Harmony Korine is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, author and occasional actor. He is best known for writing Kids and for directing Spring Breakers, Gummo, Julien Donkey-Boy and Mister Lonely. His film Trash Humpers premiered at Toronto International Film F...
Film director, Screenwriter, Actor, Film Producer, Cinematographer, Television Director, Writer
Education
Hillsboro High School
Nationality
United States of America
Spouse
Rachel Korine (m. 2007)
Children
Lefty Bell Korine
Parents
Sol Korine, Eve Korine
Siblings
Avi Korine
Nicknames
Harmony Korrine , Harmony , Laird Henn , Harm
Awards
Future Film Festival Digital Award - Special Mention
Nominations
Golden Lion, Grand Jury Prize, Best Screenplay Award, Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay, Independent Spirit Award for Best Director, Silver Lion for Best Director, Gotham Open Palm Award
Movies
Spring Breakers, Gummo, Trash Humpers, Mr. Lonely, Julien Donkey-Boy, Ken Park, Manglehorn, Kids, The Fourth Dimension, Act da Fool, Beautiful Losers, Fight Harm, Last Days, Until the Light Takes Us, The Diary of Anne Frank Part II, Umshini Wam, The Advocate For Fagdom, The Devil, the Sinner, and Hi...
Star Sign
Capricorn
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Trademark
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Often depicts teenagers doing violent and disturbing things (i.e. drug abuse, incest, sex addiction, murder)
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Films (with the exception of Mister Lonely (2007)) depict decadence in America.
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Utilizes a variety of aesthetic styles and modes, ranging from VHS tape for Trash Humpers (2009) and blown up DV tape for Julien Donkey-Boy (1999) to neon-soaked fine grain 35mm for Spring Breakers (2012). He even varies aspect ratios from film to film.
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The movies he directs rarely have a linear plot and are often made up of pieces of events that are highly symbolic and/or metaphorical.
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Quote
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[on Mister Lonely (2007)] I basically started thinking in terms of images that really have nothing to do with anything. Just simple images. I started dreaming about flying nuns, falling out of airplanes and praying the whole way down and surviving. Then I started to fixate upon specific images and characters. One of them was the idea of a Michael Jackson impersonator walking the streets of Paris. I had these different images although they really don't have anything to do with one another. But I knew that there was something in there that I was trying to get out, a unified idea, but I wasn't sure how to say it. [2007]
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[on his cinematic inspirations for Spring Breakers (2012)] A lot of it came from things I'd experimented with when shooting ads and trying different techniques. The movie I watched most, believe it or not, was Michael Mann's Miami Vice (2006). The reason I love his movies, and that movie in particular, is I could feel the place. When I watch that film, I don't even pay attention to what they're saying or the storyline. I love the colors, I love the texture. [2012]
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[on his life after directing Gummo (1997) ] I felt like Clint Eastwood except you know, from a different time and different place. I'm thinking about the Clint Eastwood with the orangutan [Every Which Way But Loose (1978)]. It's hard to say things without coming off in a certain way, but at a young age, I felt very driven. All I ever wanted to be is a soldier of cinema.
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I never really feel wrong while making movies. I know myself and I know that my intentions are pure and I'm on the side of righteousness... I always wanted the films to play in malls, and I wanted as many people as possible to see them. I never want them to be marginalized in the kind of rarefied, elitist world. I always have hopes that the films will permeate culture in a big way. A lot of times I'm wrong, but it's always the hope.
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[on his unfinished film "Fight Harm" where he randomly picked fights with real people] I wanted to make the great American comedy that would just consist entirely of me getting beat up, like a condensed slapstick comedy where you slip on a banana peel. I was really just trying to give people the greatest laugh of their life.
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Cinema sustains life. It captures death in its progress.
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When I was a child the temptation to sin was always a romantic option. This romantic option lead me to the cinema, a place where sin was welcome.
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When I'm directing films, I mostly try to create an environment on set that mimics what's in my mind, as to the tone and feel of things. I try to create a place where you feel that anything's possible. Everyone's in character all the time to a degree, everyone's in costume all the time. You want to create an environment where these characters really exist, and then it's about me finding it. A lot of times, I'll give six or seven different scripts out with alternate endings, with different character lines, with different pieces of dialogue. A lot of times, the actors think they're working on different films.[2008]
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I never cared so much about making perfect sense. I wanted to make perfect nonsense. I wanted to tell jokes, but I didn't give a fuck about the punch line.
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After 100 years, films should be getting really complicated. The novel has been reborn about 400 times, but it's like cinema is stuck in the birth canal.
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[on meeting David Blaine] The first time I hung out with him, he took me to this condemned building, and it had a pizza oven [inside], and he crawled into the pizza oven and turned the heat on to 400 degrees, or something like that, and he stayed in it for, I guess, a half hour. He came out, and except for one or two second-degree burns, he was unscathed. You meet a lot of musicians and filmmakers and actors, but it's rare to meet someone who can step inside a pizza oven and take the heat. I was intrigued by that.
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If Richard Wagner lived today, he would probably work with film instead of music. He already knew back then that the 'Great Art Form' would include a sort of fourth dimension; it was really film he was talking about.
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What I remember myself from films, and what I love about films, is specific scenes and characters.
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Fact
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In 2013, while James Franco was promoting the Korine-directed Spring Breakers, Franco asked David Letterman to comment on the rumor that Korine had been banned from appearing on Letterman's talk show during the late 1990s. After demurring, Letterman finally confirmed that Korine had indeed been banned, and revealed the reason why: Meryl Streep was also a guest on the same day that Korine was scheduled to be on, and Letterman said that he "went upstairs to greet Meryl Streep and say 'welcome to the show,' and I [knock on the door]...and she was not in there. And I looked around, and I found...Harmony going through her purse. True story. And so I said, 'Okay, that's it, put her things back in her bag and then get out.'".
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Readily admits that he was often stoned when he appeared on David Letterman's show during the mid-1990s, when he felt like he 'was a kid'.
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In 1997, Janet Maslin of The New York Times called his movie Gummo (1997) the worst film of the year.
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Has an unfinished "slapstick comedy" film in which he goads bigger men into getting into fights with him. Korine says it consists "entirely of me getting beat up".
Has one daughter with wife Rachel Korine, Lefty Bell Korine.
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His parents live in Panama, which is why he chose to film sections of Mister Lonely (2007) within that country.
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Briefly changed his name to Laird Henn. It never stuck, but there is a song by the band Sun City Girls that contains a phone message left by Harmony on one of the members' answering machines, where he introduces himself as Laird Henn.
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Has a tattoo of a trident on his right hand.
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Attended film school at NYU but dropped out after only one semester.
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Attended high school at Hillsboro High School in Nashville, Tennessee.
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Has claimed that The Basketball Diaries (1995) author Jim Carroll was in attendance at his birth and cut his umbilical cord. (Carroll was living in Bolinas at the time, as indicated in his book 'Forced Entries'.) Carroll and Korine are now friends and collaborators.
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Wrote lyrics with Björk for her song "Harm of Will" from the album "Vespertine".
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His father, Sol Korine, made documentary films in Georgia for PBS.
$3 Million
