Though production was a nightmare, Clark says he’s very proud of “Bully”
The director was supposed to have 40 days to shoot the film; and then he had 30 days; and then right before production was to start, the co-producer on the film told him he would have even less time.
“He’s a real idiot, man. He says we only have 23 days. I start thinking, ‘They don’t want me to make this movie,’ but I said, ‘Fuck you, I’m gonna make the movie,’ ” Clark said, adding that to speed up the process, they never watched dailies and “never saw a frame of what we were shooting, I never saw anything until we were in the editing room.”
The director said every day the crew would run from set to set and he “pushed [the young] kids like crazy, like crazy” in order to get the film made on schedule. “I got great performances out of [everyone],” he boasted. “I got great performances out of Bijou Phillips, who can’t act a lick and was terrible. I had to find ways around that to make her good and I made her so good. I said, ‘When this film comes out she’s going to get all these jobs’ and the directors are gonna have no idea that she can’t act a lick and she’s crazy as a bug. And after the film, she got some big roles in film and they cut her out of them ’cause nobody could have done what I did.”
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Clark says some further unpleasant things about his underage “Bully” star Bijou Phillips.
Clark had a hard time acquiring the funding for “Bully,” but with the up-and-coming Phillips in the leading female role, the financiers finally agreed. But he has little to no respect for the actress.
“Of all people, we got the go ahead with Bijou,” Clark said, recalling his incredulity. “She was like the Paris Hilton before Paris Hilton. She was a club kid who was 15 years old out there in all the clubs. Fifteen years old, fucking everybody, producers that I know [Bret East Ellis laughs], all men and shit were fucking her. Everybody was fucking her and I just found it disgusting, man. And the first time I met her, she came to me in this club and sat down next to me, put her arm around me, took my cigarette out of my mouth and started smoking it. And she started talking to me, hugging me and kinda feeling me up. She hadn’t acted, but that name — because she was in the paper every day for being a club kid and doing nothing — that name got us the money [to get] financed.”
Clark share another gross “Bully” anecdote that sexualizes a minor, this time about actress Kelli Garner.
“Kelli Garner had these great teeth, her teeth are all crooked. [She] was just beautiful,” Clark said sincerely, but then followed it up with: “She had the most beautiful breasts in the whole world and she’s only 16-17 years old or something. And I actually have her naked in a naked scene with Michael Pitt laying in bed naked in the film and that was a big coup to be able to do that scene.”
Clark is a big fan of how he shot his own film.
With little modesty, Clark praised his own visual filmmaking. “The reason why the movie works so well is because it’s visually exciting,” he exclaimed. “I tossed the script … I saw this big Hollywood movie after ‘Bully’ and I realized why my films are fucking great and these other films are so bore-fuck: because visually, you watch ‘Bully’ and you’re never going to see a movie that visually exciting … that film has every different kind of shot that could possibly be in any movie ever made, all in that one film. That’s why it works so well, that’s why the film’s so good … A lot of good filmmakers aren’t good at all. They make good movies, but visually they’re dead as a doornail.”
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On the “WTF Podcast” with Marc Maron, Clark is much tamer, but still makes reference to his drug problems and his experiences in jail.
Clark said jail had many convicts for petty crimes that didn’t belong there, some prisoners who actually did some horrible things, but he selected a small group of inmates who he thought were dangerous and absolutely irredeemable.
“There’s 3 or 4% of people in the penitentiary that need to be executed immediately,” he stated unequivocally. “They need to be taken out and shot in the head because they’re that kind of people and they’re just born that way. They don’t have that gene. I think scientists have proven that people like that who don’t have a conscience or feel any guilt are missing a certain gene, and one of my best friends was like that and he’s dead now.”
Between the two podcasts, WTF and the Bret Easton Ellis one, the conversations add up to nearly three hours, and there’s plenty more talk about “Kids,” “Another Day In Paradise,” and others. Much of the conversation won’t endear you to Clark; in fact, much of it will repel you. But there is a certain trainwreck fascination, too, that begs the same kind of moral questions about where provocation ends and exploitation begins that his films have always traded in. You can listen to both podcasts below, and if you can stomach them, let us know what you think.
