The movie that nearly destroyed Gregg Araki: “Oh, God, this is gonna kill me”
In Gregg Araki’s 1997 movie Nowhere, three Valley girls gossip at a bus stop, too busy discussing who has shagged whom to realise that an alien is approaching with a raygun, resulting in them being burned to a crisp, leaving nothing but their retainers on the floor.
This pretty much sums up the bizarre world that Araki has long been capable of creating. Blending real anxieties with heavy themes – from teen angst and sexuality through to violence and murder – Nowhere is a madcap film stuffed with stylised sets and larger-than-life characters who, strangely enough, still feel real. Maybe it’s down to Araki’s knack for campy dialogue, or that scrappy DIY vibe the film leans into, but Nowhere manages to hit a sweet spot between being utterly daft and genuinely thought-provoking.
It formed part of his Teenage Apocalypse trilogy, which would arrive before he’d enter the most devastating point in his career with Mysterious Skin. While the films in his trilogy are similarly dark, they’re loaded with much more humour and youthful charm that makes them a joy to revisit. They’re even just worth it for their impeccable shoegaze soundtracks alone.
Interestingly, Araki recalls that Nowhere, despite its often violent moments (including a character getting raped and brutalised and another getting beaten to death), was a fun shoot that was a far cry from the events of the movie. Talking to Wussy Mag, he explained, “It was summertime. It was warm and beautiful. Everybody was fucking each other. It would be just like a giant party on set every day, even though I was working the whole time. It felt very utopian. Everybody was free. Everybody had crushes on everybody. It was all very innocent and fun.”
Yet, his experience of shooting The Doom Generation, the second instalment in the trilogy, couldn’t have been more different. In fact, he wondered how he was going to get out of production unscathed, with countless issues rearing their ugly heads and pushing Araki to breaking point.
The film is much darker and more seductive in tone than Nowhere and Totally Fucked Up, with Rose McGowan and James Duval playing a young couple whose journey across America is soon marred by violence. It seems as though the themes of the film rubbed off on the production, which might not have been as cursed as Fitzcarraldo or Apocalypse Now, but were still enough to challenge the filmmaker, who was in the infancy of his directing career.
“The Doom Generation and Nowhere were made pretty much back to back. It’s interesting to me in retrospect because the films’ energies are so different. The Doom Generation was filmed in the dead of winter, and the Northridge earthquake happened on the second day of shooting,” he highlighted.
He explained why everything seemed to be falling apart, noting, “It was truly a cursed production: cold and dirty, full of long nights. Crew members would mysteriously vanish. My boyfriend was the script supervisor, and we were constantly fighting.”
Yet, in spite of everything, Araki made a movie he was super proud of, and he doesn’t mind that it took such a tumultuous shoot to bring his ideas to life, musing with adoration, “I loved everything about it. I look back on it with such affection, but I remember thinking at many points, ‘Oh, God, this is gonna kill me’.”
