I just saw Gummo at the Toronto Fest, with Korine in attendence. He called his film a "genre-fuck" and said nothing out there right now interests him. He called his work "collage". While it's true this film isn't that great, it DOES have some great moments, which to my mind is high praise indeed considering the style and randomness of the film. Some things work, some don't. Without giving anything away, I would say that the best scenes for me were the "dead rabbit" scene (reminded me of Elmer Fudd -- oh what violence lies beneath the sheen of popular culture!), the "boxing" scene, and the "wrestling with a chair" scene. These scenes work for me because they seem to be at the heart of what Korine is trying to do, namely, set up a situation and let it fly, with no rules and without "directing" it somewhere. Everything else in the film seemed forced and as a result uninteresting. These scenes show what cinema ought to be more like. To quote from the end of "Le Gai Savior": "This is not the film that should be made, but if a film is to be made, it must follow some of the paths shown here." Glen ________________________________________________________________ Glen Norton Graduate Programme in Film and Video York University, Toronto, Canada THE PANTHEON: http://www.geocities.com/hollywood/3781 "When you see your own photo, do you say you're a fiction?" -- Jean-Luc Godard ---------------------------------------------------------------- On Sat, 6 Sep 1997, Jonathan Takagi wrote: > > Similar in style to *Kids*, *Gummo* is a cinema verite exercise in > > which a group of aimless white trash youths are paraded in front of > > the camera for all to gawk at. While the 23-year old Korine claims > > that Jean-Luc Godard is his idol, the film implies that it may > > actually be P.T. Barnum, as it has dozens of distorted humans to look > > at, but nothing of much value to say. > > I'm always interested when someone is said to respect or emulate Godard, > however it's always slightly disappointing. While respected by Gus Van > Sant and Werner Herzog, I really can't take Harmony Korine seriously. > Perhaps he attributes his lack/hate of scripts and hate of actors to JLG, > but his talk of "mistake-ist cinema", where he gives everyone a camera, > lets them run loose, and fixes it in the editing room doesn't really seem > very promising. However, if you like to torture cats, I recommend > "Gummo". > > Jonathan > > ---- Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite http://www.sa.ua.edu/screensite