Gotta love the casual nature of "celebrity" watching that goes on at these events. There I was, standing opposite the entrance to door 4, patiently awaiting the already running late Harmony Korine masterclass, when, much to my shock, out walks
Mike Leigh and friend. Leigh positions himself less than half a meter from me whilst he and his pal begin to discuss the pros of the film they'd just witnessed (just looked at the LFF website and it appears to be
The Strange One (1957); Ben Gazzara's debut acting role). I, of course, wasn't paying much attention, instead, had those nasty "fan boy" thoughts circulating; the subtle butting in with any random question that would spring to mind. It wasn't until another shifty-looking fellow beat me to it, causing Leigh to retort "excuse me but I'm having a conversation with my friend here" that I figured, well, I like Leigh but he's not in my Top 50 favourite directors, so I can hold out.
Harmony Korine, however, is! and I was grateful for the relaxed tone of the afternoon (on the back of drowsy medication). You never know when you attend these masterclasses whether the artist is prepared for serious, intellectual stimuli or, as was the case with
Chris Cooper (at the Edinburgh Film Festival this year), restrained and seemingly unwilling to expand on even the most simple points (think
The Office-type intensity for the audience). That's not to fault the man's acting abilities but in terms of public speaking and subject matter, you'd be better off reading basic coffee table books on 'performance'.
I could go through the event, piece by piece (as, for the first time, I actually made notes) but that would end up as bullet point information to which not everything is relevant or necessary; instead, I shall mention one of the more comical moments (certainly, in telling these stories, Korine broke from the curse of his nervous interviewer, who constantly said "ya know", and was able to come to life in an unrestrained way; much akin to his fragmented film making).
Ok, on the set of
Julien-Donkey Boy (1999), during the family dinner sequence in which Ewan Bremner's character recites a "chaotic" poem, causing his father (fantastically played by Werner Herzog), to retaliate with "I don't like all that artsy-fartsy stuff", before himself describing the "go ahead punk, make my day" reference from
Dirty Harry (1971) as something that is "unpretentious" and "good", we might notice a simple detail such as the grandmother (Harmony Korine's actual grandmother), appearing to be constantly staring at her glass (in the film, this type of reaction would seem commonplace). The reason for this reaction as it turns out, was because prior to shooting, Harmony's grandmother's hearing aid had fallen out and ended up in her cleavage but, unable to speak fluent English, there was a commotion as to its where-abouts. As the sound emitting from the device was a loud 'ringing', the first person to cotton on was Herzog, who (and this was best described by Korine - I'm paraphrasing here), "
lunged himself at my grandmother, literally grabbing at her titties; his hand was right down the parting until he pulled out the hearing aid. From that point on, my grandmother couldn't look at Herzog without feeling total embarrassment." Haha!
Korine's advice to aspiring film makers was (based on his own method, of course): "
watch a lot of films and live your life. Get involved in petit crimes..." (he was definitely serious about the last comment too).
Finally, as a cinephile, I should mention his influences:
Buster Keaton, the Marx Brothers (Gummo being the name of the "failed" Marx brother) and of course,
Werner Herzog. On a more contemporary basis,
Carlos Reygadas was the only name to emerge, whilst he briefly panned
Kevin Smith as an (obvious) example of why his peers provide no interest. In fact, he said he was more in line with contemporary artists such as
Paul McCarthy and
Mike Kelley than film makers.
Fuck it! I ended the night as a total "fan boy"; getting my DVD of
Gummo signed and having my picture taken with
the man. I shook his hand and wished him all the best. A good night, overall.
