Playboy.com: You've done several movies now on young men's sexual coming of age. What was your sexual coming of age like?

Larry Clark: I'm a child of the '50s. It was so different back then. It was hard to get laid. Nowadays, the pressure from society, the peer pressure, and just watching TV, the pressure to have sex at a very early age is enormous. The pressure on kids to have sex early is big-time. When I was a kid, you wanted it, but it was harder to get. But it was Oklahoma. There was one girl that would fuck everybody; there'd be gangbangs. Things like that.

Playboy.com: You've been labeled a pornographer, a voyeur, exploitative. There are depictions of sex -- not yours necessarily -- that do cross those lines. Are you conscious of moments when you're walking the line between art and something that goes too far?

Clark: It's about making it realistic and making it make sense. I'm always thinking, "Would this happen?" It's about what's appropriate for the scene and what I'm trying to say in the scene. In Bully, after the murder, Marty and Lisa [Brad Renfro and Lisa Connelly] are talking about it. As the scene starts out, they're saying, "We really did it, we really killed a guy." I thought that I'd never seen a sex scene where people talk all the way through it, where the sex is secondary. What's important is what they're communicating. Plus, it makes sense for these characters that they would be doing it. So, yeah, there has to be a reason. In my photography, when there was sex going on, it's all for a reason. It all makes sense for a story. That's the difference. People told me that if you show specific things, that it's automatically pornography. But it's not. It's not pornography if it's part of real life and it's done for a reason.

Playboy.com: Wassup Rockers is much more mainstream than Kids or Bully or Ken Park. Was that your plan from the beginning?

Clark: It wasn't planned that way. It seriously wasn't. But they're good kids, and I wanted you to see them. I did get an R rating -- which is great. And only because of the language, because the kids say "fuck" every other word, because kids talk that way. It's more accessible than the other films. One reason is because they're so young, it wouldn't be appropriate. I had to figure out ways to suggest they're having sex so it's clear what's going on, without you seeing too much. That was a challenge for me as an artist.

Playboy.com: How did you tackle that challenge?

Clark: It's funny how I actually figured it out. I went over to Jonathan's house one day after school, long before I made the movie. He was in his bedroom with his girlfriend. He was dressed, but his hair was all slicked back like he had just taken a shower. His girlfriend was dressed, but her hair was all wet like she'd just taken a shower. Lying on the bed was all this candy -- suckers and gum and all sorts of candy. They'd been eating candy like crazy, and he was eating a big sucker. I didn't ask him, but I figured it out. It looks like they've had sex, taken a shower and then walked to the liquor store and bought all this candy. Kids this age, what would satisfy their needs? Obviously, sex and sugar. In the film, I can suggest they've had sex by having them eat candy. They're just playing, they don't know what I'm thinking, and I'm thinking, I can have them have candy after [sex], like an adult having a cigarette.