"Without The Work I'd Kill Myself" of Julien?

Danny Leigh / The Guardian / November 5, Korine: He's based on my Uncle Eddie. I spent 1999 five years with him and my grandmother when I moved to New York, before he was Enfant terrible Harmony Korine talks to Danny institutionalised. The character's based on that Leigh about his new film, julien donkey-boy . aspect of schizophrenia where you're basically a normal person until your early 20s, and then from Life doesn't get any simpler for Harmony Korine. nowhere you start hearing voices. So this is him Acclaimed and reviled in equal measure ever since right on the cusp. And Ewen Bremner's perfect scripting Larry Clark's controversial teen-vérité for it, because he's one of the only professional Kids film in 1995, the 25-year-old's career has actors I've met with my stamina. I mean, he's proved a masterclass in dividing opinion. Gummo , been here four months already, working in an his startling 1997 directorial debut, was a film institution for the criminally insane. We've been whose unflinching vignettes of white trash mores friends since I saw him in Naked , which was one had half its audience reaching for comparisons to of the best performances I've ever seen. I mean, I Godard and the rest heading for the exit. hated... what's that fucking movie called? Trainspotting ? Right. But I thought even there he Korine's latest project, julien donkey-boy , a portrait had a really good nervous energy. of an incipient schizophrenic played by Ewen Bremner, seems destined for a similar fate. Leigh: Who took the initiative in your joining Showing at the London Film Festival without a Dogme? British distributor, julien donkey-boy (which also stars Korine's sometime girlfriend Chloë Sevigny Korine: Basically, Thomas Vinterberg was in and legendary German director Werner Herzog) New York with Festen , and he called me, and it has already been described by US critics as, was like, "we've been racking our brains figuring variously, "a film of piercing beauty" and "an ugly, out who should start the American new wave, and self-indulgent mess." we think it should be you." And this idea of 10 rules, which if approached with what Lars [Von A few months earlier, calling from his semi- Trier] calls religious passion will force you to permanent home in New York's Gramercy Park confront certain truths, really appealed to me. hotel the weekend before filming began, the ever- voluble Korine had been keen to discuss julien. Leigh: Is part of the attraction that it's such an Keen to discuss the title, which he was inherently European project? considering changing to 'Run Rabbit Run.' Keen to discuss using a largely professional cast for the Korine: Definitely, because in America I have no first time. And keen to discuss abandoning peers. I mean, American film-makers come up to traditional film-making for digital video and me like, "Harmony, you're so inspiring, oh Dogme 95, under whose stripped-down auspices Harmony blah blah blah," and it's just this bullshit the film was being made. rap, right? And I don't feel any affinity with any of it, partly because I don't really like people, but Danny Leigh: What kind of progression can also because Americans don't like films about the people expect between Gummo and julien ? real America - if you show them something unromanticised, they call it exploitation. Which is Harmony Korine: Well, right after I wrote the how the critics destroyed Gummo . script, Werner said "Be bold, you're the last footsoldier in this army." Which sounded Leigh: But do mainstream critics matter to you? ridiculous, but something rang true, you know? So I sat down and rewrote... no, I destroyed the Korine: No, because those people will die soon. script. I mean, Gummo was about the images, but My only hope is that this movie could be the first now, although I'm still concerned with making a of a whole different kind of film. Because we're beautiful film, I want to explore character, while doing things nobody's ever seen before. giving the actors the freedom to reach somewhere they couldn't get to with a formal script. Because Leigh: Can you give me some examples? the ability to transfer video to 35mm destroys the need for formal scripts and big crews and all of Korine: Well, a year ago I had this dream about the rest of it. filming two people wearing lipstick mics with hidden cameras the size of pinholes, so we're Leigh: What can you tell me about the character working with people who've worked with the FBI on all these drug busts, the world's greatest make a Dogme movie. It's like you don't have to surveillance wizards, and they're making us these follow every rule. So I'm having to make certain cameras. Plus the characters have bifocals with a moral breaches, like using voiceovers, and that's camera in the frame, so you see everything from for me and Lars to talk about. Because for a start the actors' point of view. And there'll be a main anything in camera is legal. Like I have this Sony camera, and I'll have a camera, plus I'll give the set DV camera and there's a button marked Photo PA a camera, and we're planting hidden cameras which holds a still image for seven seconds but on the walls and ceilings, so we'll have eight or continues recording sound, so I can do voiceovers nine different types of video camera, just rolling manually. And the vows are written so obliquely at all times. that for the most part I can figure them out, and it'll still be Dogme. Leigh: How difficult is it for you to stay interested in film? Leigh: With Dogme, and you personally, people have criticised what they see as style over Korine: See, the way I got into film was as a kid I content... would never sleep, and I was a poor kid but, you know, I could pay for videos, and I would sit Korine: That's bullshit. Because I always knew there and say, "OK, Fassbinder." So I'd watch that to tell good stories I had to live, I had to put every Fassbinder movie I could. And then I'd buy myself in situations that were very uncomfortable, a book about Fassbinder, and find out about his and I had to experience these things so when the influences, and I'd be like "OK, he loved Sirk." So time came, I could tell these stories from the I'd watch all the Sirk pictures and read about Sirk inside out. And it doesn't matter who has the and find out who his influences were, and it kept camera or what's taking place - what's important on like that for years. And it was so consumptive, is there's an image nobody has seen before and a and I was so voracious... meaning behind the image.

Leigh: It sounds like falling in love. And I've always said if I run out of stories, I'll walk away. Because I could get rich off three- Korine: It was exactly like falling in love. And picture deals, but I don't, and I can sleep at night - what I learned is that film is in its infancy, all well, I can't, but you know what I mean. And we've seen is one leg of the foetus plopping out. when I studied these film-makers, I'd see where And I know movies should entertain, but there their power came from, and where it dissipated. should also be a purity, you know? And you can So I'd look at Scorsese and say, "OK, here's this find something salvageable in any movie - even incredible 10-year stretch and oh, he was on the really bad ones usually have one tiny cocaine the entire time, and then he comes off worthwhile moment. So that's what keeps me cocaine and makes The Color of Money ." And you going, or at least kept me going. Because although learn that, at best, great artists have 10 years. my love for movies never died, what I feel now is totally different. Even though what I had was Leigh: And then they're bastardising themselves... such a love, a love stronger than I've ever had with a woman. I mean, watching something like Korine: Right, then they're Francis Ford Coppola The Mother and the Whore restores my faith. But and they want to own a vineyard. But I can't be mostly it's gone. contained. It's the one good thing about America, if you can make a movie far enough beyond the Leigh: Because making movies has demystified studio's understanding, they'll leave you the fuck them? alone. I mean, I hear about directors being told to change dialogue and change endings, and I don't Korine: Right, exactly. Because as soon as I even understand the concept. Because if someone finished Gummo , I had no interest in other films. came to me demanding changes I would take a Everything seemed like a rehash, no one was knife and either destroy the person or destroy the trying anything. And that's what I liked about print, you know? Dogme, they were the only people as concerned with pushing the form as me. So if you make a movie that's over their heads, so much the better, because these fuckers don't care Leigh: How are you dealing with the "vows of if it's good or bad, they just want their money chastity"? back with something on top and a little kudos to impress their friends. And although I can barely Korine: Well, people try to turn Dogme into an feed myself, I can get the films made. I mean, I elitist thing, but the whole point is anyone can see Gus [Van Sant], who's a friend of mine, and who's good at manipulating the system and making money, and I feel bad because he's a good craftsman, and look what happened...

Leigh: Good Will Hunting was a very ordinary movie.

Korine: And I told Gus that, I told him he'd made the sequel to ET . And at that point, he'd just made this tearjerker these dorks think is the greatest movie ever, and he could have done anything, he could have made some insane $80 million art movie, or he could have said fuck you and made a Dogme film. But instead he made Psycho .

Whereas for me, it's like I'd never taken a drug before Gummo , but as soon as that was over I started flirting with heroin, because making films was all I ever wanted, and once that was done I was just bored. And my problems, my violence, they all stem from boredom, and when I did that drug it was the first time I could just sit and feel blissful, you know? But in the end it's a lie. So I went back to the anger. And I'm comfortable knowing that without the work I'd kill myself, because I feel like I'm here for one reason, and that's to create. And I'm 25 and I'm... bursting.

Leigh: So do you want to inspire a legion of Harmony Korines?

Korine: The most I can hope is that people see my movies and see film isn't a dead artform. Because it's time to be Baader-Meinhof, to reject the studio system and realise that if you want to make a movie, it doesn't even matter what you film it on anymore.

So if your father beats your mother, why sit at a computer and write a script about domestic violence, why not take a video camera and record your father breaking your mother's collarbone? And record it every night if you have to, and then show it to people and watch them fucking explode, and watch how their whole idea of what film is and what film can be changes. And that's what excited me about Dogme, because there has to be a turning of the back on the sacred cows, and a spit in the face of these fat fucks who keep the good men down.