Gregg Araki

Gregg Araki is an American filmmaker, screenwriter, and producer best known for his contributions to queer cinema and helping define the New Queer Cinema movement of the 1990s. Born in Los Angeles, California, Gregg grew up in Santa Barbara and studied film theory at UC Santa Barbara before earning an MFA in film production from USC.

Araki began making films in the late 1980s. His debut feature, Three Bewildered People in the Night, follows a video artist caught in a romantic triangle involving her boyfriend and another man. The film explored sexual fluidity and unorthodox relationships at a time when LGBT representation in American independent cinema remained limited. He followed that movie with The Long Weekend (O’ Despair) and The Living End, which follows two HIV+ men on the run after one commits murder. The movie premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and became a defining work of the early New Queer Cinema movement. 

His most widely recognized body of work remains his “Teen Apocalypse Trilogy”, which includes Totally Fucked Up, The Doom Generation, and Nowhere. These movies focused on the disaffected youth while they navigated sex, violence, identity, and emotional instability in a stylized version of Los Angeles. The Doom Generation follows Jordan White and Amy Blue as they become entangled with Xavier Red, forming a chaotic bisexual love triangle that becomes one of the film’s defining elements. Nowhere pushed sexual fluidity even further, featuring multiple queer and bi characters whose identities were treated as part of the film’s emotional landscape rather than individual one-off plot twists. 

Throughout interviews, Araki has spoken only about his own bisexuality and how it shaped his understanding of sexuality as fluid rather than fixed. In a 2010 interview with The Advocate while promoting his film Kaboom, he described his sexuality as existing on a spectrum and discussed how those ideas consistently influenced his filmmaking. 

In his 2014 interview with Out while doing the rounds for White Bird in a Blizzard, Araki was asked whether he identified as bi because of his past relationships with women, including actress Kathleen Robertson, and his then-current relationship with a male partner. He responded:  

I don’t really identify as anything, I guess. I have a male partner — we’ve been together for three years — but I don’t really identify. I’d probably identify as gay at this point, but I have been with women.

It’s very common for people to use a monosexual label, especially if they are in a long-term relationship. However, Araki is happy to acknowledge his attraction to multiple
genders.