Once We Were Kids - i - D Magazine
November 1999
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By Lena Corner
Chloë Sevigny and Harmony Korine were the epitome of edgy New York cool. Then they tired of the city and settled down in an upstate backwater. So why are their films still full of lesbians, schizophrenics, and serial killers?
This year Chloë Sevigny turns twenty - five. She'll be celebrating with just a small group of friends, strictly no alcohol, and a bland birthday feast straight from the freezer. If everything goes according to plan, she'll be ploughing through the mid - Atlantic aboard a 56 - foot yacht, heading for Bermuda. She's scheduled to hit the full force of the elements thrown up by the deadly Gulf Stream, so bad weather is guaranteed. The trip has already had to be postponed because of a battering by Hurricane Lenny. Strung onto the boat by a harness, Chloë's days are going to be divided into six hourly shifts; when she's not on lookout duty, she'll be in the cabin trying to recover. Her ultimate destination is Antigua, thousands of miles across the ocean - a madcap voyage masterminded by her brother, artist Paul Sevigny.
Harmony Korine, meanwhile, has chosen to wimp out on dry land at his parents' house in Nashville. "I couldn't spend two weeks on a boat," he says. "I couldn't even spend ten minutes on a boat. When I sail, I vomit immediately. It's just not a part of my habitat. If they'd left earlier, they'd have been totally fucked by now by some horrible hurricane. I think Chloë's getting scared."
Under the harsh lights of preppy sportswear emporium Patagonia, Chloë's seafaring days are not getting off to a good start. "I can't believe I'm buying a fleece," she mutters. "My brother was like, 'None of this secondhand clothes shit on the boat,' so I've got to get all this hi - tech stuff. We call this place Patagucci because it is so expensive." For a fraught hour, Chloë is at the mercy of a troupe of pandering shop assistants. "I loved you in Palmetta," says one, salivating over the cagoules, referring to the only big budget blunder of her career.
For two people who so neatly epitomise the essence of New York street cred, these days Chloë and Harmony's visits to the city are rare. This is the girl who, in her teens was declared Manhattan's 'It Girl' in a lengthy thesis by novel Jay McInerney for The New Yorker, and who was plucked from the streets - a scrappy pubescent skate kid - to appear in fashion shoots and pop videos. This is the boy who grabbed his chance when he ran into Larry Clark and ended up writing Kids, one of the definitive films of the decade, at the age of eighteen. They had friends on the door of any club worth going to, and, for a while, the streets of New York were their playground. "Between '93 and '94 I was really hardcore clubbing it," says Chloë. "I was living in Brooklyn Heights and going out every night. It was just before Kids. That was the favourite year of my life so far." But recently, Chloë and Harmony have grown tired of the city. "I have a hard time eating and sleeping in New York," she explains. So now she's moved back to her mum's in a small town called Darien in Connecticut. Harmony has bought a place nearby. "It's really hard living in New York," agrees Harmony. "I really don't enjoy being there anymore. I can't get anything done. Maybe there aren't enough trees or something. I've got a house right by Chloë's mum's. We call it 'Aryan Darien' - it's pretty and quiet and full of old women." Weary of the 'sidewalk catwalk' mentality of their old downtown stomping ground, what the pair crave now is anonymity; seclusion and a break from tiresome encounters with vague acquaintances still lurking in their old haunts.
Chloë and Harmony were thrown together after a chance meeting in a park. Both had just landed up in new York - two disjointed teenagers, curious oddballs who'd made a break from their smalltown homes intent on doing it different, determining to make something of themselves. "Chloë was just hanging out with these skaters, she used to wear really baggy clothes and look like a dyke, and she just stared. She used to freak me out because she had these amazing eyes and she would just stare at you. We became friends pretty quick." For the last five years, they have been seeing eachother. "It's been on and off," says Harmony. "Five years except for a couple of months here and there." It's a partnership fuelled by a sharp professional dynamic; they thrive off eachother, test eachother and support eachother. He describes her offbeat realist acting as "amazing," and writes parts with her in mind. "Our similarities are definitely an attraction," he says. She in turn advises him, designs costumes, and helps him cast. Chloë is his voice of reason. "She's a good girl," he says. "She very rarely messes up. I mess up a lot."
In Gummo, Harmony's directorial debut, Chloë sported a late '80s heavy metal look to play Dot, a hulking white trash midwesterner. He taped up her nipples and had her dancing around on a bed to Buddy Holly songs. For Chloë, it's the only thing she's done that she likes to watch. "I don't really like me in any of my films except Gummo. I can't watch myself, it makes me cringe," she says. "But Gummo is something really special to me. I love to be around Harmony, especially in his movies. I've known him so long now that we know eachothers tastes. It's almost as if we think the same way." More recently, they've worked together on julien donkey - boy, which is perhaps one of the most lucid, unforgettable portraits of schizophrenia ever captured on celluloid. Based on Harmony's real - life uncle Eddie, Julien [played brilliantly by Ewen Bremner] and filmed under the stricts rules of the Dogme 95 code, he used over 20 different types of cameras - digital, hand - held, surveillance - to produce what he describes as a 'new cinema.' "Harmony is like no other director," Bremner said afterwards. "He gave me references - watch this documentary, listen to this music. With him, you have to be on your toes." Chloë plays Julien's serene, heavily pregnant sister Pearl; her onscreen presence is, as usual, open, absorbing, and beautiful.
When we meet, Chloë has just completed what she calls 'Chloë's Fashion Week.' Monday and Tuesday she was shooting with Mark Borthwick for Purple magazine, Wednesday with S. Klein for Italian Vogue, and Thursday with Craig McDean for the Hennes campaign. "It's a lot of money," she explains of the ad. "It's more money than I've ever made on any of my films combined times two. I just couldn't resist that much money for one day." People have been falling over themselves for a piece of Chloë for years, trying to grab a slice of her effortlessly idiosyncracies. This is the girl who has shared a catwalk with Kate Moss for Miu Miu and who even managed to look sexy in a shell suit. But this is the girl who hates watching herself on screen, cannot bear the sound of her voice on tape and never looks at the poloroids when she's doing a shoot. "I don't think I should be an actress," she says. "I'm not cut out for all this attention. Ask what she thinks of her looks and she simply says, "crooked, really really crooked." Born with a defect in her back called scoliosis, Chloë has a curvature of the spine. She has to wear a lift in her shoe to even herself out and work out on a special excercise machine. It's something she's becoming increasingly conscious about and now is the time to get her priorities right. "I don't care if I don't make a movie or any money," she says. "I don't need to do anything. I just want to work on myself. This is the year of my back." From now on, auditions will take a backseat to visits to her chiropractor as Chloë hopes to have at least two children before she's 30. "I've been to a couple of doctors and they say if I want to have a baby I can't carry the weight, so I'm thinking about getting a rod put in."
In the meantime, though, she has just completed her most prolific year in film ever. The controversial adaptation of American Psycho, plus A Map Of The World alongside Sigourney Weaver, are both in post - production. Boys Don't Cry opens here in March. The directorial debut of Kimberly Pierce, this is possibly her strongest performance to date. It's the claustrophobic true story of a girl called Teena Brandon who feels trapped in the wrong body, dresses up as a boy and moves to Nebraska to lead a double life. Chloë plays Lana, who embarks on a passionate affair with the mysterious newcomer. "I've kissed girls in life before, so for me, that was nothing. Kissing's fun. But it was the sex scenes that were more difficult. I didn't want to be one of those girls that covers their chest with their sheet. I wanted it to be really raw and real. I trusted the cinematographer, and that's like, one of the most beautifully lit scenes I've ever been in." More embarassingly, though, Chloë had to perform her first shuddering onscreen orgasm. "The orgasm ... Ugh," she shrieks. "That was a nightmare. I wanted it to be really understated, just like gigglie and small, but Kimberly, who was tougher than any male director I've ever worked with, was like, 'This has to be the biggest release of your life, the biggest orgasm you've ever had.' I don't know if I'll ever do that again." But her performance has paid off. The movie just came out in the States to rave reviews and has been cropping up on Oscar watch lists. Chloë isn't convinced. "They're saying they want to campaign for me. I'm like, don't even bother, not for this. The Academy doesn't want to recognise a film like that." Strangely, for someone who is famously and justafiably picky about choosing her scripts, after her back is sorted, the next thing Chloë wants to do is a costume drama. "I'd like to do a big Hollywood period piece, like Sense And Sensibility or Portrait Of A Lady. I loved that movie Picnic At Hanging Rock. When I saw that, I was like, 'I just have to get in that dress.'"
It's a project Harmony is unlikely to get involved with. In the meantime, he has been writing a trilogy of movies called Jokes; three different stories based on one - liners by Jewish comedian Milton Burle. Gus Van Sant is directing one, Harmony another, and, as usual, there's a place in it for Chloë. "It's my favourite thing Harmony's ever written," she says. "I just love the story so much. The whole cast is female and he rarely writes about girls." Moving on, slightly at a tangent, Harmony declares that he has just released a debut album with a few friends called SSAB Songs. He features on banjo and does a bit of singing. "I don't really know what it sounds like, I only listened to it once. From what I remember, it's okay. I just read a review that said it was good. I think it's the kind of album I'd only listen to once." The idea of appearing on The Top Of The Pops tickles him, but, he insists, "I never do anything as a joke."
For milennium night, Harmony plans to be at home asleep. "I don't think I like to be around people. I don't like socialising," he says. Chloë, meanwhile, is living in fear of of Y2K. "I'm going to stay at my mum's. I don't want to be in New York because if everything goes down, it's going to be insane. Usually I like to go out dancing, but Harmony's not really into social activities so that's a sort of separate thing for me."
Chloë used to hang out with New York's infamous Club Kids, the glammed up teens who formed the nucleus of the early '90s club scene. "I never actually was one because I had short hair and dressed like a boy. But I know all of them. I knew Michael Alig and I knew Angel, the one who was murdered. He would never sell me drugs because he was saving them for the cute boys. The whole scene was really nasty though. There was a strict heirarchy and I was kind of at the bottom." Pretty quickly, the scene got saturated in heroin and things started to turn sour. The Club Kids' pivotal hangout, The Limelight, closed down and Mayor Giuliani started a clampdown on the after hours clubs. "When heroin started taking over, it just got really gross," says Chloë. "So many kids were dying. It just got really dark, the whole scene was really just kind of evil. Before, they had been these happy bubblegum kids out raving, and then everyone was carrying knives and guns. One of my roomates passed away." Chloë was bright enough to sidestep the smack, and, as the Club Kid era fizzled to a messy halt, moved on to other things - Gummo, The Last Days Of Disco, and a stageshow called Hazelwood Jr High. "I experimented with drugs a bit when I was a kid, but I've never been any good at taking them," she reflects. "I've never even been good at smoking pot because I am too conscious of what's going on in my body. My heart starts thumping and I get really paranoid that it's going to explode. The last few times I took acid, I had bad trips, so I was always really paranoid of something happening to me. I know if I took heroin, I'd probably OD the first time and die. Or I might like it too much."
Now, Chloë says, there's slim pickings in New York. The previous night she was at the Pyramid on Avenue A. "It's like a new wave goth night, there's not a celeb in sight. I like that kind of place." When she's in London, you won't find her in the Met Bar, but in Soho's mucky downmarket disco, Gossips. For a while, Chloë was seeing Jarvis Cocker [of Pulp] and she even thought about moving to London. "I used to be really into hanging there all the time - a new city, new people. I do have some really close friends there." But the draw of what she had back home was far stronger. Nowadays she just wants to stay in Connecticut, hang out with Harmony in their 'retirement' homes and wait for the New Year to pass. The feeling's mutual. "Chloë, more than anyone, knows exactly what I like and she knows if it's good or bad," he says. "We basically share a similar sensibility. She's got very good taste. I almost don't have to say anything to her, it's all very understood."
