Home Video Hovel: Gregg Araki’s Teen Apocalypse Trilogy, by Scott Nye

In her introductory remarks to a recent screening of Todd Haynes’ 1991 film Poison, producer Christine Vachon joked about how often people will declare the death of independent cinema, noting the too-common refrain that the glory days just wrapped up a few years ago, and isn’t it too bad that we don’t have them back. Independent film, she noted, will always find a way to exist, and increasingly the market depends on it. With the traditional studios producing fewer films every year, someone has to fill the screens, and smaller distributors have taken the charge with smaller films.

There’s little point arguing facts such as these. My frequent contention with contemporary independent cinema, however, is not a question of its existence, or even its singularity – personal films can and do fill this very void.

My disagreement with the output is a question of responsibility.

I no longer, or too rarely, feel untethered from a sense of duty when I watch these films. I feel, almost uniformly, that their aesthetic and narrative choices are fairly prescribed, or at the very least have a sense of discussed intention behind them. I so rarely feel the inspiration of the day, let alone the moment, driving a shot, nor do I encounter a story beat lacking a distinct purpose. Even rarer that I encounter what might be more generally described as impoliteness – characters who are rude and weird not because of some latent trauma the film will spend cycles unpacking, or because The Point is to ultimately dislike them, but just because some people are rude and weird yet still kind of likable.

Generally, such complaints drift into the background until something, some uncontrollable energy, grabs hold of my head, or my conception of cinema, and demands to know what it is we’ve been settling for.

Some force…like Gregg Araki’s Teen Apocalypse Trilogy.

Watching the films from Criterion’s newly-released 4K/Blu-ray combo set of all three films – Totally F***ed Up, The Doom Generation, and Nowhere – was like visiting another planet, one where cinema wasn’t driven by good employees trying to get promotions, but by society’s outcasts willing to risk its utter destruction to reveal something new.

Totally F***ed Up was Araki’s fourth film, still following in the form of his earlier work – 16mm, no permits, nearly no crew, and a cast of amateurs. It’s a stark film about loneliness, isolation, and desperation for connection. The Doom Generation was his first “major” film, with a proper crew and stars from the independent scene like Rose McGowan, Parker Posey, Margaret Cho, and Nicky Katt. It’s a road film, a journey to, well….the title of the third film. Nowhere is a total explosion of ambition, originally crafted as a TV pilot and crammed with enough characters to fill several seasons, it chases them for 78 relentless minutes through the hills and valleys of Los Angeles and existence itself.

Even the credits suggest an escalation in ambition. Totally F***ed Up declares itself “another homo movie by gregg araki”, the determiner and lowercase font suggesting something already tired. The Doom Generation breaks expectations with “A HETEROSEXUAL MOVIE BY GREGG ARAKI”, the bold all-caps font and new orientation suggesting departure. Finally, Nowhere declares itself “the gregg araki movie” – a return to lowercase, but more confident in its implication that we’ve reached some kind of ultimate state.

This all provides a not-unreasonable template for viewing the three films. Totally F***ed Up is about feeling trapped, a notion that even then-subversive sexuality cannot break the binds of societal participation and expectation, that it only makes them more difficult to live with. The group of teens who form its collective protagonist have no real path, no real future, and no real idea of where to be other than occasionally in one another’s beds.

The Doom Generation is hetero in name only. To call its queerness subtext is an insult to subtext. Its all-out assault on sexual binaries works in tandem with its sympathetic frustration over the binds of monogamy. It follows a teenage boy and girl (James Duval and Rose McGowan) who are nominally in a relationship that’s bringing neither of them much satisfaction. The boy wants more commitment from her and she wants less from him. Enter X (Johnathan Schaech), a drifter with a violent streak that sets the threesome on the run from the law, edging closer and closer to consummating their collective lust. It’s the cruelest, bloodiest, and most sexually explicit of the three films, a declaration that The Kids Today are not trapped, but cursed and hunted.

Its freewheeling style and bold colors set the stage for Nowhere, one of the most ostentatiously out-of-control and exhilarating films I’ve ever seen. Recounting its plot, such as it is, would be a zigzag across dozens of characters and locations, ranging from the sweet to the terrifying, and plenty with a mixture of both. If one thought Doom Generation’s Neo Nazis and decapitations pushed certain boundaries of ordinary life, surely the aliens in Nowhere could be a bridge too far, one Araki embraces and by the film’s startling conclusion, makes key to its aesthetic text. Even more than the other two, I would have a hard time saying what Nowhere “means,” which is integral to its thrill. It’s a collage of 90s culture war signifiers and bleary midnight paranoia stuffed into a comic book stolen from a gas station.

Each film had a different cinematographer – Araki on the first, then Jim Fealy, then Arturo Smith. None went onto significant careers in that role, and yet the trilogy altogether forms such a cohesive aesthetic whole. Perhaps due to Araki’s history of shooting his own films, or perhaps due to a consistent approach in the color grade and remastering process for these films, each feels of a piece with one another, inextricable, and bound together.

The new transfers – sourced from Strand Releasing’s new restorations, supervised and approved by Araki – are mostly quite good. Totally F***ed Up was restored in 2K and is available on Blu-ray only; owing to source limitations it’s probably about as good as it will ever look, outside of a possible Dolby Vision application. The mix of video and 16mm film is well handled, no doubt which is which, and playing to the strengths and limitations of each. The image can feel a bit flat at times, but it’s also the least visually-dynamic of the three films, and doesn’t particularly suffer from this relative defect.

The Doom Generation and Nowhere were both restored in 4K and are presented on Blu-ray and 4K UHD. These are very impressive, very clean, very light grain structure that provides proper texture, and rich color representation. The Doom Generation transfer comes from a 35mm interpositive rather than the original negative, which for some home video enthusiasts may detract from the overall impression. It isn’t perhaps as sharp as they come, the black levels not as deep and pure, but as someone who likes their home video presentations to give a sense of how the film might have looked in theaters, this was definitely speaking to me. 

Nowhere is sourced from the original negative, and looks more “pure,” with excellent dimension, depth, and color representation. This a film with a lot of movement, a lot of activity, taking up nearly the full dimensions of a TV, and nothing feels dropped.

The supplements here are a real joy – commentaries for all three films featuring Araki and James Duval on each, alongside other cast and crew members where applicable. Totally F***ed Up was recorded in 2005, The Doom Generation in 2011, and Nowhere’s is brand new for 2024. They set the template for the rest of the special features, loose and casual and celebratory, with small revelations that dig at the impact the films had for an underground audience, and especially as the years go on, the enduring impact of the films and how they’re received across different generations. Given the low-budget nature of all three, there are some great anecdotes about the run-and-gun nature of the productions and the agony and ecstasy of squeezing out every dollar.

One of my favorite supplements all year is easily “James Duval’s Teen Apocalypse,” in which the actor and director go through boxes of material Duval kept over the years from the making of the films, everything from birthday cards to photos to original scripts. They talk about how they met at an ice cream shop on Melrose and Araki basically cast him out of nowhere, and the friendship that developed over the years. Each piece of material draws up a wealth of memories, and while a part of me would love to see the potential hours of raw footage from this, the 24-minute featurette is well edited to keep things moving and provide a glimpse at everything.

Another outstanding featurette is “Designing the End of the World,” a half-hour video piece tying together a series of Zoom conversations with Araki, Duval, producer Andrea Sperling, cinematographer Jim Fealy, costume designers Cathy Cooper and SaraJane Slotnick, production designer Patti Podesta, art director Michael Krantz, and hair and makeup artist Jason Rail, discussing…well, exactly what it sounds like. The look of the three films is so distinct, and achieved on such a shoestring budget, and it’s a great pleasure to hear so many contributors give quite specific detail on their experience and how they brought it to light.

Fellow filmmakers also help fill out the overall impression of Araki’s place within the queer and independent cinema movements at the time, starting with a conversation between him and Richard Linklater, both of whom financed their early work with almost nothing and went on to become sensations. Gus Van Sant, a fellow contributor to the New Queer Cinema movement in the late 80s and early 90s, moderates a Q&A with Araki filmed at the Academy Museum (Andrew Ahn contributes another). Apart from the insights these provide, which are plentiful, these also help reflect the communal spirit of independent filmmaking. Van Sant and Linklater are of the same generation and help draw out the strange time in which they came of age and how determined you had to be to get a movie made, while Ahn provides a great reflection on how Araki’s films have continues to resonate. The Linklater piece was conducted remotely but they do a good job in the edit of tying the two together, but the Academy Museum sessions provide a better sense of chemistry and give and take. Some of the information can get repetitive but there are small insights each after that help color them.

Finally, there’s a very cool presentation of a Doom Generation comic book adaptation, and an energetic and appreciative essay by Nathan Lee.

I truly loved going through this set. The films are such a breath of fresh air, and the supplements are so lovingly and thoughtfully tended to. You get so much in it about this era of filmmaking and the delirious enthusiasm that drove it. The new restorations are very good, and a truly heroic act to rescue them from spotty past releases.