Harmony Korine On Spring Breakers, The State Of Today’s Youth, And Giant Meatballs
The cult director has a reputation for eccentricity. We spoke to him on the phone. It's pretty accurate.
When I got on the phone to director Harmony Korine, he was in his hometown of Nashville, Tennessee, panting heavily while walking his puppy in the park. After briefly exchanging niceties, Korine casually mentioned that he’d been spending the day “working out and making paintings”. Well, the story’s in the details; unfortunately, I have no fuckin’ idea what he said next. After re-listening to the audio about a hundred times, like a nutcase John Travolta in De Palma’s Blow Out, all I could come up with was this: “Just, like, the kinda thing, like, some old leg, no fingers and, like, a head wound on it, but baked (laughs). It’s soft, something like foetal alcohol syndrome and six brown crayons.”
Maybe that means something to you? Maybe it doesn’t. Much like his films, the guy’s all manic thought-rush, fumbled words and overlapping ideas, peppered with an infectious laugh, a raspy hehehe, kinda like that cartoon dog. Spring Breakers, his new movie, which perhaps you haven’t seen yet but definitely already know everything about, finally opened in local cinemas on Thursday. We talked briefly about it, and asses, and meatballs.
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Junkee: Spring break initially seemed like an odd choice of subject matter for you. Can you tell me a bit about where the idea first came from?
Harmony Korine: Um, I had just been collecting stuff, like some spring break imagery; photographs where you could see kids going off the rails on the beaches of Florida, just teenage debauchery, this kinda rite-of-passage. And, uh, I was stealing it from like fraternity websites, co-ed pornography, just everything pertaining to that. I started to notice there was this kinda hyper-sexualised, hyper-violent subject matter that I wound up with that was interesting, but also more innocent pop culture indicators in the details: the nail polish, the bathing suits, the Mountain Dew bottles, the puke, the kegs, all that stuff. There’s the ugliness — a lot of it feels like a kinda base cultural element — but I also saw a strange beauty to it, some bizarre poetry. I gravitate towards that; you want there to be a margin of the undefined. And there I set off to make a movie that kinda worked more like a pop poem. Or something.
Your career to date has been book-ended by films about youth, or if not “about” youth, then at least set in their worlds. What are the main differences you see between young people now and young people when you were growing up in NYC?
There’s plenty. I mean, obviously, people are people and they’re born with the same urges and instincts, but I think the big differences are the modes of socialisation. The way people communicate, the way people hang out; it’s completely different. When I wrote Kids, it was more about your adolescent oblivion seekers; it was more about people trying to disappear. They were shadow people; this kinda runaway, street culture. And, you know, that was before cell phones and internet and stuff. The whole idea back then was to get lost. The idea was to hide away, bring your own kinda world to you, your own kinda tribe or crew. So, obviously, things are different now. It’s all become more of a singular social entity. Like, the people in this film, it’s more a performance-oriented culture. It’s all about living out in front, on display. I don’t think one’s better than the other; they’re both interesting.
Rosario Dawson and Chloe Sevigny on the set of Kids (1995)
The company I work at recently released the findings to a major study they completed. They surveyed a bunch of young people — 16-30 years-old — and found that their greatest concerns were a fear of missing out and a fear of not knowing.
Yeah, I mean, I can see that. It’s a strange time, because it’s more about consumption than it is about analysis, you know? You don’t really have time to think about what you just heard or what you just saw, it’s always about what’s next.
These kinda criticisms have been leveled at Spring Breakers; the surface preoccupations, a lack of analysis…
(long silence)… Yeah, well, it’s a film.
I heard an interview with James Franco where he mentioned that you’re really intense about internet research. How much time do you generally spend on weird shit online?
Oh! Yeah, I like looking at everything; everything is interesting. I just saw something great like ten minutes ago. A friend of mine sent me this thing, a Craiglist ad for some guy in Knoxville who’s selling a mirrored armoire. And in the photo, the guy is totally naked and his schlong is hanging out; you can see it in the back, in the mirror’s reflection.
He didn’t realise?
Oh, I mean, how do you not realise? I think he’s just trying to meet someone that way.
That’s a really complicated way to meet people. So what kind of online materials did you send to James Franco to help him prepare for the role of Alien?
Oh, just hundreds of things – photos, audio clips — anything that I thought would pertain to his character, even if it was something more abstract, like an emotional connection. It was literally anything from, like, pictures of Kevin Federline to clips of girls in parking lots at three in the morning, beating each other up on the side of the road in a strip mall in Daytona Beach. There’s this rapper named Tommy Wright III from Memphis, who I would send Franco clips of all the time because I loved the way he talked. Just things that maybe I thought his character had seen or understood… It was a lotta things, a lotta-lotta-lotta things.
I read that your next project’s already in the works. That it’s this “multi-generational epic about a southern crime family”.
Yeah, I read that too. I don’t know if it’s true yet. It might be. I’m still putting everything together, figuring it out right now.
Going back to the research aspect, what kinda materials have you been collecting for it?
For the next movie? Just, like, images of huge asses.
Asses?
Yeah, just pictures of massive asses.
Where are you getting these?
It’s not that hard. They’re everywhere, man. Wherever you look.
I guess that’s true. What do you have planned for the rest of the day?
Oh, I’m just gonna go back home now and eat dinner. I think my wife is trying to make a massive meatball.
Just one?
Yeah, just one massive meatball. Like, basketball-sized. Well, I asked her if she could do it, so we’ll see. I wanna put two mushrooms in the middle and a sausage, and make a smiley face.
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Spring Breakers is now showing in cinemas nationwide.
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