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.
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'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.
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.
Life is beautiful. Really, it is. Full of beauty and illusions. Life is great. Without it, you'd be dead.
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.'
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.
I do have friends who make movies, but for the most part, I never really wanted to feel like I was part of an industry.
I always try to make films in such a way that it's hard to imagine how they came to be, or where they came from.
I've never had to pitch a movie to a studio. I usually just let people read the script, then I cast it. I always think pitching is for baseball.
If I see something that's morally ambiguous or ambiguously beautiful or has some pull in some way, I won't censor myself; I always run towards the light.
I was born 'Harmony,' and it was weird because when I was a little kid, I was picked on so much that when I was 13, I changed my name to Harmful. I thought it was a tougher name, so I had it legally changed. And then, I don't know, it just didn't seem to catch on, so... legally, my name is still Harmful, but I just said I'll go back to Harmony.
I always wanted the films to play in malls, and I wanted as many people as possible to see them. I never want them to be marginalized in the kind of rarefied, elitist world. I always have hopes that the films will permeate culture in a big way. A lot of times, I'm wrong, but it's always the hope.
Some of the most radical work is being done in the most commercially pop venues, and some of the most boring work is being done in avant-garde territory.