POMO PORNO: an interview with Richard Kern

by Ryan Akler-Bishop & Vicky Huang

RAB: It seems like a consistent thread in your artistic career is upsetting people. What was the most trouble you got in as a kid or teenager?

RK: They wouldn’t get mad, they’d just get annoyed. It was also the time when drugs were getting popular. Acid, all that stuff. I sold drugs in high school, pot mainly. There were a couple of close calls from that. But I was extremely lucky. If you wanted to buy pot from me, I’d just hold out my hand for money. I wouldn’t say anything except, “Look over there, beside that car.” That served me well. I only got arrested once on the street.

RAB: I know you funded a lot of your movies by selling drugs. What initially got you into dealing?

RK: In high school, my parents didn’t have money, so I did it to fund my first year of college. I stopped selling when I was pursuing my degree. Then, when I moved to New York, I went out with a girl who knew an Italian guy. He had some connections who wanted someone to move pot. I was working a job for $7/h as an artists’ assistant. When you work a regular job, it doesn’t leave time or energy to do anything else. I remembered how lucrative selling pot was from high school, so I started doing it again. I didn’t make tons of money, but I made enough to live like you do in your early 20s.

VH: I know you’re sober now. Can you talk about that decision? Was there a rock-bottom moment that inspired you to change?

RK: [Laughs.] I’m not 100% sober now. I take CBD and stuff like that. [Drugs] just got out of control. I was doing heroin thinking it wouldn’t get me, just like everybody does. Next thing you know, you’re broke and trying to figure out how to get your next drugs. I moved to San Francisco and really went off the deep end. Around ’88 or ’89, I came back from San Francisco with no money or anywhere to live. A guy who knew me from my films was walking down the street. I had $10 in my pocket. He said, “I’m going to an NA meeting. You have a problem with drugs, don’t you?” I went and a lot of my friends were at the same meeting. People I used to get high with!

VH: You were recruited for NA on the street… That’s so interesting.

RK: That’s the way miracles happen!

RAB: What was collaboration with Nick Zedd like? Did you often see eye-to-eye?

RK: [Laughs.] When I said I had money to make films, Nick latched on to me immediately. The whole time I knew him, he had maybe one job: driving a taxi. He always got people to support him somehow. He was a hero of mine because I saw They Eat Scum and was impressed he’d made a pretty good movie with no money. When I met him, I was so in awe of him… I met him and Beth B at the same time. They were going out briefly. I told him I wanted to make movies. Nick probably saw dollar signs. There’s a lot of people who have issues with Nick, not just me.

RAB: In Nick Zedd’s memoir, he refers to you exclusively as Nazi Dick. Did you two have a falling out? And did you ever reconcile?

RK: [Laughs.] We kind of had a falling out, but I wasn’t aware of it. The absolute truth: he was so pissed off because I shifted my career, quit drugs, and figured out how to monetize my art. I went to the bottom and came back. My career’s shifted over and over. That really bothered him. He burned so many bridges. You ask anybody that’s met him, “Did he ever borrow money from you?” They’ll say, “Yah, why do you ask?” Especially women. 

Last time I saw him was 2014 or something. I bought his painting in Berlin. After he sent it to me, he said, “You should give me more money for it.” That’s the kind of guy he was. I really respect him because there’d be no Cinema of Transgression without him. He invented the whole thing, promoted all of it. I was just along for the ride. At the time, working with him or Lydia Lunch or Beth B, I surrounded myself with people who didn’t think my ideas were crazy. These days in New York, you say, “Hey, I wanna make a movie where someone gets killed!” People think that’s cool. Back then, it was a more isolated situation outside the regular narrative. Meeting anyone like that, especially Nick and Lydia, was big for me. I couldn’t dream up anything they thought was weird! Actually, some things Lydia would suggest made me say, [nervous voice] “Hmm, I dunno.”

VH: Like what?

RK: Well, in Right Side of My Brain, there’s a scene where Henry Rollins smashed Lydia’s head against the bed. She’s lying there knocked-out. Lydia wanted our host’s kid to come in and grope her. I wasn’t really thinking about it. The kid only lifted her shirt up, then he ran out of the room. He was not into it! And thank God that was it, because that would’ve been child pornography!

VH: It seemed like Lydia always had extreme and controversial ideas. Is it true that during the production of Fingered, Lydia didn’t warn Lung Leg about her rape scene so as to arouse an authentic reaction from Lung?

RK: Yah… It wasn’t actual rape, I’ll say that. But it was definitely an abusive situation. We’d made Right Side of My Brain, and Lydia said it was too soft. She wanted to make something harder. Lydia knew the cast of characters in LA. She had been with Marty Nation, the guy in it, when she was 16. He picked her up on the schoolground.

He was older. They’d pick up hitchhikers and try to molest them. Or they’d get picked up as a couple, then Marty would take his knife out and start stabbing or cutting the guy’s seats. I said Lung would be perfect for the movie. I might’ve paid her like $100 and bought her a plane ticket. We told her nothing about the movie. Lydia thought it’d be more effective if Lung was taken completely by surprise. And you can tell she is. But Lung’s a whole trip. When she arrived in LA, we were staying in Lydia’s friend’s apartment. Lung came with a big jar of crickets on the plane. She let them go in the guy’s house. After, we put her in a loft downtown, and she just did acid for three or four days by herself. 

That was a one take scene. After, Lydia said, “I think we should do it again.” I said, “Believe me, I was holding the camera. We don’t need to do it again.” When Lydia saw the movie, her first response was, “This isn’t hard enough!”

VH: I also heard a Berlin screening of Fingered was crashed by feminist protestors, and they splashed blue paint all over the projector. At the same time you were receiving feminist backlash, conservative reactionaries were also pushing against your films. What was it like being lambasted from both sides?

RK: I’m a pretty chicken person, so I was terrified most of the time! When that started happening, I sometimes had a bit of bravado. After those [protests] in Germany, I was scared for my life, although I probably didn’t need to be. Today, Germany did a big retrospective of all my films. Now Fingered’s seen as a feminist icon movie. All the people complaining about it hadn’t seen it, it was all based on hearsay.

RAB: What was the most vitriol one of your films ever received?

RK: Whenever I did a Q&A, someone would attack me. Even in 2010, I was showing films in Denmark. Someone said, “these films are terrible, why are we even seeing this?” I said, “I got paid $1500 to come! That’s why you’re watching it!” 

I got invited to the Berlin Film Festival. Fingered was playing with John Waters’ Hairspray. Immediately, there was boo-ing like crazy. At the time, I was still an aggressive drug addict. I just gave everyone the finger and said, “This was made for people like you! Fuck you all!” Something like that. Then I was kicked out of the festival. They canceled all the screenings. But it did get me written-up in Variety! [Laughs.] My little 20-minute movie that cost $5000 was written about because of that incident! I was just into provocation at that time.

RAB: It’s funny they screened it with Hairspray, the most accessible John Waters movie ever…

RK: Waters was a fan, so it was ok!

RAB: I wanted to ask you about David Wojnarowicz. As I understand, after he contracted HIV, he distanced himself from the Cinema of Transgression and your whole scene. He critiqued the films’ mockish attitude towards death. Did that critique register with you and change your approach towards art at all?

RK: You’ve really done your research! It didn’t register with me at the time. It was something I realized later. When he realized he could die, he changed his whole tune about making fun of death. He once had an apartment directly above me. He told me, “I’m moving out because I can sit in my apartment and feel the negative vibes coming up from your place.” [Laughs.] It was probably true! We kind of became friends again right before he died.

He didn’t like that we were all becoming drug addicts. He made a couple great Archie comic spoofs about us being junkies. The whole comic was just Archie sweaty with his eyes pinned going, “Man, that stuff was good. Where’d you get it?” Betty says, “Down on Avenue C.” Then, the panel was repeated over and over. That was David’s whole statement on drug addicts. His other comic was about the Manson Family taking over Riverdale High. 

RAB: In the 90s, you shifted away from narrative film towards photography. Was that transition just about trying to monetize your art or did your aesthetic values change too?

RK: I no longer trusted any point I had to make. I didn’t see any reason to make a statement. I still kind of made a few. But it didn’t seem as important as when I was making Manhattan Love Suicides or You Killed Me First. It was also because of financial reasons. It was cheaper to shoot b/w film than Super8. I did make some films: X is Y, Tumble, and Sewing Circle. I was going to re-do You Killed Me First with GG Allin as the dad, Kembra Pfahler as the mom, these two kids that looked just alike as the daughter and the son. Everyone was gonna have sex with a different member of the family. Kembra, who was working as a dominatrix, said she’d fist GG. GG was like, “Yah, no problem.” The day we were finalizing the details, I went to see him and he’d fucking OD’d. [Laughs.] I’m laughing, but it was ironic. I was clean at that time, so it was a big shock.

Sewing Circle also came around that time. There was this couple with all these piercings and tattoos—super goth. They told me they’d sew his balls to his leg or her pussy up for kicks. I asked to film it. The day before, they backed out. Kembra said she’d do it instead, because she brought a totally different element and it’s a million times better than it would’ve been with those two serious goths.

VH: I read in an old interview that you’re inspired by amateur porn aesthetics. What drew you to it? Do you still watch porn? And if so, what kind?

RK: I’m embarrassed to say… I don’t know if I’m inspired by that anymore because amateur porn meant something completely different when I made that statement. The porn I watch now is all Japanese and maybe some Chinese. Japanese porn makes an effort to satisfy any weird thoughts you have.

VH: It’s very surreal!

RK: And it looks real… I don’t know if that’s because they’re Asian so there’s that wall between me and them. But most American porn is so fucking boring. I’d love to explore the Japanese porn world, but they’ll never let me do it.

VH: Japanese and American pornography have such vastly different ideas of what is erotic. Western porn is very explicit with their sexiness, whereas in Japanese pornography, corruption seems to be the key element: it’s all about hooking innocent girls on depravity. You kind of have a similar shift in your own artistic trajectory where you go from shooting a lot of edgy girls to Girl Next Door-types.

RK: You’re totally right about that shift. I want to see innocence now. Not necessarily innocence corrupted, but I want something in the world uncorrupt: somebody not posing, somebody caught off guard a bit, something awkward. That’s my big ambition. I don’t even usually shoot girls naked anymore. I’m going for a more realistic style. A lot of that came from seeing Juergen Teller and all those people shooting more snapshot-y. When I was young, theatrical stuff like people dressing up in bondage was new to me. Maybe I’ve seen so much, been involved in so many relationships, so much crap, that I just wanted something innocent. I’m doing my art rationalization now. [Laughs.]

VH: What’s a project that nobody’s agreed to?

RK: I always wanted to shoot Kate Moss. I was supposed to do an Underwear Story with her but it got canceled. I had this idea to keep the underwear and make a piece with the underwear itself and a photo of her wearing it. I made six or seven pieces like that where I’d shoot a girl and frame the photos with the underwear and sell them. I’ve shot a lot of famous women and I have their underwear sitting around. Maybe someday I’ll finish the project. There’s so many unfinished things…

RAB: It’s interesting that your films are now featured in the MoMA collection and you have an audience of respectable Patron of the Arts-types. Do you remember when the shift began? And do you think it defangs the provocations of your art?

RK: I think that defanging happens to everything. When did I notice it? When MoMA called! [Laughs.] If you stick around long enough, you will get accepted eventually. Otto Muehl: is he the guy who cut his dick off? There were people who did such outrageous stuff at the time and now it’s just in the canon.

RAB: It was Rudolph Schwarzkogler who allegedly amputated his penis. But it was misreported; the castration was simulated and it was a shot of his model Heinz Cibulka.

RK: Aw shit!

RAB: Sorry to burst your bubble.

RK: Just like Vincent Gallo’s penis [in The Brown Bunny], supposedly.

RAB: I thought it wasn’t prosthetics and that’s his real penis.

RK: I’ve known several girls who’ve been partners with him. Some say yes, some say no. You’ll never know.

VH: You’ve shot a lot of famous people: Addison Rae, Charli XCX, the Red Scare girls. These photos have gone quite viral online. What's it like having a cult following of Gen-Z girls? How do you feel about your intergenerational status?

RK: Intergenerational? [Laughs.] That’s a good word for it. Dasha Nekrasova wrote something for a book that goes with some new polaroids. She says that when she was fourteen living in Las Vegas, she really wanted to be Lung Leg. She’d seen every episode of Shot by Kern multiple times. Addison Rae didn’t know my stuff, but Charli XCX did. She picked a bunch of photo references she wanted to recreate. 

My Vice Online show, Shot by Kern, introduced me to a whole new audience since it was free on the internet. Instagram did the same thing for me in the 2010s. I got kicked off six years ago. I returned, but I haven’t been as active as I was before. I’m way tamer now.

VH: Do you still watch movies?

RK: Yes.

VH: What’ve you seen lately?

RK: Last night, I watched a movie called Banning. Robert Wagner’s a golf pro at a 1960s country club. The movie’s pretty bad, but I remember those country clubs when I was a kid: places rich people could go but we couldn’t. I watched this movie called Messidor by Alain Tanner. He’s a Swiss filmmaker who made a few movies. It’s two girls hitchhiking in Switzerland. Let me check my lists. I have this site called Karagarga. It’s a private site with all these super rare movies. Do you know it?

RAB: Yah! That’s how we’ve accessed a bunch of your movies!

RK: No shit! Oh, so you know the kind of stuff I watch! I got Banning from there this week. What’s your ratio?

RAB: Mine’s 2-point-something. The freeleech will save me.

VH: Mine’s 0.9. 

RK: You’re going to get kicked off!

RAB: They’re much laxer about kicking people off now.

RK: I got kicked off a long time ago. I’ll watch any French movie. I’ll watch any movie with nudity in it. I watched one about the Borgias [called Young Lucrezia] with Simonetta Stefanelli: the woman from The Godfather who Al Pacino marries in Italy. She’s naked the entire time! She has sex with her dad! She has sex with her brothers! It’s from the 1970s. I can’t believe they made movies like that.

I was watching an Eric Rohmer movie called The Tree, the Mayor and the Mediatheque, one of his political movies from the 80s. There was one attractive woman in the whole movie. Sometimes it’s hard at my age to watch a movie if no one’s attractive in it. As it goes on, I keep thinking, “Wow, she’s really attractive!” She’s not naked or anything, but she’s really cool. So I look her up and she’s only made three movies and one of them was Messidor by Alain Tanner! And she’s only eighteen in it! That’s how I arrived at Messidor.

I tried to watch Kill Bill for the fifth time, and I still can’t make it past the first fifty minutes. I like Jackie Brown a lot. I also watched Pulp Fiction again and it really didn’t age well. It feels so joke-y now. I took a friend your age to see Saturday Night Fever at MoMA the other night.

RAB: In your seventy years, how many breasts would you estimate you’ve seen?

RK: [Laughs.] If we’re counting films, a lot!

RAB: Not including ones on-screen.

RK: Oh man, I have no idea. You see them walking down the street. I saw a woman on 14th Street the other day. She didn’t realize her breast was hanging out of her bikini top. That was a free one!

VH: What’s your favourite style of panty?

RK: I’d say a plain white bikini. Or completely sheer 60s-style, the kind of style you’d see in a racy movie like Banning. Women wore gowns with big tails to bed. There’d be a woman running through the woods in a sheer nightgown that you could kinda see through. I realize now she’d probably be wearing a bodysuit beneath it.

VH: How important was zine-making to the Cinema of Transgression? Did zine culture help shape your artistic outlook? What did zines allow you to explore that other outlets didn’t?

RK: I started seeing zines when I was in school in North Carolina. People who put out fanzines were getting free records and that seemed like a great idea. I wanted to be art-y and make an art zine. A big influence on that was a magazine called Art-Rite. I still sell books and shit like that. I’m still boxing things up and putting them in the mailbox— same thing I was doing in the 1970s.You guys can look back when you’re seventy and see if you’re still on the same thread!

RAB: Who knows if we’ll still be alive then.

RK: True, true. But you will get to the point, if you’re alive, where your friends who you talked about this shit with are dead. And you’re just like… fuck. It’s a weird feeling. But you guys will still be alive. I didn’t think I’d be alive and here I am!

VH: I hope I die before you, Ryan.

RAB: Aw, I hope you do too!

RK: [laughs] That’s the way you should end it!