The film was basically a collaboration between a skateboarder/club kid (Harmony Korine) and an older man (Larry Clark) fascinated by their subculture. A lot of the cast were skateboarder/club kids themselves. It was almost like a scripted documentary. If you grew up in the urban Northeast at the time, you probably knew a lot of kids that were just like that. I certainly did. I saw it as much more of a depiction than a promotion. Also, from interviews with Clark at the time, he made it clear that his concern wasn't so much with kids having sex period, but rather that so many of them were having unsafe sex at a time when HIV/AIDS was a greater danger than it is now. I think it really reflected the time and place it depicted and that might not translate to today's audience.