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
Cinema sustains life. It captures death in its progress.
Everything has to have some kind of a point for people to breathe easy. What's the point of life? I have no clue, but sometimes there are things that just attract us and pull us in a certain way.
When I started making movies, I was pretty young, and at the time I felt like there needed to be more confrontation in cinema - or I needed to make something more disruptive - so in the beginning, those movies were me wanting to play with the rules.
I don't even know how people read new fiction anymore because there's so much old fiction that exists that seems great that's unread. It's overwhelming to me. But, I mean, I do read. But there probably haven't been many people less literate than me that have been in 'The Paris Review.'
I'd always heard stories about how Harpo Marx was the most talkative of the Marx brothers. I found it interesting that someone you never got to hear speak in films would never not speak in real life.
My knock with filmmaking is the whole bureaucracy around it, so in some ways, staying outside of it is easier for me.
I have a pretty good family. But ever since I was little, I just felt like I wanted to be on my own. It was the same thing about school.
When I had my first camera - I was a child of the '80s. I remember what it was like reusing the same tapes over and over again, and having really bad quality and images kind of bubbling up from under the surface.
When I'm directing films, I mostly try to create an environment on set that mimics what's in my mind as to the tone and feel of things. I try to create a place where you feel that anything's possible.
I studied writing at NYU. I graduated high school in Nashville and then went to the creative writing program, and in the first year, that's when I wrote 'Kids.'
Here's the thing that people don't understand: I don't really care. I've never been a careerist. It's not a strategy. I react to certain characters and story lines and specific mode of filmmaking.
When I was a child, the temptation to sin was always a romantic option. This romantic option led me to the cinema, a place where sin was welcome.
What makes Gucci Mane Gucci Mane is like what made Frank Sinatra Frank Sinatra - it's just him. He's trap's Frank Sinatra.
I don't make movies for the same reason that a lot of people do. I make films because I need to see them exist in a very specific way.