David Letterman
Harmony Korine On David Letterman
17 October 1997
Letterman: Our next guest garnered both shock and praise as the screenwriter
of the controversial motion picture "Kids." Now he is making his directorial
debut with the film "Gummo" which opened today. Here's Harmony Korine. Harmony, come on out.
[Harmony enters, is greeted by Dave and sits down.]
Letterman: Welcome back to the show. We haven't seen you in a couple of
years. I guess you were here when "Kids" came out, weren't ya?
Harmony Korine: Yeah.
Letterman: Yeah. Did you have a nice time that night?
Harmony Korine: Yeah, it was real -- it was good. Yeah, I had fun.
Letterman: But it's been a long time since you came back.
Harmony Korine: Yeah. It was like two years.
Letterman: Yeah, but did you want to come back in the meantime? Did you ever
find yourself saying, "Gee, I'd like to go back and see Dave?"
Harmony Korine: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Letterman: Well, what happened?
Harmony Korine: Well, this one night I really was thinking about that.
Letterman: Really? Well, that's good.
Harmony Korine: It was neat.
Letterman: You know, I saw your film "Gummo."
Harmony Korine: Oh, yeah?
Letterman: My, that's an interesting piece of work that "Gummo."
Harmony Korine: Thanks.
Letterman: What does "Gummo" mean as the title?
Harmony Korine: Well, " was the fifth Marx Brother.
Letterman: Can you name all the Marx Brothers?
Harmony Korine: Yeah, but well ....
Letterman: Well, let's go.
Harmony Korine: All right. Well, you have Zeppo, Harpo.
Letterman: Zeppo, Harpo, Chico.
Harmony Korine: Obviously Groucho. It's really pronounced "Chico," because he liked
to chase chicks. He also liked to gamble, and when he would play golf he
would gamble.
Letterman: So are you a big fan of the Marx Brothers?
Harmony Korine: Yeah, but Gummo quit because he liked to wear women's clothes.
Letterman: Is that right? He quit the group, Gummo did?
Harmony Korine: Yeah, because he wanted to sell cardboard boxes, but the movie is
not about him or nothing.
Letterman: The movie has nothing to do with Gummo. It's just somebody that
you liked, you admired, and you named the film "Gummo"?
Harmony Korine: Yeah.
Letterman: All right. Why don't you tell people what the movie is about. Is
it autobiographical in any sense?
Harmony Korine: Not really. It's just more like about specific scenes.
Letterman: Specific scenes from your childhood, from your upbringing?
Harmony Korine: Well, some of them, but not really. It's just more like ....
Letterman: All right. Well, now, let me interrupt you right there, because
I've seen the film. If you can, give us an example of a scene that represents
your upbringing and an example of a scene that has nothing to do with your
upbringing. I'd just like to know what kind of a guy I'm dealing with here.
Harmony Korine: Okay.
Letterman: Fair enough?
Harmony Korine: Yeah, that's fair. I guess I used to eat spaghetti in my bath while
I would take baths.
Letterman: All right, yeah, that's a scene now. You're in the bath tub and
you've got one of those things across the tub.
Harmony Korine: Yeah.
Letterman: And you're eating spaghetti; you're eating dinner.
Harmony Korine: Also, if you notice in that scene there's a piece of bacon taped on
the wall.
[Laughter.]
Letterman: No, I didn't. I'll have to load that back up.
Harmony Korine: That's my favorite part.
Letterman: I'll have to freeze it and look for the bacon. Now, when you were a kid did you tape bacon on the wall while you
had your spaghetti dinner in the bath?
Harmony Korine: I personally like it. Well, bacon is my aesthetic, essentially.
Letterman: I'm sorry. Bacon is your what?
Harmony Korine: Well, as far as it being humorous, taped bacon, It's just something
I really get excited about it.
Letterman: I'll tell ya something. This is exactly why we don't need Arnold
Schwarznegger. We don't need him. We don't want him.
Harmony Korine: Yeah. Once I met Arnold Schwarznegger.
Letterman: Yeah. Nice man.
[Korine shrugs his shoulders.]
Harmony Korine: I'm gonna, I'm gonna ....
Letterman: Now wait a minute. Wait a minute. We're not done. I want to
follow up on this. Now, that's an example of something that did happen in
your life. Now, give us an example of something in your film that is in no
way connected to reality as you know it.
[laughter].
Harmony Korine: Okay. For instance, the movie starts with a dog that's impaled on a
satellite on someone's house.
Letterman: A satellite dish antenna?
Harmony Korine: Yeah.
Letterman: But that's after like a tornado?
Harmony Korine: Yeah.
Letterman: Well, that could have happened. That happens all the time, you
know, like cows flying through the air and stuff.
Harmony Korine: Yeah, but ....
Letterman: It might have happened.
Harmony Korine: Well, see what happened was, I ride unicycles.
Letterman: No, you don't.
Harmony Korine: I swear. Well ....
Letterman: No, you don't.
Harmony Korine: Okay, so the first time in my life I was riding one down a dirt
road, and I saw the dog when we put in the satellite dish, I saw it.
Letterman: All right. We'll come back to that later. You know, when you go
to the Gap, they'll put cuffs right on those pants. They won't charge you
like a nickel extra.
[Camera focuses on ten - inch pant cuffs and shoes with no socks and audience
cracks up.]
Harmony Korine: I'm not -- I don't like that company.
Letterman: No, you're fine, you're fine. Just take it easy.
Harmony Korine: Yeah.
Letterman: Tell me about the cast in the film. It's an interesting
collection of thespians you have selected.
Harmony Korine: Yes. Well, my big influence is once I saw -- when I was in high
school I saw this play. I don't really know if I should talk about that kind
of thing.
Letterman: What about it do you find objectionable?
Harmony Korine: Well, okay. Well, you know James Joyce, Ulysses? I was just kind of
inspired, because I used to know Snoop Dog a long time ago, and it was a play
that he was starring in. He was starring in the theatrical version of that
story. So that's where I basically got the idea from.
Letterman: Yeah, but now if we can go back to the question [audience
applauds.] Just a second. It's a very rich colourful group of cast members
you have, and I am curious as to how you found these people, where you found
them and why you selected them to put them in the film "Gummo."
Harmony Korine: Okay. The main actor's name is Tummler, and I saw him on an episode
of Sally Jesse Raphael. It was called, "My Child Died From Sniffing Paint."
[Audience cracks up.]
Letterman: You think this is easy, don't you? You're just sitting there in
your house eating Cheetos. You think this is easy, don't you?
[Audience cracks up.]
Harmony Korine: But he reminded me of Buster Keaton, and he was a paint - sniffing
survivor. [Audience laughs.] Well, I don't know if like the way I'm
telling you this if it makes it sound like you'd want to see my movie.
Letterman: Oh, you are selling tickets tonight, buddy.
Harmony Korine: Yeah, yeah. It's "Gump," "Gummo"
Letterman: I'll say this for the film. It's nothing I have ever seen before.
Harmony Korine: Yeah, yeah, because --
Letterman: Where did you shoot the movie?
Harmony Korine: I grew up in Nashville in Tennessee, and I wanted to make a
different film. I wanted to make a different kind of movie, because I don't
see cinema in the same -- on the same kind of terms or the same way that
narrative movies have been made for the past hundred years. I mean, we
started with Griffith and we ended up with -- I don't know what the Hell is
going on now but --
[Audience applauds.]
Letterman: This thing will set 'em straight.
Harmony Korine: But basically nothing has changed, so I wanted to see moving images
coming from all directions.
Letterman: Well, that's what you have. You have assembled a series of very
striking vivid disturbing impressions.
Harmony Korine: Yeah, well, that's basically my style [laughter].
Letterman: Yeah. May I ask how much the movie cost to make?
Harmony Korine: Eighty mil.
[Letterman laughs hysterically.]
Letterman: Eighty million dollars, and every penny is up there on the screen,
ladies and gentlemen.
Harmony Korine: Yeah. I stole some of it. Every penny.
Letterman: 1.5 million. Is that about right? That's about right, isn't it?
Harmony Korine: I don't talk finances.
Letterman: Yeah, but no, that's about right, and you know something? I
applaud that. I think that to me it's insane that movies, most of them do
cost eighty million bucks. You know what I mean? You can't even bust open the
popcorn for less than eighty million.
Harmony Korine: No, I agree.
Letterman: And all we are doing really is telling a story, so why would it
cost eighty million dollars to tell a story?
Harmony Korine: I know. I don't understand that. That's why I made "Gummo" because
it's ....
Letterman: And what story are you telling with "Gummo"?
Harmony Korine: Okay. Well, it's not really one story, because that's the whole
thing. I don't care about plots.
Letterman: That's right, in the linear sense. It's more slices of life.
Harmony Korine: Well, like I think every movie there needs to be a beginning, middle
and end, but just not in that order [laughter], and like when I watch movies,
the only thing I really remember are characters and specific scenes. So I
wanted to make a filmmaking system entirely of that, really random.
Letterman: Right. You would like the phone book better if it were not
alphabetized, right?
Harmony Korine: Yes, I like the phone book. It's good [laughter].
Letterman: Oh, you do, do ya?
Harmony Korine: Yeah. I like Eddie Cantor. I like Al Jolson. I want to do a minstrel
with Tom Cruise, and I want him to play it on his knees.
Letterman: Really? Like Eddie Guddell.
Harmony Korine: I want to make a movie about Eddie Guddell. He was a midget
baseball player, but they didn't have -- you know it's in the Guinness Book
Of World Records, because the strike zone is really small.
Letterman: He walked him on four straight pitches or something. Are you working on a project right now? Do you have something
else in the works?
Harmony Korine: I have a novel coming out called, "A Crackup At The Race Riots."
It's about a race war, and it happens in Florida, and the Jewish people sit
in trees, and the black people -- the blacks are run by M.C. Hammer and the
whites are run by Vanilla Ice. It takes place in Florida.
Letterman: Go ahead. Try to adjust your sets. It won't make a damn bit of
difference. Go in there and screw with everything you got. Turn it up. Turn
it down. Get it going like that, get it going like that. We'll still be here
when you're done.
Harmony Korine: I wanted to write the great American choose - your - own - adventure novel.
Letterman: Now, you seem like a very prolific young man.
Harmony Korine: Yeah. I had my first art show.
Letterman: Oh, really? You can paint? Is that what it is? You can paint?
Harmony Korine: Yeah.
Letterman: Now, Harmony, will you come back now?
Harmony Korine: Yeah.
Letterman: Because when you were here the last time we all said, "Gee, it
would be nice if Harmony would come back and see us," and then you put an
Arnold Schwarznegger on us, and we haven't seen you in two years. So you're
using us.
Harmony Korine: Yes.
Letterman: You only come back when you have something to promote. Is that
safe as to say?
Harmony Korine: Yeah. Well, I mean --
Letterman: What about just coming because you kind of enjoyed the experience?
Harmony Korine: Well, all right, okay.
Letterman: Will you come back?
Harmony Korine: I'll come back sometime and hang out with you.
Letterman: No, I didn't say hang out. Now wait a minute. Listen to me.
Harmony Korine: Sorry. I have such a short attention span. I'm serious.
Letterman: Come back sometime before the end of the year. Will you do that?
Harmony Korine: Okay.
Letterman: So that gives you a couple of months. That will be all right.
Harmony Korine: Yeah, because by then I will have done something else.
Letterman: Yeah. That will be good. We don't want you to promote anything.
You just come back.
Harmony Korine: I know, I know. I will have learned to swim.
[Audience applauds.]
Letterman: The movie is called "Gummo". It opened today, and this is the
genius behind the film.
Harmony Korine: Yeah.
Letterman: Harmony Korine.
Harmony Korine: It's a new kind of movie. I just want people to know that things
need to change. We can make films differently.
Letterman: You represent the avant - garde.
Harmony Korine: I am a commercial filmmaker. I am a patriot. I hide in trees. All
right. All right.
[Dave & Harmony shake eachother's hands and the audience applauds.]
Harmony Korine
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