Notes on "Bully" (2001)
Umbrella Entertainment (AUS), 2024
“Bully” is by some significant degree Larry Clark’s best film. For whatever reason I didn’t like KIDS, too much skateboarding, too much New York, some fun fetishism but ultimately a hollow HBO-style blandly moral think piece. Or maybe that was my reaction to convivial post-movie chat over beers with nice people in Chicago, 1995. I guess we were in town recording “Quality Time.”
As an aside, to help pay for Mr Albini’s admittedly generous studio rates, we played a few shows (Madison, Cleveland, maybe more) and ended the week of recording with a show at the Empty Bottle. Mr Albini came along, eschewed the guest list and insisted on paying at the door. Amazing how many people who claim to support your band, or indie music venues, are the first to hit you up for the guest list. It can get depressing. They’ll sit backstage and quaff the beers whilst you play. Fuck it, I don’t miss it. Mr Albini, at the very, very least, had genuine class and decency.
Another problem with KIDS was the central conceit, good girl gets AIDS, wanton slut does not. I get the fairy tale narrative, but don’t tell me this is some shocking new look at teenage anomie. I blame Korine. Gummo is definitely in my top five overrated pieces of shit (tied at the top with everybody’s favourite war flick ‘Come and See’ - I could name 50 better war films - Cross of Iron, The Ascent, Guns of Navarone, The Thin Red Line, for starters). I’ll cop to perving on Julien Donkey Boy for the skating sequences and, as the commentary track on this stunning new Blu-ray edition from Umbrella suggests, a double bill of ‘Bully’ with ‘Spring Breakers’ would work well.
There’s a palpable feeling of shock watching ‘Bully’ in 2024. Difficult enough to make at the time, now it would be completely unthinkable. There actually was a era when films were made for adults. When independent against the grain filmmaking existed. Imagine the farrago Netflix would make of Jim Schutze’s true crime source for Clark’s film Bully: Does Anyone Deserve To Die? (William Morrow, 1997) in today’s benighted and blasted cultural landscape.
So what’s so good about Bully? Stunning cinematography. Florida looks absolutely exquisite. Pizza Hut a-go-go. Every handheld shot is perfect. The cast look shit. Dumpy clothes, always sweating, probably high. Almost certainly fucking each other. Brad Renfro (dead at 25), Rachel Miner (searingly accomplished performance), Bijou fucking Philips being insanely hot. Fine ensemble acting throughout. The soundtrack is not especially to my liking but makes sense for the movie … passable Thurston Moore guitar dronescapes for the murder and unending hiphop, every white high school kid’s drug of musical choice. Parents are absent or oblivious. Kids horny and fucked up.
Larry’s in fine form, you’ll strain to see cock and wonder if you really did just witness Bijou’s left pussy flap as the camera rammed in tight on her tiny denim shorts. I generally take exception to nudity or sex in movies, but when its pursued at such a high level of fanaticism I’ll gladly make an exception. Nihilism, despair, violence, and relentless, omnipresent bullying from some pit of Floridian hell. This really is a film about violence, way more so than sex, and that’s really what adds to the viscerality on display.
Umbrella’s generously packed Blu-ray looks sumptuous, beguiling, and repellent on screen, ripe with the rot of decay. You can safely throw away your muddy video or DVD transfers. Critic Jeremy Richey offers an unapologetic defence of Clark’s art in his commentary track — and quotes at some length from the absolute shellacking Bully got from reviewers at the time of release (Roger Ebert, a notable and rare exception to the herd). There’s also an intriguing spoken word piece from writer Jim Schutze, a particularly informative video essay by L. Scott Jose (“Death Is More Perfect Than Life”) that provides additional context to the original crime and its aftermath (including the played down, but not entirely extinguished, homoeroticism), and finally, the reason I really want to be here, to maybe snatch a few more vital seconds, to see these kids again, captured on jerky video footage, because death is indeed more perfect than life … the mouthwatering (to quote the packaging) “full-length behind-the-scenes documentary.” Needless to say, I wasn’t disappointed.*
The very best Blu-ray editions will put you under the spotlight. Hand your needs back to you and you’ll gladly pay the $35 for this all-region release (I got mine from Grindhouse Video, fuck Amazon). If you’re a real collector scumbag, I’m not, you can hunt down the $60 edition only available direct from Umbrella’s website and get some extra postcards, a poster, and a hardback of Schutze’s book. Actually, maybe I should have sprung for that option. The life hands you these minor regrets.
* The world being what it is, YouTube channel “cinephiles should be castrated” has already uploaded the Making Of to their channel. Don’t be a shit. Don’t ask for the guest list. Get in line and pay. You’ll enjoy it more.
Further reading:
Jim Schutze. Bully: Does Anyone Deserve To Die? Morrow, 1997.
Larry Clark. The Perfect Childhood. Scalo, 1995.
Jim Goldberg. Raised By Wolves, Scalo, 1995.
Robert A. Waters. Sun Struck: 16 Murders In The Sunshine State. New Horizon, 2009.*
*absolute garbage, but I love it.
Have you ever seen Clark’s segment from the film destricted? It’s called Impaled, it’s Clark just sitting in a small office space interviewing young people (mostly boys late teens early twenties) about their pornography habits, then he chooses one of the boys and shoots an unsimulated sex scene with him and a woman he brings in. It’s non narrative, kind of is a distillation of Clark’s more fetishy side. I wrote a thing last year about Clark and the type of boys he often featured, Uncensored New York paid me for it but never ran it. Kids does have the cheesy moralism but the look of it is pure Clark, sweaty kids, drugs and stupid violence. Another Day in Paradise is maybe his most underrated movie.
🌟 I have not purchased this Umbrella label bluray yet.. but I still don't believe this is the Full UNCUT uncensored 1 hr and 55 min version of the movie BULLY that I saw years ago at a film festival. The version I saw had originally come out with unrated 1 hr. 55 min version on DVD in 2001. But was pulled from stores and only the R rated version remained available since then. The version I saw had a scene all the other versions removed. It is when Brad Renfro is having sex with his girlfriend and his bully buddy walks in on them. He proceeds to strip and then he climbs on top of them and begins to anally rape Brad while Brad is still having sex with his girl. That scene seems to have been cut out from all the presently available released versions. I wonder if this Umbrella Label version has this uncut version or it's still the R rated 1hr and 52min version?