Penguin napping, abusive nuns, exploding cadavers and tragic games of russian roulette – these are just some of the tales in Bedtime Stories for Bad Boys and Girls, a new book and exhibition by artists Larry Clark and James Gilroy. The two met in downtown New York in the early 1970s and formed an instant and permanent bond rooted in drugs and a shared pleasure in indeterminancy. “We were living with abandon and not thinking about the consequences,” Clark tells me. Gilroy elaborates, “Back then, you walked down the block and maybe ran into somebody or into a situation. We’d just get pulled into something every day.” The collection, which sits somewhere between an unflinching memoir and a personal sketchbook, collides their bold, vulgar, hilarious oral histories with Clark’s photographs and Gilroy’s drawings. Each gesture amplifies the next omission in a chaotic and sometimes nightmarish stream of consciousness that’s impossible to put down.

The book spans many years, ranging from the 50s to the 70s and beyond. Throughout, we encounter Clark’s snapshots of artists, lovers and revellers staring down the camera – images brought into being as proof of life, rather than cynically extracting from it. Gilroy’s drawings brim with rapture, atmospheric sketches of the weird and unpalatable, spurring you to read on. In an art economy voracious for autobiographical narrative, you can’t help but feel like the friends are playing a game of cat and mouse with the reader, testing the cultural critic’s threshold for the messy truth, waiting to see who squeals first. And yet, underneath the salacious stories runs a rich vein of tenderness. The dialogue between Clark and Gilroy is intimate and painstakingly honest, offering a rare glimpse into the connective tissue of male friendship over multiple decades.

As poet Max Blagg writes in the book’s foreword, Clark and Gilroy are “veterans of a thousand burnups, breakups, smash palaces, and nocturnal collisions that they somehow survived like the mythical phoenix”. Their survival is significant, and as the book reveals, a rare viewpoint amongst so much young death that surrounded them – a haunting destruction of possibility. Against all odds, the duo, [Clark, now 83, and James, 78], remain standing – two inseparable friends, able to reflect upon their merciless view of the world we live in and their own participation in its madness. 

Here, Clark and Gilroy speak on living free, valuing the unexpected, and the importance of bearing witness to your friends’ lives.

What was your first interaction like?

Larry Clark: Ralph Gibson was a friend. He was hanging out with Sam Wagstaff, and we both crossed paths there.

James Gilmore: We met and became fast friends.

How did your friendship evolve? What was the connective tissue that helped retain the relationship?

Larry Clark: Initially, it was drugs, man. We maybe shouldn’t say that, but back in those days, that was contingent.

James Gilmore: I think beyond that, we had the same sensibility, you know, both having come from the street... Larry came to New York and took to it right away. Not everyone’s like that.

What was the genesis of Bedtime Stories for Bad Boys and Girls?

Larry Clark: I mean, we were always telling each other stories and sharing stories amongst friends. People get high, and you tell your personal stuff. They bare their soul with you. The whole thing is to bear witness to their lives. You wouldn’t do that with someone you didn’t feel safe with.

What was the process like putting the book together?

James Gilmore: I started doing drawings from Larry’s stories. Larry has so many pictures of so many experiences that he can give me to riff on. I use that process of drawing on an oil ground, so it doesn’t look like just a drawing on paper.

There was a social and cultural revolution while you were growing up, and the book speaks to the highs and lows, the pleasures and the casualties. Did you feel free?

Larry Clark: We didn’t really worry about the dangers back then. We were living with abandon and not thinking about the consequences. Had you thought about the consequences, you wouldn’t have been doing that shit.

James Gilmore: Those were wild days. It went right up to Woodstock. Meanwhile, there’s war going on... revolution...

Larry Clark: Tune in, turn on, drop out.

One thing that reverberates through the book is that it’s about a different world. How do you view the current social/cultural moment in comparison to your own experiences growing up in the 60s and 70s?

James Gilmore: Back then, you didn’t have a smartphone, so instead you walked down the block and maybe ran into somebody or into a situation. We’d just get pulled into something every day. I don’t know if that’s happening now. Back then, the unexpected would happen. Today, everything feels a lot more scripted, everyone’s on camera everywhere they go, every concert is recorded... It’s just a different predator. Imagine the era of these stories when Larry and I were hanging out. You could work two or three days and make enough cash for the month. You could take that cash and go away for three months, knowing it was possible to get a job when you got back. I don’t think you could do that now.

You’ve witnessed so much together. Is there a catharsis in making this project together, in that you managed to survive it all against the odds?

Larry Clark: We’re still standing if that’s catharsis.

This book feels so radically unfiltered. Any advice for young artists now navigating rising censorship and oppression?

Larry Clark: Don’t pay attention to that shit. Tell your story. I don’t know, otherwise it’s a lie. You’re the one who has to choose. Don’t try to please somebody else.

James Gilmore: Tell your story ‘cause you want your friends to be close. You want people to witness who you really are.

Larry Clark: Tell your story.

James Gilmore: Remember when you got sober? How you used to say, ‘I’m sober in the United States’? I’m back in the United States, and I’m sober. When I’m in Europe, I drink a drink. When I come back here, I’m sober in the United States. I feel like we could make an album from that title.

Larry Clark: I feel like it would be a dangerous record.

Bedtime Stories for Bad Boys and Girls by Larry Clark and James Gilroy is available to pre-order here.

Dashwood Projects (63 East 4th Street, New York) is hosting an exhibition and book signing with Larry Clark and James Gilroy on March 26, from 6 to 8 PM.