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The most provocative filmmaker in cinema says Gen Z should have more bad sex
Gregg Araki, the New Queer Cinema icon, has made a career out of sexy, caustic art like ‘The Doom Generation’ and ‘Nowhere’ and the haunting ‘Mysterious Skin’. Now he’s back with a raunchy S&M comedy starring Olivia Wilde. He speaks to Adam White about sexual fluidity, Gen Z prudes, and why you’ll never see him...
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Thank you for registering Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in Please refresh your browser to be logged in Jump to content Open full menu UK Edition US Edition Asia Edition Edición en Español Log in Log in News Premium Sport Voices Culture Lifestyle IndyBest Travel More Swipe for next article Culture Film Features Interview The most provocative filmmaker in cinema says Gen Z should have more bad sex Gregg Araki, the New Queer Cinema icon, has made a career out of sexy, caustic art like ‘The Doom Generation’ and ‘Nowhere’ and the haunting ‘Mysterious Skin’. Now he’s back with a raunchy S&M comedy starring Olivia Wilde. He speaks to Adam White about sexual fluidity, Gen Z prudes, and why you’ll never see him making a $20m movie Wednesday 26 August 2026 06:00 BST Bookmark Comments Go to comments Bookmark popover Removed from bookmarks Close popover open image in gallery ‘I have a very strong, pure voice, and I can’t make anything that I’d be embarrassed about’ ( Shutterstock ) Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Email * SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our Privacy notice A n arty atrocity for thugs and sub-literates” is how The Washington Post described The Doom Generation , the breakthrough film from the freaky, fanciful day-glo auteur Gregg Araki, in 1995. Mention this to him today – when his films, including his new black comedy I Want Your Sex , typically earn raves – and Araki laughs, slapping it on like a badge of honour. At the time, he wasn’t so sanguine. “Literally everybody walked out of the press screenings for that movie,” he smiles. “No one was left by the end. I wasn’t happy about it, but it’s also like… Oh well, they didn’t get it.” More than 30 years after being anointed one of the central voices of New Queer Cinema, a subset of caustic, sexy, volatile art made by the likes of Todd Haynes and Gus Van Sant , Araki has stubbornly yet winningly refused to grow up. His film sets are still decorated in polka dots and neon, and his stories still traffic in apocalyptic malaise, embittered teenage bisexuals and occasional space aliens. The Doom Generation , starring Rose McGowan as a sensationally outfitted nihilist on the road with a timid baby queer and a psychopath, remains a bit of an outlier in his work. So too does Mysterious Skin (2004), about two young men – one a hustler, the other permanently adrift – coming to terms with their childhood sexual abuse. It’s beautifully told, but you wouldn’t rush back to it in a hurry. His others lean soft: the polycule romcom Splendor (1999), the garishly silly stoner comedy Smiley Face (2007), the lusty, MTV-era teen-dream fantasia of Nowhere (1997). And now I Want Your Sex , which casts a career-best Olivia Wilde as a vampy contemporary artist who convinces her permanently awe-struck assistant Elliot (a revelatory Cooper Hoffman) to get on his knees, bark on command, and do her sexual bidding. Elliot loves it, then resents it, then is grateful for it. The HR rep in your life would spontaneously combust were they were to glimpse a second of it all. By Araki’s own admission, I Want Your Sex is the product of an existence well indulged. “Sex and sexuality have been central to my personal life, my creative life, my entire being,” the remarkably well-preserved 66-year-old explains, guns ablazing in a tiny red T-shirt, his hair cut into his trademark swishy black mop. “Had I not snuck out of my parents’ house and gone to that gay bar at 19, I’d be nothing today. That was the first step on my journey as a person.” I’m a person of colour, I was openly queer, I was very punk. In retrospect, I understand where that attention came from So he’s bothered by the fact that contemporary 19-year-olds don’t do this. Or so he’s heard. We’re speaking a few weeks after comments Araki made about the state of today’s youth – “Go out on a bad date, have that bad relationship, have that bad girlfriend … that’s how you learn about yourself” – were widely clipped, dissected and condemned by the prudes and the terminally online on X. There’s a soupçon of defensiveness to Araki when I mention it today. “I don’t want to lecture anybody,” he says, “but I want to open up a conversation.” Erika, Wilde’s character in I Want Your Sex , describes reading about the high percentage of Gen Z who haven’t had sex in a year (24 per cent of them according to a study last year, which is double what it was a decade ago), and Araki himself recounts straight friends of his with teenage children who “don’t date, who don’t get out there” and who are “fearful of discomfort or vulnerability”. “There are so many factors in that they grew up during Covid and have always had a phone in their hand from the time they were children,” he says. “I know they’re in a very unique position. But I’d like them not to be afraid to take that next step.” He knows that sex can be bad or regretful, he adds, but therein lies the point of it. “It’s not like I stepped into that gay bar and everything was rainbows and sunshine,” he says. “It was a lot of confusion and trauma and not-great-things and bad sex and bad encounters. But it’s like that old cliché about having to kiss 1000 frogs to find a prince. The alternative is to not engage in any of it, which I feel is a huge mistake.” It worked out for him at least: he’s been with his partner, a landscape designer, for 13 years. open image in gallery Olivia Wilde and Cooper Hoffman in Gregg Araki’s ‘I Want Your Sex’ ( Black Bear ) Stoking the fires of sexual discourse is nothing new for Gregg Araki. His professional debut, The Living End (1992), was released beneath the shadow of Aids, yet recast gay sex as punk, hedonistic and legitimately sexy. His Nineties trilogy of teen apocalypse movies that followed – Totally F***ed Up (1993), The Doom Generation and Nowhere – revolved around characters who refuse labels and sleep with pretty much anyone and anything, perplexing a media climate that insisted everyone was either straight, gay or lesbian. Even if today’s teens allegedly aren’t having sex, they’re at least identifying themselves as a little more fluid than the queers of yore. Araki has long noticed the shift in how young people are defining themselves. “I was a little ahead of the curve,” he smiles. “ Nowhere , especially, is a movie with a lot of bisexuality and homosexuality – everyone’s kind of everything in that movie. And it was confusing to some people back then. But I remember going to Coachella maybe a decade later, and seeing these beautiful kids of various types of sexuality listening to alternative music and it was like Nowhere come to life. And my work tends to resonate with young people and specifically a lot of trans people now, just because there’s this lack of definition in it.” Even as he’s settled into middle age, then post-middle age, Araki has remained interested in the stories of young people. “You’re at an age where you’re searching and confused, and that’s a really fertile creative place to be,” he says. “I’m in my sixties now, I’ve certainly figured out my life to an extent where it’s drama-free, but that doesn’t exactly make for stimulating material.” Watch Apple TV+ free for 7 day New subscribers only. £9.99/mo. after free trial. Plan auto-renews until cancelled. Try for free ADVERTISEMENT. If you sign up to this service we will earn commission. This revenue helps to fund journalism across The Independent. open image in gallery Jeremy Jordan in ‘Nowhere’ ( Janus Films ) He’s also resistant to autobiography, even if his own life feels made for the screen. He was born in the quiet suburbs of Los Angeles to solidly middle-class Japanese-American parents, and would flee to the hardcore clubs of late Seventies Hollywood to party, hook up, and revel in bohemia. “My idols were punk rock and New Wave musicians who marched to the beat of their own drummer and didn’t give a s*** about what people thought of their outfit or whatever,” he says. “It’s why I ended up writing about people like that in all my movies.” He made two tiny indies for less than $5,000 each, then found himself thrown into the indie-auteur spotlight with The Living End . “[This] could become a crucial breakthrough film for Araki,” went The Los Angeles Times in 1992, “if not necessarily for a wide audience but with hip younger moviegoers.” It reads like a prophecy. But as the press attention grew, and focused more on Araki himself, he grew nervous. “I’m not in movies. I didn’t want to be an actor. To this day I don’t like to be photographed. I was always so confused.” Old press clippings seem practically prehistoric by this point. “Strange bedfellows: Gay director falls for 90210 babe” went The New York Post in 1999, after Araki – assumed back then to be gay despite never once saying he was – began a two-year relationship with one of his female muses, the Beverly Hills 90210 alumnus Kathleen Robertson. “Honestly, I think I was being naive at that point, because I can understand the curiosity,” he says now. “Like I’m a person of colour, I was openly queer, I was very punk. I had a funny haircut. I was an attraction .” He giggles. “I was this weird art kid making crazy movies, at least compared to your normal, cisgender middle-aged white straight director who nobody gives a s*** about. In retrospect, I understand where that attention came from. But it’s never been something I was interested in.” open image in gallery Rose McGowan in ‘The Doom Generation’ ( Janus Films ) It also explains why he’s rarely moved into the filmmaking big leagues. Big, corporate money has certainly flirted with him over the years – he once made a TV pilot for MTV, and was asked to pitch ideas for one of the Fifty Shades sequels – but has rarely gone all-in. And, Araki says, vice versa. “I’ve never made that big $20m movie,” he says. “I was attached to a studio movie at New Line Cinema after Doom Generation , but it got weird – I have a very strong, pure voice, and I can’t make anything that I’d be embarrassed about. I can’t make something that doesn’t fit in my oeuvre. Like even the odd movies in my filmography – things like Smiley Face or Mysterious Skin – they still fit, they still feel like me.” I also can’t really imagine a mainstream Gregg Araki movie with massive audience appeal. They feel like things made for a contingent of sad gays, Tumblr girlies and fine art students (Charli xcx, who has a brief role in I Want Your Sex , is somewhat inevitably a superfan). He seems to know this too. “The highest compliment anybody can pay me is when someone comes up to me at a Q&A and says, ‘I found out who I am because of your movies’,” he says. “I’m not the type of filmmaker who’s, like, ‘I won nine f***ing Oscars last year’. That’s not what I’m about. But knowing that something I created – that feels very personal to me and that I’m passionate about – also touches somebody else in a very deep, profound way? That’s everything. That’s the only reason I make movies.” ‘I Want Your Sex’ is in cinemas from 28 August More about Olivia Wilde Independent Cinema filmmaker Join our commenting forum Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies Comments Most popular Popular videos Bulletin Read next Get in touch Contact us Our Products Subscribe Register Newsletters Donate Today’s Edition Install our app Archive Other publications International editions Independent en Español Independent Arabia Independent Turkish Independent Persian Independent Urdu The Standard Extras Puzzles All topics Betting offers Latest deals Competitions and offers Independent Advertising Independent Ignite Syndication Working at The Independent Legal Code of conduct and complaints Contributors Cookie policy Donations Terms & Conditions Privacy policy User policies Modern Slavery Statement Thank you for registering Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in Please refresh your browser to be logged in
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