WALKING AN INVISIBLE DOG

Nick Feitel / Gay City News / May 1, 2008

Harmony Korine's screenwriting career began only after he dropped out of the NYU program he entered to learn the craft. Stories about his relationship to NYU range all over the map from his having rejected business school to pursue his dreams in film, to his having dropped out after three days to do drugs in Washington Square Park, to his never having attended at all.

When I sat down recently with Korine, his account was more prosaic.

"Well, I was just broke, man," he explained. "That's pretty much the story plain and simple. I was living off-campus in Queens commuting in to school every day so I didn't have any friends really at NYU, since every other freshman lived in the dorms. It was great though. I ended up just watching movies in the library and hanging out in Washington Square Park. Eventually, it just wasn't worth it to come back."

His time spent in the park has given way to another story - that he met Larry Clark, with whom he would make Kids (1995), when the photographer-turned-filmmaker approached a group of skateboarders Korine was with and asked which of them could write a screenplay. As the tale goes, Korine raised his hand.

Kids is a grimy look at punksters in New York City screwing, drinking, doing drugs, and carrying out other deeds unimaginable to their parents, who remain steadfastly clueless. The film is stylized in its approach and over-the-top, which gave it is trademark shock value, but also sincere in its approach to issues such as HIV and teen drug use. The film launched the acting careers of Rosario Dawson and Chloe Sevigny and established the filmmaking credentials of Korine and Clark.

Korine was instantly heralded a wunderkind, living the NYU screenwriting dream. Gummo (1997), his next film, which he directed, was even less narrative than the cluttered rush of "Kids," aiming in general terms to explain Midwestern malaise. Its spontaneous scenes, jumping and cutting almost at random with patterns hard to discern, often keyed off an emotion or an image. An intern who worked on the film described the experience as horrifying, since Korine would "see a rain cloud and declare that it must be chased and chase it we did."

Mainstream recognition eluded Korine, but critical acclaim did not, though that was not universal. Filmmaker Werner Herzog declared him "the last foot-soldier of cinema." Director Gus Van Sant said he wished he "could make a film that good." In contrast, the Times' Janet Maslin called the film "the worst movie of the year," deriding Korine for his "willful stupidity."

When I asked Korine what was going through his head when he made the movie, he responded confrontationally: "That's the problem people have with filmmaking, man. I don't think about making films; I make them. Thinking about is only going to drag you down."

Korine next made julien donkey-boy (1999), an American entry into Lars Von Trier's Dogme 95 movement of films shot sparely and minimally, using only low-quality digital video. The film was interesting and Herzog starred, but critics responded less enthusiastically than they had before. After its release, Korine disappeared in a way; the one-time skater kid in Washington Square Park now often showed up in the tabloids strung out, saying wild things.

The last time I heard of him he was trying to make a movie called Fight Harm, in which another admirer of his films, the magician David Blaine, would film Korine trying to fight various people and losing. More easy laughter came when I asked Korine what became of that film.

"Yeah, the idea behind Fight Harm was to have a continuous loop of violence, but to put myself in there, to risk myself," he said. "However, I found out in the filming of the movie that most fights are pretty short. Also, I was getting the crap beaten out of me. We stopped filming when a bouncer pinned me to the sidewalk and broke my ankles."

If there's a theme that ties Harmony Korine's films together, it's a desperate sense of humor employed to survive desperate times. The characters are always so flawed that they can't help but make jokes of themselves. In his new film, Mister Lonely, which comes more than five years since his last screenplay, Ken Park (2002), and nearly nine years after julien donkey-boy, the characters are all impersonators of famous people who exist as themselves and pastiches simultaneously. The film is, alternately, screwball and sad, awkward and ugly, visually interesting and sometimes, utterly disgraceful.

It may prove yet, as well, to be a summer romance of sorts. Two beautiful actors, Diego Luna and Samantha Morton, are romantic leads and the film has flourishes of whimsy and coincidence. But if you're going to a Korine film expecting anything other than a Korine, you're bound to be sorely disappointed.

Mister Lonely is filled with the particular sort of errata that he populates his films with. Instead of a simple "boy meets girl" framework, the filmmaker instead chooses a less conventional "post-plastic surgery / skin treatments-Michael-Jackson-impersonator-meets-Marilyn-Monroe-impersonator- in-Paris" framework.

Michael (Diego Luna) is the Jackson impersonator who works busking in a Parisian park, though none too successfully. Michael's routine is interrupted one day by Marilyn (Samantha Morton), a Marilyn Monroe impersonator so taken with Michael's "Michael" that she invites him to live in her secret celebrity impersonator colony off the Scottish coast.

There's also a wholly separate and unrelated plot somewhere about Werner Herzog and a planeload of nuns.

In a Korine film, the action is not required to make sense in the service of the bizarre. Gummo and julien donkey-boy handled narrative conventions like a dirty dish-rag, at a remove and with their noses held, preferring instead to do, well, whatever Korine wanted.

The result has often been mixed and Mister Lonely is no exception. Some moments feel genuine, even in improbable circumstances. Others, like a soon-to-be-notorious painted-egg reunion at Michael's flat, are, inescapably, just terrible.

What is easily praiseworthy here is the acting. Both of his excellent stars have been severely underplayed in movies recently. Luna was, along with his best friend Gael Garcia Bernal, the best part of the tour-de-force Y Tu Mamá También. In that film, he note for note matches his now more successful friend.

Morton is even more accomplished, a two-time Academy Award-nominee, whose performance in Woody Allen's Sweet and Lowdown should be textbook for aspiring film stars. Korine lets her be beautiful, lets her have fun and enjoy the screen. She responds only modestly but the result is a pleasure.

Korine today bears little resemblance to the gaunt, dirty skater kid from Washington Square Park. He's bigger, fatter, and, the day I met him, was dressed in Lacoste and a blazer. When asked questions, he often offered little by way of response, seeming not to want to concentrate on the past, instead saying something that sounded off-hand, even ridiculous.

Explaining the impetus for Mister Lonely, he said, "I was involved with a cult and I got into a fight with a member whose wife was autistic. She gave me her dog leash of her 'invisible dog' when I left. I went home and hung up the collar and two weeks later, I heard a bark and I knew it was time to make a new movie."

Mister Lonely is not for everyone. It has a Charlie Chaplin who looks like a ragged Hitler, jumping nuns, and a pretty dead-on Buckwheat. But if you're willing to take a chance and see something that might be wonderful, and terrible, then maybe - who knows? - you'll fall in love.