding spots in Brooklyn Banks, Astor Place and Washington Square Park, Clark’s photos capture a young Fitzpatrick and his friends pre-Kids fame, chugging beers and dwarfed in XL T-shirts and baggy jeans, offering a rare snapshot into Manhattan’s hedonistic – and now-iconic – skateboarding scene. “Before I met Larry, I didn’t know anything about art, photography or film,” says Fitzpatrick. “So I wanted to do a show with the guy who was responsible for getting me into art in the first place. This show is for the teenage skateboarders in New York City who aren’t comfortable going to galleries.”

Read full article at anothermag.com