Harmony Korine

At 51 years old, Harmony Korine has this physical status:

Harmony Korine (born January 4, 1973) is an American film producer and screenwriter.

He is best known for his writing Kids (1995) and writing and directing Gummo (1997). Julien Donkey-Boy (1999), Mister Lonely (2006), and Spring Breakers (2012).

His film Trash Humpers (2009) premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and took home the main prize, the DOX Award at the CPH:DOX.

The Beach Bum, Korine's first project in six years, was launched in 2019.

Early life

Korine was born in Bolinas, California, and the son of Eve and Sol Korine. His father, an Iranian Jewish immigrant, was migrant. In the 1970s, his father, a tapdancer and produced documentaries for PBS; he'd take Korine to carnivals and circuses and taught him how to use a Bolex camera. Korine and his father, who rented Buster Keaton films for Korine, took him to see Werner Herzog's Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970) in the theater as a child. "I knew there was a poetry in cinema that I had never seen before that was so impressive," Korine reminisced.

Korine spent his early childhood in the San Francisco Bay Area residing with his family on a commune. They moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where he attended Hillsboro High School before moving to New York City to live with his grandmother. Korine spent his summers in San Francisco, "skateboarding, living on rooftops, running away from my parents, and getting into fights. You know, girls. At that time, I was just getting into movies, but the idea of making films came later in high school. He began attending revival theaters, watching films by John Cassavetes, Werner Herzog, Jean-Luc Godard, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Alan Clarke. Korine briefly mentioned that he took Business Administration in college in an interview with Bruce LaBruce. According to other reports, he attended Dramatic Writing at Tisch School of the Arts in New York University for one semester before deciding to pursue a career as a professional skateboarder.

Personal life

During her senior year of high school in 1993, Korine met Chlo Sevigny in Washington Square Park in New York City. Both girls became close friends, which resulted in her appearance in the low-budget independent film Kids (1995). Despite being close friends, they have had a marital affair that ended in the early 2000s. He is now married to actress Rachel Simon, with whom he has two children.

After Polanski was arrested in Switzerland in 1977 for drugging and raping a 13-year-old teen, Korine was chastised for signing a petition in favour of film director Roman Polanski, calling for his release.

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Career

Korine was skating with friends in Washington Square Park when he encountered photographer Larry Clark. The photographer, who was insecure, begged him to write a script about skaters and include a teenage AIDS story in the story. "I've been waiting all my life to write this story," Korine told Clark. Korine wrote Kids, a film about 24 hours in the midst of many Manhattan teenagers' sex and heroin-filled lives during the AIDS epidemic within three weeks. Kids received mixed feedback, but few viewers saw the movie debut due to its NC-17 rating. However, it has since become a hit cult film. Chlo Sevigny and Rosario Dawson appear in their first film roles, among other things. The film, although controversial, launched Korine's career. He was put into contact with film director Cary Woods, who spent about $1 million to create Gummo, Korine's personal vision.

Korine wrote and directed Gummo, a film based on life in Xenia, Ohio, which was destroyed by a tornado in the early 1970s. Gummo is a nonlinear, fragmented collection of sketches by Korine that leaves out traditional narrative. Much of the cast members were discovered during preproduction in Tennessee, and out of all those who appeared in the film, only five of them were professional actors. The film is known for its unsettling, often bizarre scenes, as well as its dreamlike soundtrack, which adds to the disconcerting atmosphere. It features "an eclectic soundtrack with death metal, Madonna, and Roy Orbison."

On August 29, 1997, it premiered at the 24th Telluride Film Festival. During the initial cat drowning sequence, several people were up and left during the screening. Werner Herzog called Korine to celebrate the film as a whole, particularly the bacon taped to the wall during the bathtub scene three months later. "I was knocked off my chair" as a piece of fried bacon was stuck to the bathroom wall in Gummo," he told The New York Times. [Korine's] a very strong voice of a generation of filmmakers who is taking a new position. It's not likely to take over world cinema, but what is it like?

Although the majority of mainstream commentators characterized it as an unintelligible mess, Korine earned top awards at the Venice Film Festival this year, including Gus Van Sant, and others. "Unlike anything you've seen in a while – perhaps ever" – and "if you're the kind of person who claims to be unable by commercial filmmaking's predictability, [it provides] a rare opportunity to put your money where your mouth is."

Korine released The Diary of Anne Frank Pt II, a four-minute three-screen collage with a boy burying his dog, children in satanic dress vomiting on a Bible, and a man performing "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean," a child's tantrum. Since the film uses footage that did not make the final cut of Gummo, it can be considered a companion piece. Critics were "further disgusted," and the film established his reputation as a notorious and experimental director.

Julien Donkey-Boy's signed Dogme 95 manifesto was released in 1999. Lars Von Trier lauded Korine's ability to interpret the laws creatively, although it fell short of some of the movement's basic tenets.

The tale is told from the viewpoint of a young man suffering from untreated schizophrenia, played by Ewen Bremner, as he tries to figure out his deteriorating world. Werner Herzog plays Julien's adversious and possibly hypersensitive father. Korine had intended to play the son but he was forced to leave and Bremner was recalled.

It has since become a cult movie for most moviegoers, as Roger Ebert said in his three-star review, much like Gummo and Kids, but not unlike "the slick aboveground indie productions" that are now the norm.

In 2000, The Devil, The Sinner, and His Journey premiered, with Korine in black metal as O. J. Simpson and Johnny Depp as Kato Kaelin.

Larry Clark produced Ken Park in 2002, based on a script that Korine had written several years ago. The film, which was another adult tale of youth gone awry, was not released in the United States. Clark and Korine had long since parted ways, and Korine had no involvement in its manufacture at the time.

He made the television documentary Above the Below a film about his friend and collaborator David Blaine's 44-day stunt in a park in London underneath a suspended plexiglass box. It also includes comedies, graphic poetry, and music in a Sky Television and Channel 4 documentary. In addition, Korine has worked with Blaine on several of Blaine's specials.

Rachel (Simon) Korine, a 17-year-old from Nashville, was his first wife around this time.

Mister Lonely, his brother's co-writer, was co-written by his brother, Avi Korine, and it stars Diego Luna, Samantha Morton, Denis Lavant, Anita Pallenberg, Werner Herzog, and Mal Whiteley. In 2008, the film was released in 2008 and premiered at Cannes. It was his first film, with a budget of $8.2 million, and it earned $386,915 in its first nine months.

The film tells the story of "a young American man who was missing in Paris." He lives out of a life as a Michael Jackson lookalike, dancing in the streets, in municipal parks, tourist spots, and trade shows. He appears as if he is floating between two worlds, which is different from everyone else. Michael Jackson meets Marilyn Monroe at a geriatric hospital. He is taken to a commune in the Highlands by her angelic beauty, as her husband Charlie Chaplin and her daughter Shirley Temple are joined together. Everyone is famous, and "no one gets old." Here, the Pope, Madonna, James Dean, and other impersonators create a stage in the hopes that the world will flock and watch them perform. Everything is beautiful. Until the world shifts, history will define their utopian fantasy.

Korine also appeared in the 2007 documentary film Beautiful Losers, in which his life and career were a main focus of the film, along with other writers such as Mike Mills, Shepard Fairey, Margaret Kilgallen, Jo Jackson, and Barry McGee. Korine addresses his motivations as an artist and filmmaker as well as his inspiration for making films he has never seen in the series. Footage from one of Korine's rare, early, and unidentified short films, which predates his work on Kids, has also appeared.

Korine was contracted for worldwide commercial representation in 2008.

Trash Humpers, Korine's film, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 6th, 2009. Despite being a work of fiction, the film went on to win the top award at the influential European documentary film festival CPH:DOX in November 2009.

Korine released Umshini Wam, a short film that is a common Zulu war song that says, "bring me my machine gun." Ninja and Yo-Landi of Die Antwoord appeared in the film. Korine produced Snowballs, a short film produced by the Proenza Schouler fashion label in September 2011.

Korine's next project was the crime thriller Spring Breakers, which was released in Florida and starred James Franco, Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson, Ashley Benson, and Korine's wife, Rachel Korine. Indiewire wrote about early scenes of filming and discussing the director's film, cast, and earlier works of the filmmaker "may be the strangest film the director has ever made simply for being completely unlike his previous work." According to The New York Times, "Mr. Korine seems to be having it both (or many) ways, but only if you believe that the artist's role is to be a didact or a scold." On March 30, 2012, principal filming came to an end. At the 69th Venice International Film Festival, the film was selected to compete for the Golden Lion. Spring Breakers made its world premiere at the 2012 Venice International Film Festival, and then was on view at the Toronto International Film Festival before being released to the general public in March 2013.

In 2019, Korine's feature The Beach Bum was released, starring Matthew McConaughey, Isla Fisher as his wife, Minnie, Martin Lawrence as Captain Wack, and Snoop Dogg as Lingerie.

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