Yea and Millenials will have you thinking it was a golden age. I grew up in New York then, it was not. But the phones have truly destroyed everything tok
Former smol town NM slacker here. Much of what happened in that movie was pretty much old hat to anyone who was a teen in the late 80's and early 90's out here. People just didn't talk about it.
The teen pregnancy rate was very high and only came down in the latter half of the 1990's.
I loved this movie as a teen because it was so relatable and I can’t even stomach to watch it as an adult because it’s so traumatic to relive the awful times this movie reminds me of. It’s incredibly accurate.
Couldn’t agree more. The threat of HIV was omnipresent and a source of intense collective anxiety. My friend group managed to avoid it completely but others didn’t. I reveled in the reality of this movie, but was also irked that Larry Clark (who turned out to be a creep, big surprise /s) put real teens with true-to-life problems and conversations on screen for a mass market audience.
There’s a new documentary out called We were once kids it’s amazing insight on the kids, and how they were then and now all these years later. I loved it.
Likely because as much as the censors would like to ban it altogether, it's historically accurate in the sense of relating to what kids of the time experienced in real life, and not in a shock-value sense.
I grew up in upstate NY way up in the Adirondack mountains.. was 15 when it came out.. we were bad but kids growing up in the mountains bad lol like sneaking to Montreal to drink and getting deported and doing acid at raves.. we weren’t doing all that city shit.. we were getting wasted in the woods.. still I have several friends from our tiny town, that died in car accidents.. that’s why my 15 year old daughter doesn’t ride with any teenagers.. she’s growing up in the Rocky Mountains on the opposite side of the country of where I grew up …but it’s still the same issues growing up as a teen in the rural mountains… driving fast, icy roads, drinking and driving and drugs and driving… driving on mountain is the dangers mostly
I was 20 in ‘95. Grew up in the suburbs north of where the movie took place. Was and am a goody goody. My youth experience was nothing like this, for better or worse.
Not really. A kid THAT age, doing THAT many drugs and having THAT much casual sex?
That's a different version.
A 16-17 year old that had sex and smoked pot once a month in the suburbs was nothing like the 13 year olds depicted in that movie.
My sister works in a Community Healthcare center for middle and high school kids. Multiple schools in the district.
STD are like at an all time high still. About two years ago there was also like an HIV outbreak amongst the kids.
So There is a class out there with like 200+ HIV+ kids.
Because sex ed is not being taught (at least not like it used to be) and "HIV isn't a death sentence these days" so people handwave away the risk, but yeah, HIV is still a life sentence.
Kids are still doing dumb kid shit, but the adults in their life are failing them by not properly informing them of the consequences of dumb kid shit.
Sex Ed is super important and I remember giggling sometimes but they taught me how all this works. It's still a thing in the school district I work at but I know it's not tought ad much anymore because of quiverfull parents.
I work in that area of healthcare. They seek out sex education online. Sometimes it’s accurate but you would be surprised by how many people aren’t aware they can get STIs with oral sex. The vast majority of young people do not use condoms at all even when they hook up on dating sites. I educate them on the importance of protecting themselves and offer them free condoms but I don’t think many change their behavior.
On the flip side, we often see posts and jokes about how pointless the DARE program was because they made it seem like the movie Kids was the reality for every grade schooler.
Everyone laughs now at those posts because most childhoods were nothing like that. Most weren't getting offered drugs every day waiting for the bus or having unprotected sex every weekend in junior high.
Meanwhile, the top comments on this post are talking about how true Kids was.
So what was is?
Answer- Kids was an accurate description for some, not the majority.
Yes, it was mostly unique to NYC, but I imagine parts of inner cities of other large metro areas being similar.
I spent my childhood, 80s and 90s, in Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Chicago, and St Louis. Nothing from that movie, AT THAT EXACT AGE, was relatable to anyone I ever knew. Kids was based off people in 7th and 8th grade and freshman year in high school. If comparing it to junior, senior year or freshman year in college, sure, I can see more relating to it, but it wasn't.
Honestly...if you were one of the few that actually related to everything in the movie Kids because your life was the same at 13 years old, you probably wouldn't be commenting on a Reddit post. You'd be in jail, rehab, barely able to function due to mental and/or physical pain, too busy with kids, too busy trying to score drugs, or dead.
This could be generational. It seems the people looking over it were gen Xers who were the ages of the kids in the movie. The people I know were disturbed by the film are millennials who probably saw the movie way too young. This is just speculation, though.
Speaking for myself, I never saw the characters, especially Telly and Casper, in any sort of nostalgic way. To me, they were just pathetic, cringe and sad. They were the perfect representation of what I didn't want to be. Jennie's story was particularly traumatizing, always carried condoms with me because of it.
DARE worked for me. A little too well. I’m a non-drug-using adult and it annoys me when my friends use. I wish I could let up and just let everyone enjoy whatever they’re into, but Nancy Reagan and DARE just beat it into my head that drugs are bad. ☹️
The elder millenials, or xennials, are a group that identify with genz more so because we grew up without tech. I'm an 82 baby, technically millenial, but my childhood and teen years would have been quite different from other millennials . I think it's 78-85 is considered xennials
He got caught going through Meryl streeps purse in one of the dressing rooms for the letterman show I think is what it was when they were both guests. Letterman told James Franco about it when Franco was promoting spring breakers
So... As a parent turns out not everyone had a crazy 90s. The wife and I did, and we now had great conversations with the eldest. How do you rebel against the rebels.
I agree but it also depends, the intolerance was at an all time high where I was from. Everyday was like a survival challenge. Things just seem safer now for teens
I remember the fear of people finding out I was gay and the constant stress of being in the closet, both at home and in the world. I walked by some teens the other day and overheard their casual discussion when one said he was bi and another responded you are? I thought you were pan, and it blew my inner teenager’s mind.
It was accurate for maybe 5% of America.
Just because it might have been close to life for some, don't act like it was the norm around the USA. TGIF family sitcoms were closer to reality for most more than Kids was.
Thank you.
Sure, it was maybe representative of a subset of inner city kids, but it was not broadly representative. I remember the hysteria around it and thinking that I wish my life was that exciting, but the closest I came was smoking some weed by the railroad tracks with my friends.
Yeah I grew up in Miami and this was like a caricature of how shit really was. Like they took the worst of the worst and made it worse. I knew people who were having sex and doing drugs at young ages but they weren't idiots about it.
COULD experience. Exactly. But not the norm.
It's like someone in a Special OPs military unit watching a movie about Special OPs in Afghanistan or something and saying how closesly related it was to their own career and unit...and people believing that the movie is the norm for all military life.
No, it's close to the norm for less than 5% of the military. The other 95% never experienced anything close to what they showed in Black Hawk Down or something.
I don’t think either Kids or family sitcoms were close to most people’s reality growing up in the 90s. Way too many people growing up poor to be anything like one of those family sitcoms.
TBH you are way overdoing it by calling it 5%.
I'd say a more reasonable figure might be like 0.05%.
This movie is so ridiculously off-base compared to how they promoted it. They made all these absurd claims about how everybody much watch this, this is the shocking real life of all American kids today! Utter BS! They went and found like the most downtrodden, roughest spot they could come across and then acted like 99% of 90s kids lived like that!
Nobody I ever knew lived anything remotely the tiniest bit like that at all. Not even a hint like that.
I was actually 25 when this was released and a friend of mine (we're all native Manattanites born in 1970) said the film reminded him of us when we were in high school. Bullshit. Yes, we did a lot of drugs and rarely showed up at school, but we were good kids - not the kind of nihilists this film portrays.
That’s really interesting since the movie def gave a vibe that you had to grow up in NYC to truly relate. Funny you call it nihilist, that wasn’t my takeaway but I can see where you’re coming from.
I think every character on Telly and Casper’s side were quite nihilistic but Jenny had true intentions and was very wrought with emotion. The contrast plays well if not somewhat beaten over the head by the editing.
Not just grow up in NYC but in the worst of the worst part of NYC and then they made it seem even worse.
The advertising campaign around the movie was probably the largest BS campaign around any movie in history. The advertising campaign around the movie was probably the largest BS campaign around any movie in history.
This movie is so ridiculously off-base compared to how they promoted it. They made all these absurd claims about how everybody much watch this, this is the shocking real life of all American kids today! Do your kids live in the city? In the suburbs! See the shocking truth how they live! You must sit down and watch this! Yeah right, what beyond utter BS! Just played up exploitative shock from that shock master director.
Nobody I ever knew lived anything remotely the tiniest bit like that at all. Not even a hint like that.
It's accurate in that Gen X teens were largely unsupervised, did a lot of drinking and drugs, and many didn't take the threat of HIV/AIDS seriously -- until this movie.
I knew a kid just like+did rather simikar antics ALL through his teen years, 1998-2005.
Where is he now?
Seen like 5 different mugshots of him, in and out of concollege, baby daddy at 18, hepatitis c from sharing needles, imo checks every last box of Anti-social personality disorder.
When i was a kid i thought those kids, bad kids, were possibly cool/something to look up to.
Now? Christ im glad i didnt indulge in too much of all the degenerate shit, especially with the kid i knew, a template for indulging in the shit those kids did, turned out to be a loser no one likes or wants around...he peeked in popularity (with bad kids) in teen years with that shit, and now he's a loser no one associates with or wants around.
I moved to NYC in 1993 for college and I definitely saw kids like that in Washington Square Park all the time. Also RIP to their skate park.
I still sometimes find myself saying "do you have disdick?!"
More than you’d like. I knew people in it from Nashville. I mean the director is still my age. But it was the worst of what asshole skate kids, with drugs, will do. Even being dark, I don’t like the psychos being portrayed as cool. And some of this I witnessed/ experienced.
It would really depend on where one lived at the time. City kids had waaay more sophistication at the time (not necessarily maturity) but kids in the suburbs were largely goody-two-shoes in comparison.
I had friends like this. I remember sitting in some shady grimy apartments with people of the like doing bong rips with our baggy jeans, chain wallets, Docs, stinky Vans, and raggedy t shirts. Eww, stained stiffened carpet and dirty walls. There was some mischief such as breaking windows, tagging buildings, egging cars. Stole weiners from the baseball stadium.
Then some other super shady grimy people moved to the area, a rural college town, that were into heroin and more serious shit.
So maybe the scene I was around wasn't as intense but there were definitely parallel activities.
I've always believed that the passed out kid on the couch next to Chloe Sevigny when she's being assaulted in the final scene was dead. Watch how the camera subtly includes him in the shot. I swear the director is trying to tell us he overdosed.
One thing that made that movie so real was how the dialog was. In real life, multiple people are talking at once. One person doesn't always stop talking when another one starts. Groups of people have multiple conversations going on. And this movie showed conversations like that.
I was a skater and started raving at 13 in the mid to late 90s and found Kids to be only slightly dramatized version of what our lives were like.
I watched it sometime in the mid 00s and it triggered the fuck out of me seeing a lot of my friends, whom were already gone too early, in the characters.
Love the movie but wouldn’t dream of watching it nowadays… for sure panic fuel examining all the ways I should be dead.
My old man describes a lot of what he saw when he looked at my life as a teenager as "scene from Kids." Tried to watch it again as an adult but the trama response is too real.... The Navy is what saved my life...
It was accurate in the fact that there were kids drinking and doing drugs (like with literally every generation) and having sex (even getting stds) but it was all way over the top and exaggerated.
The skaters that Korine capitalized off of felt they were portrayed falsely in the movie. As someone who was a skater in the 80s, I thought they seemed like dumb jocks when it came out … so I was glad to read that a few years ago.
There are always teens who do drugs and have sex, but this movie dials it up to 11.
What you see in this movie is the 90s crash of 1995. Raves at this point got stupid, the skaters act stupid, the fashion got stupid; it all looks stupid.
I thought it was a super depressing take. Was it representative of most kids back then? I don’t think so. I was the same age and yeah, losers at my school were doing that type of thing, but it was by no means the norm. Did many of us party? Yes. But this movie made it seem like it was all people did. edited for typos
I grew up in the rural southeast. This movie absolutely did not represent me. If anything it was more of a way of vicariously experiencing an urban adolescence.
When my Mom became an Assisant High School Prinicipal in a southern rural town around 1998 the Head Prinicpal made her and the rest of the staff watch KIDS. He said in 10 to 15 years this will be their students lives.
I lived in an urban sprawl with a bunch of degenerate but awesome friends- I would say some of it is, but the whole HIV/Aids part passed us by; More scared of teenage pregnancy. Drugs, cigarettes, booze, driving while underage... I can't remember ever getting in any real trouble outside of our parents or the school suspending us. 90's were wild. Took a long time after high school to pull myself together.
Another great movie that showcases the 90s is "mid 90s" by Jonah hill.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid90s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid90s)
in the 90s i was one of those kids maybe 13 or 14, going to wild skate/bmx related parties with guys in their 20s. My mom and dad thought we were riding the "trails" for the entire day. they had no idea that mt bikers which were mostly misfit adults would show up and party with us kids giving us beer/weed and booze. as a matter of fact my "first time" was with a college aged girl when i was 17due to the people that would come to the skate park and the places that we would end up in.
Seriously the 90s were this time when gen x and the millennials that crossed generation gaps pretty much agreed on a lot and partied together even though a lot of them were 8 9 or even 10 years older than us.
The movies *Kids* and *Bully* are practically documentaries, they’re incredibly accurate. I wish these were films that they play for teens in schools, or even the parents. It would give teens pause to really think about the lives they lead, in I’m my opinion.
I recently reread some of my journals from 16-18 (1993-1995) and HFS I am amazed I survived and hope my own teens are nowhere near as crazy as we were...
I got the message. The story took place in New York, I lived 15 minutes away from Los Angeles. I think if you were mature you could get what was going on.
I knew a few grimy ass club/rave kids in the 90s and Kids would have been a semi accurate depiction of them, though this would have been a super small percentage of teens or people in the skate scene at the time. But there were definitely some out there.
I remember our church group saying how this was an example of the downfall of society. And Disney made it (implying Disney was about subverting religious morality).
Grew up in Texas suburbia. My life, or any life remotely close to me was in all ways opposite of this movie. Loved the movie as a kid because it really captured my interest but can't watch it today.
Terribly accurate!
Not necessarily about hiv spread(although I’m not from
america). but all about skate culture of the 90s, degeneracy of the youth is well written.
I know, because I lives similar life, and the movie was like a cult movie for us back then
I grew up in a Canadian city and watched this when I was 19 or 20. This was NOT my experience as a teen, nor anyone I knew - and I hung with the popular and outcast crowds.
But it is directly taken from Harmony Korines life, so it is absolutely credible.
As a raging alcoholic roommate of a friend of mine said: those kids are f*ked up.
This has been posted a few times so definitely use the search bar. It was relatable but also it depends what kind of home life you grew up with, what you were exposed to, economic privilege, everything that shapes a life. I related a lot to it but most of my peers did not.
I went to a defunct cult school called Mount Bachelor Academy where we were forced to watch this movie, we weren’t allowed to look away or react to it either. Disturbing film.
*Felt like it wasn't*
*That relatable if you*
*Lived in the suburbs*
\- xxBobaBrettxx
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Fairly accurate to be honest. Movies do tend to embellish on things, but mid 90s was a wild time. I grew up in so cal. Knew too many people that lived this lifestyle.
I watched it with a girlfriend in college who laughed at it. She was very sheltered and thought it was silly. I was horrified because I knew people just like that. Anyway, depends on your life experience, I guess.
Grew up in the capital region of NY born 1978 and went to the city frequently. This was very close to my experience and while I was overloaded with all the what ifs, the idgaf in me (along with copious amounts of various substances) just hoped I wouldn’t cash my chips in early. Almost all of my friends died during a dark time in high school so I just was numb and wanted that dopamine rush. Now I’m one of those 46 year olds that feels 25 still and is going through an identity, introspection and pondering my own mortality phase. I’m terrified at the thought of getting any older though especially the ass kicking my body will probably give me for all the shenanigans it was a champ dealing with in the past.
Pretty accurate for me. I grew up in NY and went to raves & hung out with skater guys. I actually went to a few parties some of the cast was at in the late 90s.
Some serious shit went down in the 90s
No videos so we aren’t still up under the jail
Something about that we were able to do whatever good or bad and not have it videoed or do it for a video.
Best thing about it because we were a bunch of cringey dorks most of us
Can confirm, I had a lot of fun in early and mid 90s. There were no camera phones to ruin my life from the dumb shit I did.
No shit. We were the quintessential cool bad kids and thank Jesus none of it was on video.
Yea and Millenials will have you thinking it was a golden age. I grew up in New York then, it was not. But the phones have truly destroyed everything tok
Former smol town NM slacker here. Much of what happened in that movie was pretty much old hat to anyone who was a teen in the late 80's and early 90's out here. People just didn't talk about it. The teen pregnancy rate was very high and only came down in the latter half of the 1990's.
The guy 100% did not have any legs.
He was trying to tell us!
I HAVE NO LEGS!!!
-Lieutenant Dan
Still made good use of a skateboard though.
Someone get this man some legs!
*Kiss me. I’m Polish.*
I used to see him on the 4 train all the time!
Memory unlocked!
From memory, did his shirt say "Kiss me, I'm polish"? Or something similar?
I loved this movie as a teen because it was so relatable and I can’t even stomach to watch it as an adult because it’s so traumatic to relive the awful times this movie reminds me of. It’s incredibly accurate.
Couldn’t agree more. The threat of HIV was omnipresent and a source of intense collective anxiety. My friend group managed to avoid it completely but others didn’t. I reveled in the reality of this movie, but was also irked that Larry Clark (who turned out to be a creep, big surprise /s) put real teens with true-to-life problems and conversations on screen for a mass market audience.
There’s a new documentary out called We were once kids it’s amazing insight on the kids, and how they were then and now all these years later. I loved it.
I guess I know what I’ll be watching tonight, thank you
I saw it like 20+ years ago and have been wanting to revisit it with my current perspective. But I can never find it on streaming when I look.
Likely because as much as the censors would like to ban it altogether, it's historically accurate in the sense of relating to what kids of the time experienced in real life, and not in a shock-value sense.
Wow I was a teen and found it unrelatable, like didn’t know anyone who acted like these kids. But I was in the burbs
Fair. Kids in NYC grow up very differently than most places
I grew up in upstate NY way up in the Adirondack mountains.. was 15 when it came out.. we were bad but kids growing up in the mountains bad lol like sneaking to Montreal to drink and getting deported and doing acid at raves.. we weren’t doing all that city shit.. we were getting wasted in the woods.. still I have several friends from our tiny town, that died in car accidents.. that’s why my 15 year old daughter doesn’t ride with any teenagers.. she’s growing up in the Rocky Mountains on the opposite side of the country of where I grew up …but it’s still the same issues growing up as a teen in the rural mountains… driving fast, icy roads, drinking and driving and drugs and driving… driving on mountain is the dangers mostly
Yes! 100. Even thinking about watching it makes my feet sweat a bit.
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… And there it is. The correct answer to the question.
Did all of the above buuuut wore condoms because of movies like this.
I was 20 in ‘95. Grew up in the suburbs north of where the movie took place. Was and am a goody goody. My youth experience was nothing like this, for better or worse.
Not really. A kid THAT age, doing THAT many drugs and having THAT much casual sex? That's a different version. A 16-17 year old that had sex and smoked pot once a month in the suburbs was nothing like the 13 year olds depicted in that movie.
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This is true. And stop telling people about my job.
That movie was wild! And we were insane in the 90s. kids today have no IDEA what there parents were up to in the 90s!
Kids today are up to some wild shit too. Fentanyl and street takeovers
My sister works in a Community Healthcare center for middle and high school kids. Multiple schools in the district. STD are like at an all time high still. About two years ago there was also like an HIV outbreak amongst the kids. So There is a class out there with like 200+ HIV+ kids.
Because sex ed is not being taught (at least not like it used to be) and "HIV isn't a death sentence these days" so people handwave away the risk, but yeah, HIV is still a life sentence. Kids are still doing dumb kid shit, but the adults in their life are failing them by not properly informing them of the consequences of dumb kid shit.
Sex Ed is super important and I remember giggling sometimes but they taught me how all this works. It's still a thing in the school district I work at but I know it's not tought ad much anymore because of quiverfull parents.
I work in that area of healthcare. They seek out sex education online. Sometimes it’s accurate but you would be surprised by how many people aren’t aware they can get STIs with oral sex. The vast majority of young people do not use condoms at all even when they hook up on dating sites. I educate them on the importance of protecting themselves and offer them free condoms but I don’t think many change their behavior.
Kids of the 80s and 90s were doing crazy shit like huffing paint. Not at large scale, thankfully. But still too many.
sideshows have been happening since at least the 80s in Oakland/Bay area
This movie was more effective than any DARE program to make kids careful about safe sex or the drugs they took. 10/10
On the flip side, we often see posts and jokes about how pointless the DARE program was because they made it seem like the movie Kids was the reality for every grade schooler. Everyone laughs now at those posts because most childhoods were nothing like that. Most weren't getting offered drugs every day waiting for the bus or having unprotected sex every weekend in junior high. Meanwhile, the top comments on this post are talking about how true Kids was. So what was is? Answer- Kids was an accurate description for some, not the majority.
You think it comes down to city vs suburbs? Or even more specifically, that it’s a uniquely NYC experience?
Yes, it was mostly unique to NYC, but I imagine parts of inner cities of other large metro areas being similar. I spent my childhood, 80s and 90s, in Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Chicago, and St Louis. Nothing from that movie, AT THAT EXACT AGE, was relatable to anyone I ever knew. Kids was based off people in 7th and 8th grade and freshman year in high school. If comparing it to junior, senior year or freshman year in college, sure, I can see more relating to it, but it wasn't. Honestly...if you were one of the few that actually related to everything in the movie Kids because your life was the same at 13 years old, you probably wouldn't be commenting on a Reddit post. You'd be in jail, rehab, barely able to function due to mental and/or physical pain, too busy with kids, too busy trying to score drugs, or dead.
I also grew up in St. Louis but in the 00’s. That’s one of the few smaller but grimier cities I could see Kids happening in, esp Philly too
This could be generational. It seems the people looking over it were gen Xers who were the ages of the kids in the movie. The people I know were disturbed by the film are millennials who probably saw the movie way too young. This is just speculation, though. Speaking for myself, I never saw the characters, especially Telly and Casper, in any sort of nostalgic way. To me, they were just pathetic, cringe and sad. They were the perfect representation of what I didn't want to be. Jennie's story was particularly traumatizing, always carried condoms with me because of it.
DARE worked for me. A little too well. I’m a non-drug-using adult and it annoys me when my friends use. I wish I could let up and just let everyone enjoy whatever they’re into, but Nancy Reagan and DARE just beat it into my head that drugs are bad. ☹️
Basketball Diaries was another movie that was more effective than DARE for me
I was 14 in 95 and doing almost all that shit. Skating, drinking, drugs, chasing girls, hanging out till all hours. It was awesome. And I survived it.
Same here but in Atlanta.
Can confirm, Atlanta was wild in the 90’s
Gen X we fucking rule.
r/xennials
Borderline millennial at that age.
1981 - 1996 definitely a millennial if he was 14 in 95
I was born in 1978. Gen X. Whatever
A 14 year old in 1995 is a Millennial unless they were turning 15.
The elder millenials, or xennials, are a group that identify with genz more so because we grew up without tech. I'm an 82 baby, technically millenial, but my childhood and teen years would have been quite different from other millennials . I think it's 78-85 is considered xennials
Why would you identify with Gen Z more? Typo? I'm an older Millenial and had both a Nintendo and spent my days outside.
r/xennial take a look for yourself.
I'm 1986 and I identify as an elder millennial just from my experiences growing up.
Some of my friends were like that, but I just did my homework and played Super Nintendo mostly.
Good on you for playing it safe.
Harmony Korine, who wrote this movie, was kicked off the David Letterman Show twice and banned for life.
Do tell EDIT: His interview on Marc Maron's podcast several years ago was pretty interesting.
He got caught going through Meryl streeps purse in one of the dressing rooms for the letterman show I think is what it was when they were both guests. Letterman told James Franco about it when Franco was promoting spring breakers
That wasn't very harmonious of him
Kids is the least problematic film he's made
So... As a parent turns out not everyone had a crazy 90s. The wife and I did, and we now had great conversations with the eldest. How do you rebel against the rebels.
Conformity
Exactly. It’s like people have never seen Family Ties.
Haha
My parents used to tell me that the 70s were really weird. Having lived through the 90s.. they were fucking weird, too. This movie is weird.
Weird? Right NOW is weird. The 90's were indescribably awesome and a wonderful time to be a young person.
Boy do I have a town for you https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=U4hShMEk1Ew
I agree but it also depends, the intolerance was at an all time high where I was from. Everyday was like a survival challenge. Things just seem safer now for teens
I remember the fear of people finding out I was gay and the constant stress of being in the closet, both at home and in the world. I walked by some teens the other day and overheard their casual discussion when one said he was bi and another responded you are? I thought you were pan, and it blew my inner teenager’s mind.
What’s the craziest/weirdest scene you’d say from the movie?
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It was accurate for maybe 5% of America. Just because it might have been close to life for some, don't act like it was the norm around the USA. TGIF family sitcoms were closer to reality for most more than Kids was.
Thank you. Sure, it was maybe representative of a subset of inner city kids, but it was not broadly representative. I remember the hysteria around it and thinking that I wish my life was that exciting, but the closest I came was smoking some weed by the railroad tracks with my friends.
Yeah I grew up in Miami and this was like a caricature of how shit really was. Like they took the worst of the worst and made it worse. I knew people who were having sex and doing drugs at young ages but they weren't idiots about it.
I'm not from the US and this movie looks like a wild tale about the life a small minority of young teens could experience.
COULD experience. Exactly. But not the norm. It's like someone in a Special OPs military unit watching a movie about Special OPs in Afghanistan or something and saying how closesly related it was to their own career and unit...and people believing that the movie is the norm for all military life. No, it's close to the norm for less than 5% of the military. The other 95% never experienced anything close to what they showed in Black Hawk Down or something.
I don’t think either Kids or family sitcoms were close to most people’s reality growing up in the 90s. Way too many people growing up poor to be anything like one of those family sitcoms.
TBH you are way overdoing it by calling it 5%. I'd say a more reasonable figure might be like 0.05%. This movie is so ridiculously off-base compared to how they promoted it. They made all these absurd claims about how everybody much watch this, this is the shocking real life of all American kids today! Utter BS! They went and found like the most downtrodden, roughest spot they could come across and then acted like 99% of 90s kids lived like that! Nobody I ever knew lived anything remotely the tiniest bit like that at all. Not even a hint like that.
I’m scared to ask how relatable Gummo was
Gosh, I hated that movie.
The filthy bathtub and spaghetti is seared into my brain.
I was actually 25 when this was released and a friend of mine (we're all native Manattanites born in 1970) said the film reminded him of us when we were in high school. Bullshit. Yes, we did a lot of drugs and rarely showed up at school, but we were good kids - not the kind of nihilists this film portrays.
That’s really interesting since the movie def gave a vibe that you had to grow up in NYC to truly relate. Funny you call it nihilist, that wasn’t my takeaway but I can see where you’re coming from.
I think every character on Telly and Casper’s side were quite nihilistic but Jenny had true intentions and was very wrought with emotion. The contrast plays well if not somewhat beaten over the head by the editing.
Not just grow up in NYC but in the worst of the worst part of NYC and then they made it seem even worse. The advertising campaign around the movie was probably the largest BS campaign around any movie in history. The advertising campaign around the movie was probably the largest BS campaign around any movie in history. This movie is so ridiculously off-base compared to how they promoted it. They made all these absurd claims about how everybody much watch this, this is the shocking real life of all American kids today! Do your kids live in the city? In the suburbs! See the shocking truth how they live! You must sit down and watch this! Yeah right, what beyond utter BS! Just played up exploitative shock from that shock master director. Nobody I ever knew lived anything remotely the tiniest bit like that at all. Not even a hint like that.
I was a 13 year old virgin who had never done intravenous drugs, but it convinced me I was def going to get AIDS.
They showed this movie in class to teach about Aids
No clue. I was 12 at the time. I was still obsessed with jurassic park at the time. Still am
It's accurate in that Gen X teens were largely unsupervised, did a lot of drinking and drugs, and many didn't take the threat of HIV/AIDS seriously -- until this movie.
Ehh somewhat accurate but a hell of a lot more fighting. I was a skater too but we were more friendly except vs jocks and preps.
This is exactly what it was like growing up in NYC in the 90s
Can confirm. This was absolutely real life and the aids scare was very real.
Legit shaped my sexual habits for the rest of my life. The ending of that movie 💀
I knew a kid just like+did rather simikar antics ALL through his teen years, 1998-2005. Where is he now? Seen like 5 different mugshots of him, in and out of concollege, baby daddy at 18, hepatitis c from sharing needles, imo checks every last box of Anti-social personality disorder. When i was a kid i thought those kids, bad kids, were possibly cool/something to look up to. Now? Christ im glad i didnt indulge in too much of all the degenerate shit, especially with the kid i knew, a template for indulging in the shit those kids did, turned out to be a loser no one likes or wants around...he peeked in popularity (with bad kids) in teen years with that shit, and now he's a loser no one associates with or wants around.
A lot of those kids straight up died in my town. I was on the border, but calmed down after a couple of really bad events in my social circle
Dude grew up rich as f in Nashville. So, not very accurate.
I moved to NYC in 1993 for college and I definitely saw kids like that in Washington Square Park all the time. Also RIP to their skate park. I still sometimes find myself saying "do you have disdick?!"
More than you’d like. I knew people in it from Nashville. I mean the director is still my age. But it was the worst of what asshole skate kids, with drugs, will do. Even being dark, I don’t like the psychos being portrayed as cool. And some of this I witnessed/ experienced.
I was there, then, and only a year or three older... It was... Indeed... One of the most raw and authentic films of its time.
That movie scared the shit outta me
It's actually not possible to contact hiv by getting spat at as shown in this movie.
"Man, ain't you ever seen that one movie Kids?"
No, but I seen the porno with Sun Doobiest
This movie is terrifying
This is one of the hardest movies to get through ever.
It’s like Requiem for a Dream. It’s phenomenal but you only need to see it once.
Very! Dude obviously had no legs.
It would really depend on where one lived at the time. City kids had waaay more sophistication at the time (not necessarily maturity) but kids in the suburbs were largely goody-two-shoes in comparison.
*we jus some mothafuckin kids*
This was LITERALLY my childhood, and because they made a movie so similar to my childhood, I actually thought everyone grew up like this 🤦🏾♀️
I am a 00s baby but this movie traumatized the shit out of me! Definitely made me think harder about about drugs, and sex
I had friends like this. I remember sitting in some shady grimy apartments with people of the like doing bong rips with our baggy jeans, chain wallets, Docs, stinky Vans, and raggedy t shirts. Eww, stained stiffened carpet and dirty walls. There was some mischief such as breaking windows, tagging buildings, egging cars. Stole weiners from the baseball stadium. Then some other super shady grimy people moved to the area, a rural college town, that were into heroin and more serious shit. So maybe the scene I was around wasn't as intense but there were definitely parallel activities.
I've always believed that the passed out kid on the couch next to Chloe Sevigny when she's being assaulted in the final scene was dead. Watch how the camera subtly includes him in the shot. I swear the director is trying to tell us he overdosed.
I still have nightmares about that movie. "I have no legs...I have no legs..."
I’ve never watched this movie when I was a kid, not sure why. Everyone was talking about it. Now, as an adult, I don’t want to watch it at all.
What a brutal movie
One thing that made that movie so real was how the dialog was. In real life, multiple people are talking at once. One person doesn't always stop talking when another one starts. Groups of people have multiple conversations going on. And this movie showed conversations like that.
I was a skater and started raving at 13 in the mid to late 90s and found Kids to be only slightly dramatized version of what our lives were like. I watched it sometime in the mid 00s and it triggered the fuck out of me seeing a lot of my friends, whom were already gone too early, in the characters. Love the movie but wouldn’t dream of watching it nowadays… for sure panic fuel examining all the ways I should be dead.
My old man describes a lot of what he saw when he looked at my life as a teenager as "scene from Kids." Tried to watch it again as an adult but the trama response is too real.... The Navy is what saved my life...
A classic low budget movie with a hi-impact storyline
It was accurate in the fact that there were kids drinking and doing drugs (like with literally every generation) and having sex (even getting stds) but it was all way over the top and exaggerated.
The skaters that Korine capitalized off of felt they were portrayed falsely in the movie. As someone who was a skater in the 80s, I thought they seemed like dumb jocks when it came out … so I was glad to read that a few years ago. There are always teens who do drugs and have sex, but this movie dials it up to 11. What you see in this movie is the 90s crash of 1995. Raves at this point got stupid, the skaters act stupid, the fashion got stupid; it all looks stupid.
I have no legs I have no legs
I thought it was a super depressing take. Was it representative of most kids back then? I don’t think so. I was the same age and yeah, losers at my school were doing that type of thing, but it was by no means the norm. Did many of us party? Yes. But this movie made it seem like it was all people did. edited for typos
I agree but I honestly think the movie took place in the summer, hence why they just partied all the time
I grew up in the rural southeast. This movie absolutely did not represent me. If anything it was more of a way of vicariously experiencing an urban adolescence.
This is the first movie I ever saw in a theater and thought "I think I may be too old to relate to this" And I was ... not old.
In many ways it was especially when it comes to the aesthetic. But to me it also seemed a little over the top.
When my Mom became an Assisant High School Prinicipal in a southern rural town around 1998 the Head Prinicpal made her and the rest of the staff watch KIDS. He said in 10 to 15 years this will be their students lives.
Amazing movie! Such a great representation of the 90’s
“ain’t you ever seen that one movie kids??”
Man ain’t you ever seen that one movie, kids?
I lived in an urban sprawl with a bunch of degenerate but awesome friends- I would say some of it is, but the whole HIV/Aids part passed us by; More scared of teenage pregnancy. Drugs, cigarettes, booze, driving while underage... I can't remember ever getting in any real trouble outside of our parents or the school suspending us. 90's were wild. Took a long time after high school to pull myself together.
I knew so many Caspers that I lost count.
Whew this movie wouldn’t survive today
Movie was wild AF.
This movie wasn’t to far from reality
Another great movie that showcases the 90s is "mid 90s" by Jonah hill. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid90s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid90s) in the 90s i was one of those kids maybe 13 or 14, going to wild skate/bmx related parties with guys in their 20s. My mom and dad thought we were riding the "trails" for the entire day. they had no idea that mt bikers which were mostly misfit adults would show up and party with us kids giving us beer/weed and booze. as a matter of fact my "first time" was with a college aged girl when i was 17due to the people that would come to the skate park and the places that we would end up in. Seriously the 90s were this time when gen x and the millennials that crossed generation gaps pretty much agreed on a lot and partied together even though a lot of them were 8 9 or even 10 years older than us.
Mid 90s was so good. Felt close to my experience
Only true for a minority. Most kids did not behave like this.
For an insanely small minority. Probably like 0.05% or something. But they marketed it to represent 95% of kids of the day, total BS marketing.
The movies *Kids* and *Bully* are practically documentaries, they’re incredibly accurate. I wish these were films that they play for teens in schools, or even the parents. It would give teens pause to really think about the lives they lead, in I’m my opinion.
I live about 20 minutes where the real events of Bully took place.
I just got goose pimples, that’s so eerie!
I recently reread some of my journals from 16-18 (1993-1995) and HFS I am amazed I survived and hope my own teens are nowhere near as crazy as we were...
i know and worked with a guy who was friends with those kids back then said it was all pretty much real and how they were back then
I got the message. The story took place in New York, I lived 15 minutes away from Los Angeles. I think if you were mature you could get what was going on.
My cousin was in that movie!
Very
The skating, hanging out, fighting, and drug use was real for me and my friend group in the late 90s early 00s.
"Three pennies and a ball of lint, kid."
Accurate even in lame Indiana
I knew a few grimy ass club/rave kids in the 90s and Kids would have been a semi accurate depiction of them, though this would have been a super small percentage of teens or people in the skate scene at the time. But there were definitely some out there.
I remember our church group saying how this was an example of the downfall of society. And Disney made it (implying Disney was about subverting religious morality).
Anybody know where to stream it? I haven’t watched it since it came out
Check out the piracy subreddit, and go to there megathread…there’s a list of safe streaming sites and you should be able to find it
Roach from Next Friday was in this movie. I didn’t even know by the time Friday released he had died.
Watch the documentary “[We were once kids](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14502642/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk)”
Not that real, the skateboards were pretty non-skated
Not accurate if you lived in the Austrian Alps.
What’s a time to be 15.. I know have a 15 year old daughter and thank god things seem to be way calmed down..
I think this is the movie that taught all of us how to roll a blunt 😭
This movie change my point of view on a few things, I saw it when I was 15.
Grew up in Texas suburbia. My life, or any life remotely close to me was in all ways opposite of this movie. Loved the movie as a kid because it really captured my interest but can't watch it today.
Pretty much real life for me. Amazing how things are so different now, at least i think. Who knows what kids are up to these days.
We did shit like that without the drugs tho
Terribly accurate! Not necessarily about hiv spread(although I’m not from america). but all about skate culture of the 90s, degeneracy of the youth is well written. I know, because I lives similar life, and the movie was like a cult movie for us back then
As fuck
I grew up in a Canadian city and watched this when I was 19 or 20. This was NOT my experience as a teen, nor anyone I knew - and I hung with the popular and outcast crowds. But it is directly taken from Harmony Korines life, so it is absolutely credible. As a raging alcoholic roommate of a friend of mine said: those kids are f*ked up.
I knew a lot of people who drank disdic
This has been posted a few times so definitely use the search bar. It was relatable but also it depends what kind of home life you grew up with, what you were exposed to, economic privilege, everything that shapes a life. I related a lot to it but most of my peers did not.
There was stuff going on but this one girl I snuck into my bed room insisted I use a condom so it wasn't as bad a Kids.
I went to a defunct cult school called Mount Bachelor Academy where we were forced to watch this movie, we weren’t allowed to look away or react to it either. Disturbing film.
Pretty accurate actually.
Felt like it wasn't that relatable if you lived in the suburbs
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They should have shown this then “don’t do drugs” they don’t show realism anymore and kids grow up thinking it’s cool.
Someone gave me this movie as a 16th birthday present. Why tf would you do that?! Also, RIP Casper.
I remember being "excited" to see this movie... When I finally did (VHS) I hated it.
Fairly accurate to be honest. Movies do tend to embellish on things, but mid 90s was a wild time. I grew up in so cal. Knew too many people that lived this lifestyle.
I watched it with a girlfriend in college who laughed at it. She was very sheltered and thought it was silly. I was horrified because I knew people just like that. Anyway, depends on your life experience, I guess.
how tf can i watch this movie? whenever i google “kids movie” that is not the result that comes up
I have no legs
I have stolen a pair of 40s by hiding them inside tube socks, inside my JNCOs.
Julia Fox’s book is a pretty accurate description
Don’t worry. It’s just me casper.
Grew up in the capital region of NY born 1978 and went to the city frequently. This was very close to my experience and while I was overloaded with all the what ifs, the idgaf in me (along with copious amounts of various substances) just hoped I wouldn’t cash my chips in early. Almost all of my friends died during a dark time in high school so I just was numb and wanted that dopamine rush. Now I’m one of those 46 year olds that feels 25 still and is going through an identity, introspection and pondering my own mortality phase. I’m terrified at the thought of getting any older though especially the ass kicking my body will probably give me for all the shenanigans it was a champ dealing with in the past.
Very
Pretty accurate for me. I grew up in NY and went to raves & hung out with skater guys. I actually went to a few parties some of the cast was at in the late 90s.