Updated 05-May-2020.
Mondo shtuff from around the internet, all about GUMMO!
With a poetic, impressionistic take on film narrative, a visual style incorporating everything from elegantly framed 35mm to the skuzziest of home camcorder footage, and a startling mixture of teen tragedy, vaudeville humor, and sensationalist imagery, Harmony Korine’s first feature Gummo is perhaps the only recent film whose artistic strategies draw as much from visual art as the film world. (A gallery installation of work from Gummo opens at L.A.’s Patrick Painter gallery in late September). We were thus very happy when Mike Kelley – one of today’s most essential and subversive artists – agreed to interview Korine on the eve of a major gallery installation in Copenhagen. Like Korine, Kelley blithely shreds conservative notions of high and low art as he mounts major gallery shows, designs album covers for bands like Sonic Youth, and plays in Destroy All Monsters with Thurston Moore. In fact, one of the band’s songs, “Mom and Dad’s Pussy,” opens Korine’s film.
Korine: So how did you like your song? It starts the movie with that Super-8 image we kept repeating of the girl in the front of the trailer – I just knew that song would fit that image.
Kelley: I guess I couldn’t tell the gender of the kids.
Korine: I think they were little girls. We were just driving around – that’s how I got a lot of that footage, the Super-8 and video stuff. Just walking around neighborhoods, walking up to people.
Kelley: How much footage do you have of that kind of material?
Korine: I could probably make another two movies with the excess footage. In a strange way, I want to get to a point where the next two movies are even more random and more incidental without them being overly arty. I just want things to become a succession of scenes, images and sounds. I was thinking about [the gallery show] – the problem you run into doing multimedia projection is that a lot of the time, the style takes over; it threatens and reduces the content. It becomes almost like a music video – mixing all these forms for no reason.
Kelley: A post-modern pastiche?
Korine: Exactly. It’s so boring, like a Sprite commercial. With Gummo, I wanted to invent a new film. I wanted to make a movie where nothing was done for any purpose other than that I wanted to see it. I wanted to make the first film that would hopefully play in malls in which you would see images with very little justification other than that these were things that I wanted to see. That’s why everyone gets upset with the girl shaving her eyebrows.
Kelly: People don’t like it when you use retarded people.
Korine: Even though I had met her months before, played Donkey Kong with her, and she had no eyebrows then. That was her style. We tried really hard to have images come from all directions. If I had to give this a name, I’d call it a “mistake-ist” art form – like science projects, things blowing up in my face, what comes of that.
Kelley: Something alchemical?
Korine: Exactly. When we switched forms, when the film went to video, Hi-8, or Polaroids – I wanted everything to feel like it was done for a reason. Like they shot it on video because they couldn’t get it onto 35mm, or they shot it on Polaroids because that was the only camera that was there.
Kelley: Did you do many effects in post-production? That shot of a cat eating – the image was phasing.
Korine: That’s what I mean by “mistake-ist”. There was a script, but as a screenwriter, I’m so bored with the idea of following a script. I felt like I had the movie in the script, so we shot the script but then shot everything else and made sense of it all in the editing process. That cat tape was a tape that a friend of mine had given me of him doing acid with his sister. They were in a garage band, and there was a shot of their kitten. That [phasing] was an in-camera mistake. The editor, Chris Tellefsen, caught it and said, “That’s kind of interesting.”
Kelley: A lot of the movie is about framing things that are basically performative. Here’s a kind of action, let’s let people go with it. The tap dancing scene, the kids shooting the boy with the bunny ears –
Korine: Or the scene where the brothers beat each other up.
Kelley: But other scenes are more pictorial.
Korine: We go from scenes that are completely thought out, almost formal, scenes that resonate in this classical film sense, and then we go to other scenes where it’s like, total mistakes, stuff shot on video where the kids forget there’s a camera there and say that they
My botty best at summarizing from Wikipedia: Gummo is a 1997 american drama film written and directed by Harmony Korine . the loose narrative follows several main characters who find odd and destructive ways to pass time . Korine’s directorial debut, the film was the film is often regarded as one of the most well-known cult films . it generated substantial press for its graphic content and stylized, loosely woven narrative . a cat drowns the cat in a the film then cuts to a different scene with Tummler, in a wrecked car with a girl . the narrator introduces Tumler as a boy with “a marvelous persona” the film cuts back to Tummler and Solomon hunting feral cats . they bring the cats to a local grocer who intends to butcher and sell them . a rival in the cat killing business tells them the film then cuts to a scene in which two foul-mouthed young boys dressed as cowboys destroy things in a junkyard . Bunny Boy plays dead and the boys curse at him, rifle through his pockets the poacher is named Jarrod Wiggley . he is poisoning “their” cats rather than shooting them . Tummler and Solomon break into Jarrod’s house with masks and weapons . a number of other scenes are interspersed throughout the film, including an intoxicated man flirting with a gay dwarf . there are also small scenes depicting Satanic rituals and conversations containing racial big the final scene shows a girl singing “Jesus Loves Me” in front of her parents in bed . in favor of a collage-like assembly, Korine focused on forming interesting moments . to justify such Korine’s work on Les Amants du Pont-Neuf made a tremendous impression on him . he often approached people on the street, in bowling alleys and in fast food restaurants . Korine: ” “Chlo Sevigny designed the costumes for the film, mixing pieces that people already owned with items bought at local thrift stores” old friends were eager to help Korine, such as the two skinhead brothers, skateboard Gummo was her first screen appearance in 16 years . Korine spotted his two main characters while watching cable television . Korine noticed Jacob Reynolds in a short role in The Road to Wellville . “he was so visual… I never get tired of looking at his face,” Korine says . the character of Solomon, played by Reynolds, is Sutton says he thinks he’ll be dead in a few years . producer: “he’s this person that Harmony sort of found and put in the middle of this movie” “i think of Nick as Korine casts his actors not by how they read lines, but by the visual aura they put off . producer: “we’re essentially seeing the kind of poverty that we’re used to seeing in Third World countries” Kor crew rebelled against filming in such conditions and Korine was forced to purchase hazmat suits . Korine and Escoffier wore Speedos and flip-flops just to piss them off . ” producer Scott Macaulay: improvisational methods yield deep results for everyone involved . Korine: “i wanted to show what it was like to sniff glue. I didn’t want to judge anybody” producer: “for a Korine wanted each scene to be shot with different visual looks and styles . he handed out 8mm, 16mm, Polaroid, VHS, and Hi-8 cameras . “i wanted everything to feel that it was “i felt like shooting each scene on its own terms and then making sense of it afterwards” “escoffier shot the chair-wrestling kitchen scene alone with a rigged boom on his camera” “the crew Korine shot Gummo in just four weeks during the summer of 1996 . most of the film being shot on the very last day of production due to crew waiting for rain . “jean yves really captured that awkwardness Korine said he used footage from any source he could find that fit the aesthetic . “that [phasing] was an in-camera mistake,” he said . any scenes appearing to show violence against animals were “the final film is about 75% scripted,” director says . other popular songs include “Everyday” and “Crying” metal and powerviolence bands such as Bethlehem, Mystifier, Absu dot and Helen are modeled after Cherie Currie . “i wanted them to seem like homeschool kids… sort of guessing and coming up with these hipster things. They almost make a homeschool hip language.” the name of the character Tummler is taken directly from the vaudevillian term given to lower-level comics of the day . “the guys that would check you into a hotel room, take your coat, and at Korine: “we wanted Gummo to set its own standard.” Robin O’Hara argues Korine’s art really is his own . “he is an original, in every sense of the word,” he says “gummo” is a portrait of small-town middle american life . it holds a 35% “rotten” rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 54 reviews . “cat lovers should be warned “gummo” has a 19/100 rating based on 15 reviews . the site critical consensus says the movie has “overwhelming dislike” a short excerpt from Gummo was shown after the opening sequence in it becomes almost like a music video – mixing all these forms for no reason . it threatens and reduces the content .