Criterion Collection Sale

 

For those who experience cinema with physical media, the Criterion collection DVDs and Blu-ray discs are on sale for 50% off at Barnes and Nobles (in store and online). The sale lasts a month, ending on December 2nd. 

Harmony Korine

Harmony Korine turns 51 today. 

Printed Matter Membership Drive

Above: letters of support for Printed Matter/artworks by Harmony Korine, Jenny Holzer, John Waters, Lucy Lippard, Paul Chan, Raymond Pettibon, Thurston Moore, and Yoko Ono.

Harmony Korine | A Crack Up At The Race Riots

Harmony Korine
A Crackup At The Race Riots
New York City, USA: Main Street Books/Doubleday, 1998
176 pp., 23.5 x 14 cm., paper
Edition size unknown

By calling his first bookwork a novel, filmmaker Harmony Korine pointedly plays with the reader's expectations. A Crack-Up at the Race Riots is a fragmentary book of lists, letters, jokes, and dialogue, many of them hand scrawled or doodled. But rather than an extended 'zine  - similar to the type he was making in collaboration with Mark Gonzales at the time (later to be collected and compiled by Drag City Books) - or an artists' book, the title was released as a first 'novel'.

Most early reviews took Korine at face value and reviewed it as such. One suggested it was work of "creative overreach" from a talent "thrust too soon into the limelight" and another felt that "Korine seems too much inside his own head to speak for anyone outside it." Chloe Sevigny, who appeared in three of Korine's film projects and was dating him at the time, said "I liked the suicide notes and the rumour stuff. It was a little too dirty for me, though." Her co-star in Korine's Julien Donkey Boy, actor Ewen Bremmer (Snowpiercer, Trainspotting) called it "quite lazy as a novel".

When the reviews were good, they were effusive, with some praising the work as a 'reinvention of the novel', and comparing it favourably to the fragmented fiction of Kathy Acker and William S. Burroughs.

At the time, Korine was reading Walter Benjamin, a book of jokes by Milton Berle, Henny Youngman's autobiography Take My Life Please and a history of molestation in the Boy Scouts. Much of this comes out in Crackup, but the also content seems oddly prescient to the contemporary youth pop culture conversation. Subjects like suicide, sex, celebrity worship, drug use, race and rape are Tumblr and Reddit staples today.

The book includes a page titled "Idea for a Late-Night Comedy" (below), which suggests an intervention into the stale format of the American late night talk show.  On April 3rd, 1998 Korine made his third and final appearance on The Late Show With David Letterman to promote the book. His first was as the wunderkind who wrote the screenplay for Larry Clark's Kids in his teens, and the second was to promote his debut film Gummo. Korine was banned from the show after Letterman discovered him in the Green Room, rifling through Meryl Streep's purse.

Presumably high, Korine is even less coherent than his previous visits, but his best joke ("I wanted to write the Great American Novel, or a novel.  I just wanted it to be American.") confirms his liquid commitment to the format of long prose plot driven narrative. Letterman is stumped and incredulously asks how long it took him to write ("two or three years" is the reply) and flips to a page  he had clipped off in advance. He asks his guest: "...all I see on page 59 is the word hepburn......How much does this thing go for, Harmony?" Korine laughs and says "I think it's the regular book price."

Korine addressed the page in question in a recent interview with Vice Magazine:

"I’d write titles for books I wanted to write, then I would see that the titles were more interesting than the book, and I would say maybe the book would actually kill the title. Maybe the title is better than the full book. It’s like that page that just says hepburn. I’d spent like three years just trying to figure out what would be the perfect one word novel. And I finally thought of the word hepburn. It just made perfect sense. I felt like all the answers to the world were wrapped up in those letters—or actually not answers, but all the questions."

The book includes one such list of these titles, called "Titles of Books I Will Write", which includes "A Life Without Pigment", "Foster Homes and Gardens" (my favourite) and "Can't Touch This" (the book also opens with an image of MC Hammer). This approach always reminded me of the books Monty Python issued in the early seventies. They often played with the format of the book itself, and would typically include fictional dust jacket blurb endorsements and "further titles you may care to enjoy" such as "Toad Sexing for Married Couples" and "So You're Interested in Acne". Coincidentally, one of them, under Historiography, is "A History of the English Speaking Publishers by Kate Hepburn."

As Letterman is wrapping up his interview, he tries, but fails, to get the author to endorse his own book: "I don't know, I don't like to, I never even, I can't imagine why anyone would buy a book nowadays," says Korine.

A Crackup At The Race Riots was reissued by Drag City last year, following the renewed interest in Korine after the release of Spring Breakers. But if you, like Korine, you can't imagine actually buying it, you can download the PDF for free, here.

In February of this year Korine and actor James Franco told the New York Post that they were working together again, with Franco set to star in an adaptation of the 'novel'. The subsequent details suggest that the announcement was in jest, but it's hard to certain.

Harmony Korine | Leon and Guidance

Harmony Korine | Trash Humpers

Harmony Korine
Trash Humpers
Sheffield, UK: Warp Films, 2009
VHS
Edition of 300 signed numbered copies

Korine's 4th feature (after Gummo, Julien Donkey Boy and Mister Lonely, and preceding Spring Breakers) was released on DVD, digital download, 35mm print and VHS. The film, which follows the lives of three sociopathic elderly people in Nashville "who do antisocial things in a non-narrative way", was filmed on VHS and edited between two VCRs.

At the film’s premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, Korine informed the audience that the title was to be taken quite literally, giving those likely to walk out due warning. “That’s why I named it Trash Humpers," he told Eye Weekly, "because I didn’t want to fool anyone.”

Each of the 300 VHS copies were released in existing VHS boxes, for other films, which Korine personally altered, or 'vandalized' as the Warp site listed. They were available for around fifty British pounds, and sold out quickly.

The 35mm film print was released in an edition of 5. Each print consisted of four 1000 foot film reels,  playable on 35mm projection equipment, with a print case customized by Korine.

Artists and their books

Harmony Korine | Devils and Babies

Harmony Korine
Devils and Babies
Zurich, Switzerland: Nieves, 2009
Photocopied artist book
20 pp., 20 x 14 cm., staple-bound
Edition of 150

This photocopied 'zine, consisting of drawings, notes and stories, is long out of print, but a copy can be downloaded here.

Harmony Korine interviews agnes b

Harmony Korine: Do you believe in aliens ?
agnès b.: Oh, yes!

H.K.: Have you ever seen an alien?
a.b.: Some people are aliens for me and the great thing is that artists, like you Harm, are able to create aliens and I like it.

H.K.: Would you ever date a man if he was missing both of his ears?
a.b.: Yes I would... I would put flowers in his holes and whisper into them. I would suck his brain.

H.K.: Do you believe that animals have feelings?
a.b.: Of course. They have feelings, memory, language, happiness, sadness, sorrows...

H.K.: Have you ever had an out-of-body experience?
a.b.: Yes… Have you ever risen from your lying body to fly away, going through the walls?

H.K.: Do you think animals can communicate in secret languages?
a.b.: They do! They have their own intelligent communication ways… Animals are so diverse, much more than we are. We are basic.

H.K.: Would you ever go onto a crowded dance floor and dance with a man who only had one leg? Is there a circumstance where you could imagine doing this?
a.b.: Of course I would… no problem. I would be his artificial limb so he would have three legs and we could dance perfectly. We would be a tripod couple. Anyway, I love Tod Browning’s “Freaks.”

H.K.: Do you ever pray?
a.b.: I pray a lot, anywhere - in a traffic jam, swimming, driving, or lying in the grass.

H.K.: Have you ever been completely bald?
a.b.: Not yet…..!?

H.K.: Could you fall in love with a blind man?
a.b.: Yes… It must be so comfortable when the words become so important. Every word and thought would be even more important. I’m sure you could understand each other even better than with anyone.

H.K.: Would you rather be reincarnated as a fish or a turtle, and why?
a.b.: I don’t want to choose my reincarnation. I prefer having a surprise.

H.K.: Could you eat 10 lemons in a row without puking?
a.b.: For sure I could, but not 10 hard boiled eggs. I would collapse!

H.K.: I love you.
a.b.: Love you 2.

Agnes B and Harmony Korine - How They Met

From The Independent Sunday (October of 2003):

HARMONY KORINE
The first time I set eyes on Agnes it was at the Venice Film Festival, in a lobby. She was going to a screening of Julien Donkey-Boy but she missed it. I didn't recognise her but I'd heard that she was interested in meeting me and I remember going by her shops when I was young and she'd always have Godard posters in the window and stuff like that.

I liked her immediately; there was something special about her. She's like a kindred spirit or something: very sensitive with artists. She had to go back the next day but we kept in touch and I went to Paris and stayed at her house, which was just incredible. She's got a good art collection and beautiful gardens and there was amazing food. I remember really good tomatoes. I was in Paris for about 10 months. I couldn't understand what anyone was saying but it was decent. I was on my own, in a strange state of mind and that was what I needed to go through. I'm still figuring it out. I wasn't that happy where I was.

She drives this old Cadillac and when all the Le Pen rallies were going on she went to vote to oppose Le Pen but I remember she was so disgusted with who she had to vote for to keep him out that she burnt her ballot in the car. Just driving around with a burning vote.
We started talking about doing this production company, O Salvation. She was really receptive. I didn't want a movie production company because I'm just as interested in writing books or art shows, stuff like that. She understood that I wanted to go off in different directions. I needed something that whatever I wanted to do I could do and get it out there. She's like the backer and I do what I want to do. She's very supportive. I'm not sure what's in it for her. It's a good question, beats me.

I met David Blaine at the premiere of Kids and he's one of my closest friends. Agnes made the clothes he wore during the stunt in London. She was there to see him go up and is here to see him come down. They get on good but then Agnes is not difficult to get along with, she's easygoing. She doesn't necessarily join in, she observes and then gives feedback. Not criticism just discourse. Agnes is like a sponge: she absorbs a lot and she has a big heart and I think it comes out of her in interesting ways.

She doesn't seem like a mum or a sister, she's like a friend. I think she's a beautiful woman, but there's never been anything romantic between us. She meets my girlfriends, but it's not like taking them home to meet mom or anything. She's a friend and I never feel any of the age stuff. It's never seemed awkward or bizarre.

AGNES B
I loved Gummo so much that I wanted to meet Harmony. So, in 1999 I went to Venice to see Julien Donkey-Boy and went to the hotel where he was staying. We met in the corridor, talked for about 15 minutes and became friends. I didn't know Harmony but I thought he was a beautiful person, very poetic: I like the way he moves, his gestures, and he's funny and smart. Very smart. Chloe Sevigny [the actress, Harmony's former girlfriend] was there too, and I love her very much. I don't know anything about the break-up but I'm sure they still love each other. I don't ask questions. Anyway, I ended up producing the subtitling for Julien Donkey-Boy so it could come out in France.

I'm shy, but we got on quickly and kept in touch; he'd write me notes and then told me that he'd like to come to Paris. He stayed about three months, last spring. He was working, writing scripts and he liked it in Paris because he was away from things and people. He wanted unknown places. He works a lot. He's very serious. It's like he has to do it.

When he was here we saw each other a lot. We'd have a sandwich downstairs, talk, listen to music. There is something between us, as if we are children together. It's not a question of being supportive, it's a question of friendship.

Harmony has settled down a lot in the past few months. He knew that he had to spend some time alone and I admire that. The only real difference between us is in ages, but the funny thing is that you don't notice it when we're together. It's not about me being a big French designer and him being a young American. There are no misunderstandings between us. We've never had an argument. Never ever. I'm not argumentative anyway but we respect each other. I show his work at the gallery, which we hung together and he asked me to write a long text on the wall.

I have five children but they're different to him. I'm much more of a fantasist than my children. They sometimes worry about my behaviour. But Harmony is a friend. We've set up this company and we're starting to produce things through that. We are working on a film, I'm going to the editing room to see what's going on, and I do my producing work.

He's given me T-shirts that he didn't want anymore, he's generous like that, and I gave him my favourite jacket, which he wears every day. I've given him shirts and things but he doesn't worry too much about how he looks. He's the sort of person who just wears what's on the floor in the morning, and I'm a bit like that too. I don't care too much, I always wear the same things. We're a little like children in a way. A bit like les enfants terribles.

Point D'Ironie #12: Harmony Korine

Harmony Korine's March 1999 issue, Untitled (The Ass Sanctuary) features stills from an unreleased video of the same name.

"All I do is smoke cigarettes and complain. I'm happy only every once in awhile and that is when I see something in one of my pictures that I know is good. These pictures are of boys fucking and sucking each other. I have no genuine reason for them being made, only that at a certain time I felt they should exist. Maybe one day I will be happy again."
- Harmony Korine