‘Teen Apocalypse’ Trilogy Star James Duval On Working With Gregg Araki and Shaping Cinema
Writer and director Gregg Araki changed the landscape of cinema, especially queer cinema, with his ultra low-budget films about teen angst and sexuality told with a dash or three of surrealism. Later dubbed the Teen Apocalypse Trilogy, his three films Totally Fucked Up, Doom Generation, and Nowhere painted a fucked up but real picture of life in the 90s. And joining him on this cinematic quest was actor James Duval, who starred in all three films in the trilogy. Thanks to Araki, Duval’s young life was changed as he helped convey Araki’s vision to a slowly growing group of cult fans.
From the Criterion Collection’s description of the trilogy:
Take the conventions of the American teen movie, transpose them to Los Angeles’s freaky fringes, anchor them in an unapologetic vision of sexual fluidity, and top it all off with heavy doses of Gen X disillusionment, gonzo violence, and hallucinogenic surrealism, and you’ll end up with something like these audacious transgressions from New Queer Cinema renegade Gregg Araki. Gleefully mixing slacker irony with raw sincerity, Godardian cool with punk scuzz, the savagely subversive, hormone-fueled films that make up the Teen Apocalypse Trilogy pushed 1990s indie cinema into bold new aesthetic realms, while giving blistering expression to adolescent rage and libidinal desire.
We spoke with Duval about the evolution of Gregg Araki, how being part of these films saved his life, and finding community through cinema.
Dread Central: How does it feel to have the Teen Apocalypse films be more recognized in the mainstream again? What does that feel like for you as an actor who was such a huge part of these films?
James Duval: I mean, I’m still taking it in honestly. I think, and I know for Gregg too, I’ve choked up a couple of times and Gregg choked up a couple of times when we made these movies that were very much of the time and reflections of who we were and how we saw things and how we felt. They were very little movies. We’d go into a theater, and there’d only be like five or 10 people, and for us that was like, “Hey, that’s five or 10 people that are our people. These are our people.”
So even if it’s only five or 10, that doesn’t matter. As long as we’re reaching our audience, it is for our people. And so to see all these years later, our people became this new generation to not only embrace us, but understand the movies we’re making, that they live that effortlessly.
We ultimately made these movies to let people of our ilk know they’re not alone. So when you’re alone and you feel like there’s nothing else and you have no one in the world, that’s not true. We’re out here and we love you and you need to love yourself. It’s all about finding your people in that environment where we can be safe, where we can thrive, like what we like, and be who we are.
DC: That’s the thing. I feel like so many people younger than me love these films, even though they’re such a product of the 90s. And as you said, there’s a universal appeal to them even though they’re a time capsule. So that’s got to be incredible for you to see.
JD: And it’s important as well. I was speaking about it earlier, and it’s like we’ve moved forward in some ways and we’ve also kind of regressed as a society. So some of these advances and things that we’ve moved forward, I don’t understand how we’re going backward. So that’s where it becomes more relevant again because these movies are like, “Fuck you, I’m not going backward. Fuck you, I’m not doing that anymore. I will not fucking conform. I’m a punk rocker, I find and I make my own way. And if you don’t like it, tough shit.” That’s what these movies are about.
They’re uncompromising and our youth should be uncompromising. Do not let our older generation get away with the crimes that they’re committing. So to see [the younger generations] rise up like that in the numbers, in the power, and in love, I am so moved by it all. I never thought I would be a part of something like this. I couldn’t be more proud that I’m a part of it.
DC: Oh, that’s so cool. And I mean, I think I know the answer, but you came into these Teen Apocalypse movies as a brand new actor. How have they changed your life as an actor and as a person, especially at such a young age?
JD: Well, that’s so incredible. I met Gregg and made these movies. I was 18 when I started. And I’d never even read a screenplay before. I knew movies I liked, I knew movies I didn’t like. I was starting to get into independent film, I was already starting to get into John Waters. I’d already done extra work with John Waters on Crybaby. I started to get into Peter Greenway and The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, and weird indie movies where I was like, “Oh, I didn’t know you could, oh my God, I’m horrified. Oh my God, I’m attracted, oh my God, I’m under his spell.” I didn’t know you could do that in movies.
Then I met Gregg, and here he was making these movies, writing about these characters, and articulating what I was feeling that I couldn’t articulate. By reading his scripts and making his movies, I began to understand who I was, what I was about, my place, and everything. And to be able to accept and love myself for it.
In a lot of ways, he saved my life, not just as a person, but as an actor. I think he’s done this for a lot of us as audience members, for a lot of us who were lost and maybe felt isolated and didn’t know where to go, or who we were. He gave us an avenue, he gave us a direction, he gave us signposts, and, more importantly, he gave us the ability to not only recognize who we are, but to recognize, accept, and love that, embrace it. And that’s what it’s all about.
DC: Exactly. And especially, I mean, I’m queer, and seeing these kinds of queer characters and looking at queerness as something complex, and it goes back to the thing you saying about acceptance and just feeling like you can be a fucked up little queer and it’s okay. So many of us need to hear that. And so getting to have these films be what they are, I think is so important for us as a community, too. And I’m assuming you’ve probably heard that so many times with the characters you’ve played.
JD: And all the challenges and the hurdles that we’ve faced since we were young growing up, not liking what other people like, asking what’s wrong. There’s nothing wrong with us. There never was. It’s not us, it’s them. There was never anything wrong with us when we came from a place of love and acceptance and connection. If the other people are not doing that, then it’s not us that have the problem, it’s them.
So when it comes to things like films like Gregg Araki makes, or the writers and painters and artists that express themselves in such a way that not only can we identify with it, but we can stand proudly by that because it represents who we are.
I certainly felt like, “Oh, I was fucked up and I’m fucked up.” Now not only do we kind of embrace that, but it’s like maybe we’re not all that fucked up. Maybe it’s everybody else that’s fucked up, but we’re actually okay. And that’s the big 180-degree thing where you were never raised to think that way. But that’s actually the reality of it. We’re not the one that has a problem connecting. It’s other people. We are connected with ourselves. We know who we are, even if it doesn’t fit into their guidelines. And that’s what’s important because we want people to know who they are so we can accept each other and so we can connect.
DC: What has it been like watching Gregg develop as a director? You got to watch him really develop a style. So what was it like to watch him grow and then also grow together?
JD: There’s a magic there to be quite honest, because Gregg is one of my best friends in the world, and he’s an incredibly sweet, tender, generous, giving human being. When we first did those movies, Gregg was very extremely shy and he could express himself on scripts, he could express himself through film. But he didn’t speak that as much as it was reflected in his work. How I’ve seen him grow and how I’ve seen him change is now he can verbalize it, he can express it, he can connect in ways that aren’t just through his work anymore.
Not to toot our own horns, but I’d like to think the work with all the teenagers in Totally Fucked Up, with Jonathan and Rose in The Doom Generation, and with everybody in Nowhere helped Gregg feel connected as well because we all felt kind of like, “Here’s this guy who wrote this thing and he’s talking about what we all feel. How did you do that?”
I’m still blown away at his perception of being able to understand who we were. He cast people that understood his work, is what I would say. If you understand his work, if you understand the emotion behind it, you’re perfect for the movie. You don’t have to have gone to acting class to be this great actor. You just have to understand what it feels like and express that.
DC: So how did you get into acting? Is that something you’ve always wanted to do?
JD: That’s the crazy thing. I was very interested in acting from a young age. And actually, I saw some dinner theater when I was in junior high, The King And I. I fell in love with it and I went to my dad and said, “Dad, I know what I want to do. I want to do this.” And he was like, “OK.” And it never went anywhere. [Laughs]
Then I joined a drama club in eighth grade or something right after that. And I got the lead in a play. Then I went to high school and the drama class, they didn’t let freshmen act or anything like that. So I got really like, “Fuck the drama club” and “Fuck you, then I don’t want anything to do with actors.”
So I’m so frustrated, I’m like, “I don’t want to act.” Then I was 16, so now my junior year in high school, and this girl, Marissa, I still remember, comes over. She’s like, “I just got this job doing extra work, do you want to do some extra work? All you have to do is get your parents to get your work permit. You get out of school and you go on set and you can work as an extra.” My dad actually took work off to get me a work permit. So I started and I signed up and started doing extra work.
DC: That’s so cool.
JD: My third extra job was for John Waters for Crybaby. So in a weird way, I’ve actually worked with John before Gregg. [Laughs] Yeah, I tease him about that.
But I met Gregg in a cafe. I came out to Hollywood to record shop, and then I would try to talk to people. But I didn’t have parents in the business. I didn’t have headshot. I didn’t have money. I’m super poor and living on someone’s couch.
I don’t know anyone. I’m not connected. So no one had the time of day. So after a few months, I’m like, “I can see this acting thing is going nowhere. That’s fine.” There’s this cafe that I was hanging out at. I became friends with the workers there, they gave me free coffee. I always used to hang out there. And I used to see this kid hanging out there was always doing his homework.
Well, that kid doing his homework was actually Gregg Araki, and he was in that cafe writing the script for Totally Fucked Up. Then he saw one of the guys that worked at the cafe taking pictures and had the headshot proofs for me. So I was getting my first headshots. Gregg saw that and just walked up to me in the cafe and goes,”Excuse me, I don’t mean to bother you, but I’m a no budget filmmaker. I make these little indie movies for no money. It was kind of like a queer John Hughes movie.” He had no idea if I was going to punch him in the mouth or what I would be how I be. So it goes to show how brave Gregg was.
Then he sent me the script for Totally Fucked Up. And I never read a film screenplay before. But like I was saying earlier, all I know is what I read all of a sudden I’m identifying with this script. I didn’t know that you don’t identify with everythinh you read. I was very lucky that I happened to meet Gregg. He wrote something that spoke to me and I went into audition for him and I got the part. That was the beginning that changed the course of my life. And it changed everything, really.
Originally it was going to be The Living End and Totally Fucked Up, two movies about the HIV/AIDS crisis that we were all pretty angry about. A lot of people were dying in the late 80s and 90s, and there was a massive blackout of media and silence on it. We lost so many people. And Gregg, again was writing something that was tender, but also a big reflection on society, what we were going through.
But his impression of working with all the young kids, myself, Gilbert Luna, Roko Belic, Susan Behshid, Jenee Gill, and how open and just liberated we were from all these rules. We didn’t care what people thought. We identified with the script and the story. And that changed Gregg to the degree where he decided he was going to make a teen trilogy. He wanted to write about young kids because young kids were the future. They’re the ones who could fix things. They’re the only ones who could embrace the things that the adults weren’t embracing anymore. The only ones still open enough to accept and change things the way we needed to be changed that it wasn’t being done in our generation.
DC: It’s just so inspiring to hear that, you know what I mean? It’s so hard to make things and be creative and to hear that you were hanging out at a coffee shop and he was hanging out. Sometimes things just happen. And then lead to a beautiful, incredible trilogy that spoke to generations. [Laughs]
JD: And it’s so wild I ended up in that cafe. I was just record shopping, buying, all the music I love. And Gregg was doing the same thing. In fact, we still both do the same thing
DC: I was going to ask, do you still do that?
JD: Oh yeah. I just bought two albums before I came in. I buy four or five albums of physical media a week.
DC: I’m the same way with Blu-rays and DVDs. If there’s a place to buy them, I will be bringing home at least four new things to put on my shelf.
JD: I love my physical media and it’s not going anywhere.
DC: Since we’re talking about physical media, the trilogy is getting this beautiful box set from Criterion.
JD: They’re so beautiful. That’s always how Gregg envisioned and planned them to look and they look like that now.
DC: That’s just so exciting. And before we wrap up, is there one of the three films that speaks to you the most or was most important to you?
JD: Totally fucked up. For various reasons, but I think totally fucked up was about not just Andy searching for himself, which unfortunately doesn’t end very well for him. But I went through a similar journey, but it saved me by going through that. He saved my life. And so there’s a special poignancy that will always remain. I’ll always feel like I’m a piece of Andy in me and there’s a piece of me in Andy. And that will always be, he’s the character that liberated me as an actor and as James Duval, the individual person.
Gregg Araki’s Teen Apocalypse Trilogy is available now to purchase from the Criterion Collection.
Categorized:Interviews
