The Mike Watt Spiel: Interview By Mike Watt - MEAN Magazine
It was the morning [my time] of December 12, 1997. It took me a little bit to get the tape recorder running, so I missed the first little bit, but that's okay. It was Watt front - end spiel anyway. Here it goes:
Mike Watt: Them Saturday Night Live people make terrible movies.
Harmony Korine: I know, they should all die.
Watt: Fletch and all that, so unfunny.
Korine: I hate shit like that.
Watt: Are they take - offs of Milton Berle?
Korine: I like Milty, though. Milty had the biggest schlong. The whole time he was wearing a dress he had like three legs. I saw this photo of his wife and all I could think about was her taking Milty - like she was so old and awful and I had this image of it and it was really hard to digest. But he basically owns most of Western humour. He took all the jokes and copyrighted them and then he published them in his books. He's the Proust of 20th century humour.
Watt: I heard he had a terrible reputation for stealing jokes.
Korine: The only person worse was Al Jolson.
Watt: He was a thief too?
Korine: He was the worst of them all. Jolson was good because he was a Jew dressed as a black man.
Watt: That was the whole plot, right? His daddy wants him to be a cantor but he wants to wear blackface and sing jazz.
Korine: Yeah, but he was notorious. He was the world's greatest performer.
Watt: Talk about comedians rip - off, what about Robin Williams ripping off Jonathan
Winters, man? He stole that guy's whole act.
Korine: Yeah, I can't even look at that guy. That guy's just like an ape. Oh, I'm in love with this one girl in this magazine. I just looked at her photo. Sorry to break ....
Watt: That's all right.
Korine: What did you say?
Watt: I mean you're making movies and I wonder what you think. What about all these retread movies?
Korine: I stopped seeing movies. I grew up watching films and I stopped because they fail to startle. The actors aren't there to give you something you haven't seen before. That's why I became a filmmaker, because no one else is showing me the types of things I wanted to see.
Watt: I saw only two movies in my whole 30's. I'm going to be 40 in 10 days.
Korine: My parents are 44.
Watt: Damn! I stopped watching movies when crap like Caddyshack started coming out.
Korine: Somehow you have to find influence in Caddyshack. Somehow you have to find
something in Caddyshack. It's like a job, it becomes a mission. Didn't Casavette's direct
Caddyshack? It was one of his last movies.
Watt: He must've been on the shit like everyone else in the movie.
Korine: I think he had cancer or something?
Watt: Oh fuck.
Korine: I mean Godard directed Porkys under a pseudonym. So things like that are good.
Watt: Now they keep making shitty movies based on '60s TV shows like The Beverly Hillbillies.
Korine: You can't even stop to pay attention to that kind of thing because it just leads to something grander and more disappointing. You just lose any kind of faith you once had. You don't want to give up all together. I mean, I almost have, but you have to think there are some kind of gems.
Watt: You have to take heart in the little victories because in the end it's a big defeat.
Korine: You know a lot of people do crank in Middle America. I grew up around those kids.
Watt: Is that what the apartment wrestling thing is about, when them cats start beating up that chair?
Korine: Oh, right, right, right.
Watt: That's kind of a tweaker hobby.
Korine: That's one of those things that definitely comes out of that.
Watt: I really liked that scene.
Korine: That's probably one of my favourite scenes in the movie .... a chair becomes a person.
Watt: It becomes like a Sisyphys stone in a way, man, like he's gonna get back at the fuckin' world.
Korine: I wasn't in the room. There was no one in the room except for the cameraman when we shot that scene because I knew something was gonna happen, I could feel it. So, I just let it happen. We rigged a boom onto the top of this camera and closed all the doors and smashed all the monitors - it was the last day of shooting - and just run in every four minutes and give some kind of direction, whisper something. I knew there was something special going on. At one point the big guy asked if he could throw the refrigerator out the window. In the first cut that scene was five minutes longer. They ended up baking the chair, making it spaghetti. They cooked it. I had to shorten it but it became its own film. You saw them put it in the oven and put the spaghetti sauce on it, and then the big guy started to eat a piece of the seat! It became something pretty. Maybe that's the director's cut.
Watt: You know them little kids at the beginning that are going "pussy"?
Korine: Yeah, right.
Watt: ....And then it ends with the cat and the cat's a pussy too.
Korine: There's millions of those types of things. Hopefully, that's what the film is only about, just things like that.
Watt: It's like throwing marbles in the air and having them come down stacked in pyramids.
Korine: Exactly. Everything's about the details, everything's about what's going on or what's in the corner.
Watt: I kind of hated them [the kids in the movie] at the end because they said they'd only kill cats with no owner. They broke their own rule.
Korine: Yeah.
Watt: When a guy builds a little logic he builds a little world.
Korine: That's what happens.
Watt: That's how I saw the framework. It was their commandment they took, and then they go and fuck it up.
Korine: That's what always happens. They always kill the cat.
Watt: The other thing was the filth. People can live in such squalor.
Korine: Yeah, all that stuff was from that person's house. I mean we didn't set any of that up. Where that little kid lives, that was his house. I remember after the movie was done, he got hit by a car when he ran out in the street and it like broke his leg and his dad made him get up and apologize to the guy that hit him, that ran over his leg.
Watt: Damn.
Korine: That's the kind of thing that inspires thought. It's snowing out my window [in New York City].
Watt: It's not snowing in Pedro.
Korine: For my next movie I'm going to try to get Merle Haggard to do the score.
Watt: I just played in NYC and Merle played the night before me and he left his bottle of Dickie [Tennessee whiskey] and the club gave it to me and I drank it.
Korine: That's amazing.
Watt: You told me you saw him, and he was all fucked up, right?
Korine: He had rosey cheeks. It was real dark and he was wearing a Kangol and black sunglasses. He was singing with his ex - wife. They sounded real good together. He was falling off and stuff. He's a real good guitar player though.
Watt: He smokes. He's got a face that's a fuckin' story.
Korine: The Merle Haggard story, that's a good story, too, the whole thing about seeing Johnny Cash when he was in prison, when he did Live In San Quentin, that's when he said he wanted to be a singer. He was in jail when Johnny Cash played there.
Watt: I like that shot of Johnny Cash flipping off the camera, him going "fffuhhh" with his mouth.
Korine: My little sister used to be best friends with his granddaughter. She'd go over there every Christmas and watch him pop pills and stuff. He's one of those guys who says "I'd just like to thank Jesus for getting me off drugs," and all that to get the career back and then after the show he'd go into the bathroom and shoot a speedball. I think of all those guys, though.
Watt: Looking for the redemption, I guess.
Korine: You have to live within the margins.
Watt: You were talking about tweakers, that stuff goes way back in a way …. In the culture.
Korine: Sure …. Crank.
Watt: Work hard, work fast.
Korine: I don't think people realize how many people are on crank. I used to be able to smell people making it in their bathtubs. I mean there's housewives and little kids….
Watt: They make it in mini pickup trucks and just drop the waste shit on the side of the road.
Korine: And everyone pulls their shades down, their houses are totally dark.
Watt: In Japan they call it "sabu."
Korine: In Russia now, it's like the biggest thing. It's not speed, they make this thing called, uh, I don't know, they make it with gasoline and syrup and Ketamine. It's more popular than heroin here. It's very cheap and all the old women sell it, old women sitting on corners. Something like six million teenagers are addicted to it. It has like a real weird name like "slovovov" or something. It's good it's taking over. I think that the future is tweakers.
Watt: You were saying you were into hardcore punk when you were eleven?
Korine: Oh yeah, I started listening to Minor Threat when I was real little. The only time I ever had a job in my life was when I worked at Hagen Daz when I was like twelve.
Watt: Like Henry? [Rollins.]
Korine: Exactly. I lied about my age 'cause Ian Mackeye [on the back of the Minor Threat album] was working at Hagen Daz. So me and my friend shaved our heads and we got jobs and we'd do stuff like spit in the fucking ice creams, and put dead daddy - longlegs in there. My friend used to jerk off on bagels and stuff. It was good, but we got fired real quick. It was the only job I ever had.
Watt: I heard that with daddy - longlegs, if their poison could get into you, it'd kill you, but their teeth are too weak.
Korine: I wonder if I killed the fuckers when I was little? I hope not.
Watt: Their teeth aren't strong enough so they can't get the poison in you.
Korine: Wow. I didn't know there was any poison in them.
Watt: Me neither, I just read this somewhere.
Korine: It sounds like a lie.
Watt: Haaaaa! I always let spiders live, they get the roaches.
Korine: That's a good thing to live by.
Watt: D. Boon was always freaked out by spiders.
Korine: I never liked them when I was growing up. I never liked animals. I liked to watch horses though.
Watt: Did you do a lot of cutting [on Gummo]?
Korine: Completely. I could of made like, four other films.
Watt: What about the scene you're in?
Korine: That's hard for me to talk about. That's the last scene I filmed in the entire movie because I don't work drunk.
Watt: I thought it was done around the time of the furniture wrestling.
Korine: Sometimes it's hard for me to watch it. I know it's funny but I wasn't really sure if that was the intention. I mean, it's intended to be funny but I don't know …. I can't really look at myself. I was really fucked up, I was out of my mind. After I was done I threw my sister out a window.
Watt: Whoa!
Korine: Just out of joy, though. She didn't get cut. It was some kind of release. I think it was an emotional thing.
Watt: Fuck this world!
Korine: You just gotta please yourself. But at the same time I hate it when people call me an anarchist or some kind of punk because I totally think of myself in a tradition, like in a cinematic tradition as far as maverick filmmakers go. I don't think of myself as an anarchist who does something for the effect of it because that's empty. That's an insult.
Watt: Yeah, it's sort of like theatre.
Korine: I don't think there's a thing called inventing the wheel, the wheel is like there. Maybe it's the spin of the wheel.
Watt: People keep making all these hambone shit films! All of those Saturday Night Live films!
Korine: That's why I almost think that if those movies are films, then what I do is not - I know it's cinema, but what I do is not movies.
Watt: How do you feel about D. W. Griffith?
Korine: I feel more at home with him or Buster Keaton than with …. I don't feel any union with other filmmakers. There's definitely not a movement.
Watt: You like Scorsese?
Korine: Yeah, he's made good movies. I love that "King Of Comedy." I think it's a great film. From what I heard, Jerry Lewis is supposed to be the most evil guy in the world and that was as close to his real personality that anyone has seen. It took like 50 takes of each scene because no matter how Scorsese directed him he did the Jerry Lewis thing and finally after 50 takes he would get so angry and annoyed he would do what you saw. I heard it was real difficult. Jerry's like the Demon. He made that infamous film "The Day The Clowns Died," that no one's seen. He plays this piper who leads all the children to the gas chambers. I think he owns the only print in the whole world. Like eleven people have seen it.
Watt: "In France I'm God." [Imitating Jerry Lewis].
Korine: Yeah, I don't understand the French.
Watt: Did you just go there?
Korine: Yeah, the film was really well received in Europe, I mean critically. There's no such thing as a right or wrong in response to it - if someone hates it, fine.
Watt: Like that cat you were telling me about in Toronto?
Korine: Oh yeah, the guy I almost stabbed. That guy got right in my face. I just don't like it when people get in my face. They can write what they want and I get upset when they write lies, but in a weird way I don't really care, you know? My job is just to make movies and let them respond but I just don't like it when a person gets right up in my face like this critic did. I almost stabbed him in the neck - I almost killed him, his girlfriend too. You gotta defend your honour.
Watt: What do you think about Andy Kaufman?
Korine: He was so, so good. He was so punk. He would throw out jokes with no punchlines. He's the ruler, the greatest. They're gonna make a movie of his life now. That's gonna suck so bad.
Watt: They always do.
Korine: I mean, there's enough footage, just do the documentary. Use the real footage, it's much better.
Watt: What about the Bad Brains?
Korine: Oh my Gosh, they were amazing.
Watt: H. R. and the backflips!
Korine: I remember when I saw them when I was a little kid, it was like nothing I had ever seen before. He had such a good style.
Watt: He had like thirty voices.
Korine: All those SST bands, what happened? Like your band. What I mean is like I was watching this documentary on punk rock and it ended with The Sex Pistols. I think it went up to The Talking Heads or something and then it totally skipped to Nirvana and it didn't make any sense to me.
Watt: Who's your favourite old school rapper?
Korine: I think the best one of those guys is Slick Rick. I always liked his voice. He's probably the most influential. Snoop and all those guys are indebted to him because he lived in England like for ten years and then came to America so he had that real strange British - Bronx - gay smooth voice. I think The Wu is pretty good now. I was hanging out with Ol' Dirty Bastard not too long ago. I like it because it's like Vaudeville.
Watt: You spend a lot of time on the music in your films?
Korine: I spend as much time editing the sound as I do editing the film.
Watt: Wow.
Harmony Korine
