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Bully
directed by Larry Clark
with Nick Stahl, Brad Renfro, Rachel Miner
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It's difficult to imagine a film more unlikable than Larry Clark's Bully. Its cheap exploitation of serious themes would be welcomed as summer-movie trash-- after all, some form of exploitation is at the heart of all movies; that's why we get off on them. But Bully is mendacious and pretentious, while posing as a serious journey into the heart of what's wrong with American society.

At first glance, Bully looks promising. As written by David McKenna and Roger Pullis (from a book by Jim Schutze) it recounts a true 1993 murder of Bobby Kent, an out-of-control Southern Florida teenager who spent his life verbally and physically abusing his peers. Feeling nowhere to turn, a group of his erstwhile friends stabbed and bludgeoned him to death. They were caught and sentenced to various jail terms.

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Like Clark's Kids, Bully is a loosely written, faux cinema-verité chronicle of out-of-control teen life in which the casualness of script, acting, and camera-work together give an impression of hard-hitting realism. With one important exception-- the casting of sweet-looking Nick Stahl as Kent-- the film follows the basic outlines of the original case. Bobby Kent is a nasty bully who lashes out at everyone, especially Marty Puccio (Brad Renfro), his best friend since childhood. In fact, he seems to have a special place in his brutal heart for Marty, who he forces to dance in his underpants in a gay strip bar for tips and have gay phone sex for money. Bobby also makes videos of gay men having sex (we never see them but they appear to be jerk-off films) that he wants to sell to queens. When Bobby is not beating on Marty, he is busy coercing a female date into sex and just being generally a contemptuous fucker. Marty begins having an affair with Lisa (Rachel Miner) who adores him-- she is pleased to be preggers even though neither she or he have any idea what to do about having a kid-- and it's her idea to bump off the noxious Bobby.

The film becomes minimally funny at this point since Lisa and Marty think nothing about telling this to all their friends, less to solicit support than because they have little else to talk about. This, indeed, seems to have been one of the only ideas any of them have had in quite a while. As the circle of conspirators spreads-- they all think it's a great idea to kill Bobby, either because they hate him, or have nothing better to do-- we realize that they can't even figure out a good way to commit the murder and get away with it. Sure enough, deed done, they all get caught because they can't keep their mouths shut and leave flagrant evidence at the scene of the crime.

Clark's artistic inadequacies also ruin whatever salacious interest we may have in the film. We are treated to endless shots of all of the performers naked, fucking, and generally unclothed. But Clark is that traditional sex moralist who can't wait for us to get off on what he is exposing. His obvious erotic interest in these performers (as well as ours) is ruined by his constant insertion of himself as an unsolicited commentator. And his casting of Nick Stahl is all wrong for the part. To be sure, Stahl's a fine actor-- his performance in the 1996 The Eye of God is amazing. But the original Bobby Kent was a large, brooding hulk of a boy-- a stereotypical bully. Stahl simply doesn't convey the menace or the terror that Kent had to instill in his companions. Of course. Clark is not really interested in bullies, human psychology, or group dynamics. An unattractive, or really formidable and dangerous Bobby Kent making his date watch gay porn while he forcibly fucked her, or making cute Brad Renfro strip on-stage in a queer club to be ogled would simply not be sexy enough.

Clark is far more interested in us getting off on the aimless, hyper-sexual shenanigans of cute unclothed teens then in telling a convincing story. And that's OK. Pauline Kael has always claimed that the basic appeal of movies was "Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang" (words she found on an Italian movie poster). But Clark is so caught up in his moralizing that he can't even allow us-- or maybe even himself-- the simple joys of a sleazy jerk-off fantasy. Clark has often been compared to a pornographer, but that claim, said a wag in the New York Times, really is unfair to pornographers. Clark was also accused by critics after Kids that his use of teens in the film was exploitative, if not abusive. And here we have to admit that these performers are, for the most part, abused. Many of these actors have given solid, interesting, and powerful performances in the past. Clark, with his lazy, silly script and his arty, but ultimately aimless camera-work has given them nothing with which to work. Bully is empty and stupid, enticing us with cheap sexual thrills that it has not even the integrity to deliver.

Author Profile:  Michael Bronski
	Michael Bronski is the author of Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility and The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom. He writes frequently on sex, books, movies, and culture, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
	Email:	mabronski@aol.com