Gummo's Whammo by Werner Herzog Interview / November 1999

Gummo’s Whammo by Werner Herzog Herzog: Tell me about your upbringing. Interview / November 1999 Korine: If someone asked me what my father did, I wouldn't be able to answer. He would leave for Harmony Korine's directorial debut is the fall film long periods of time, and sometimes my mother most likely to disturb and disgust the most would disappear too. It's not that they weren't people. Here Korine talks to one of his newest good; they were just doing something else and I fans, fellow moviemaker and rule-breaker Werner didn't know where they were. But I liked them Herzog when I saw them, and when my father came home he'd bring money and presents, so that was If Harmony Korine's screenplay for 1995's Kids nice. I recently asked my dad what his profession announced the arrival of a shockingly precocious was, and he wouldn't tell me. There were other observer of teenage wasteland, his first film as a things I didn't know, so I asked my mother to director not only confirms his precocity but send my birth certificate to me so I could find out establishes him as both auteur and unrepentant my real age and make sure everything was nihilist. The nonnarrative, super-squalid Gummo - legitimate. I got it a month and a half ago and it cryptically named for the absent member of said my father's occupation was fur trader, but Korine's beloved Marx Brothers - is a biliously I've never seen him wear fur or heard him talk Burroughsian snapshot of post-twister 1974 about it. Maybe he's embarrassed by it, I don't Xenia, Ohio, depicted as the kind of hellhole that know. Anyway, my parents let me do whatever I makes the Manhattan of Kids seem like wanted, and I was mostly off on my own. Disneyland. Actually filmed in and around Korine's hometown of Nashville, Tenn., this Herzog: What was the first movie you saw? fiercely anti-Hollywood "genre fuck," as Korine calls it, offers a scornful parade of surrealist Korine: I think it was Harry & Tonto [1974]. My images that posit the gifted tyro as a brave new father told me I flipped out about something that Godardian, though one who has something to happened to the cat in it. The first movies that learn about telling (or not telling) a story. really changed my life were yours, Fassbinder's, Godard's, and [Charles Laughton's] The Night Of Korine numbers among his influences the The Hunter [1955]. My father loved the movies. obsessive German filmmaker Werner Herzog, We didn't talk much when he was around, but who interviewed him in front of an audience at every day after school, when I guess most kids the recent Telluride Film Festival. The following would go home and do their homework, we'd go was adapted from their conversation. to the movies. By the time I was sixteen, I was seeing three or four films a day, including a lot of Werner Herzog: When I met you for the first art films. I saw all your films. My dad rented them time, Harmony, I was stunned because you have a for me at first, and then he took me to the theatre strong physical resemblance to me when I was to see Even Dwarfs Started Small [1968] - which is your age. I had a great problem getting a start in my favourite movie of all time. It was when I filmmaking because my puberty came late, and heard the girl screaming in the cave and saw the until I was sixteen or so, I looked like a very monkey being crucified in that film that I knew I awkward child... although I think it's the wanted to make movies. hunchbacks who make the movies. Did you have a similar experience? Herzog: It's obvious to me that you never attended film school. Harmony Korine: My mind was very fast, but I looked like a little boy until I was sixteen, too. I Korine: I hate that shit. It's eating the soul of grew up in Tennessee, but I didn't want to live cinema. Filmmaking has become like a process, there, and when I got out of high school I flew to and it's all garbage. All these rich kids who were New York City to live with my grandmother. I going to be doctors now want to be filmmakers, was taking photos in a park one day when I met but they have very little life experience and they're Larry Clark. We started talking about films, and I just writing really shitty wit for each other. That's wrote a screenplay [Kids] for him. I then went to perfect for when they go to Hollywood and meet California to meet agents, and met Cary Woods, the people who finance films, 'cause those guys who became my producer. I was smaller then, and are fucked up too. That's why films are the way must have seemed childlike. He probably thought they are now and why I've largely stopped going I stepped off a school bus or something, because to see them in the last two years. at first he didn't believe it was me. Herzog: I know you've expressed some desire to relationship with that other world. Early on I said get away from writing screenplays, but you have I was going to make a specific kind of film and if always been a writer? I couldn't do that, or if I had to soften my vision, then I would just quit. There's nothing wrong Korine: I've never wanted to tell other people's with quitting if you can't do the kind of work you stories. I'd read books,and there'd be things in want to do. What's amazing is that I got to make them I could relate to, but it still wasn't my story, Gummo as a pure vision and that it wasn't so I figured the only way for me to talk about my touched - especially since I'm young and it's a new life and adventures was to write. Writing's a great aesthetic. In a way,it's a miracle that this movie thing. I even have a novel that's going to come exists in the current climate. out next April called A Crackup At The Race Riots . I want to do everything: It goes back to [Charles Herzog: What I like about Gummo are the details and Ray] Eames [architects, designers, that one might not notice at first. There's the filmmakers] and [Isamu] Noguchi [sculptor] scene where the kid in the bathtub drops his talking about a unified aesthetic. You can make chocolate bar into the dirty water and just behind movies, write books, do a ballet, and sing opera, him there's a piece of fried bacon stuck to the wall but it's all part of the same vision. with Scotch tape. This is the entertainment of the future. Herzog: I see Gummo as a true science fiction film in the way it shows a scary vision of the Korine: It's the greatest entertainment. Seriously, future: a loss of soul, a loss of spirituality. And yet all I want to see is pieces of fried bacon taped on you clearly see all that with very tender eyes. I am walls, because most films just don't do that. very interested, too, in how you show the effects of a tornado on people. Herzog: Tell me about creating a sense of dirt in the film. Those people's homes are like garbage Korine: When I look at the history of film - the dumps. early commercial narrative movies directed by D.W. Griffith, say - and then look at where films Korine: I grew up in Nashville, so I knew the are now, I see so little progression in the way they neighbourhoods. Certain houses were just the are made and presented,and I'm bored with that. worst people were living like pack rats. In one of Film can be so much more. With Gummo I wanted the houses, I found a piece of a guy's shoulder in to create a new viewing experience with images a pillowcase. As far as production design went, it coming from all directions. To free myself up to was about taking things away to make it cleaner. do that, I had to create some kind of scenario that At times the crew would refuse to film in those would allow me to just show scenes, which is all I conditions. We had to buy them those white suits care about. I can't stand plots, because I don't feel like people wear in a nuclear fallout. I got angry life has plots. There is no beginning, middle, or with them because I thought they were pussies. I end, and it upsets me when things are tied up so mean, all we're talking about is bugs and a perfectly. There had been a tornado in Xenia in disgusting rotting smell. I couldn't understand 1974, and I decided to set the film there. After the why they had no guts. I was like, "Think about tornado, people found dogs up in trees and what we have access to,"but I guess most of them playing cards that had been blown through brick didn't really give a shit.

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