Gregg Araki is having a moment. The beloved cult queer filmmaker began his 2023 by premiering the 4K restoration of his official cut of 1995 road trip apocalypse hangout movie The Doom Generation at the Sundance Film Festival in the same theater where it first played all those years ago. Since then, Strand Releasing has announced that, in addition to restoring The Doom Generation (which is still playing in select theaters and will be released on Blu-ray soon), they are also set to release a 4K restoration of Araki’s follow-up feature, Nowhere.

It’s a satiating moment for fans of the director, particularly those in the queer community who have found kinship in the work of this iconoclastic, give-no-fucks rebel of the indie scene who has always played by his own rules, leading to years of his work being under-appreciated, misunderstood and largely unavailable on physical media or streaming services.

Speaking of streaming, the Criterion Channel has recently debuted their collection ‘Three by Gregg Araki,’ giving cinephiles the chance to feast their eyes on the colorful grooves and moody blues of The Doom Generation, Totally Fucked Up and Mysterious Skin. The latter of those features a sensational early performance from Joseph Gordon-Levitt and remains the most popular—and highest-rated—Araki film on Letterboxd. The filmmaker even got to enter the hallowed Criterion Closet!

If that doesn’t seem like enough, Araki was also the recipient of an exclusive retrospective at this year’s Sundance London, where my colleague Ella Kemp snagged some gorgeous pictures of the feted auteur. The festival screened three of his features, accompanied by Q&As from the director: the 4K restoration of The Doom Generation, Mysterious Skin and in its first ever public UK showing, Araki’s debut feature, 1987’s Three Bewildered People in the Night. Everything is truly coming up Gregg.

While the primary motivation for my chat with Araki was in celebration of The Doom Generation’s re-release, when we first saw each other he remarked on my t-shirt for the teenage angst ’80s classic, River’s Edge. “It’s all late ’80s, early ’90s all day,” he said, before telling me that he was going to be recording a podcast later that day about movies that blew your mind, and he had selected David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me.

Since Araki is a certified cinephile who spent plenty of time in film school—and because we’re Letterboxd—it was inevitable that we would dive into numerous questions on Araki’s personal favorites. (After plenty of talk on The Doom Generation and having him read your reviews of that film, of course.)

You have a real knack for capturing the teenage world, whether it’s in the Teenage Apocalypse trilogy or Mysterious Skin, Kaboom, etc. What are some of your favorite films centered on teenagers?
Like River’s Edge!

[Laughs] River’s Edge is clearly a big one for both of us.
I’m trying to think of any specific movies I saw when I was growing up. I can’t think of a specific one, but I think of the genre in general as being interesting and resonant for me as an audience member, and certainly as a filmmaker. Things like Rebel Without a Cause and stuff.

I think one reason why I’m so attracted to that generation as a subject is because when you’re young and unformed, there’s a world of confusion and possibility. I find that the older you get, like every decade... I mean, I’m in my 60s now, but when you turn 30, when you turn 40, when you turn 50, you get more and more settled, more and more comfortable, more and more comfortable in your skin. Happier, too. I mean, I’m happier than I’ve ever been. But at the same time, I think a movie about my life would be super boring. Nothing really ever happens; you know what I mean?

Whereas when you’re young, the whole world is a scary place, but it’s a world of possibility. You’re unformed, you don’t know who you are, you don’t know who you’re going to be, you don’t know if you’re going to fall in love, if you’re going to be straight, gay, bi, trans: it’s all an open book. As an artist, that is such an interesting power for me. That’s why I’m gravitated towards that.

I’m not really that interested in a movie about certain things. Like, I don’t have kids, so I’m not going to write a movie about a single mother. Or a couple getting divorced, like that Scenes from a Marriage show—that’s just so not interesting to me. Literally, just some middle-aged married people and they have problems. That’s not really my thing. [Laughs] I mean, even in Now Apocalypse, the characters are, like, 25. I remember pitching it, talking about how they’re all that age where you’re just searching for who you’re going to be. It’s all about the search. Once you turn 30, 40, 50, you find it—hopefully. The finding of it is not interesting. It’s the searching that’s interesting, isn’t it?

That’s what makes sex scenes in something like The Doom Generation so much sexier than just watching porn, because you are getting to know the characters and that whole progression.
Yeah, it’s really about the interaction of those characters.

We talked about Bringing Up Baby before, and I know that you’re a massive fan of screwball comedies. Along with that one, what are some of the standout screwballs for you?
Oh, I have a ton. I wrote papers on screwball comedies when I was in school. My two favorite genres are couple-on-the-run movies and screwball comedies, and they’re both the same movie in a way. Like, Bringing Up Baby is actually a couple-on-the-run movie as well. They’re both always about this romantic couple that are in a chaotic and hostile universe. That’s the structure of all of those movies. It’s always about them being in this world of craziness, and clinging to each other and their relationship, with the ups and downs of that relationship.

Most screwball comedies were made in the ’30s and ’40s, and they’re interestingly the most feminist genre of that whole period. All of the female characters are always really smart and strong, and the woman always drives the narrative. That’s the case with Katharine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby. My other favorite one is Barbara Stanwyck in The Lady Eve. It’s funny, because if I think about it, Now Apocalypse had the same dynamic of the really smart, sexually forward female, and the men who are basically just dumb blondes. The men are just like the Henry Fonda character in The Lady Eve: he’s this beautiful creature that she literally turns into putty in her hands. It’s so fascinating to me, the dynamic that they have.

The level of stylization of those movies is always something that really attracts me, too. I think it’s where some of my sensibility comes from as a filmmaker, in the sense that those movies are always super pop and super fun and easy to watch. I used to write 50-page papers on it—thematically, they’re so rich and so deep. It’s that idea that you can make something that’s artistic and significant and has a lot of stuff going on, but that it’s not painful to watch. That, I think, is another thing about that genre that really excites me.

I love that observation about the feminism in them. One of my partner’s four favorites on Letterboxd is The Lady Eve. We’re both obsessed with Barbara Stanwyck.
Oh, really? That’s awesome. I think that’s Preston Sturges’ best movie. It’s so brilliant and so deeply, deeply layered.

Ball of Fire is another great Stanwyck where it’s literally just her dominating this whole squad of men who are drooling at her feet.
Yeah! Yeah, all of those movies—like Twentieth Century as well, the Howard Hawks movie—the female character is always so fascinating. She always has the upper hand on the male character.

Yeah! I mean, why not, right?
That was one of the coolest things about doing this restoration, being able to remix it and really bring all that music up. It has such a fucking awesome soundtrack; being able to pump it, and making the ride of the movie more rocking was really cool.

Last one: you had the premiere of The Doom Generation’s restoration back at Sundance where it first played. I had a friend there who was euphoric about seeing it in theaters with a crowd. What have been some of your greatest experiences of seeing a movie in the cinema?
Well, I can think of a memorable one.

Go for it.
A memorable one would be Irreversible.

Oh, shit. Yeah, sure.
I just remember, I barely made it through that movie. I remember being so literally brutalized by that movie. I almost left because I was like, ‘I just can’t take this anymore.’ Particularly the subway scene is so fucking brutal, and then you think it’s over and it just keeps going. It’s literally like some sick joke from Gaspar [Noé]. That was pretty intense, but I was glad I made it through the movie, because the second half is actually very beautiful.