Harmony Korine: Interviews

Conversations With Filmmakers Series

by Eric Kohn (Editor)

Harmony Korine: Interviews tracks filmmaker Korine's stunning rise, fall, and rise again through his own evolving voice. Bringing together interviews collected from over two decades, this unique chronicle includes rare interviews unavailable in print for years and an extensive, new conversation recorded at the filmmaker's home in Nashville.

After more than twenty years, Harmony Korine (b. 1973) remains one of the most prominent and yet subversive filmmakers in America. Ever since his entry into the independent film scene as the irrepressible prodigy who wrote the screenplay for Larry Clark's Kids in 1992, Korine has retained his stature as the ultimate cinematic provocateur. He both intelligently observes modern social milieus and simultaneously thumbs his nose at them. Now approaching middle age, and more influential than ever, Korine remains intentionally sensationalistic and ceaselessly creative.

In 1995, Korine was discovered while skateboarding and became the bad boy teen writer behind Kids. He parlayed this success into directing the dreamy portrait of neglect Gummo two years later. With his audacious 1999 digital video drama Julien Donkey-Boy, Korine continued to demonstrate a penchant for fusing experimental, subversive interests with lyrical narrative techniques. Surviving an early career burnout, he resurfaced with a trifecta of insightful works that built on his earlier aesthetic leanings: a surprisingly delicate rumination on identity (Mister Lonely, 2007), a gritty quasi-diary film (Trash Humpers, 2009) and a blistering portrait of American hedonism (Spring Breakers, 2013), which yielded significant commercial success. Throughout his career he has also continued as a mixed media artist whose fields included music videos, paintings, photography, publishing, songwriting, and performance art.

Genres: Film, Collections

246 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 27, 2014

Reviews

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Compulsively readable, and by the end almost a parody of film journalism with the same fawning intros, potted origin story, and Korine's repetitive, road-tested responses to questions about his art ("It's about feeling" "unified aesthetic" etc.). Where's "Hitting Harmony" by Nathan Ihara when you need it?

[DanoXmas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not the most insightful look into Harmony Korine, more just a neat chronicling of his meteoric rise as a writer/filmmaker. Maybe I’d be more interested if the interviewers pressed him more on his edgelord persona answers or asked better questions; by the second half of the book, he just keeps saying “Idk man, I wasn’t thinking that hard about it.”

Still, it’s neat reading about how he conceptualized “Gummo” & “Julien Donkey-Boy”, I just wish there were more conversations about his later films.

[Lou · Rating 4 out of 5]

I luv this guy, mann

[Leo Robertson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great overview of the things the guy has said about his various films over his career :)
Gets repetitive at times but then even what is repeated becomes revealing I guess :D

[Elijah · Rating 5 out of 5]

a collection of interviews with my favorite filmmaker? one word... SIMPLY EPIC

maybe other people might find this repetitive. Not me!

[･ · Rating 5 out of 5]

MK: So the script would have a scene that would be imagistic, and another section would say, “Now there’s going to be a party.”
HK: No, this is what would happen. I wrote out the script perfectly. We would ask the actors to do the scenes without me imposing my ideas of how it should be blocked. Most of the time, it was a different way than I dreamt it. In some cases, it was worse, and we’d go with my blocking. In other cases, it would be really exciting and I’d change the scene spontaneously.

cf. Buster Keaton: Interviews

About fifty percent you have in your mind before you start the picture and the rest you develop as you're making it.

[?0?0?0 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eric Kohn has thrown together a fun, intriguing read for fans of Harmony Korine. The book traces interviews from various sources since "Kids" up until "Spring Breakers" with talk of his other artworks, other jobs (directing music videos, ads etc.). While I would have preferred if the interviews could have been edited a bit for their repetitiveness and the questions containing similar answers, this book offer pretty much what one would expect from such a book and by not tying these individual pieces into anything fancy or pseudo-intellectual, it works as a collection simply for being that.

[Boenjegginz of Glasgow Town · Rating 5 out of 5]

Une excellente compilation d'interviews. Korine souffre de l'image qui lui a été collée depuis "Kids" (= le gamin camé, surdoué, perché qui fait compulsivement des fanzines). Ce livre permet de le découvrir comme un homme qui a grandi, qui revient de loin, très terre à terre finalement. Et les interviewers sont de qualités, posent des questions pertinentes, contrairement aux autres interviews que l'on peut lire en ligne.

[Devin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great collection of interviews. Incredibly interesting man and figure!