Harmony Korine - Rotten Tomatoes Celebrity Profile

Biography

This page uses content from the Harmony Korine biography page on the English version of Wikipedia and is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. This list of authors can be seen in the page history. Rotten Tomatoes disclaims any and all warranties as to the accuracy or reliability of the content.

Harmony Korine (born January 4 1973) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter and author.

He is best known for the screenplay Kids and for directing the movies Gummo and Julien Donkey-Boy. He has been a seminal figure in independent film, music and art throughout the past decade.

Korine was born in Bolinas, California and raised in Nashville, Tennessee.

Films

Kids

Korine first gained notoriety in 1995, at the age of 21, for the screenplay Kids directed by Larry Clark, a film that examines the lives of several New York City teenagers who are coming of age in the era of AIDS. Kids garnered good reviews, but due to its NC-17/unrated rating, few of its intended audience actually saw the film upon its debut. However, it has become a significant cult film. The film features Chloë Sevigny and Rosario Dawson in their first movie roles.

Gummo

Following his fame with Kids, Korine directed and co-produced Gummo (1997), a film based on life in Xenia, Ohio, a town devastated by a tornado. Forgoing conventional narrative, Gummo embodies sketches written by Korine, hence the nonlinear, fragmented events over the course of the film capitalizing on the obscure. A contributor to the ingenuity and zeitgeist of the film, much of the cast was found during preproduction where it was filmed in Tennessee. Of all those who appeared in the film, only five were experienced actors/actresses. Although New York Times critic Janet Maslin deemed Gummo "the worst film of the year", [1] it earned Korine the respect of noted filmmakers such as Gus Van Sant and Werner Herzog.

The film is notable for having unsettling, often bizarre scenes, as well as its dreamlike soundtrack, which strengthens the disconcerting atmosphere of the film.

This film premiered at the 24th Telluride Film Festival on August 29 1997. During the screening, numerous people got up and left during the initial cat drowning sequence. After the screening, Werner Herzog, the prolific director associated with the German New Wave, and Harmony Korine hosted a Q&A session in which Werner gave praise to the film overall, especially the bacon taped to the wall during the bathtub scene.

In 1998, Korine made The Diary of Anne Frank Part II, a 40-minute three-screen collage featuring a boy burying his dog, kids in satanic dress tearing apart and vomiting on a Bible, and a man in black-and-white minstrelsy make-up dancing and singing "My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean". It utilizes some of the same actors and themes as Gummo, and can be considered a companion piece.

Julien Donkey-Boy

Korine released his next film, Julien Donkey-Boy, in 1999, which included a signed Dogme 95 manifesto. While it broke a number of the movement's basic tenets, Lars Von Trier himself lauded Korine's ability to interpret the rules creatively.

The story is told from the perspective of a young man suffering from schizophrenia, played by Ewen Bremner of Trainspotting fame, as he tries to understand his deteriorating world. Julien's abusive father is played by Werner Herzog. At one point, Korine was to play the son, but he backed down and was replaced by Evan Neumann.

Ken Park

In 2002, Larry Clark made the film Ken Park, based on a script Korine had written several years earlier. The film, another adult tale of youth gone awry, was not distributed in the US and was banned in Australia. At the time of its release, Clark and Korine had long since parted ways and the latter had no involvement in its production. Three years later, when asked about Clark, Korine said that he "wished him the best."

Above the Below

In 2003 he made the film Above the Below about his friend, illusionist David Blaine and his 44-day stunt in a park over the bank of River Thames in London inside a suspended Plexiglas box. A documentary commissioned by Sky Television and Channel 4, it also includes jokes, visual poetry, and music. In addition to the documentary, Korine has worked with Blaine on a number of Blaine's specials.

Mister Lonely

His third feature film, Mister Lonely, began production in 2006, starring Diego Luna, Samantha Morton, Denis Lavant, Anita Pallenberg, David Blaine, Jean-Pierre Léaud and Werner Herzog. The film is co-written by his brother, Avi Korine.

The story, according to the Korines, is of "a young American man lost in Paris. He scratches out a living as a Michael Jackson look-alike, dancing on the streets, public parks, tourist spots and trade shows. Different from everyone else, he feels as if he's floating between two worlds. During a car show Michael Jackson meets Marilyn Monroe. Haunted by her angelic beauty he follows her to a commune in the Highlands, joining her husband Charlie Chaplin and her daughter Shirley Temple. A place where everyone is famous and no-one gets old. Here, The Pope, The Queen of England, Madonna, James Dean and other impersonators build a stage in the hope that the world will visit and watch them perform. Nuns fall out of airplanes and children ride pigs. Everything is beautiful. Until the world shifts, and reality intrudes on their utopian dream." [2]

Other works

Books

In 1998 Korine published a book entitled A Crack Up at the Race Riots, a collage of suicide notes, jokes, rumours, fragments of dialogue, movie ideas, letters from Tupac Shakur, and other random bits. It was described by publisher Doubleday as "the ultimate postmodern video," like "Slacker meets James Thurber."

The bookjacket reads, "There is no place for plot, linear narrative, character development, or scene setting in Harmony Korine's audacious and original first novel, A Crackup At The Race Riots. The twenty three year old filmmaker has created a bold work of fiction, a montage that takes literary convention and explodes it in a sequence of half-remembered scenes, suicide notes, dialogue fragments, movie ideas, rumors, and jokes. Korine's eye and ear are exquisitely tuned to the absurd, to the hypocrisy and hilarity that comprise our national obsessions with death, dirt, poverty, celebrity, religion, and gossip."

Art

He has also been involved with a number of major art projects, including "The Devil, The Sinner and His Journey", which featured Korine in blackface as O.J. Simpson and the actor Johnny Depp as Kato Kaelin. Much of his art is photography or video related to his films.

In particular, Gummo seems to have been the basis for much of his late-nineties artistic output. Most recently his works were presented in a 2003 exhibition at agnes b's Galerie du jour in Paris, with whom Korine has often been associated.

Music

Korine has directed a number of music videos for artists such as Sonic Youth, Cat Power and Will Oldham. In addition, he sang on Oldham's "Ease Down The Road", and co-authored the lyrics of Björk's musical composition "Harm of Will" from her album Vespertine (2001). In 1999 Korine and Brian Degraw of Gang Gang Dance released a music CD SSAB Songs. "I don't really know what it sounds like," Korine explained to i-D magazine. "I only listened to it once. I think it's the kind of album I'd only listen to once".

Themes and influence

Much of Korine's work is based around the dark humor and absurdism involved in dysfunctional childhoods, mental disorders, and poverty. This is often incorporated into surrealist, non-linear forms and presented experimentally (see the mix of Polaroids, Super 8 and high definition film that makes up Gummo).

Another major theme is of the 19th century American blackface minstrel show, as seen in his "No More Workhorse Blues" music video and a number of his short films. Most enigmatically he mentions in his final Letterman appearance that he is working on a biopic of a one-legged Olympic swimmer played in the style of Stepin Fetchit.

Though mainstream success has eluded Korine he has gained a significant cult following. Despite the scorn of a majority of mainstream reviewers, he has won festival prizes at Venice and Rotterdam, among others, and established directors such as Bernardo Bertolucci and Gus Van Sant are outspoken proponents of Korine's genius. A significant number of scholarly essays have been written on the importance of his oeuvre to film and art in general.[3]

As critic Roger Ebert said in his review of Julien Donkey-Boy, "Korine, who at 25 is one of the most untamed new directors, belongs on the list with Godard, Cassavetes, Herzog, Warhol, Tarkovsky, Brakhage and others who smash conventional movies and reassemble the pieces... Harmony Korine is the real thing, an innovative and gifted filmmaker whose work forces us to see on his terms."[4]

Filmography

Feature-length

Mister Lonely (2006)
Above the Below (2003)
Ken Park (2002) (screenplay only, directed by Larry Clark)
Julien Donkey-Boy (1999)
Gummo (1997)
Kids (1995) (screenplay only, directed by Larry Clark)

Shorts

Jokes (2000) (with Gus Van Sant)
Korine Tap (2000)
The Diary Of Anne Frank Part II (1998)

Music videos

Living Proof by Cat Power (2006)
No More Workhorse Blues by Bonnie "Prince" Billy (2004)
Sunday by Sonic Youth (1998)
Casper the Friendly Ghost by Daniel Johnston (1995)

Trivia

Korine appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman three times before finally being banned for shoving Meryl Streep in the Green Room in 1999. His first appearance, in 1995, was to promote Kids; his second, in 1997, was for Gummo; and his third, in 1998, was to promote A Crackup at the Race Riots. These appearances are notable for Korine's incoherence and deadpan hilarity, something also found in his director's commentaries and filmed interviews. There is some debate as to whether it is simply his persona or, as Letterman posited during his last visit, due to heavy drug intake.
He originally intended to follow up Gummo with a short-lived project known as Fight Harm, directed by Blaine. Described as a comedy, it comprised footage of Korine engaging random people in actual street fights. In filming these fights, Korine followed a loose set of rules: his opponent had to be larger and stronger than him, he had to provoke his opponent into throwing the first punch, and the fights could not be broken up unless Korine was in danger of losing his life. David Blaine filmed most of the fights for him, however Korine claimed later that he was one of the worst cameramen he's ever worked with and most of the footage Blaine shot was unusable. After filming seven fights and sustaining several injuries, Korine had produced only fifteen minutes of usable footage. He subsequently aborted the project.
Harmony Korine allegedly lived in a squat in Brixton and once dropped his crack pipe in a London restaurant.

References

External links

Video

Harmony Korine (DVblog)

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