Gregg Araki wants to make sex fun again

Devan Suber: It's been 10 years since your last film and you've been doing TV in the interim. What made you decide it was time to return?
Gregg Araki: Well, you know, I was on vacation in Tahiti, just laying on a beach, sipping a coconut, and thought, “Well, oh, maybe it's time.” [Laughs]. No, this movie has been 12 or 13 years in the making. Originally it had a female intern and a male boss, more like a comic 50 Shades of Grey. That fell apart, and through the years, I added things like the Sunset Boulevard-esque parts (the mansion, the body in the pool, etc). I switched the sex roles around #MeToo because I was uncomfortable with the image of a woman being dragged by her hair.

At the same time, I had written and directed 10 episodes of Now Apocalypse for Starz. That was like making three movies. It's not like I haven't been working, it's just that indie movies take a long time. 

DS: Did you consider making it gay while rewriting? Or was it more interesting to have the inverted heterosexual dynamic?
GA: It was always a heterosexual dynamic because it was based on a true story. Switching the roles made the movie so much more interesting from a feminist perspective, because of the topsy-turvy nature of the patriarchy, which wouldn't exist if it was two men.

DS: You've spoken a lot about Gen Z’s fear of sex. Do you think part of it ties back to coming of age during #MeToo? It’s similar to the spectre of AIDS and homophobia in Totally F***ed Up.
GA: Cooper's character talks very eloquently about the aspects of life today that are so different for Gen Z than they were for previous generations: technology, social media, fear of public humiliation, COVID, helicopter parents. There's so many things going on that make sex more tricky than it was in a simpler time when I was young. My generation was very sexually motivated out of the gate.

As funny, entertaining, wacky and crazy as the film is, I hope that it provokes conversation and gets people talking about how sex is an important part of our lives. 

DS: You were a trailblazer as a gay Asian man in a field where that was barely conceivable. Do you feel like it's starting to become more common now via filmmakers like Andrew Ahn, Annapurna Sriram, or Roshan Sethi?
GA: Well I invented being gay and Asian, I have a trademark on it.

DS: And personally, I thank you for that as gay Asian myself. [Both laugh]
GA: No, I mean honestly, as a filmmaker, I don't think about any of that stuff. I've always just been me and just doing my thing, and I've been so fortunate and lucky that I've been able to do it for as long as I've been doing it. I just don't think about other people or that kind of stuff when I'm working. It's really it's much more internal for me

DS: Speaking of trailblazers: Margaret Cho was in The Doom Generation.
GA: One of her very first roles! Like literally, she had just moved to LA and was about to start her sitcom All American Girl. I just saw Margaret the other day, she’s a trailblazing queer icon.

DS: Have you felt like you're revisiting some of the themes and elements of your past work? James Duval is back, the ending being reminiscent of Nowhere’s.
GA: Almost everybody in the cast are people from my movies past and present: Jimmy and Nathan (Bexton) from Nowhere, Michael Hitchcock from Smiley Face. The funnest one is Darcy Marda, who was in The Living End and my very, very, very first black-and-white movie out of film school. There's a lot of Easter eggs for the fans. 

DS: Charli XCX has a major role, one of her many this year. You wanted her songs in the film, but how did she come to act in it?
GA: It was kind of crazy. Charli's been a fan and wanted to meet. She was on the Sweat tour with Troye Sivan, and I thought, “I guess that's not going to work out.” But her people said, “No, no, no, she has two days off between San Diego and Los Angeles!” She wants to shoot a movie while she's on a break during a major tour?

Charli takes acting very seriously. Her American accent was perfect, and she's such a joy to work with, such a hard worker. I don't know how she does it. Her energy level is just crazy, it makes me tired just thinking about all the stuff that she does.

DS: Mysterious Skin is much more serious than your past work, but did it inspire some of the ideas around consent and abuse?
GA: My movies are always about sex and sexuality. Very much an awareness of power, control, consent. I love Erika Tracy but I don't necessarily condone her behavior. I trust that my audiences are sophisticated enough to understand what consent is, and that she is definitely crossing a boundary. But her outrageous behavior is what makes her so fun and interesting, and I think that's why I'm so drawn to her.

DS: Do you have anything on the horizon?
GA: I've got a movie I’ve been trying to make right now, but I don't really talk about movies unless they're literally happening or have already happened because everything in this business is so up in the air. You never know what's gonna happen next but that’s what makes it fun.