I'm in Park City in between films at the Slamdance Film Festival. Last night I saw Larry Clark's new film Wassup Rockers. Like Kids before it, he captures something rarely seen on screen about adolescence. So rare I'd forgotten I lived through it myself until I watched his film last night. It's the in between place where we're still a child and also fully aware-often more aware than our parents-of the world around us. Wassup Rockers reminds me how many of us played with sex and suicide as teenagers the way we played with Barbies and G.I. Joe dolls just a few years earlier.

The film follows seven Hispanic, punk-rock skateboarders living in South Central LA. They skate and have a band. They don't do drugs or cause trouble, but they're constantly harassed for existing outside the gangsta culture of their neighborhood. They wear tight clothes instead of baggy hip-hop gear. When they skate by, the kids in the neighborhood try to start something and yell, "Wassup rockers!" It's not meant in a nice way.

The story then takes them to Beverly Hills to skate Beverly Hills High where so many professional skate boarding videos have been shot (Clark shoots these scenes like you'd see in the videos but, refreshingly, he leaves in the wipe outs). A couple girls from the school notice the boys and flirting starts. The second half of the film is non-stop chase to get out of Beverly Hills prompting the question, "Is there any safe place for kids like these?"

The film is clearly not a documentary, but it's so authentic that almost every question asked of Clark in the Q&A afterward had to do with how he made a narrative story feel so real. I loved his response. The seven boys aren't actors. They're exactly who they are in real life. He'd met them hanging around a photo shoot after making his last film. He instantly liked them for their strength to be who they were in a neighborhood where it's dangerous to stand out and wanted to tell their story. So every Saturday for a year Clark met up with the seven, took them out to skate, bought them a meal and listened to their stories. He developed a relationship with the boys. His answer to how he got an authentic performance from non-actors? To paraphrase, we had a relationship. I knew intimately what they were capable of because I'd spent countless hours with them. They trusted me and I trusted them.

It's so simple. Know intimately who it is you're shooting. Know intimately what you're going for. Another pearl of wisdom he dropped was a piece of advice about composition. Frame your shot up and compose it in the camera just right. Then take a step forward and screw it up. That way you see what's in front of you and not your perfect shot.

More later.