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KODAK LECTURE SERIES: HARMONY KORINERyerson University, Canada / April 1, 2005
On April 1, 2005, Harmony Korine appeared as a guest speaker at Ryerson University in Canada as part of the school's ongoing Kodak Lecture Series program. The interview, which lasted 150 minutes, was conducted by filmmaker/journalist Bruce LaBruce. Following LaBruce's introduction... Bruce LaBruce: Without further adieu I'm going to invite Harmony onstage and begin our discussion. Warm round of applause please... (Harmony walks out on stage and greets LaBruce before sitting down. LaBruce and Korine are sitting across from each other, in front of a table) LaBruce: This is way too "Inside the Actor's Studio." Or Brian Langaham, do you know about Brian Langaham? He's a famous Toronto interviewer who passed away a couple of years ago, who asked very detailed, personal questions and embarrassed his subjects... I'll try to do that as well. Welcome to Toronto. Harmony Korine: Thanks. LaBruce: I should also mention Harmony and I have been friends for about ten years, I guess. We met at Sundance in 1995, I think, when Harmony was there with Kids and I was there with one of my movies. It was the world premiere of Kids. Did we get drunk during the screening? Well during the screening we smuggled in a bottle of tequila that Gus Van Sant had and I remember getting quite drunk during the screening. It was a good movie. (Audience laughs. Harmony is smiling) I'm going to ask you a few questions about Kids and then we'll watch a couple of clips. I just watched all of your movies again and it kind of struck me that when [Kids] came out ten years ago people really thought it was some kind of shocking expose of the new youth of today and it was almost like a documentary of this kind of new youth scene. But actually, looking at it now, it seems like it's really a very carefully constructed narrative about a group of kids in New York, a very specific group of kids that you knew. So I'm just wondering if you have seen the movie (laughs), since you told me earlier that you haven't seen Ken Park yet, and if you've seen it lately and what your thoughts are about it. Korine: Ah... LaBruce: Is that too general? Korine: No, it's... (laughing and mumbling). Yeah, I haven't seen that, I don't really watch my films so much so I haven't seen it really since it was made... I forget what you asked... (Audience laughs) LaBruce: It was seen as like a slice of life, like documentary or something but it actually seems like a very constructed narrative so... which is it? Korine: Ah, I think it has, well... [extends one arm out] I think it straddles... (starts laughing). (Audience laughs) LaBruce: Go on, go on, go on. I'm listening. Korine: Well, I think probably both... It has some of that. LaBruce: Ok, and how long have you been sober now? (Harmony and audience laugh) LaBruce: We'll get into that later. That was kind of a stupid question, so let's run a clip. (Audience laughs) LaBruce: This is the first clip from Kids. (A clip from Kids is shown on the screen behind them. It is the scene where Telly takes money from his mother's room. You can hear Harmony laughing when Casper says, "My girl's got mad flavor, heavy flow.") LaBruce: So one thing I'm curious about, watching that, is the dialogue seems really natural and some of it improvised. How much of it is actually written and how much of it is improvised, that whole process, and were you around during the whole making of that film? Korine: Well it's probably about an 80 to 20 percent split. Like 80 percent on this side... LaBruce: For scripted, 80 percent scripted? Korine: Yeah. LaBruce: Because that line he says, about how his arm looks like "Buckwheat in a headlock." That sounds like something you would write. Korine: But he (Justin Pierce) made that up. LaBruce: But you're friends with Justin. Korine: Justin's dead, man. LaBruce: Yeah, I know. But you were friends with him, right? Korine: Yeah. LaBruce: So he would know like your sensibility or your sense of humor, that's how he would come up with a line that... Korine: Probably. LaBruce: Yeah, so that whole process of making the movie, were you there for Kids everyday on set? Korine: Yeah. Well what happened was I left for New York, and when I moved there... LaBruce: In what year? Korine: I just moved there really quickly, but I was actually in the business department... LaBruce: Of what? Korine: (laughing) I forget. (Audience laughs) LaBruce: (laughing) Of school? Korine: Well I meant I was supposed to be in the writing department but I ended up taking business classes... And so there were these kids that would hang out in the park, in the... LaBruce: Washington Square Park. Korine: Yeah, and... I thought they were interesting and I started to hang out with them, and we became friends, we were friends and... LaBruce: Did that include Justin? Korine: Yeah, all those guys... LaBruce: And Leo [Fitzpatrick] as well? Korine: Yeah, he came in later but he was part of that scene at the time, I guess it was like 1993. LaBruce: Justin Pierce, who plays the guy who was sucking on the tampon, committed suicide three years ago... Korine: About four years ago, it's horrible ... When I wrote this, I'd never written a script before and I wrote the movie in like a week or something. LaBruce: Did you write it while you were in New York? Korine: Yeah, and I wrote it specifically for these people, like it was tailored, like the characters, a lot of them were named after the specific people, so the dialogue... LaBruce: Like Harold [Hunter], who plays Harold? Korine: Yeah (laughs). LaBruce: He's hot. What's he doing now? Korine: He's got a big schlong. (Audience laughs) LaBruce: He's the one during the swimming pool scene, where he's like [sways hips] moving his hips like this and you can hear his dick slapping his thighs even though you can't see it. Korine: I love that. LaBruce: Yeah, that was my favorite scene. No... (laughs). (Audience laughs. Harmony laughs) LaBruce: But anyway, the script... Korine: I mean it was pretty much like, I was pretty good at listening to people talk and kind of figuring out cadences, the rhythms of speech and stuff and so the dialogue was really pretty close and I was trying to write dialogue that was accurate... It was pretty much written with those voices in my head, it was tailored for those specific characters. LaBruce: I'm also curious about that process, for example with a scene like [the one that was just shown], would you have been there off camera? Korine: Yeah, I was there the whole movie. It was Larry's first film, I was just out of high school, I knew I wanted to make movies and it was good for me, I got to watch the whole process. I got to learn technical stuff... LaBruce: His camera man was Eric Edwards... Korine: Yeah. LaBruce: He shoots a lot of Gus Van Sant's films. Korine: It was good. In writing it I used a lot of films like Pixote and Los Olvidados as kind of models, and we knew we wanted to use the real kids. LaBruce: Were you influenced by La Luna at all? Korine: La Luna's one of my favorite films, but... actually it's funny because I just rewatched that a couple of days ago. It's one of my favorite movies but it's not really a direct influence on this movie. LaBruce: I would think it would be, you'd seen it though when you... Korine: Yeah. LaBruce: Kids in a way reminds me very much of Bertolucci's La Luna, especially the parts with the kids. Like when the kid is shooting up heroin, and Jill Clayburgh, his mother, think he's getting an innocent kiss from a girlfriend but she's actually shooting him up. Which is made in 1979, but that seems to me like a real precursor to Kids, whether it was conscious... Korine: Yeah, maybe, you know, it's one of my favorite films, and the couch with his mother is terrific, where she jerks him off was great. LaBruce: Yeah, exactly. (Audience laughs) LaBruce: Another one of my favorite scenes. This leads me to my next question. So you were hanging out with these kids in Washington Square Park and it wasn't really your scene to begin with but you were really paying attention, like you said, to the cadences... Korine: Yeah, well I used to ride skateboards. LaBruce: So it became your scene, basically. Korine: Yeah, well they were my friends, that's where I met Chloe [Sevigny] at the time and all those guys. The first people I met when I went to New York. LaBruce: And Larry was hanging out there as well? Korine: Yeah. LaBruce: Is that where you met him? Korine: Yeah, in the park. (Slight break. Harmony starts laughing) LaBruce: And were you afraid he might be a pedophile? (laughs) Korine: Ah, no (laughing). LaBruce: One thing I really like about your movies is that you combine this old school vaudeville and borscht belt kind of humor and dialogue with these modern kids, who were like skateboarding and glue sniffing and all this other stuff. Which seems like a really unlikely combination of things. You have a line in Kids, you're in Kids, you have a cameo when Chloe Sevigny goes to a party she finds out she's just been infected with HIV by Leo Fitzpatrick, the Virgin Surgeon, and she's looking for him, and you have a line to Chloe, where you give her a heavy tranquilizer and you say, "You'll be kissing Leo Gorcey on the chops in heaven." Korine: Oh, yeah. LaBruce: Right? Korine: Yeah. LaBruce: Like nobody watching the film would know who Leo Gorcey is, right, who was one of the Dead End Kids and all the Hollywood... Korine: Bowery Boys. Actually, I said that because my dad used to show me all the Bowery Boys movies when I was growing up. I loved Huntz Hall, he was one of my favorites. I saw that in a lot of ways as a precursor to that film, so it was just a kind of offhand reference. LaBruce: To Kids? Kids is like a Dead End Kids remake. Korine: Yeah. Angels with Dirty Faces. LaBruce: And also in Gummo, the glue sniffing character, Tummler, does a Jimmy Durante imitation. Korine: Yeah, that movie, I don't know if you want to get into that, but that movie is... because I'd been reading a lot of Milton Berle joke books and before that I'd wanted to make the Henny Youngman biography, it was called Take My Life, Please! and I wanted to make... LaBruce: Ah... Korine: (Laughs) But he died. LaBruce: He wanted to make it into a film Korine: Well, in the book he said, it's strange, when I was reading it it said that he kept his phone number in the phone book so he could play at bar mitzvahs if you wanted to call him up. So I looked his phone number up and I started calling him and he died a few days later... (cracks up laughing) LaBruce: Any connection? Korine: But, yeah, he was great. He was the guy that said, "My luck is so bad that aspirin gives me headaches." (laughs) LaBruce: Right, right. I can see you being influenced by his oeuvre... But what is it about the borscht belt and vaudeville, because you're also really into tap-dancing and banjos, black face and all those sort of things... (Some reaction from the audience) LaBruce: Do we have a banjo fan over there? Um, what is it about, I mean... First of all it's a very deeply jewish tradition, like the borscht belt. You're jewish, right? ...Or half? Korine: Well there's some of that stuff in there. LaBruce: Yeah, so... But I'm just curious because it seems like such a weird juxtaposition with the kind of subjects that you have. Korine: I always liked it. I can appreciate a person that can paint themselves black and go out on stage and do a dance and sing a jingle, and I just like that. (Harmony laughs. Audience begins laughing) LaBruce: Ok. It's entertaining. Korine: Yeah, it's really good. I used to... Yeah, Red Buttons was another guy... LaBruce: Red Buttons is a trooper. But, yeah, I mean, it's part of the tradition that they were out there every night, workhorses... total workhorses. Just entertaining... Korine: Another thing is it's rare... Actually, I got Tummler's name; Tummler was what they used to call the low-level comedian in the early vaudeville, the warm-up guys, who was like a dry cleaner on the weekends, an exterminator, then he'd go and warm up... LaBruce: ... He'd warm up the main act. That's hilarious because you have that scene in Gummo where Tummler is doing a vaudeville bit for Max Perlich. He does it really well, actually. Korine: Yeah, that was that. LaBruce: Ok, so let's show the next clip from Kids (Scene shown is where Jenny, played by Chloe Sevigny, is riding in a taxi shortly after she is told she's HIV+) LaBruce: So I assume that was pretty much a scripted scene. Korine: Yeah, that was scripted. That guy (the taxi driver) was actually a dentist, he was a rabbi and he was a dentist. When I had my wisdom teeth, they were compacted, a really bad condition, and it was 19.99 (dollars) a tooth at this place and this guy removed my wisdom teeth in this, it was like a basketball court that was separated by like a partition. I'll never forget, I woke up in the middle of the operation and he had his foot on my sweater (kicks foot and starts laughing)... LaBruce: What do you mean he had his foot on your sweater? Korine: No, no. He was going like that (puts foot out and pulls hands back). And when I woke up, this is the God's honest truth, I woke up and there was footprint on my shirt, but he was this really good dentist. (Audience laughs) Korine: I remember his wife made rice pudding, they gave it to me on the way out. But I liked the way he spoke and, yeah, we cast him. LaBruce: For me, and I maybe want to get into this later, but some of your influences, it has a real Cassavetes feel to me in that scene. You often use people that are life, like random people: relatives, just people you would run into. Often they just strike up conversations, like in Cassavetes films where somebody'll strike up... Korine: Like the beginning on Minnie and Moskowitz is the best... LaBruce: The guy in the bar? Korine: Yeah, what's his name, from The World's Greatest Sinner... man, that guy's so good... ah, Tim Carey. LaBruce: Yeah, right, right. Who was also in, ah, Paths of Glory. Korine: Yeah, Paths of Glory, that guy's great. LaBruce: It's just like this random, kind of running into these people who are cast, who are actually just these people you would find in your life. So you do that with all your... Korine: Yeah. LaBruce: Also, I like this scene because it's like what we were talking about earlier, this clash almost of the young generation and the older generation and [the taxi driver], he has this world view that's more simplistic and knife of optimistic in a way; where she is sitting in the back of the cab and she's just found out she's been infected with HIV and you know... He couldn't conceive, you know, he still thinks she's worried about her boyfriend or something. Korine: That's the way he was. LaBruce: So he didn't really read the script, necessarily. (Bruce starts laughing, as does Harmony) Korine: No, he was a good guy. LaBruce: He seems like a nice guy. Um, so, that's Chloe Sevigny, who you were involved in a relationship with for quite a few years. She was, you might say, your muse for quite a few years. You met her in the park, or you met her before... Korine: (laughing) I met her in the park. LaBruce: In the park? Korine: (laughing) It was by this [inaudible, possibly says, "by this urinal."]. (Bruce laughs. Audience laughs) LaBruce: No, I'm just curious. You knew her before. It was because of you, or you were a friend of hers or in a relationship with her, that she was cast in the film. Korine: Yeah, just like the others. I mean, we didn't cast her until... We were gonna try to use an actress, I was trying to get Bette Middler to play the part. LaBruce: (laughs) Get out! Korine: (laughing) No, I'm just joking. LaBruce: That was the musical version. Korine: But we were trying to find an actress. Before that we'd actually cast this girl from Canada, but, ah... LaBruce: Who? Would I know her? Korine: Mia Kirshner. LaBruce: Oh. Korine: And something happened, it just didn't work out. LaBruce: And was Rosario Dawson already... Korine: No, it's funny. I was walking with Larry, scouting locations in the lower East side. I saw this girl on a stoop. I saw her just sitting there. I think she was eating a banana or something, and I thought she had really great star potential, and... (laughs). So we called her in. LaBruce: It wasn't Schwabs drug store? No... nobody gets that reference. So that was her film debut as well. Korine: Yeah. LaBruce: And Chloe. Korine: Literally, it was everyone's. It was everybody. LaBruce: Everybody's debut. Korine: Yeah. LaBruce: Including the dentist. I'm curious also about your relationship with Larry because you've had a sort of up-and-down kind of relationship. During the making of the movie, was it a real collaborative thing and was it difficult because you hadn't directed a film before at that point, but did you feel like you wanted to be directing? Korine: No, you know, it's weird... LaBruce: He hadn't directed a film either. Korine: ... And also, to be honest with you, I would never have written that movie had it not been for... It wasn't a movie that I was dying to tell. That movie wouldn't have existed if it wasn't something that [Larry] wanted to make. I had just never written anything before and it was kind of an experiment. My relationship with Larry is a little complicated. I think he's a great photographer, I really do, he's one of my favorite artists, and I learnt a lot from him, especially at that time in my life. LaBruce: Are you still friends? Korine: You know, I wish the guy good, I hope he has happy trails. LaBruce: Is it one of those things, it happens quite often, where people get into very tense artistic collaborations and then it kind of blows out. Korine: There may be that in there, and also personal things, and life gets crazy, and Jesus, you don't know which way to turn, next thing you know you get smacked in the face (laughs). LaBruce: I hear you. (Audience laughs) LaBruce: We may be getting ahead of ourselves, but with Ken Park, which you told me you haven't seen, was that an old script... Korine: Ken Park, this is what happened. Ken Park was written right after Kids, before we had gotten the financing for Kids. [Larry] realized I could write pretty well and that I understood a certain type of vernacular, the teenage vernacular. So he wrote down five things he wanted to see on a napkin in red ink. LaBruce: Because he says though that those are his things, basically, his stories. Korine: (waves hand) Fine. LaBruce: No, no, I mean... Korine: No, no, sure. (sort of shrugs) LaBruce: No, he said... In the credits it says: "Based on stories and characters by Larry Clark." Korine: I mean, that's true. They were things that he wanted to see. Five images that he wanted to see, and with those images he wanted me to construct a basic narrative, like a certain kind of narrative. I wasn't interested in telling a kind of elliptical narrative, I wanted to deconstruct some stories. At that point, it was written literally right after I wrote Kids. LaBruce: Like immediately after. Korine: Yeah, and that was... LaBruce: Has Kids come out, it was somewhat a success, and then you wrote Ken Park. Korine: No, it was written before we even got the money to do Kids. LaBruce: Oh, I see... It's kind of interesting because Kids and Ken Park, in a way, they're very narrative. They actually have very complex narratives. Korine: Yeah. LaBruce: Sophisticated, I would say. It's kind of amazing that you had never written anything because those two scripts have a narrative sophistication that is kind of remarkable. But in another way, judging by the films you've made as a filmmaker, they don't seem like movies, like you say, that you would make because they're too narrative, really, to interest you. Korine: Yeah, probably. LaBruce: I mean, in some ways they're like conventional narrative. Korine: Yeah, [Larry's] always been more of a straight storyteller. LaBruce: Because he made that Melanie Griffith movie... You didn't see that one, Another Day in Paradise? Korine: No. LaBruce: Ok, so let's show one more clip from Kids and we'll talk a little bit more about that before we go on to Gummo. (Scene shown is where the four young boys are sitting on a couch smoking, which is intercut with Casper laying in the bath tub) LaBruce: Was that a scripted scene? Korine: Man, that's... (impersonating boy in scene) "Saved his life," I think he calls him a "saver." (laughs) And he says, "Saved his life." I couldn't write like that. LaBruce: You couldn't write like that. So obviously they weren't actually smoking pot, but they're actually seasoned pot smokers. I mean, you can tell by the way they're... The reason I showed that clip is that it really does seem like a modern version of Spanky and Our Gang, or the Dead End Kids. Even the way it's shot, the way it's framed, they always had shots like that in those movies. Korine: Yeah, with that. For me, that [scene] is probably one of the best things in the movie, or something I can remember the best from watching that film. And it kind of came from observing that in real life and then sort of setting up the situation in a certain way, then letting it happen. Documenting it... LaBruce: We'll have to watch the time here because we've got a lot to get through. So we're going to go on to Gummo, which was Harmony's directorial debut, and again I've just chosen three clips. So this clip is from Gummo, which was made in 1997... Yep. (Clip shown is the scene with Korine and the dwarf, Bryant Crenshaw, sitting on a couch) Korine: Jesus, that's painful for me to watch that (laughs). LaBruce: Ok. Explain. (Audience laughs) Korine: Oh, man. LaBruce: No, I'm sorry to torture you like this, but you know, old friends can do that. Um, so was that scripted? I'm just curious. Korine: Ah... LaBruce: Do you remember, do you recall? Korine: You know, I don't think that scene is. It's published, I can't remember, I mean, you could look it up (laughs). LaBruce: One thing that you said was (looking through papers)... Ok, here's the quote, in the commentary track for Gummo on the CD: "On the last day of shooting I pulled my pants down and threw my sister through a plate-glass window and vomited in a yellow bucket and someone stabbed me with a little red army pocket knife." You also claim that a lot of the movie was shot on the last day of filming because you were waiting for rain. Korine: That's true. We shot almost half the film on the last day. It was like a two-month shoot, but the last day we shot half the movie. (laughing) It was a spectacular day. LaBruce: Did you go over-time? Korine: Yeah, it was like a twenty or twenty-five day shoot. But I had been waiting for it to rain, and we shot it where I grew up in Nashville and it just didn't rain. LaBruce: Was it shot in Nashville? Korine: Yeah. In this place called the Nations. LaBruce: It was supposed to be set in Ohio, which had just been hit by a tornado. Korine: Right. Xenia, Ohio. Yeah, so we shot half the movie that last day. LaBruce: Including that scene? Korine: Yeah, and in that scene, what happened was, obviously in order to get to a place where I could be that honest with my emotions I needed to be in a certain state (laughs), and it's hard to direct in that state, so we saved that for last. It was the very last scene. What happened was I was really excited when I was done, it was a strange feeling, it was a strange scene. That kid, his name is Little Bryan, they call him Bushwick, like Bushwick Bill... LaBruce: No, who's that? Korine: From the Geto Boys. He's a dwarf, got his eye shot out. LaBruce: Oh, Ok. Korine: Anyway, he's a good rapper. But I had gone to school with [Bryan] for a long time... LaBruce: With, with... (points at screen) Korine: Little Bryan. LaBruce: In Nashville. Korine: Yeah. So Little Bryan was a big influence on me growing up. He was a smooth guy, I remember in the 2nd Grade he had big girls giving him head (laughs). In like school, after-school suspension. And it was freaky to see a little black guy like that getting a big woman to suck him off. LaBruce: I think he's really sexy. Korine: Yeah, that guy's great. And, ah, he had a real appeal. LaBruce: Obviously he's not really gay [like his character in Gummo]. Korine: No. LaBruce: Or is he bi-? Korine: Well, for you maybe. LaBruce: (laughs) Are you still in touch with him? Korine: Yeah, I saw him the other day, I gave him twenty bucks. It's weird because... (Audience laughs) Korine: (laughs) It's strange, this is the God's honest truth, I live in Nashville now and I was driving around looking for a house to buy. Again, it was raining, and I saw this dwarf on this hill (laughs), and it was him, and I hadn't seen him in years so I drove up and he was really excited, he said he gets residual cheques because he's a member of SAG. But, yeah, I gave him twenty bucks, he needed money. LaBruce: Does he still look good? Korine: You know, I think that was his peak, to be honest with you. (Audience laughs) Korine: So that was the last scene, and I was really out-of-it and I was really excited, it was like four in the morning. I think my sister went up to give me a hug to congratulate me on finishing the film, and something happened and I threw her through a window. And I think it was this grip who looked like Mr. Clean, he's this bald guy, and he took a pocket knife and he stabbed me in the (touches side), I think he thought we were fighting... And they threw me into a car and drove me away and they all went to this strip club called The Mirage. It was down in Nashville, it was kind of like an all-black strip club, really hardcore, like real ghetto shit. But I passed out, so I wasn't there, but the wrap party was there, and that (laughs), that was the way it ended. LaBruce: Cary Woods produced that movie, right? And you guys party a lot. Was he very hands on? Korine: No, no. He was actually really hand off. Most people around me are hands off. (Audience laughs) LaBruce: Because obviously, when you had whatever you had, several million dollars... Korine: 1.5. LaBruce: 1.5. Even with that amount of money usually you have producers breathing down your neck, going, "Why haven't you been shooting for the last month?" Korine: We were shooting, it was just a different type of movie. I wanted to make a movie with images coming from all directions. I wanted to make a different kind of film. With what I wanted to do I wasn't so concerned with how it was photographed or where it came from, the source. I wanted to give everyone around me cameras: super-8 cameras, polaroid cameras, video... 35mm, obviously. Basically I saw it like a book of photos or something, like when you go to someone's house and they show you photographs, like family photos, and there's a picture of like your mom on the toilet or your father (laughing) visiting a statue somewhere or like your dog that's dead, but they're kind of random. So I was thinking there's like a narrative that develops through this, a cohesion, that was the idea of the movie. I just wanted to set things up, just document it, and make sense of it later. LaBruce: So did you have other people shooting with different cameras? Korine: Yeah, all the time. I used to say it's like a mistakeist art form. I was just as interested in the mistakes as I were with the things that were pre-planned. It's like chemicals, I wanted to put them in a bottle, these different chemicals, and shake it up. Document the explosion. LaBruce: Well that leads to my next question. It's kind of nerdy, but in the beginning there's a scene with a boy and a girl in a car, and the guy's feeling the girl's breasts and says he feels a lump in her titty. The scene seems to be more conventionally set up, so I was just going to ask if that was shot early on and that was something you abandoned, that kind of style of shooting, because it seems to be shot differently. Korine: Yeah, that was one of the first scenes we shot. The very first scene I ever shot in my life of any movie was the scene where they were shooting the rabbit, where the kid says, "Suck my dick." LaBruce: Right, I love that scene. Korine: Yeah, and then the second one was that scene. That was a kid I'd gotten from Sally Jesse Raphael, the glue sniffer, and I didn't know if he was capable of acting, you know, and he was starring in my film and I'd never seen him act before. LaBruce: That's Tummler? Korine: Yeah, the Tummler character. So I was staking my entire life on this glue sniffer... (Audience laughs) Korine: ... and that was a really stressful scene because it took like fifteen... Writing that scene I thought, 'Oh boy, that would be really insane.' I remember feeling this girl's titty when I was probably 13 or 14 and the whole time I just kept thinking how strange it'd be, because I had a grandmother that had just died of cancer, breast cancer. So when I was feeling it I just kept thinking, 'Woah, what if there was a lump in there.' (laughs) Cause it's horrible, but also you would be turned on. Not by the lump (laughs), but by the circumstance. (Audience is laughing) LaBruce: That's a good metaphor for your movies, actually. Korine: But, yeah, that scene was set up... LaBruce: Yeah, it just seems that it took you a long time to set that up, that scene. With lighting, the camera static, and then it seems like you just abandoned that technique. Korine: Well, also, with that movie the idea was that I'd address each scene on its own merits or on its own terms, you know. What I would do is I would go in before I'd film a scene in Gummo and I'd think about how a scene, I'd set it up and watch the actors, I wouldn't give them any direction, I would just let them do it. I would think about how the scene plays out from beginning to end and [what] the most traditional way to photograph it would be. And then I would start to think about it in terms of opposites, maybe, you know. How I can turn it on its head, kind of, visually, maybe. Just let the scene happen the same way but tell it backwards or something. But some scenes I thought just called for really traditional film technique, you know, like a master shot, a close-up, a medium shot. Other scenes you could just do in a single shot, and then there was things that I wanted to get really technical with. LaBruce: Right. Well the film does sort of veer back and forth, like you said, between these almost experimental scenes with still montages and voice over, and then more traditional narrative scenes like when the two boys visit the guy with the mentally challenged sister and have sex with her, which I think is the next clip... (Clip is shown) LaBruce: So, what kind of, I mean... It pissed me off sometimes the way people, like certain people, have called your films really cynical and exploitative, and I just watch that scene and I find it so heartbreaking, you know, and there's an amazing repoire between the actors. You obviously had a real repoire with the actors yourself. And then Janet Maslin wrote in The New York Times that this film is total exploitation, which really hurt the distribution of the film. Before she wrote this article in The New York Times I think it was slated to be released in I don't know how many theaters.. like 100 theaters of something? Korine: Yeah, a decent release. LaBruce: And then the distributors scaled back the distribution of the film. How do you respond to that? Korine: You know, it's hard. The thing is, I realized early on that I'd just make my films, that's it. Like I'd just do what I do, and I try to make them the best I can and all I can do is make it and then put it out there. And hopefully people will see it, any hopefully it'll reach a certain audience but after that it's kind of over. Those reactions... I was a little bit surprised with certain things that were so... Well, they just carried a lot of political weight, you know, and like you said, made it difficult for it to reach an audience. I wanted this movie to play in the malls on a double bill with Titanic. I see now that was a little bit delusional. But still, you make films for people to see. In the end I think I'm just grateful to be able to make the films. Once the movie exists, it's out there, it's permanent. And also, in a weird way, it's ok if someone feels that strongly in a negative way about some of the stuff I do. I don't think there's necessarily a right or wrong, like what you see in that movie and what I see is gonna be completely different than what a Maslin fuck sees. LaBruce: Yeah, but that is irritating when it actually affects the distribution. Korine: Yeah, that was the bad part. They put out only 15 prints or something after that. LaBruce: But then you did go on Letterman to promote the film and Letterman saw the film. I just reread the transcript of that on the Harmony Korine website. It did reach, because of that exposure... it was meant to be a commercial film, basically, or to reach a wider... Korine: Yeah. LaBruce: They were promoting it as... Korine: Yeah, I thought, I was really looking up to Clint Eastwood and I was trying to model myself on a tradition of great American commercial filmmakers with kind of artistry in their repertoire, and I... LaBruce: And it was like a wake-up call, a cruel reality... Korine: Well, you know, it's ok. I remember Herzog, after Janet Maslin said it was the worst movie of the year, worse than 8 Heads in a Duffell Bag, and Herzog called me up and said that was the best thing for, you know, he was really happy and I didn't understand. He was like (imitating Herzog), 'Ziz is great, now it's classic.' (Audience laughs) Korine: But it did, I didn't understand it at the time. LaBruce: What do you think of, incidentally, Diane Arbus? Korine: Yeah, she's great. LaBruce: Because there's scenes in the movie that really remind me of Diane Arbus. Like there's a scene, just a shot of one of the mentally challenged girls just standing in the middle of the frame, and she's just standing there... Korine: Yeah, that was a... LaBruce: That's a direct reference? Korine: Yeah, probably, as direct as I would make something. LaBruce: Yeah. And then, we were talking about the influence of Cassavetes earlier, it's kind of like this... I mean, from him you take this kitchen sink reality, where he uses people in his life, like his relatives and familiar friends and houses... Korine: Yeah, it's weird, Cassavetes is almost like part of the air you breathe now. His influence is great. His influence on so many filmmakers today is just mega, but, more than Cassavetes for the same sort of reasons was [the influence of] a director called Alan Clarke, which for me is the most important filmmaker. LaBruce: Who was Scottish. Who wrote... made the film Elephant... Korine: Yeah, he made Elephant, but he made a bunch of films. He made this movie Christine, which people don't talk about, it's one of my favorite movies. He wasn't a writer, he was mainly just a filmmaker. He made stuff for the BBC in the 70s and 80s for television. He had a really great sense to him and he worked with actors and non-actors, and his performances from actors was incredible. And most of his movies were shot on steady cam in this kind of continuous, flowing way... But what I'm saying is his movies are just as important to me as Cassavetes. LaBruce: Right, and just incidentally, when Gus Van Sant made Elephant you had shown him Alan Clarke's movie of the same name. Korine: Yeah. The original Elephant was just executions, just consisted of set-up executions. LaBruce: Right. Korine: And I was talking to Gus about how much I like that. LaBruce: Ok. Just, ah, this is just a total tangent but there was a rumor you were supposed to... You were on Letterman three times? Korine: Yeah. LaBruce: And then the forth time you were supposed to go on but they kept bumping you? Korine: Yeah, that's true. LaBruce: They bumped you a couple of times, and the third time, this is what I heard, the world's biggest pumpkin or something. Korine: (laughs) No, to be honest with you, it wasn't that they kept bumping me, I was just really superstitious. So when I went there I saw, the last time, it was the forth time or something, there was, what's the band... Van Halen was drinking non-alcoholic beer in the green room and practicing jump kicks. (Audience laughs) LaBruce: You mean David Lee Roth? Korine: No, it was Sammy Hagar, I think. I just got this weird vibe, you know, this strange feeling. So I told the producers I just didn't think tonight was the night. LaBruce: But what about, I heard that you shoved Meryl Streep. Korine: That was the last... LaBruce: You shoved Meryl Streep in the green room? (There is some giggling in the audience. Harmony doesn't answer the question for a moment) Korine: Well, you know, it wasn't like a punch. (Bruce and audience laugh) LaBruce: I didn't say it was. Korine: Well... Look, the last time I came in he said something about, I think it was, he made this comment, something about Meryl Streep and me being on the same bill. It was an odd comment. So I said to the producer, 'I'm gonna go out, I'll probably get David tonight,' and he thought I was threatening him. (some laughter from audience) LaBruce: Which you were, but not in a menacing way... Korine: But then, ah, what's her name... Meryl Streep said something to me, and I just didn't like what she had to say. And, to be honest with you, I didn't understand what gave her the right to talk to me like that, and, you know, I wasn't even a fan of hers. (Audience laughs) LaBruce: She's very actorly. Korine: You know, that's alright, it just wasn't my thing at the time. LaBruce: Ok, and Letterman said... Korine: So anyway, I just left. I was feeling really weird and also I didn't want to use make-up. LaBruce: Letterman said, 'That kid's a hothead.' Korine: Yeah, 'That kid's a hothead.' LaBruce: 'He's not coming back on this show...' Korine: Well, you know, she pushed my buttons (laughs). LaBruce: Ok, well, shit happens. We're gonna show one more scene from Gummo. (Clip shown is from the chair wrestling scene) LaBruce: So I'm surprised that chair-wrestling never really caught on after that. Because you also have a chair-wrestling scene in julien. Korine: Yeah, that's one of my favorite sports. LaBruce: I think we can see your same modus operandi there. Or some people may recognizes the guy that told the little rhyme is Mark Gonzales, the skateboard... Korine: The guy that fights the chair. LaBruce: Oh, really? The guy that fights the chair? Korine: Yeah. LaBruce: Oh, that's Mark. Korine: Yeah. LaBruce: Mark Gonzales, the skateboarder, artist... Korine: Yeah, he's a good friend of mine, but also a hero growing up. He's one of the best skaters, a really good artist, but he... LaBruce: He lives... Korine: He lives in New York now. He was living in Los Angeles LaBruce: You just brought him in for the movie? Korine: Yeah, and what happened with Mark was he was one of the greatest chair wrestlers that I've ever seen. He would fight chairs like most people'd fight, well I don't know how most people fight but he would fight chairs really well. LaBruce: So you got it from him? Korine: Yeah, that was from him, because Mark was a great chair wrestler. I'd actually seen times where the chair had beat him, which is even stranger than that. So I flew him in and the other guys we met in a bowling alley, and we filmed that on the last day. LaBruce: Yeah, so you were friends with him and Little Bryan and the rest were... Korine: Yeah, I just wanted to... I see things in my head in a certain way and one of the things I always do is just imagine what certain people maybe from different places, with specific talents, and, you know... LaBruce: In a different context. Korine: Yeah, and I can create the context. But the thing is this guy taught me these chords of a guitar once, and they were like these magic chords. You know, I don't really play guitar but it really helped my technique. Now, I can't really repeat what I was taught, but I use a similar technique when I'm setting up these scenes. (Some laughter from the audience) LaBruce: Based on the magic chords? Korine: Well, just like the stuff this guy taught me. I use that technique in just about everything I do nowadays. (Audience laughs) LaBruce: Sounds a little arcane Korine: Well, this guy was a really good guitar player. LaBruce: Is there a mystical element to your work, would you say? Korine: Ah... LaBruce: Do you believe in mysticism? Korine: What do you mean? LaBruce: I don't know. Korine: Like an Enya video? (Audience laughs) LaBruce: I think you've answered that. Ok, and just before we leave Gummo could you talk a little about working with your DP for Gummo, Jean-Yves Escoffier, who died prematurely of a heart attack a couple of years ago. Korine: No, not of a heart attack. He died of a... Escoffier to me was the greatest DP. I mean, he was just... LaBruce: Tell us what he also shot. Korine: He did these Leos Carax films: Les Amants du Pont-Neuf and Mauvais Sang and Boy Meets Girl. Immediately when I had first seen Les Amants du Pont-Neuf... I saw it when I first moved to New York and there was something about his photography in that movie, they took four years to shoot that. Leos Carax was one of my favorite directors as well. There something, I knew, like an innate understanding of light and camera movement and there was something in his photography that I hadn't seen before. It was like he could do everything, the camera always seemed to be in the right place. It was like real life but more poetic, like truth but accentuated. So immediately I knew that he would understand what I wanted to do. And he was a small Frenchman, and for him, when I took him to Nashville, it was like a third world country for him. So what was good was... LaBruce: He'd never been to... Korine: No, he'd never seen stuff like that, those kind of characters. Also, it was important because I wanted the person who was photographing the movie to, they really needed to look at like... I was familiar with these people and these things that they did and it didn't seem so outrageous to me, but for him it was really, you know, he's a [inaudible], so really he was looking at it differently. Anyway, he died about two years ago, he had like a brain aneurysm, something just went off in his brain, and they said he died with a smile on his face. LaBruce: Ok, we're gonna move onto julien donkey-boy. One more thing about Jean-Yves Escoffier. When you were shooting, obviously you had this process where... Were there days where you would not actually shoot anything? Korine: No, we shot everyday. LaBruce: Oh, you shot everyday. Korine: Yeah. LaBruce: But he was... Korine: But what I mean when I say we would save stuff for the last day is that... I would just improvise scenes. If we couldn't shoot the scene I wanted to shoot we would just improvise other scenes. We were always working, but it was just [that] we would do other things. LaBruce: Ok, so obviously he was attuned with your process... Korine: Yeah. LaBruce: Ok, so let's move on to Harmony's second feature film, which is julien donkey-boy, and we'll show a clip from that. (Clip shown is the scene where Pearl, played by Chloe Sevigny, is walking through a field, singing 'Lamb of God') LaBruce: I love it. I really love that scene. I visited you on the set of julien donkey-boy and wrote a piece about it for Index magazine. What struck me partly about that scene is that it's so beautifully shot and this beautiful field she's in, but actually that was just this random field right beside your grandmother's house in the middle of Queens, right? For me, it seems like you made a big transition with julien donkey-boy aesthetically, not only because of it being a Dogme film, because you shot in digital and did a lot of cross-processing, and again you used a variety of cameras, but one thing I love about it is, because you were using all this cross-processing and the grain and everything, it looks like an old school film then a lot of new films did because new film technology, the resolution is so high and the grain has disappeared and the way modern films are list, so broadly, it almost looks just like video. Whereas with your cross-processing and digital you're almost going back to an older film aesthetic. Korine: Yeah, it's hard work to make a film look that crappy. LaBruce: Well, congratulations. So let's just talk a little about... julien donkey-boy was a Dogme film. It has a Dogme certificate at the beginning, was blessed by the Pope of Dogme himself, Lars von Trier. So can you talk just a little about the Dogme experience and how that affected the film aesthetically or you... Korine: Yeah, it's... I'd been talking to Thomas Vinterberg before this movie. I'd seen The Celebration... LaBruce: [Vinterberg] directed The Celebration. Korine: Yeah, I thought it was a great film and he was telling me about this thing called Dogma 95, that him and Lars and a few other Danes had come up with this manifesto and he explained it to me and we talked about it and it was interesting because Esscoffier, my other cinematographer, was shooting another film at the time and I had to find another DP, so that initially was why I was talking to Thomas, to find out about Anthony Dod Mantle. Who shot my movie... LaBruce: Who shot The Celebration... Korine: Who shot The Celebration and The Idiots and the last few Lars von Trier movies. LaBruce: You were gonna use, ah, you were talking to Christopher Doyle but you told me that you thought the Wong Kar-Wai looked like shit. Korine: (laughs) I just wasn't a fan, you bastard. LaBruce: Which I don't agree with... But anyway, your actual experience with Dogma, how seriously did you take it? Because when I visited the set I think you were wearing the... No, you weren't wearing the white lab coats... Korine: No. LaBruce: But you had been? Korine: I'd been wearing a white lab coat... LaBruce: Because when you make a Dogma film you're supposed to wear a white lab coat, but you guys were wearing them with nothing on underneath... Korine: Yeah, I was wearing this weird speedo contraption and some flip-flops, but it was snowing. LaBruce: So you and Anthony were not necessarily taking it... Korine: Well, actually, there's nothing stated about a lab coat. I just thought... LaBruce: Oh, that was your invention? Korine: Yeah, I just liked the way it looked. LaBruce: I think that's a good idea. People should wear lab coats... Korine: It seemed like it made sense for that movie. LaBruce: Yeah. Well, it is about mental illness. Korine: Yeah, so, I forget what was the question... LaBruce: Tell me about how seriously you took the Dogma... Korine: Oh yeah, I took it really serious. LaBruce: You kind of did, but then again there's very basic concepts of Dogma that you contravene. Korine: You know... LaBruce: Like rules that you broke... Korine: Chloe wasn't pregnant. That was obviously something that was false, that was a sin against the Brotherhood. LaBruce: What else? What other rules did you break? Korine: They're pretty minor. I remember there was a balloon in one of the shots that I had someone go and buy. LaBruce: Right. Because in Dogma you're supposed to only use things that you encounter on the location. Korine: But we did things that people thought were cheating but weren't cheating. With music... LaBruce: Right. Music was only supposed to be from sources that you see on screen. Korine: But it was. I would just play it. I would have the music that existed at my grandmother's house, like a tape that was there, and we played it off like a record player directly into a live feed. So the image and sound were one in the same. We didn't separate the two. We didn't add music afterwards. It was just fed into the image. LaBruce: So you bent the rules a little bit? Korine: No, it was fine, there was no bending. Then, also... It's just technical, you know I really don't like technical stuff nowadays. LaBruce: But what made you want to make a Dogma film? Korine: Well, it seemed like a good thing and... I just liked it. LaBruce: Ok. That's good enough. One thing I really like about the movie, I would call it almost like a formalist film. Much of the movie, again, is composed of still montages with voiceovers and highly stylized scenes... Korine: Can you just hold on, I gotta pee. (Harmony gets up and walks off) LaBruce: In fact, while he's peeing why don't we show the next clip so I don't have to sit here like an idiot. (A clip is shown on the screen. The scene shown is where Chris is wrestling the plastic garbage can) LaBruce: Ok. So we have more wrestling with inanimate objects, but tell us about... Obviously that was Werner Herzog... Korine: Yep. LaBruce: How did you contact him and how did he respond to things like wrestling. Obviously he took it in stride because his films are so incredibly on the same sort of plane. Korine: Yeah, Werner was, you know, probably if I had to say my favorite filmmaker. LaBruce: How did you first contact him? Korine: He called me. He called me after there was this... Tom Luddy, who ran the film festival in Colorado, I forget what... Telluride. [Luddy] is friends with [Herzog], who I guess had gotten an early screening of Gummo. I got this phonecall from Herzog, and so I flew out to San Francisco and met him and we became good friends. You knows, he's a great one. LaBruce: What was he doing in San Francisco? Korine: He was living with this Siberian girl. She was, well they're married now, she's a scientist, she's also a bull fighter. LaBruce: And what did you do in San Francisco? You just hung out? Korine: Yeah, we hung out. I got these gold teeth made. LaBruce: The fronts? Korine: Yeah. LaBruce: Like the ones in the movie? Korine: Yeah. We went to, ah... I forget... LaBruce: Did you get into any trouble? Korine: With Werner? No, it was pretty much just hanging out at his house. He just has a lot of furniture. The thing about Werner is he eats a lot of ketchup... LaBruce: Didn't you said he speaks in platitudes alot? Korine: No, he's just a great... (extending arm out). LaBruce: Or a lot of anecdotes? Korine: Ah, yeah. LaBruce: So what was it like working with him on the set? Korine: It was good. The thing is he had always said, (impersonating Herzog a little) "If you ever make a movie and you have a part for a villain please cast me." (laughs) It always made sense to me. LaBruce: He plays the father. He's berating his children all the time, he's really abusive to them. Was that based on a real character in your life? Korine: Yeah, it was based on certain characters, but also it was... This movie wasn't scripted so much. This was the least scripted of all the films I've done. There's only one scene where actual dialogue was written. So a lot of it were things that I had heard Werner talk about or we'd discussed, or like what he was gonna say was, "I got this great story about Dirty Harry," and he'd go and do this terrific monologue on the virtues of Dirty Harry, and... So it was like improvised from ideas. A lot of stuff was like that. LaBruce: Yeah. It seems like you started out with a skeletal premise sort of... Korine: Yeah, this is what happened: I wrote things scenes with things that could happen, might happen, possible, like you set them up. I left them very open-ended. Allowed for stuff to happen. I think with Werner's character he had tapped into something that he had learned in Bavaria. LaBruce: Yeah, it seems like it. (Harmony laughs) LaBruce: And of course the film is basically inspired by your schizophrenic uncle, who was in an institution. Korine: He still is. Originally I wanted him to star in the film. My uncle used to eat sticks of butter and, ah, he... When I first moved into my grandmother's house he was living there before he was institutionalized. He was a hardcore schizophrenic. He would only eat sticks of butter and he was getting really sick. So they had to take him off it, butter. His arteries were clogged, he was in really bad shape. LaBruce: He only ate butter? Korine: Sticks of butter, yeah. He would drink coca-cola. He would have these cokes in those cups. I always remember those huge cups with big ice cubes and he would shake them and put Crisco (Cooking Oil) in his hair. He was an intriguing guy and I always felt bad that he was locked away in this place. So was happened was, a lot of this film was filmed with hidden cameras and so I would visit him with cameras on my body and stuff. I just wanted to film him, see what it was like, because they didn't allow cameras because it was a public hospital. LaBruce: In New York? Korine: In New York State Mental Facility. And so they caught me one day with one of the cameras and confiscated them and I realized I couldn't get my uncle... Also my grandmother at the time, she isn't alive now, was opposed to bringing him out. LaBruce: Because he would get violent with her? Korine: No, he was never violent. LaBruce: I thought you said that he threw her down the stairs. Korine: No, that was me. LaBruce: Oh. He threw you down or you threw... Korine: No, I tripped by accident. LaBruce: Oh, by accident. Ok. You and Bremner, who played Julien, you took him into the mental institution as well to meet your uncle. Korine: Yeah, he... LaBruce: He sort of based that performance pretty much on the same speech cadences... Korine: Right, he would walk around with... We'd make these recordings of my uncle and Ewen, because he's Scottish, a really thick accent, for about six months before shooting would just walk around with these headphones of my uncle's voice. LaBruce: He obviously really got into the role. Korine: Yeah. He was really... LaBruce: I mean, there was rumors at the time, I think I heard from you, that you were talking to Macaulay Culkin about that role? Korine: No. LaBruce: Or DiCaprio? Or was that... Korine: No, that's true. I'd been friends with Leo at that point and I was talking to him, but he didn't want to do a movie without dialogue. LaBruce: Like without a script? Korine: Yeah. It's hard for a lot of actors, sometimes it's really scary. A lot is on you when you have to come up with your own dialogue. The process is heavy. For a certain kind of actor it's not worth it. LaBruce: Right. Do you think he could've done it? Korine: Probably. I don't know. I'm sure he could've done something good. LaBruce: Well now he's making crap like The Aviator. But anyway let's go on to the next clip from julien. (Clip shown is where Pearl is cutting her father's hair) LaBruce: So that seems to be that you're getting into even more formal sort of territory, like a Stan Brakhage film almost. Would you ever make like a purely formalist film or do you consider this like a formalist... Korine: Um... LaBruce: Like without plot or character altogether. Korine: Yeah, I would. The thing is I do love stories and this is a problem that I have just in general, it's a hard thing to keep making movies in this way. It's hard to get money for them. I love stories, but I just never liked plots in movies. When I think of films I don't ever really remember plots, I remember characters and specific events. And so it's a hard thing with me when I write movies because I feel that anytime that I try to impose like a kind of false structure or something that would drive the narrative, pull the narrative, like a conventional plot, I feel like it's a lie, you know. But when people read scripts these days and make movies it's something that's almost essential. LaBruce: You mean in order to get something made? Korine: Yeah. It's always the one thing that would annoy me about the movies. I'll try to do it through character and stuff. You see, I like stories, I just don't like plots. I just never felt that there were plots in life. I never felt like things in my life were beginning or that I was ever at the end of anything, or in the middle. I've always felt that things just go. That you just exist, kind of... So when I make a movie... LaBruce: You would, but the mechanics of the film industry... Korine: Yeah. I'll figure it out somehow. LaBruce: Well let's talk about then your new movie, because you're making a, I don't know how much you want to talk about it, but you're making a new feature called "Mr Lonely," which will be your largest budgeted film with name actors. You may be shooting in Iceland or whatever. So how do you feel about making that kind of transition, are you going to work with the same process... Korine: Yeah, I mean, I haven't made a movie in five years and so this is something that I've wanted to tell for a long time. I think it's my most ambitious film. I just want to go to a place that I've never been before. LaBruce: So what about the process though. Do you think your process will have to change because of the mechanics of working within a large budget. Korine: Yeah, probably a little bit. I'm doing things in this movie that I haven't done before, stuff with effects. Just different... I just want to push myself in a certain way. But it's still, you know, one of my movies. It's difficult to get made. We'll start shooting in October. LaBruce: You're going in with a complete script... Korine: Yeah, this one is... LaBruce: But is it more narrative than anything you've done before? Korine: Probably, it's been a while, I'm still gonna mess about. LaBruce: I think we're probably... Kathleen and Daniel, time-wise when should we get to the Q and A? Are you, where are they? (Voice can be heard) LaBruce: Should we start now? I was gonna talk about Ken Park and show a clip, but I think we'll just skip that. Korine: Can I see a clip? LaBruce: Oh yeah. He hasn't seen Ken Park. It's based on his script so let's watch the one clip from Ken Park, which is my favorite clip in the movie and then we'll take questions from the audience. (Clip shown is the scene where Tate is playing scrabble with his grandparents) LaBruce: Of course, that character, later on, brutally murders his grandparents with a knife. Your wrote that, right? Korine: Yeah. LaBruce: I love all scenes in movies having to do with scrabble, for one thing. (Harmony is laughing) LaBruce: But what is that, where did that come from? Korine: I just like scrabble. I play a lot. LaBruce: Yeah. Do you play online? Korine: That was like an infomercial, that scene. LaBruce: The way it was shot? We'll tell Ed [Lachman] that... Korine: No, no, no. Not the way it was shot, the acting. It was strange. LaBruce: So enough of my questions. What we're gonna do is someone's gonna be passing around a microphone. So if you have a question please wait until you have the microphone and then speak. So if anyone has a question... Ok, there's one over there. Audience Member #1: The Shab, Philadelphia. A Crackup at the Race Riots, there's a quote from Al Jolson: "We're all basically bi-sexual." I really like that. Also, I wanted to know why you took blackface out of Gummo, why'd you cut that out? I really like that, it's in the DVD, it's good. Korine: Yeah, that's a great shirt (The Shab is wearing a hand-made shirt with Jolson on the front). I did this scene, it was a minstrel scene and I think what happened was... I really liked the scene, it was a minstrel tap-dancing guy. It's just when we put it together, there was a lot of scenes that I had to cut out of Gummo. But when we put it together, when I ran it it was interesting on its own but I thought took away from the flow of the film. A lot of scenes that were good on their own didn't work so well within the whole of the film, that was one of them. I should do some DVD thing someday. (laughs) LaBruce: Like what? Korine: Yeah, well, it'd be cool to put... LaBruce: Like deleted? Korine: Yeah, it'd be interesting to see that. LaBruce: Would you ever do a remake of the Jolson story? Korine: I wanted to do that. I wanted to make like a Jolson story. I wanted to make this thing with Tom Cruise as Eddie Gaedel, you guys know Eddie, he was a midget baseball player in like the 50s. The strike zone is really small for a dwarf so I think the Yankees pulled him out. He played like one inning, and I wanted to make the Eddie Gaedel story. LaBruce: He played one inning in his career? Korine: Yeah, they walked him because the strike zone is like one inch. (Audience laughs) Korine: But I wanted to do that in this minstrel way, and I wanted Tom Cruise to play it on his knees. (Audience laughs) LaBruce: Well, you still have time to do that. Ok, next. Audience Member #2: Hey. You mentioned before how Kids is very natural and I was just wondering, on average, how many takes would a scene take. Korine: For which movie? Audience Member #2: For Kids. Korine: That movie, I think that shot a pretty fair amount of film. It was a kind of thing where I think Larry was letting the camera roll, just keep going. Takes, like certain things, like the one on the couch with the boys was just once, you only get that once. Other things you just do multiple times. It's more difficult when you're working with non-actors to do continuous takes. LaBruce: What about the scene in the park in Kids where they beat up the black guy? Korine: Well, anytime you see a scene and there's a lot of different camera angles and stuff like that. Yeah, that was probably. But, you know, to be honest with you, that was so long ago I can barely remember that. For me though, there are whole years I can't remember. (Audience laughs) LaBruce: I can believe that. We wont go into that at the moment. Ok, anybody, somebody else? Audience Member #3: I was just wondering in your films, particularly Kids and Ken Park, not so much in Gummo, your music queues, do you write them as your writing or is it something that you let the editor take care of? Especially like when Casper gets in a fight with the drug dealer or whatever in the park, when they all rush him, like that song, was that something you wrote beforehand knowing that you were gonna put it in that scene or did it just work out that way after? Korine: Yeah, that Daniel Johnston song. Music's really a big part of movie-making for me and so a lot of times I know beforehand, like there's specific songs that I'll imagine a scene... that I can think of the scene only with the song. So a lot of times I'll write with the song in mind or I'll be listening to certain kinds of music, like I listen to this guy Washington Phillips, this singer from the 20s, a lot lately. I'm gonna use his music in the movie I'm about to do. It's just something that is like a different feeling. LaBruce: Do you like how, I was reading about how Kubrick with 2001 actually used all that classical music as, what's the term for it when you edit to music that you don't actually intend on using in the final edit until it's scored by someone afterwards... Anyway, there's a term for that. He just edited that, all the Stravinsky and everything while he was editing and that he liked it so much that he had a score that he scrapped by a composer... Korine: Usually what it is... LaBruce: So do you do that? Korine: No. LaBruce: Edit to music? Korine: No, not music. Usually we're editing on a computer so I'll just put the songs that I like at that time, or the songs that I wrote it listening to or just things that strike me as a feeling... LaBruce: And you edit, to edit to it? Korine: Yeah. LaBruce: And then you keep it? Korine: Yeah, right. LaBruce: So that is sort of... Korine: Yeah. LaBruce: But you've never actually used a composer. Korine: No. I probably wont. LaBruce: Not even for the new one? Korine: No. I'm gonna use different things, different music. Audience Member #4: I've two things to ask. Firstly, I have a CD for you, I was hoping I could bring it down. (Harmony has a funny look on his face at this). Then I was hoping you could talk about Fight Harm a bit because I've only heard a little bit about it, it's interesting. LaBruce: Yeah, Fight Harm. Yeah, just bring [the CD] down. Fight Harm is the movie, if some of you don't know, Harmony's been working on, in which he provokes people to beat the shit out of him and then has people filming it. Is that an accurate description? (The man from the audience comes up from the side. He hands Harmony the CD and walks off. Harmony has a very funny expression of non-understanding on his face as he takes it and places it on the table. He then shrugs and the audience laugh) LaBruce: Harmony? Is that an accurate description? (Audience laugh) Korine: Ah, yeah. LaBruce: You provoked people to beat the shit out of you and then you'd have somebody... Korine: Yeah, yeah. LaBruce: David Blaine shooting... Korine: Yeah, yeah, that's right. LaBruce: So you intended on making it a 90-minute movie, but you were getting to beat up. Did you go to jail once? Korine: Yeah, twice I went to jail. I was taking a lot of quaaludes at the time and it sort of distorted by judgment a little bit. LaBruce: Where did you get quaaludes? Because I remember running into you in new York and you were on quaaludes and it was like way past the time that anyone was doing quaaludes. (Audience laughs) Korine: (laughing) Yeah, I know. It was so good. I found this guy, he was like a relic, he lived in Long Island and he used to make them in his bathtub and man, those suckers were great. But yeah, I spent like whole years on those. That's when I got in a lot of trouble. LaBruce: But did you abort that project? Korine: What happened was that I wanted to... I really felt strongly. I wanted to make the Great American Comedy. I was reading a lot of joke books and that was the other dream, to be able to write a joke book, like a novel consisting of just one-liners. I was reading a lot of the Milton Berle jokes. I noticed that with the humor there was always a victim. There was always somebody who was like, someone... So there was always a victim. You know, someone slips on a banana peel and cracks their head. LaBruce: Yeah, it's classic sort of slapstick. Korine: Yeah, so I was thinking that would be great. It would be great to see someone get beaten up, to fight every single demographic. I wanted to fight lesbians. I wanted to fight half-breeds. I wanted to fight... LaBruce: Albinos, I'm sure. Korine: Yeah. I just wanted to fight every single demographic. LaBruce: How many did you get though? I know a black man beat the shit out of you and broke your ankle. Korine: Yeah, this bouncer. This cab driver smashed me in the head with a mandolin. (Audience laughs) Korine: The problem was that I would try to do too many in a single night. (Audience laughs) LaBruce: How would you provoke them? Korine: Well, what I'd do, the rules were that I would do and say whatever it took... It wouldn't be funny if I could've found somebody, like I probably could've cast somebody who would have been willing to be in one of my films and get beaten up, but... LaBruce: Beat you up? Korine: No, not to beat me up, to do it instead of me. But I thought in order for the humor to really thrive I needed to do it myself. So what happened was I didn't realize how short a fight lasts, or especially when you're fighting... LaBruce: Especially when you're involved (laughs). Korine: (laughs) You bastard. And also, it wouldn't be funny if I beat the other guy up, it was funny if I got beat up. So what I'd do is provoke people that were a lot bigger in stature, you know. And also because I was taking so many quaaludes and other things at the time I couldn't really feel pain that much. The rule would be that I could do and say whatever it took to make somebody on the street beat me up and then once they hit me I would fight them back. The only other rule is that they couldn't break up the fight no matter how bad it looked like I was getting beaten up, unless I was gonna get killed. LaBruce: Was this only David Blaine? Korine: Yeah, David and a few other people. There was a lady that would follow me around and ask for waivers, for signatures, after the people had... LaBruce: Like release forms. Korine: What happened is we went to this strip joint. This bouncer at this place. I went up and I popped the stripper's balloon. This guy flipped out and he broke my ankles. He put them on the sidewalk and he started snapping them, and I didn't really realize it until I stood up. It was horrendous, and he also cracked a few of my ribs. But the comedy came in... (Audience laughs) Korine: Well, here's what happened: I got up and making like chimpanzee noises. I was trying to get him involved. (Audience laughs) LaBruce: So whatever it takes. Korine: Yeah, whatever it takes. Everything's whatever it takes. The purpose makes it holy, remember that... Oh yeah. I went to go grab like a wire trash can, like a big trash can. I wanted to smash it on his head. He was chasing me around a car and there was a big trash can and I went to throw it, I waited for him to get really close, and it was chained to the lightpost and it went and stayed then. So he went *crack* and broke my ankles... (Audience laughs) Korine: I was thrown in jail that night. The thing is I did nine fights in total and what happened was I got back in and started the editing process and I didn't realize how short they were and would be, because I thought they were gonna go on, but really two-three minutes, just bone-crushing. LaBruce: So nine fights, you had how much material? Korine: I had maybe edited fifteen minutes. So I realized that in order for me to be able to make a 90-minute feature, something like 45-50 more fights. LaBruce: You'd be dead. Korine: And I'd gotten arrested twice and there was the "three-strikes you're out" rule. So I was gonna start to serve serious time. Also, my ribcage, and my lung was punctured... It'll come out, we'll have a list of all my injuries, we photographed all of the bruises and stuff. I almost turned purple at one point, my whole body almost turned purple. LaBruce: Cool. Ok, next. Audience Member #5: Hey. I was wondering if you could talk about your editing process, like how fluid it is and stuff like that. Or if it is fluid. Korine: Ah, let's see. With the editing, I usually don't let the editor watch anything until the movie's done. Before we sit down and edit each scene... (making movement with hand for a moment) Yeah, that's pretty fluid... (laughs). I don't know what to say. LaBruce: So you're obviously in the editing room for the entire process. Korine: Yeah. LaBruce: You never let an editor do a scene by themselves... Korine: There'll be times that my editor will cut from notes or something for a certain scene, and I'll come back and watch it, but pretty much. I never understood directors who give their movies to their editors. I know it's pretty common, but... LaBruce: The editor obviously doesn't edit as your filmmaker... Korine: I don't do any kind of... LaBruce: Assembly? Korine: Yeah. There's no assembly when the film's done. She hasn't even watched any of it yet. LaBruce: Do you work with the same editor? Korine: I've worked with a few different editors, but Valdis [Óskarsdóttir], the last one, I'll probably work with again. LaBruce: Do you construct a lot of the narrative in the editing process? Korine: Yeah, definitely. It's probably the most important. Audience Member #6: In Gummo... What was I gonna say... (Harmony laughs). The scene where Solomon was in the bathtub: what water is that, is that actually dirt water or something? Korine: You mean why is the water so dirty? Audience Member #6: Yeah. Korine: It was coffee. Audience Member #6: So when he dropped the chocolate bar in there did he actually eat it from there? Korine: Yeah, yeah. He was vomiting in this bucket. LaBruce: Can you talk just a little about the bacon? Korine: Oh, the bacon is my aesthetic? LaBruce: Yeah. Korine: Yeah, when I was making Gummo I was really obsessed with bacon and I would stare at these strips of bacon and I started to feel this kind of repoire. I know it sounds bizarre, but I had this kind of repoire with this special brand that's made down South. LaBruce: What's it called? Korine: I can't tell you that. LaBruce: A trade secret. Korine: So what we did was start pasting the bacon in the back. In some of the scenes, there's strips of bacon if you look closely. (Audience laughs) Korine: Because I bacon was my aesthetic. (Audience laughs) LaBruce: Ok. I want to ask you about Linda Manz, who was in Gummo. Linda Manz was in Days of Heaven and the amazing Dennis Hopper movie Out of the Blue. Where did you find her and did you hunt her down... Korine: Yeah, it was weird. She had married an orchard picker and I... LaBruce: In that part of the country? Korine: Northern California. She'd moved to Northern California. She was one of my favorite screen presence, just amazing. Out of the Blue is one of my favorite movies. So we went I just bought a few pounds of peaches off her husband and basically that's how it happened. LaBruce: Wow. She has that line where she says, she's talking to her son in the basement and she's tap-dancing, and she says, "You came out of my womb and I'm gonna stuff you..." Korine: "...stick you back in." LaBruce: "Right back up there." Was that her line or yours? Korine: I think that was my line, but the weird thing was she only ate Sesame Chicken and, ah, so... (laughs) (Audience laughs) Korine: I just remembered that. LaBruce: Does that relate to the bacon at all? Korine: No, it was just so weird. She also had these false teeth. LaBruce: And how was she to work with? She seemed like she was so totally on the wavelength of the movie. Korine: Yeah. She was great. Her husband, this is true, incidentally, when Michael Jackson's hair caught fire in the Pepsi commercial he was the guy that threw the rag over it. (Audience laughs) LaBruce: Interesting. Ok. Audience Member #7: Hi. You're fantastic, by the way. My question is on kind of your aesthetics of beauty and the way you portray what other people portray as beautiful in their films. You have a very kind of painful grit to your films, which I find absolutely stunning because I think the conventional way of expressing beauty in Hollywood is disgusting and pathetic. I was wondering how important that is to your filmmaking, how important it is to capture this pain, this grit, abnormality, I suppose. Korine: Yeah, I don't know. Sometimes it's important. I have this strange thing about... Sometimes when I see something beautiful I'll immediately think how to make it ugly and sometimes when I see something really ugly I immediately think of how to make it beautiful. Then I like to pervert the nature of certain things... Yeah, I guess that's it. LaBruce: Maybe this is off-topic, but the whole thing with using mentally unbalanced or mentally challenged people or schizophrenics, people that are perceived by society in general as mental problems is something that you really use in a lot of your movies. So what is it that makes you... And you don't romanticize it, you present it in a way that I think has more to do with beauty than ugliness, so... Korine: It's just strange because sometimes I don't really know why I do certain things. There's just certain things in the world that I wanna see and I want to see them presented in a certain way. I try not to rationalize them or even figure out... I'm not a big believer in introspection. I don't really care to know much about myself or why I do the things I do. I just don't think I'll ever know. For some reason I've just always been drawn to a specific kind of person, handicapped. Audience Member #8: Hello. Thanks for coming, very nice of you. I was just wondering, in the movie Gummo a lot of the characters had death metal t-shirts, like Poison or DIO. Is there some sort of connection with the costumes and your soundtrack? Korine: Let's see. Growing up in Tennessee in the 80s a lot of kids looked like that, but those aren't really death metal bands, those are more like cheesy metal. The soundtrack was mainly a lot of black metal coming from Europe. Music that I've always liked. A lot of underground bands at the time. It was just music I liked, basically. A lot of those bands. LaBruce: You've incorporated a lot of that. You do art shows. Agnes B. has sponsored some of your art shows and you use a lot of that imagery in your shows. Korine: Yeah. Heathen and pagan and stuff. LaBruce: Heathen and pagan? Korine: (laughs) Yeah. LaBruce: Is that what appeals to you about it? Korine: Yeah. LaBruce: Would you consider yourself a pagan? Korine: Satanist (laughs). No, I'm just kidding. I just like that music. LaBruce: Ok. Who has the mike? Let's just take one more and that'll be it. Audience Member #9: (inaudible) Korine: Ol' Dirty is one of my best friends. Yeah, he was a great one. I first met him, he was having an argument with a telephone pole. I guess it was 1992 or something like that. I think that Ol' Dirty Bastard is what makes America great. (Audience applauds) Korine: Yeah, give a clap. He was a real original, a real artist. We did a lot of crazy, illicit things... LaBruce: Tell us one story. Korine: Ok, the first time I met the guy, Ol' Dirty, he had just stolen a pair of sneaker. It was right around the time we got that photograph. This lady was taking a photograph of us together and I'd just written Kids at the time and he looks at me and goes, "You wrote that shit, nigger?" I say "Yeah," and he goes, "I'm gonna since your ass down on a church pew. You're gonna start dictating for me." (Audience laughs) Korine: Anyway, so this photographer was like can we get a photo of you two together and [Ol' Dirty] put his arm around me and he goes, "You got two shots 'cause the nig steals from the nig." He's like, "I'm like Marvin Gaye, I don't believe in that shit." So he only let us two photographs. We went in this elevator together and this chinese woman got in, a business lady, and I'll never forget. you know, just a normal woman. She was short and she pressed the button and Ol' Dirty and I were standing there and he just looked at her, he was looking at her ass and he just goes, "I wanna put a baby in your ass, bitch." (Audience laughs) Korine: And she looked around and says 'excuse me,' and he's like, "I wanna plant my seed up in there." I just fell in love with the guy right from there. LaBruce: Ok, that was a good one. So is that it, people? Ok. Thanks for Harmony for coming. Korine: Thanks everybody. (Audience applauds) 
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