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SWEET HARMONYLinlee Allen / V / April 23, 2008
On the eve of Mister Lonely, director Harmony Korine talks Werner Herzog, agnès b., and keeping it in the family Anyone who has crossed Harmony Korine of late will notice that the dirty T-shirts, prankster overtones, and hallucinatory whirlwind (the infamous guest spot on Letterman, hello?) have taken a back seat to a more focused frame of mind. Enter 35-year-old Korine, whose newfound appreciation for the art of filmmaking is about to blast across theaters with his latest effort, Mister Lonely. Earlier this week Linlee Allen took ten minutes to uncover his thoughts on three people and two experiences thus far. On co-writing the film with his kid brother: "Avi is eight years younger than me and I hadn't seen him for a while as I moved to Nashville a few years ago. He was always busy going to see boxing matches and eating chicken nuggets with this honey that I used to send him. One day I picked up the phone and lured him to come see me and promised I'd pay for the honey if he came. So he got on the plane, he stayed on my futon, and when he got here we started writing. Sometimes we stopped to play basketball and to eat fried chicken but otherwise we basically hung out and wrote." On Samantha Morton: "What more can I say? She is one of the best around. I've known her a long time and she is always someone I have really wanted to work with so I'm lucky that I got the chance to make that happen. She is very, very special. And she's always very expressive and emotionally ready." On Werner Herzog (and a particular scene depicting a priest and a broken-hearted alcoholic): "Sometimes directors make great actors. Werner is an old friend who is one of my favorite people and as a filmmaker, I live for moments like that scene. I've always been attracted to those sorts of people who make up their own logic. To those who think outside of the system. To those who invent as they go along. These kinds of people are the biggest dreamers of all and so I suppose that's the reason why they are always the ones who end up getting hurt." On agnès b.: "I love Agnès very dearly. She's a poet and is someone I have an extreme fondness towards." On the dark years: "Well, it's no secret that I used to love narcotics. I was in such a dark period of my life that I wasn't sure I would ever make movies again. I started at a very young age and everything came very quickly to me so at some point I guess I lost that love for film. I felt disconnected from the rest of the world. So I went to a place where I didn't know anyone and basically became a ghost. Somehow I started to build myself back up and to re-attach myself. I started to laugh again. Then one day I saw a small woman walking her invisible dog down the road. I asked her what she was doing. She told me it was time to make a movie. I took her word for it and now, here I am." 
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