Harmony Korine
Harmony Korine
Harmony Korine is an American film director and screenwriter. He is best known for writing Kids and for writing and directing Spring Breakers, Gummo, Julien Donkey-Boy and Mister Lonely. His film Trash Humpers premiered at Toronto International Film Festival and won the main prize, the DOX Award, at CPH:DOX in November 2009. His most recent film Spring Breakers was released in 2013...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth4 January 1973
CityBolinas, CA
CountryUnited States of America
I've always wanted to be a very commercial director, or I had dreams of making these movies into blockbusters. And with each movie, they tell me it's not that way.
I look at WorldstarHipHop in the morning, Bossip, Global Grind, and everything in between, but it's all so quick, I don't even think about it. And I've never been a fan of lyrical or socially conscious rap music.
I had these experiences as a kid; I remember certain things happening in school that were horrifying that I would see, certain things of violence or certain things of cruelty, but around that, something might happen afterwards to cause everyone to laugh, and that always blew me away.
Sometimes, when you watch people play a video game, they seem lost in this wormhole, or in a trance.
It's hard to say things without coming off in a certain way, but at a young age, I felt very driven. All I ever wanted to be is a soldier of cinema.
I never liked socially conscious rap. I like rap that's physical, that's about a beat and bass and repetition.
I don't listen to music made by white people. I especially hate anything where a guitar is used. I don't listen to white people and guitars.
I use to live on this street when I was a kid where there was an old person retirement home, and all of the old people would listen to that band Herman's Hermits, and they would wear white nursing shoes. And they would throw away stacks of VHS tapes, and I would go through the trash and take them.
I purposefully try to make films in that grey area, where things are morally ambiguous. It's like life: good people do horrible things, and bad people do good things, and there's beauty in horror and horror in beauty.
I was free when I was 12 because I got my first skateboard. I've been free ever since.
When I was a kid, I loved Nicholas brothers films. It was like skateboarding. Even Gene Kelly: I always preferred him to Fred Astaire, just because he was more athletic, like skateboarding.
I had a guidance counsellor who made me take an aptitude test, and told me I should be a bricklayer.
I always get sick of these conversations where people are so obsessed with pixels, with high definition, and even with technology in general. I find it just dull and heartless. And so I wanted to use only the worst machines.
I've always liked street lights, and I've always photographed them. I probably have a collection of two to three thousand photographs of them, just around the city, mainly at night.