Taken from the May 2012 issue of Dazed & Confused:
Los Angeles is a fluorescent hellhole of motels, 7-Elevens and aimless sex and violence in Gregg Araki’s The Doom Generation. Labelled “an arty atrocity for thugs and subliterates” by the Washington Post, the 1995 teen roadtrip nevertheless won a loyal underground following, as its star Rose McGowan (as nihilistic speed-freak Amy Blue), who kicked off her career at Sundance that year, remembers:
“When I first met Gregg he said, ‘Do you want to be an actress?’ And I said, ‘No.’ But I was going to have to move back to Seattle and the fee was enough for first-and-last deposit. It was like boot camp for acting. I’m very protective of the film, and when fans come up to me now, they always get extra credit points for citing The Doom Generation. When it came out my father chased Gregg into an alley and tried to beat him up. At Sundance some people walked out – but I wound up being on the cover of about ten magazines. Looking back at it now, honestly I don’t know if Gregg could have gotten another actress to be as daring as I was – you needed someone as clueless as me then. There were lawyers coming up to me at Sundance, handing me their cards and I was like, ‘Screw you, creepy old man! Stop trying to perve on me!’ I had no idea they were trying to say I needed representation…”
THE DOOM GENERATION is out on DVD now, released by Second Sight
