The way that 19-year-old aspiring writer Harmony Korine met director Larry Clark sounds like a typical New York success story, told at bars in Kansas to make bright-eyed kids move to the Big Apple with nothing but a suitcase full of dreams. “I used to walk around with these movies that I made in high school in my backpack – films that I shot on 16mm – and I would put my grandma’s phone number on top of the VHS tape and if I saw someone I recognized, I would hand them the film,” explained Korine.

“I gave one to Larry and he called me the next day and I went to his place and started talking about making a movie together. He had an idea for a film and wanted to know if I wanted to write it.”

The film they ended up making together was Kids, a frank exploration of 90s New York City youth culture gone wild that the New York Times called a “wake-up call to the modern world” and the New Yorker dubbed “nihilistic pornography”.

“Larry had never directed, I had never written, Rosario [Dawson] had never acted. It was pretty much everyone’s first thing,” said Korine. The result was a raw display of disaffected youth going around their day, complete with sex, drugs, violence and skateboarding. It was filmed in a way that felt like a documentary – unscripted and raw – with dialogue that felt real. “Harmony was such a good writer and it was so natural,” said Leo Fitzpatrick, who has since starred in The Wire and also started a second career as an artist.

“A lot of what we talked about in the movies we talked about in real life.”

For Fitzpatrick, his newcomer naiveté was what made him, a 16-year-old skater with no real aspirations, willing to take on the role of Telly, a self-described “virgin surgeon” whose unwittingly depraved actions are the focus of the film. “What helped me pull it off, was being fucking naïve,” laughed Fitzpatrick. His inexperience also made it easier for him to engage in intimate moments on camera with ease. “The first day of shooting was supposed to be me and Justin [Pierce] walking down the street talking, to get us used to the cameras, and used to the dialogue and so on, but it rained,” said Fitzpatrick. Because of the weather, the shooting order was re-arranged and Fitzpatrick found himself in bed with a half-naked girl.

Larry had never directed, I had never written, Rosario had never acted. It was pretty much everyone’s first thing Harmony Korine

“The first scene you see in the film is the first day I ever acted in my life, so when you start out like that, everything after seems easy.”

Fitzpatrick believes that his lack of fear helped his acting, too. “That was my best performance, because it was the surest I could be, I wasn’t overthinking it. It was just something to do that summer. I never thought the movie would even come out.”

The film did come out though, catapulting Korine, Clark and the young cast into the spotlight. Fitzpatrick ended up quitting his job at the skateboard shop and moving to London to escape the ire of people who thought the movie was a documentary, while Korine found himself sitting on the Weinsteins’ company yacht in the Cannes harbor talking to film critic Roger Ebert about the movie he had written in a week, while holed up in his grandma’s basement.

“The whole thing was crazy,” said Korine. “It was strange and it didn’t seem real, but at the same time it all made perfect sense to me. Even though Larry and I had never done anything and were complete amateurs, we were still very ambitious.”

For Clark, who chose not to be interviewed for this piece, the film’s success meant that the photographer-turned-director had made the right bet in choosing a script written by a teenager and casting a group of teenaged neophytes, including a lead that the studio initially flat-out refused to consider, according to Fitzpatrick. “Larry was like ‘but he’s a genuine teenager, that’s what teenagers are like’,” explained Fitzpatrick, speaking about himself. “You can’t manipulate that or change it because then you are changing the story.”

“Larry doesn’t do kids the way other people do,” said Fitzpatrick. “Larry knew early on that to make a film like this he needed to be on the inside of this sort of counterculture.” So at 50 years old Clark taught himself how to skateboard and hung around Washington Square Park everyday getting to know the kids. In Fitzpatrick’s opinion, that time commitment was absolutely necessary, because “teenagers don’t trust adults”, and it was the only way Clark could convince the skaters to take part in his film. “He knew that to get respect from these kids he would have to give them respect,” said Fitzpatrick. “Larry gave them respect and they trusted him to tell their story.”

That story was of a day in the life of a group of street kids living in a pre-Giuliani New York City that was gritty and raw. “It was pre-internet, pre-cellphone, kids had pagers back then,” said Korine. “There was a wildness to it, living on rooftops and no one really had houses and no one really cared, that was all pretty accurate. Drugs and the girls and the shadow culture. It was a real, pure street culture. It was street. It was all about the street and never going home.”

There was a wildness. Living on rooftops and no one had houses and no one really cared. That was all pretty accurate Harmony Korine

The film’s raw depictions of teenage sexuality and proclivity for drug use and violence was too much for the MPAA’s standards board and the film was slapped with an NC-17 rating. While Miramax had paid $3.5m to distribute Kids worldwide, because they were owned by the Walt Disney Co, they couldn’t release an NC-17 movie. Miramax wound up starting an entirely new company in order to distribute the now un-rated film.

“It would be impossible to make that film now,” said Korine with a sigh. “You could never get away with it.”

When it was eventually released, it caused a moral panic. The Washington Post’s 1995 review called it, “virtually child pornography disguised as a cautionary documentary”. The pearl-clutching reaction by adults was fine with the cast and crew, even though, as a further sign of their naïveté, they were taken aback by the reaction.

“I was surprised that the movie would cause such a ruckus and that many people were that upset. I really enjoyed that. I think watching all the grownups flip out was the most fun for me,” said Korine.

Larry Clark, director of Kids. Photograph: Sarah Lee/The Guardian

“I think everyone involved wanted a reaction. Most of the kids in there had been ignored their entire lives, so it was exciting.”

The shock may have been a thrill, but for Korine and Fitzpatrick it was also inexplicable. “Everything about Kids seemed highly normal to me. It was just the first time that it had ever been seen on screen,” said Korine.

Fitzpatrick agreed: “The surprise was that people thought it was crazy, because for me – outside of the sex – it depicted what was going on in my life. It wasn’t that crazy to me.”

It was also surprising because for the young cast, filming was just a great way to spend the dog days of a New York summer. “It was kind of the best summer camp you can imagine,” said Fitzpatrick.

“Kids felt like a family affair. Rosario’s parents would be on the set all the time. Kids who weren’t shooting that day would come hang out because it was something to do. We were generally just skateboarding all over the city anyway, so the film gave us a destination.”

“We were just broke-ass kids trying to do something cool,” said Fitzpatrick. Controversy creates headlines, though, and the film still raises eyebrows. “It seems to have somehow tapped into something,” said Korine, “It’s 20 years now. We were all kids. And we’re still talking about it.”

Korine and Fitzpatrick along with Chloë Sevigny and Rosario Dawson were able to leverage the film into successful careers (co-stars Justin Pierce and Harold Hunter both died young). They no longer hang out in the same circles or on the same street corners, but Kids will always bind them.

“We all grew up and have our own lives, but we still have Kids,” said Fitzpatrick, who believes the Brooklyn Academy of Music event – a screening and Q&A with Korine, Clark, Dawson, Sevigny and Fitzpatrick – is the first time they will all be in the same room in about 15 years. “That’s the one thing that will always connect us. There’s a mutual respect that we pulled that off.”

The 20th anniversary screening of Kids takes place at BAM on 25 June.