Ken Park is a 2002 erotic drama which revolves around the abusive and dysfunctional lives of several teenagers, set in the city of Visalia, California. It was written by Harmony Korine, who based it on Larry Clark's journals and stories. The film was directed and shot by Clark and Edward Lachman. The film is an international co-production of the United States, the Netherlands, and France.
Plot
The title character Ken Park (nicknamed "Krap Nek": his name spelled and pronounced backward), is a teenager skateboarding across Visalia, California. He arrives at a skate park, where he casually sets up a camcorder, smiles, and shoots himself in the temple with a handgun. His death is used to bookend the film, which follows the lives of four other teenagers who knew him.
Shawn is the most stable of the four main characters. Throughout the story, he has an ongoing sexual relationship with his girlfriend's mother Rhonda, whom he tells that he fantasizes about being with while having sex with her daughter, Hannah. He casually socializes with their family, the rest of whom are completely unaware of the affair.
Claude fends off physical and emotional abuse from his alcoholic father, who detests him for not being masculine enough, all while he tries to care for his pregnant mother, who makes little to no attempt at defending him. However, after coming home drunk one night, he attempts to perform oral sex on Claude, prompting the boy to run away from home.
Peaches is a girl who lives alone with her obsessive and highly-religious father, who fixates on her as the innocent embodiment of her deceased mother. When he catches her having sex with her boyfriend Curtis – whom she has playfully tied to her bed – he beats the boy and savagely disciplines her, then forces her to participate in a quasi-incestuous wedding ritual with him.
Tate is an unstable and sadistic adolescent living with his grandparents, whom he resents and abuses verbally. He engages in autoerotic asphyxiation while masturbating to a video of a woman playing tennis. He eventually kills his grandparents, in retaliation for petty grievances, and finds that it arouses him sexually. He records himself on his tape recorder so that the police will know how and why he did it, puts his grandfather's dentures in his mouth, lies naked in his bed, and falls asleep; eventually being found and promptly arrested.
The film cuts frequently between these subplots, with no overlap of characters or events until the end, when Shawn, Claude, and Peaches meet and have a threesome. In a game of "who am I?" afterward, they refer to an unnamed person they know who is now dead. The film cuts to a title screen, followed by a flashback to before the opening scene. Ken has impregnated his girlfriend and taken a menial job. At the skate park, they discuss whether to abort the pregnancy, and she asks Ken rhetorically if he is glad his mother did not abort him; he does not answer.
Cast
Tiffany Limos as "Peaches" James Bullard as Shawn Stephen Jasso as Claude James Ransone as Tate Adam Chubbuck as Ken Park Maeve Quinlan as Rhonda Amanda Plummer as Claude's Pregnant Mother Wade Williams as Claude's Father Julio Oscar Mechoso as Peaches' Father Richard Riehle as "Murph" Murphy Bill Fagerbakke as Bob Eddie Daniels as Shawn's Mother Seth Gray as Shawn's Brother Patricia Place as Tate's Grandmother Harrison Young as Tate's Grandfather Zara McDowell as Zoe Mike Apaletegui as Curtis Larry Clark as Hot Dog Vendor
Production
Clark attempted to write the first script for Ken Park, basing it on personal experiences and people with whom he had grown up. Dissatisfied with his own draft, he hired Harmony Korine to pen the screenplay. Clark ultimately used most of Korine's script, but rewrote the ending. The film was given a $1.3 million budget. The arrangement was to film using digital video, but Clark and Lachman used 35mm film instead.