Harmony Korine

Biography

Date of Birth 4 January 1973, Bolinas, California, USA Nickname Harm Height 5' 8" (1.73 m) Mini Biography Harmony Korine was born in Bolinas, California, in 1973. His family moved to the east coast of the United States when he was five, and he spent his early years in Nashville, Tennessee, and New York. At the age of 19, he wrote the critically acclaimed screenplay Kids (1995) for director Larry Clark. At the time of release of Gummo (1997), he was currently at work writing a new feature and a 10-part decalogue called "Jokes," which is to be financed through French investors. Spouse Rachel Korine (? - present) 1 child Trade Mark 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. Trivia Directed the video for Sonic Youth's "Sunday" starring Macaulay Culkin and Rachel Miner. His father, Sol Korine, made documentary films in Georgia for PBS. Wrote lyrics with Björk for her song "Harm of Will" from the album "Vespertine". 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. Attended high school at Hillsboro High School in Nashville, Tennessee. Attended film school at NYU but dropped out after only one semester. Has a tattoo of a trident on his right hand. 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. His parents live in Panama, which is why he chose to film sections of Mister Lonely (2007) within that country. Has one daughter with wife Rachel Korine, Lefty Bell Korine. Named his top ten favorite films of all time in a December 1999 issue of Dazed & Confused: Pixote (1981), Badlands (1973), Days of Heaven (1978), Fat City (1972), Stroszek (1977), The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976), A Woman Under the Influence (1974), McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), No Looking Back (1980) and 'Je vous salue, Marie' (1985). Brother of Avi Korine. Personal Quotes What I remember myself from films, and what I love about films, is specific scenes and characters. If 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. [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. 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. 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. (2008) 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. 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. Cinema sustains life. It captures death in its progress.