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Disharmony
Ray Pride Talks With GUMMO's Brat Celebre, Harmony Korine.

It's a little more than halfway through this year's Festival and few films have elicited more than modest praise and polite disagreements. But Harmony Korine's GUMMO has been a jawdropper for most viewers, with expressions of outright contempt and righteous bewilderment filtering through the streets of this mild - mannered metropolis. Korine, writer of Larry Clark's KIDS, again flexes his talent for outrage with this eclectic teenage white - trash fantasia, which is composed mostly of vaudeville - like routines, vignettes that incorporate nonprofessionals, including an Albino and a shaven - headed bald Black Dwarf, and unlikely actors such as a grown - up, tap - dancing Linda Manz, from DAYS OF HEAVEN, as a goofy if loving mom. There are scenes involving the aftereffects of tornadoes, cat - torture and how teenage girls can make their nipples stand proudly at attention. Existential slapstick or crazy indulgence?? Bold new work or irresponsible lunacy?? It'll be interesting to see the general reaction to what Gus van Sant calls "A sophisticated and refined cinematic dialogue of modern cultural influences."

As photographed by the great Jean - Yves Escoffier, cinematographer of Leos Carax's luminous films, BOY MEETS GIRL and LES AMANTS DU PONT NEUF, as well as van Sant's upcoming GOOD WILL HUNTING, the near - plotless GUMMO alternates gorgeous imagery, sometimes dreamlike, with poker - faced scenes that can be intensely distasteful. Yet at its brightest moments, GUMMO suggests the go - for - broke immediacy of contemporary Asian filmmaking.

Korine sees his work as a mix of realism and absurdism, captured by whatever means -- "Mistake - ism" is a word he's coined for himself -- yet the movie moves to its own blissed - out rhythm, never pretending to the alleged ethnographic veracity of KIDS. After all the provocative quotes attributed to Korine, it's a gratifying surprise to meet an articulate, knowing 23 - year - old instead of a Ritalin - deprived brat. Korine, who was mistaken for a New York club kid after the release of KIDS, in fact spent his formative years near Nashville, Tennessee, where GUMMO was shot. It's displaced Gothic: While the events purport to unfold in Xenia, Ohio, it's a Southern piece through and through, particular in its embrace of a dark and freakish mood. "Oh, it's completely Southern, it's totally, one-hundred percent Southern," Korine agrees. "I'm a Southern boy so how would it not be?? I'd say GUMMO is an American film; it's Southern, but it's strange. But it fucks with it, it's a genre - fuck. I love the South, love it, love it. I didn't leave until I was 18. I had to move out to understand it. I couldn't have made that film if I hadn't left [Tennessee] for those four or five years."

GUMMO boasts as many bare boy - chests as a season's worth of Bruce Weber and Herb Ritts fashion layouts. [There is a recurring figure, Bunny Boy, a silent, bare - chested boy clad only in shorts and dirty sneakers and big floppy pink bunny ears, whose almost feminine beauty is as angelic as any man, woman or child seen on screen in ages.] Many scenes are knowing about the dynamic between teenage homosexual panic and homoeroticism, but Korine would only grin when I tried to get him to talk about this aspect. "What do you want me to say??"

Korine expresses disappointment that more journalists had not been rude to him if they don't like his work. "I would like that instead of these polite questions like, 'Do you feel like you're exploiting people??' Exploiting people, I don't know what they mean." I wondered how he reacted to critics who will drag out the dread label, "self - indulgent" to describe GUMMO. "How can an artist be expected not to be self - indulgent??" Korine says. "That's the whole thing that's wrong with filmmaking today. Ninety nine percent of the films you see do not qualify as works of art. To me, art is one man's voice, one idea, one point - of - view, coming from one person. Self - indulgent to me means it's one man's obsession. That's what great artists bring to the table. When fucking critics or whatever say, 'he's self - indulgent,' I don't know what that means. The reason I stopped watching films is because so many people lack any kind of self - indulgence. But I don't believe in being boring."

So "boring" is a scarier word??

"Oh much more. Entertaining to me is what it's all about. We can talk about esthetics and influence but in the end when I go to see anything all I want is to be entertained in a different way. It could be informative or shocking but I want to be entertained. I don't want to be bored by the bland and generic. Film is like a dead art because of people not taking chances."

GUMMO is overtly an experimental narrative, and under the Time Warner name as the Fine Line logo unfurls, a child chants the film's first words, "Peanut butter, peanut butter, motherfucker." "I love it, I love it," Korine says when I point that out. "To me that's the most exciting thing. That to me is the future. The most subversive thing you can do with this kind of work, the most radical kind of work, is to place it in the most commercial venue. I have a novel coming out in April called "Crackup At The Race Riots," from Doubleday, and that's Michael Crichton's label. It's the most fucked - up book, but to me that's exciting. When Godard did BREATHLESS, the reason it became influential and changed the cinematic vernacular is that it came out in a commercial context. I only think things change when they're put out to the masses, regardless if somebody dislikes them. Velvet Underground put out their first album, and almost nobody bought it, but everyone who did started a band that sounded just like them. For me to put it out to as many people as I can get it to is much more subversive than if you're giving it to the same three theaters with the same crowd that always goes to see this kind of film."

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