The Quixotic kid - interview with filmmaker Harmony Krine - Interview

Interview, Feb, 1997 by Dimitri Ehrlich

Harmony Korine, writer of Kids and an upcoming film called Gummo, which he also directed, is someone from whom we should expect the unexpected

Harmony Korine wants to hide. In conversation, the twenty-three-year-old filmmaker ducks behind an absurdist worldview, fending off questions with his wry sense of humor. He doesn't want to comment on what he is, he just wants to be it.

The screenplay Korine wrote for Kids, the cult sensation of 1995, got at the heart of the meanness and meaninglessness that drives people, young and not so young, to behave in suicidal and savage ways. He has since written and directed a new film, Gummo, which Fine Line is scheduled to open later this year. Despite Korine's desire to be just a fly on the wall, the world has found him and won't abandon him any time soon.

DIMITRI EHRLICH: Tell me what Gummo is about.

HARMONY KORINE: I was thinking about that, like, how I could describe it to you. But, really, it would be too hard because I don't know myself. I'm editing right now, and I guess I'm still learning what it's about.

DE: I'll understand if you can't give me a straight narrative.

HK: I could say there's a scene where you're on an airplane and there are these two women who are sitting next to you, and they're wearing khaki golf shorts and they're pulled up really high. And I guess you might think they're gay, but you're not sure. They probably are. They look alike. They could almost be sisters or something. They have, like, swollen ankles. And then a stewardess would come up to them and say, "What can I get you to drink? And the one on the right would say something like, "Do you have Shasta soda?" And the lady would say, "I'm sorry, we don't have that." And then the lady on the left would say, "I'd like a Sanka." And then the stewardess would give it to her. Actually, that's not in Gummo, but it's a scene that might be in another film I'm writing.

DE: Are you saying that Gummo has a surreal quality?

HK: Well, there's no set narrative. I can't discuss it in any real, tangible way - what it's about, I mean.

DE: Are you being secretive?

HK: No, honestly. I would tell you if I knew.

DE: What is your ambition?

HK: To make movies and write books.

DE: Do you think success might affect the kind of work you do?

HK: Yeah.

DE: Who's in the Gummo cast?

HK: Chloe [Sevigny, Korine's live-in girlfriend] is in it. And Max Perlich and Linda Manz, who was in Out of the Blue and Days of Heaven. The rest are pretty much nonactors.

DE: Is there anything else you're working on?

HK: You know the book Ulysses?

DE: Mhmm, by James Joyce.

HK: Right. I'm trying to adapt a screenplay of that. And you know the rapper Snoop [Doggy Dogg]?

DE: Sure do.

HK: He's going to be the central figure.

DE: Why Snoop?

HK: After I read that book, he was the first person I thought of. I've seen him on television offering people the rings off of his fingers. And I know someone he bought a neck brace for that he didn't have to buy. The guy had been trampled at a cattle auction.

DE: What does innocence mean to you? I mean, obviously it was a theme In Kids -

HK: I think purity is good and I think it's important.

DE: Do you think it exists?

HK: Sure.

DE: Where?

HK: At cattle auctions.

DE: Anywhere else?

HK: [laughs] No.

DE: Are you afraid of death?

HK: No.

DE: Who are you afraid of?

HK: I'm not afraid of anyone.

DE: That's Interesting, because the one scene I didn't believe in Kids was the fight scene.

HK: And that was the one scene that was actually taken from real life, that exact thing.

DE: What have you been doing between Kids and Gummo?

HK: I lived in Morocco for a while and hung out with the artful dodgers. I was robbed a bunch of times.

DE: That must have been a really bad experience.

HK: No, it was cool. I liked it.

DE: It seems you have a pretty dry sense of humor.

HK: Right.

DE: And do you think your absurdist take on life is Inevitably going to come through in Gummo?

HK: Well, I'm not saying Gummo's a comedy.

DE: Let me ask you one more question. What kinds of questions do you like to answer?

HK: None. [laughs]