Independent Film Magazine
By Paul Zimmerman
The Independent Film Magaine Interview with julien donkey - boy writer -director cinema provocateur Harmony Korine.
It has been suggested that a film's style should be dictated by the character's personality and state of mind. For the new film julien donkey - boy, writer - director Harmony Korine has taken that notion somewhere past the Twilight Zone. Not since The Cabinet Of Dr. Calagari and Clean, Shaven has a film so emphatically reflected its protagonists' sense of confusion.
Shot with a multitude of mini digital video cameras, that even the actors wore and improvised throughout, julien is the story of a New Jersey schizophrenic and the contradictory world he lives in. Reflecting his fractured mind the film is grainy, jarring, dreamlike and altogether disturbing. By having professional actors like Ewen Bremner, Chloe Sevigny and Werner Herzog interact freely with people on the street [who often were aware they were being filmed], Korine has achieved a unique kind of free form feature film that you'll either embrace or run from.
Adopting the Dogme '95 Doctrine [a loose list of rules set up by a group of directors led by Lars Van Trier], no artificial light, props or otherwise Hollywood trickery was allowed, [including any post production tinkering], forcing Korine to do everything [music, voice over, lap dissolves etc.] while they shot. Korine first came to fame with his outrageous script for the controversial Kids in 1995 and furthered his bad boy rep two years ago with Gummo, an outrageously funny mosaic about lower class disenfranchised youth.
Like a precocious child looking to get a reaction, Korine has enjoyed teasing the press in the past. Recently in LA to spread the word on julien, he looked disheveled and confused, as he answered questions with the softest voice and the straightest face. Dressed in a simple button down shirt and pants, he seems to have abandoned the metal - toothed, rapper, shock look of two years ago and passed it on to julien leading man Bremner. While some dismiss Korine outright, others believe his every word. The truth lies somewhere in between, the key to his films and his appearances is to imagine what might have happened had Andy Kaufman become an independent filmmaker.
1) ON THE REAL JULIEN...HARMONY'S UNCLE
"Julien's character, at least his mannerisms and cadences, was based on my uncle who's my father’s brother, who is a schizophrenic and is institutionalized now. When I was a kid, when I'd go stay at my grandmother’s house, he was living there and I was very much intrigued by him. Whenever I've seen in films any kind of mental illness for the most part it was romantic and cute. And I really wanted to show it exactly the way I remember it and I’ve seen it."
2) ON ADOPTING THE DOGME DOCTRINE...
"It's a rescue action for anyone who really cares about the cinema and the elevation of cosmetics to a higher power by stripping things down. And for this particular film it seemed to make sense. It was liberating. I want to make different kinds of movies in different ways of watching films with different narratives."
3) ON THE KORINE DOCTRINE...
"I wanted to put an end to so - called realism. Now, I wouldn't say julien is real, but I'm trying to make things seem as organic as possible. I wanted to kind of strip things down by putting cameras on actors and setting them in a real situation. And after a certain point having myself not even involved. Just set up a scene and get out of the way. I think to some degree traditional screenplay writing is just not exciting."
4) ON DIRECTOR TURNED ACTOR WERNER HERZOG
"He gave me a call after he saw [my first film] Gummo in the theatres and we became friends. As a kid he was a big influence on me, his work, more than almost any other director. I really identified with his characters. His approach [to playing Julien’s abusive father] in this film is all his, I don't think anything would stop him from getting what he wants to get. [Smiles devilishly]. He told me 'If you ever have a part for a maniacal so and so...,' and I said, 'It just so happens that I do.'"
5) ON THE FILM THAT NEVER GOT COMPLETED
"Fight Harm was a movie where I was just fighting people on the streets. I'd make people fight me. And the only rule was I couldn't throw the first punch and that the crew was not allowed to stop the fight unless it looked like I was going to die. But after six fights I really got messed up and was in the hospital and my ankles were broken and I'd been arrested. And I'd wanted to make a 90 - minute feature of just that, just one assault after the next one, and I'd fight every demographic. I'd fight a lesbian one night and fight a Puerto Rican the next. I'd fight a Jew. I tried to get everyone in there but they always had to be bigger than me. I think I’ll play the 40 - minutes I've got in a gallery or something. I was also making a movie about just tap dancing where I was trying to invent new styles of tap dancing, but after I got my ankles broken I couldn't do that."
6) ON HIS INFLUENCES...
"We'd have to play a guessing game. Because it's strange, I'm as influenced by negative things as well as what I like. My novel, A Crackup At The Race Riot, is full of that kind of stuff."
7) ON BREAKING THE RULES OF THE DOGME DOCTRINE...
"There's this strange misconception from people. I keep reading where people are saying that I broke the Dogme rules because of opticals. But everything that was done was done in camera. Organically. The sound. The picture. There was nothing done in post production. The Vow of Chastity, the ten rules of Dogme, state basically technical rules on how to make a film. And people have read into them in different ways and they're written obtusely enough that basically you can do whatever you want, you just have to do it a different way. So if I wanted a voiceover I had the actor read it off camera while we shot the scene. Any music heard we played in the room while we shot."
8) ON THE LONG VERSION OF JULIEN DONKEY - BOY
"My first cut was six hours. And I really like that cut. Then it was deciding whether I wanted to make a six - hour movie or a 90 - minute one. And I guess that’s why I like Rocky, which was right at 90 - minutes. It has a real pace to it. I'll put out the six - hour one on DVD or something."
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