Gummo's Whammo
Harmony Korine's directorial debut is the fall
film most likely to disturb and disgust the
most people. Here Korine talks to one of his
newest fans, fellow moviemaker and rule - breaker Werner Herzog.
Werner Herzog: When I met you for the first time, Harmony, I
was stunned because you have a strong physical resemblance
to me when I was your age. I had a great problem getting a start
in filmmaking because my puberty came late, and until I was
sixteen or so, I looked like a very awkward child - although I think
it's the hunchbacks who make the movies. Did you have a
similar experience?
Harmony Korine: My mind was very fast, but I looked like a
little boy until I was sixteen, too. I grew up in Tennessee, but I
didn't want to live there, and when I got out of high school I flew
to New York City to live with my grandmother. I was taking
photos in a park one day when I met Larry Clark
[photographer / director]. We started talking about films,and I
wrote a screenplay ["Kids"] for him. I then went to California to
meet agents, and met Cary Woods, who became my producer.
I was smaller then, and must have seemed childlike. He
probably thought I stepped off a school bus or something,
because at first he didn't believe it was me.
Werner Herzog: Tell me about your upbringing.
Harmony Korine: If someone asked me what my father did, I wouldn't be able
to answer. He would leave for long periods of time, and
sometimes my mother would disappear too. It's not that they
weren't good; they were just doing something else and I didn't
know where they were. But I liked them when I saw them, and
when my father came home he'd bring money and presents, so
that was nice. I recently asked my dad what his profession was,
and he wouldn't tell me. There were other things I didn't know,
so I asked my mother to send my birth certificate to me so I
could find out my real age and make sure everything was
legitimate. I got it a month and a half ago and it said my father's
occupation was fur trader, but I've never seen him wear fur or
heard him talk about it. Maybe he's embarrassed by it, I don't
know. Anyway, my parents let me do whatever I wanted, and I
was mostly off on my own.
Werner Herzog: What was the first movie you saw?
Harmony Korine: I think it was Harry & Tonto [1974]. My father told me I
flipped out about something that happened to the cat in it. The
first movies that really changed my life were yours,
Fassbinder's, Godard's, and [Charles Laughton's] The Night Of
The Hunter [1955]. My father loved the movies. We didn't talk
much when he was around, but every day after school, when I
guess most kids would go home and do their homework, we'd
go to the movies. By the time I was sixteen, I was seeing three
or four films a day, including a lot of art films. I saw all your films.
My dad rented them for me at first, and then he took me to the
theatre to see Even Dwarfs Started Small [1968] - which is my
favorite movie of all time. It was when I heard the girl screaming
in the cave and saw the monkey being crucified in that film that I
knew I wanted to make movies.
Werner Herzog: It's obvious to me that you never attended film school.
Harmony Korine: I hate that shit. It's eating the soul of cinema. Filmmaking
has become like a process, and it's all garbage. All these rich
kids who were going to be doctors now want to be filmmakers,
but they have very little life experience and they're just writing
really shitty wit for each other. That's perfect for when they go to
Hollywood and meet the people who finance films, 'cause those
guys are fucked up too. That's why films are the way they are
now and why I've largely stopped going to see them in the last
two years.
Werner Herzog: I know you've expressed some desire to get away from
writing screenplays, but you have always been a writer?
Harmony Korine: I've never wanted to tell other people's stories. I'd read
books,and there'd be things in them I could relate to, but it still wasn't my story, so I figured the only way for me to talk about my
life and adventures was to write. Writing's a great thing. I even
have a novel that's going to come out next April called The
Crackup At The Race Riots. I want to do everything: It goes back
to [Charles and Ray] Eames [architects, designers, filmmakers]
and [Isamu] Noguchi [sculptor] talking about a unified aesthetic.
You can make movies, write books, do a ballet, and sing opera,
but it's all part of the same vision.
Werner Herzog: I see "Gummo" as a true science fiction film in the way it
shows a scary vision of the future: a loss of soul, a loss of
spirituality. And yet you clearly see all that with very tender eyes.
I am very interested, too, in how you show the effects of a
tornado on people.
Harmony Korine: When I look at the history of film - the early commercial
narrativemovies directed by D.W. Griffith, say - and then look at
where films are now, I see so little progression in the way they
are made and presented,and I'm bored with that. Film can be
so much more. With "Gummo" I wanted to create a new viewing
experience with images coming from all directions. To free
myself up to do that, I had to create some kind of scenario that
would allow me to just show scenes, which is all I care about. I
can't stand plots, because I don't feel life has plots. There is no
beginning, middle, or end, and it upsets me when things are
tied up so perfectly. There had been a tornado in Xenia in
1974, and I decided to set the film there. After the tornado,
people found dogs up in trees and playing cards that had been
blown through brick walls. I heard about this one guy on a paper
route who was sucked up by the twister and dropped off, still on
his bicycle, fifty miles away, and the only injury he had was a
scratch on his forehead.
Werner Herzog: You use the tornado in your film to shatter the narrative
form. All your screenplays-not only "Gummo" - follow that same
lack of pattern. There is no story line, no development of
characters. Everybody in Hollywood would immediately
ask, "Where's the development? Where's the good guy and the
bad guy?" You are obstinate about that.
Harmony Korine: I guess I'm lucky, too, because I've been protected by my
producer and my agents so far. They understand that I don't
want any kind of relationship with that other world. Early on I
said I was going to make a specific kind of film and if I couldn't
do that, or if I had to soften my vision, then I would just quit.
There's nothing wrong with quitting if you can't do the kind of
work you want to do. What's amazing is that I got to make
"Gummo" as a pure vision and that it wasn't touched - especially
since I'm young and it's a new aesthetic. In a way,it's a miracle
that this movie exists in the current climate.
Werner Herzog: What I like about "Gummo" are the details that one might not
notice at first. There's the scene where the kid in the bathtub
drops his chocolate bar into the dirty water and just behind him
there's a piece of fried bacon stuck to the wall with Scotch tape.
This is the entertainment of the future.
Harmony Korine: It's the greatest entertainment. Seriously, all I want to see is
pieces of fried bacon taped on walls, because most films just
don't do that.
Werner Herzog: Tell me about creating a sense of dirt in the film. Those
people's homes are like garbage dumps.
Harmony Korine: I grew up in Nashville, so I knew the neighborhoods.
Certain houses were just the worst people were living like pack
rats. In one of the houses, I found a piece of a guy's shoulder in
a pillowcase. As far as production design went, it was about
taking things away to make it cleaner. At times the crew would
refuse to film in those conditions. We had to buy them those
white suits like people wear in a nuclear fallout.I got angry with
them because I thought they were pussies. I mean, all we're
talking about is bugs and a disgusting rotty smell. I couldn't
understand why they had no guts. I was like, "Think about what
we have access to,"but I guess most of them didn't really give a
shit. But Jean Yves [Escoffier], the cinematographer, was
fearless. When the others were wearing their toxic outfits, he
and I wore Speedos and flip-flops just to piss them off.
Werner Herzog: When one of the kids in the film moves a picture on a wall
and all these cockroaches come crawling out, the cameraman
doesn't zoom in from a distance; he moves in physically,
because he's interested. The first cinematographer I worked
with said to me, "Werner, don't use a long lens - just move in.
Film knows no mercy. "You have to be bold, you have to be
curious.
Harmony Korine: I don't know how other directors work, but I wanted to
create a kind of ultrachaotic environment where things were just
happening, and thenshoot them without thinking about it. The
line producers told me thebond company was threatening to
take the movie away at one point because I was shooting too
much film, but I said, "Leave me alone. The film we're shooting
is the movie."Jean Yves said to me late one night: "Fuck these
guys! We will fire everyone. It will be me, you, a fucking
lightbulb, and the soundman." That was so punk. I was so
charged by that; I felt I couldn't lose.
Werner Herzog: He has to be given credit, because in some scenes he
was alone, wasn't he?
Harmony Korine: Oh yeah. He got one of the most amazing scenes on the
last day of shooting. It's where those guys are arm wrestling in a
kitchen. I'd written the scene, but some of the people in it had
just gotten out of prison that day, and I could feel that things
were going to happen that night that were way beyond what I
hoped for or imagined, but I knew they wouldn't happen if I was
there watching them. So Jean Yves and I agreed he'd be the
only person in the room with them. We rigged a boom onto his
camera, and I shut all the doors and turned all the monitors
down, so even I didn't know what was going on. I would just run
in between takes and get them really excited. I'd tell them to
throw the refrigerator out the window or kick the door. It got
really violent in there. There were pregnant women in the room,
too; it was scary.
Werner Herzog: The moment I like most in that scene is the moment of
silence when nobody knows what to do next. That's not
something that could be directed.
Harmony Korine: When I saw that in the dailies, it amazed me, because Jean
Yves really captured that awkwardness, that sad silence; it was
beautiful. Most of the people in that scene were parents of kids
in the film, so it worked out well.
Werner Herzog: Can you talk about some of the kids?
Harmony Korine: When I go to the movies, there's usually nothing on the
screen that compels me, and with this film I wanted to see
people who were amazing looking. I was watching an episode
of Sally Jesse Raphael called "My Child Died From Sniffing
Paint,"and I saw this kid on it named Nick [Sutton] who's a
paint - sniffing survivor. They asked him, "Where are you going
to be in a few years?" and he said, "I'll probably be dead." I loved
him and wanted him to star in the film, so we tracked him down.
He told me he'd been on acid on the show.
Werner Herzog: This is the older of the two boys who go hunting for dead
cats. What about the one whose hair gets shampooed by his
mom [Linda Manz]?
Harmony Korine: Jacob Reynolds. I'd seen him in a small part in The Road to
Wellville [1994], and he was also in a Dunkin' Donuts
commercial I liked, so we cast him. He's got an amazing face.
Most of the others I'd grown up with or gone to high school with
or knew from hanging out.
Werner Herzog: Who do you want the audience for "Gummo" to be?
Harmony Korine: I never thought about that while I was making it, but I feel it's
definitely most important if young people see it, because it's a
new kind of film with a new kind of syntax. Younger people have
a different kind of sensibility, and I think they'll understand it. But
if someone said that I was the voice of my generation, I couldn't
agree with that.I'm just the voice of Harmony.
Originally Published In INTERVIEW, Brant Publications, Inc., November 1997.
Harmony Korine
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