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HARMONY KORINE INTERVIEWScott Hoffman / Moviepicturefilm.com / April 23, 2008
Shocking the world at age eighteen, Harmony Korine has never been someone who plays by the rules. In 1993, Korine wrote the now infamous screenplay for Kids, which went on to become one of the most controversial films of the 1990's. The film, was which was picked up by Miramax Films at the Sundance Film Festival for $3.5 million gave Korine instant industry clout. With his new found fame, you would surely think the writer/director would want to make an instant jump into bigger Hollywood films, but instead Korine decided to stick to smaller, independent projects following up Kids with two cult directorial efforts: Gummo and julien donkey-boy. Then, suddenly, he was gone. Korine vanished from the film world and stayed away for almost ten years. Now he's back, and people are talking about the writer/director once again. His new film Mister Lonely, an exploration of self identity and celebrity impersonators may seem like a return to his now trademark weird, eccentric films but some are calling it his most mainstream project to date. I sat down with Korine for an EXCLUSIVE 1 on 1 interview to talk about everything from Kids (he talks about a sequel) to the state of Indie film today. Read on for more in our EXCLUSIVE 1 on 1 with Harmony Korine... Scott Hoffman: People use many favorable words to label you. ‘Brave’, ‘Fearless’, ‘Wunderkind’ and ‘Visionary’ are only some of the many I’ve read. I have my theory on the choices of these words, but why do you think people use them to label you? Harmony Korine: You tell me, I’m more interested in your theories. Hoffman: I suppose it’s because your films are just so different from what’s out there now. Korine: Yeah. I think it’s because I always made a specific kind of movie with images coming from all directions. You’re right for the most part. My movies are different from what you see at the theater. They have a different rhythm. There is a different idea behind them, you know? Hoffman: Do you think they’re bleak? Korine: I think it’s like life, there’s bleakness in it, sure. But I also think they’re just as comedic. Hoffman: But this film is different, I found it to be more hopeful. Korine: I would hope so. Long ago I stopped predicting what the reaction would be from audiences or the way people would take it because I was always wrong. I realize that everyone sees the movie in their own way. Some people get nothing out of it, some people get moved. But I definitely knew when making this particular movie that it had been so long, almost a decade- the idea of making a film that was just totally without any hope or that was perceived as being bleak was something I didn’t want to do. I find there is a kind of unique pull, a strangeness and poetry, a rhythm to things. Hoffman: Do you feel that the attitude towards experimental cinema has changed at all in ten years? Korine: I think that there is just more stuff out there now. With digital technology it’s easier to have your stuff shown. I make movies for the theater though. Hoffman: Are you against people watching your films on their IPods or computers? Korine: No, I’m just happy that people watch them and in the end you can’t stop technology. I’m not really frightened by it, it is what it is. It actually doesn’t even scare me, it excites me. It presents new possibilities, you know? In the end all anybody wants is to be told a good story, to laugh or to feel something, whether it’s thirty seconds or thirty hours. We want to be entertained. My next film could even be on a camera phone. In the end, it’s about the subject. Hoffman: It’s not everyday someone says “I’m going to make a film about a Michael Jackson and Marilyn Monroe impersonator”, so where did this idea come from? Korine: I spent time on a commune in Peru with a cult of fisherman called ‘Malingers’. We were searching for this golden fish or carp with these three dots on the side of its gills and if you pressed them in a certain order they would play the sound of a toy piano. There hadn’t been one photograph since the beginning of the last century. They were wise men, about 20 of them, mainly Columbians and Peruvians. One day I got into an argument with one of the guys there because I had heard he was doing it for the reward money that these Japanese guys were offering him. So his wife who was autistic, handed me a leech with an invisible dog she used to hang around and I took it, flew home to Nashville and hung it on the wall. Three weeks after I got there, I was asleep one night and I just heard barking sounds coming from this leech and it kind of opened the flood gates-and all of sudden I felt it was time to make movies once again. Hoffman: So why the huge creative gap between this and julien donkey-boy? Korine: Because I was messed up in the head. I was debased and living like a tramp. I had very little to give and wanted to live a life that was totally separate from the film world. I wanted to live life outside mowing lawns, swimming, even rob a bank. I just wanted to do something different. Hoffman: Everyone probably says this to you but when I was a teenager, Kids rocked my world. That’s a movie that never leaves your brain. So what I want to know is, is there any chance of a sequel? Korine: I don’t know. It would almost be a reunion tour. Hoffman: I would love that! Korine: (laughs) It’s nothing I’ve ever thought about. The difference now is I’m not a teen anymore. (pauses) So maybe I’d call it “Adults” and it would be the after effect of all that’s happened. Larry (Clark) and I never discussed the possibility. I don’t know, the original is out there, I don’t think I’d tamper with it. Hoffman: Would ever consider doing a bigger budget, even mega blockbuster movie if given the chance to? Korine: I doubt it. Not because I’m opposed to those kinds of films, I think they’re fine and every once in a while you see something that’s good, but I really don’t think that way. Maybe if I ever had a story that came close to that crossover appeal. If I had a hundred million dollars offered to me to a make a movie, I’d make a hundred million little ones. 
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