Gummo
Encyclopedia
Gummo is a 1997 American
independent
drama
film written and directed by Harmony Korine
. It was his directorial debut and has since become a cult film
. The film stars Jacob Reynolds
, Nick Sutton, Jacob Sewell, Chloë Sevigny
, Linda Manz
and Max Perlich
. Rather than following a linear plot, the film is a series of seemingly unrelated vignettes
depicting the hopeless, nihilistic
lives of the residents of an Ohio city
that had been previously struck by a tornado
.
, a small town hit by a tornado
in 1974, although it was filmed in Nashville, Tennessee
. The film portrays Xenia as the home of various oddball and somewhat disturbing backwater characters. The loose narrative follows several main characters who find odd and destructive ways to pass time, interrupted by vignettes depicting other denizens of the town.
The film opens with a grainy voiced narrator recounting the events of the tornado while disturbing home-movie images play — mostly of the town's people. Following the narration, the credits roll over a montage of an adolescent
boy, known as Bunny Boy, wearing only pink bunny ears, shorts and tennis shoes on an overpass in the rain.
The next scene opens with a cat being carried by the scruff of its neck by a teenage boy. He drowns the cat in a barrel of water. The film then cuts to a different scene with the same boy Tummler, in a wrecked car with a girl. They fondle each other, and Tummler realizes there is a lump in one of the girl's breasts.
Tummler and Solomon then ride down a hill on bikes. The narrator introduces Tummler as a boy with "a marvelous persona", whom some people call "downright evil". Later, Tummler aims an air rifle at a cat. His friend Solomon stops him from killing the cat, protesting that it is a house cat. They leave and the camera follows the cat to its owners' house. The cat is owned by three sisters, two of whom are teenagers and one who is pre-pubescent
.
The film cuts back to Tummler and Solomon, who are hunting feral
cats. They bring the cats to a local grocer, who intends to butcher and sell them to a local restaurant, and the grocer tells them that they have a rival in the cat killing business. They then buy glue from the grocer, which they use to get high via huffing.
The film then cuts to a scene in which two young boys dressed as cowboy
s curse and destroy things in a junkyard. Bunny Boy arrives and the other boys shoot him "dead" with cap gun
s. Bunny Boy plays dead and the boys curse at him, rifle through his pockets, then remove and throw one of his shoes. They grow bored of this and leave him sprawled on the ground.
Tummler and Solomon track down a local boy who is poaching "their" cats. The poacher, named Jarrod Wiggley is poisoning the cats rather than shooting them. When Tummler and Solomon break into Jarrod's house with masks and weapons with intent to hurt him, they find disturbing photos of the young teen in drag and his elderly grandmother, who is catatonic
and attached to life support
machinery. The poacher Jarrod is forced to care for her, which he had earlier opined was "disgusting." Tummler's original intention was to hurt the poacher for killing the cats that they were killing for profit but he was not home. He then discovers the grandmother laying in her bed, opines that it is, "no way to live," and turns off the life support machine.
A number of other scenes are interspersed throughout the film, including: an intoxicated man (played by Harmony Korine
) flirting with a gay
dwarf
; a man pimping his Down Syndrome
afflicted sister to Solomon and Tummler; the sisters encountering a child molester
; a pair of African-American twin boys selling candy door-to-door; a brief conversation with a tennis player who is treating his ADD; a long scene of Solomon eating dinner while taking a bath in brown water; a drunken party with arm-
and chair-wrestling; and two skinhead
brothers boxing each other in their kitchen. A number of even smaller scenes depicting satanic rituals
, racist conversations, and some disturbing hygiene round out the film.
The final scene in the movie is set to the song "Crying" by Roy Orbison
, which had been previously mentioned by Tummler as the song his older brother would sing (the brother eventually went to the "Big City" and abandoned him). The final scene involves Solomon and Tummler shooting the sisters' cat repeatedly with their air rifles in the rain with jump cuts to Bunny Boy kissing the teenage girls in a swimming pool. The film ends with Bunny Boy running towards the camera through a field holding the body of the dead cat, which he displays prominently.
To help him achieve his vision, Korine sought out French cinematographer Jean Yves Escoffier. His work on Leos Carax's
Les Amants du Pont-Neuf
made a tremendous impression on Korine. Escoffier, who liked the script, worked on Gummo for a fraction of his usual rate.
During the months of pre-production, Korine scouted for locations in his hometown of Nashville, Tennessee
, filming unusual and distinctive homes to shoot in. Korine often approached people on the street, in bowling alleys and in fast food restaurants and asked them to play a part in his movie. Korine notes, "This is where I grew up. These people are interesting to me, and I'd never seen them represented on screen in a true way."
Chloë Sevigny
designed the costumes for the film, mixing pieces that people already owned with items bought at local thrift stores.
, and little person Bryant Krenshaw. Some exceptions include Korine's then-girlfriend Chloë Sevigny
, Linda Manz
, and Max Perlich
.
On Linda Manz
Korine stated, "I had always admired her. There was this sense about her that I liked - it wasn't even acting. It was like the way I felt about Buster Keaton
when I first saw him. There was a kind of poetry about her, a glow. They both burnt off the screen." (See Days of Heaven
) Gummo was her first screen appearance in 16 years.
Korine spotted his two main characters while watching cable television. Korine noticed Jacob Reynolds
as an extra in The Road To Wellville. "He was so visual... I never get tired of looking at his face." The character of Solomon, played by Reynolds, is described in Korine's script as looking "like no other kid in the world."
Nick Sutton (Tummler) was spotted on a drug prevention episode of The Sally Jesse Raphael Show called "My Child Died From Sniffing Paint". In the show they ask Sutton where he thinks he will be in a few years, to which he responds, "I'll probably be dead." Recalls Korine, "I saw his face and I thought that was the boy I dreamed of, that was my Tummler. There was a beauty about him." Producer Scott Macaulay on Sutton stated, "He's this person that Harmony sort of found and put in the middle of this movie, which is at times realistic and at times magical. I think of Nick as being Harmony's equivalent of Herzog's
Bruno S." (See The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
& Stroszek
).
Korine cast his actors not by how they read lines, but by the visual aura they put off.
comments, "we're essentially seeing the kind of poverty that we're used to seeing in Third World countries when news crews are covering famines, [but] seeing that in the heart of America." One small home housed fifteen people and several thousand cockroaches. Bugs literally crawled up and down the walls. Korine comments, "we had to take out stuff to be able to put the camera in the room." At times, the crew rebelled against filming in such conditions and Korine was forced to purchase hazmat suits for them to wear. Korine and Escoffier, who thought this was offensive, "wore Speedos and flip-flops just to piss them off."
Korine encouraged improvisation and spontaneity. To achieve this, Korine had to establish a mode of trust. "If an actor is a crack smoker, let him go out between takes, smoke crack, and then come back and throw his refrigerator out the window! Let people feel they can do whatever they want with no consequence." Producer Scott Macaulay commented the improvisational methods yielded deep results for everyone involved. "For a lot of the non-actors, you sensed that it was a very emotional experience for them, and that they were tapping into something important." Korine adds, "I wanted to show what it was like to sniff glue. I didn't want to judge anybody. This is why I have very little interest in working with actors. [Non-actors] can give you what an actor can never give you: pieces of themselves."
Korine wanted each scene to be shot with different visual looks and styles. While many scenes are shot in traditional pre-planned 35mm, Korine handed out 8mm
, 16mm, Polaroid
, VHS
and Hi-8 cameras to his crew, friends and family to achieve an enhanced collage-like style. "I wanted everything to feel that it was done for a reason. Like they shot it on video because they couldn't get it onto 35mm or they shot it on Polaroids because that was the only camera that was there... I felt like shooting each scene on its own terms and then making sense of it afterwards. And I felt that the styles would blend, that there would be a cohesiveness."
On the last day of shooting, Escoffier shot the chair-wrestling kitchen scene alone with a rigged boom on his camera. Some people had just gotten out of prison and Korine felt the performance would be greater if he wasn't in the room. The crew shut all the doors and turned off all the monitors, so no one knew what was going on. In between takes, Korine would run in and get everyone hyped up. At the end of the scene there is a moment of silence where no one knows what to do next. Korine comments, "When I saw that in the dailies, it amazed me, because Jean Yves really captured that awkwardness, that sad silence; it was beautiful."
Korine shot Gummo in just four weeks during the summer of 1996, most of the film being shot on the very last day of production. This was due to the crew waiting for rain.
The last scene that was shot for the movie is the one with Korine starring a heavily intoxicated and homosexual boy on a couch with a midget.
Any scenes appearing to show violence against animals were simulated, sometimes using prosthetic animals.
Korine used footage from literally any source he could find that fit his aesthetic. "That cat tape was a tape that a friend of mine had given me, of him doing acid with his sister. They were in a garage band and there was a shot of their kitten. That [phasing] was an in-camera mistake."
The final film is about 75% scripted.
's "Like A Prayer," from Almeda Riddle's field recording of the traditional children's song "My Little Rooster," to the stoner metal of the California band Sleep
. Other popular songs include Buddy Holly
's "Everyday" and Roy Orbison
's "Crying" which closes the movie, and is directly referenced in the dialogue.
Metal bands such as Absu, Burzum
, Bathory
, Bethlehem
, Brujería
, Eyehategod
and Spazz
are also featured. Korine later showed interest in black metal
subculture in his 2000 visual series The Sigil of the Cloven Hoof Marks Thy Path.
, violence
, homicide
, vandalism
, mental illness
, poverty
, profanity
, homophobia
, sexual abuse
, sexism
, suicide
, grief
, prostitution
, animal cruelty, euthanasia
and racism
. Korine avoided any romantic notions regarding America, including its poor and mentally handicapped.
Korine comments on the film's pop-aesthetic, saying: "America is all about this recycling, this interpretation of pop. I want you to see these kids wearing Bone Thugs & Harmony t-shirts and Metallica hats - this almost schizophrenic identification with popular imagery. If you think about, that's how people relate to each other these days, through these images." Dot and Helen are modeled after Cherie Currie
. "I wanted them to seem like homeschool kids... sort of guessing and coming up with these hipster things. They almost make a homeschool hip language. I wanted this inbred vernacular."
The film has a strong vaudevillian influence. The name of the character Tummler is taken directly from the vaudevillian term given to lower-level comics of the day. "The guys that would check you into a hotel room, take your coat, and at the same time throw a few one-liners out. They're like the warm-up, the lowest level comedian. The tummler." (See Borscht Belt
)
Robin O'Hara argues that while people naturally look for points of reference to describe Gummo (such as Herzog
, Cassavetes
, Arbus
, Fellini
, Godard
, Maysles
and Jarman
) that Korine's art really is his own. "He is an original, in every sense of the word." Korine comments on the film's aesthetic: "We tried very hard not to reference other films. We wanted Gummo to set its own standard."
on August 29, 1997. During the screening, numerous people got up and left during the initial cat drowning sequence. Several festival appearances followed including International Film Festival Rotterdam
where it won the KNF Award for "best feature film in the official section that does not yet have distribution within the Netherlands," and Venice Film Festival
where it received a special mention from the FIPRESCI
jury. It was picked up for distribution by Fine Line Features
, and saw a limited release with an R rating (edited from the original NC-17 version) in the United States on October 17, 1997 for pervasive depiction of anti-social behavior of juveniles, including violence, substance abuse, sexuality and language.
A short excerpt from Gummo was shown after the opening sequence in the 1998 Hype Williams film Belly
Werner Herzog
praised the film and spoke of being especially moved by the bacon taped to the wall during the bathtub scene.
The film's portrayal of "poor white trash
" has garnered both glowing reviews and thunderous condemnations for its disturbing content and unusual style, which is simultaneously hyperrealistic and surreal
.
Director Lukas Moodysson
listed it as one of his top ten films for the 2002 Sight and Sound Poll and director Megan Spencer
.
Filmmaker Gus Van Sant
on Gummo writes, "Venomous in story; genius in character; victorious in structure; teasingly gentle in epilogue; slapstick in theme; rebellious in nature; honest at heart; inspirational in its creation and with contempt at the tip of its tongue, [Gummo] is a portrait of small-town Middle American life that is both bracingly realistic and hauntingly dreamlike."
Korine comments, "I could probably make another two movies with the excess footage [from Gummo]. Some of this material I'm going to use in this art work... the problem you run into doing multimedia projection is that a lot of the time, the style takes over. It threatens and reduces the content. It becomes almost like a music video - mixing all these forms for no reason."
Cinema of the United States
The cinema of the United States, also known as Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes separated into four main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period...
independent
Independent film
An independent film, or indie film, is a professional film production resulting in a feature film that is produced mostly or completely outside of the major film studio system. In addition to being produced and distributed by independent entertainment companies, independent films are also produced...
drama
Drama film
A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...
film written and directed by Harmony Korine
Harmony Korine
The story is told from the perspective of a young man suffering from untreated schizophrenia, played by Ewen Bremner, as he tries to understand his deteriorating world. Julien's abusive father is played by Werner Herzog...
. It was his directorial debut and has since become a cult film
Cult film
A cult film, also commonly referred to as a cult classic, is a film that has acquired a highly devoted but specific group of fans. Often, cult movies have failed to achieve fame outside the small fanbases; however, there have been exceptions that have managed to gain fame among mainstream audiences...
. The film stars Jacob Reynolds
Jacob Reynolds
Jacob Reynolds is an American film actor born in St. Petersburg, Florida who began acting at age four. His career started with an American television commercial for Ritz Crackers, but he is perhaps best known for his role as Solomon in the cult film Gummo. In 2007 he appeared in the Gotham Award...
, Nick Sutton, Jacob Sewell, Chloë Sevigny
Chloë Sevigny
Chloë Stevens Sevigny is an American film actress, fashion designer and former model. Sevigny gained reputation for her eclectic fashion sense and developed a broad career in the fashion industry in the mid 1990s, both for modeling and for her work at New York's Sassy magazine, which labeled her...
, Linda Manz
Linda Manz
Linda Manz is an American actress, mainly active between 1978 and 1985.-Career:In 1976, at the age of fifteen, she was cast by Terrence Malick to play the young narrator in his second film Days of Heaven, which was released in 1978...
and Max Perlich
Max Perlich
-Biography:He was born in Cleveland, Ohio. His mother was a teacher and his father, Martin Perlich, a writer and radio programming director and announcer, worked for a time with the Cleveland Orchestra. The Perlich family moved to Los Angeles, California when Max was four...
. Rather than following a linear plot, the film is a series of seemingly unrelated vignettes
Vignette (literature)
In theatrical script writing, sketch stories, and poetry, a vignette is a short impressionistic scene that focuses on one moment or gives a trenchant impression about a character, an idea, or a setting and sometimes an object...
depicting the hopeless, nihilistic
Nihilism
Nihilism is the philosophical doctrine suggesting the negation of one or more putatively meaningful aspects of life. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value...
lives of the residents of an Ohio city
Xenia, Ohio
Xenia is a city in and the county seat of Greene County, Ohio, United States. The municipality is located in southwestern Ohio 21 miles from Dayton and is part of the Dayton Metropolitan Statistical Area...
that had been previously struck by a tornado
Tornado
A tornado is a violent, dangerous, rotating column of air that is in contact with both the surface of the earth and a cumulonimbus cloud or, in rare cases, the base of a cumulus cloud. They are often referred to as a twister or a cyclone, although the word cyclone is used in meteorology in a wider...
.
Plot
The film is set in Xenia, OhioXenia, Ohio
Xenia is a city in and the county seat of Greene County, Ohio, United States. The municipality is located in southwestern Ohio 21 miles from Dayton and is part of the Dayton Metropolitan Statistical Area...
, a small town hit by a tornado
Tornado
A tornado is a violent, dangerous, rotating column of air that is in contact with both the surface of the earth and a cumulonimbus cloud or, in rare cases, the base of a cumulus cloud. They are often referred to as a twister or a cyclone, although the word cyclone is used in meteorology in a wider...
in 1974, although it was filmed in Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville is the capital of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Davidson County. It is located on the Cumberland River in Davidson County, in the north-central part of the state. The city is a center for the health care, publishing, banking and transportation industries, and is home...
. The film portrays Xenia as the home of various oddball and somewhat disturbing backwater characters. The loose narrative follows several main characters who find odd and destructive ways to pass time, interrupted by vignettes depicting other denizens of the town.
The film opens with a grainy voiced narrator recounting the events of the tornado while disturbing home-movie images play — mostly of the town's people. Following the narration, the credits roll over a montage of an adolescent
Adolescence
Adolescence is a transitional stage of physical and mental human development generally occurring between puberty and legal adulthood , but largely characterized as beginning and ending with the teenage stage...
boy, known as Bunny Boy, wearing only pink bunny ears, shorts and tennis shoes on an overpass in the rain.
The next scene opens with a cat being carried by the scruff of its neck by a teenage boy. He drowns the cat in a barrel of water. The film then cuts to a different scene with the same boy Tummler, in a wrecked car with a girl. They fondle each other, and Tummler realizes there is a lump in one of the girl's breasts.
Tummler and Solomon then ride down a hill on bikes. The narrator introduces Tummler as a boy with "a marvelous persona", whom some people call "downright evil". Later, Tummler aims an air rifle at a cat. His friend Solomon stops him from killing the cat, protesting that it is a house cat. They leave and the camera follows the cat to its owners' house. The cat is owned by three sisters, two of whom are teenagers and one who is pre-pubescent
Puberty
Puberty is the process of physical changes by which a child's body matures into an adult body capable of reproduction, as initiated by hormonal signals from the brain to the gonads; the ovaries in a girl, the testes in a boy...
.
The film cuts back to Tummler and Solomon, who are hunting feral
Feral
A feral organism is one that has changed from being domesticated to being wild or untamed. In the case of plants it is a movement from cultivated to uncultivated or controlled to volunteer. The introduction of feral animals or plants to their non-native regions, like any introduced species, may...
cats. They bring the cats to a local grocer, who intends to butcher and sell them to a local restaurant, and the grocer tells them that they have a rival in the cat killing business. They then buy glue from the grocer, which they use to get high via huffing.
The film then cuts to a scene in which two young boys dressed as cowboy
Cowboy
A cowboy is an animal herder who tends cattle on ranches in North America, traditionally on horseback, and often performs a multitude of other ranch-related tasks. The historic American cowboy of the late 19th century arose from the vaquero traditions of northern Mexico and became a figure of...
s curse and destroy things in a junkyard. Bunny Boy arrives and the other boys shoot him "dead" with cap gun
Cap gun
A cap gun is a toy gun that creates a loud sound simulating a gunshot and a puff of smoke when the trigger is pulled. Cap guns were originally made of cast iron, but after World War II were made of zinc alloy, and most newer models are made of plastic....
s. Bunny Boy plays dead and the boys curse at him, rifle through his pockets, then remove and throw one of his shoes. They grow bored of this and leave him sprawled on the ground.
Tummler and Solomon track down a local boy who is poaching "their" cats. The poacher, named Jarrod Wiggley is poisoning the cats rather than shooting them. When Tummler and Solomon break into Jarrod's house with masks and weapons with intent to hurt him, they find disturbing photos of the young teen in drag and his elderly grandmother, who is catatonic
Catatonia
Catatonia is a state of neurogenic motor immobility, and behavioral abnormality manifested by stupor. It was first described in 1874: Die Katatonie oder das Spannungsirresein ....
and attached to life support
Life support
Life support, in medicine is a broad term that applies to any therapy used to sustain a patient's life while they are critically ill or injured. There are many therapies and techniques that may be used by clinicians to achieve the goal of sustaining life...
machinery. The poacher Jarrod is forced to care for her, which he had earlier opined was "disgusting." Tummler's original intention was to hurt the poacher for killing the cats that they were killing for profit but he was not home. He then discovers the grandmother laying in her bed, opines that it is, "no way to live," and turns off the life support machine.
A number of other scenes are interspersed throughout the film, including: an intoxicated man (played by Harmony Korine
Harmony Korine
The story is told from the perspective of a young man suffering from untreated schizophrenia, played by Ewen Bremner, as he tries to understand his deteriorating world. Julien's abusive father is played by Werner Herzog...
) flirting with a gay
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...
dwarf
Dwarfism
Dwarfism is short stature resulting from a medical condition. It is sometimes defined as an adult height of less than 4 feet 10 inches , although this definition is problematic because short stature in itself is not a disorder....
; a man pimping his Down Syndrome
Down syndrome
Down syndrome, or Down's syndrome, trisomy 21, is a chromosomal condition caused by the presence of all or part of an extra 21st chromosome. It is named after John Langdon Down, the British physician who described the syndrome in 1866. The condition was clinically described earlier in the 19th...
afflicted sister to Solomon and Tummler; the sisters encountering a child molester
Child sexual abuse
Child sexual abuse is a form of child abuse in which an adult or older adolescent uses a child for sexual stimulation. Forms of child sexual abuse include asking or pressuring a child to engage in sexual activities , indecent exposure with intent to gratify their own sexual desires or to...
; a pair of African-American twin boys selling candy door-to-door; a brief conversation with a tennis player who is treating his ADD; a long scene of Solomon eating dinner while taking a bath in brown water; a drunken party with arm-
Arm wrestling
Arm wrestling is a sport with two participants. Each participant places one arm on a surface with their elbows bent and touching the surface, and they grip each other's hand...
and chair-wrestling; and two skinhead
Skinhead
A skinhead is a member of a subculture that originated among working class youths in the United Kingdom in the 1960s, and then spread to other parts of the world. Named for their close-cropped or shaven heads, the first skinheads were greatly influenced by West Indian rude boys and British mods,...
brothers boxing each other in their kitchen. A number of even smaller scenes depicting satanic rituals
Satanism
Satanism is a group of religions that is composed of a diverse number of ideological and philosophical beliefs and social phenomena. Their shared feature include symbolic association with, admiration for the character of, and even veneration of Satan or similar rebellious, promethean, and...
, racist conversations, and some disturbing hygiene round out the film.
The final scene in the movie is set to the song "Crying" by Roy Orbison
Roy Orbison
Roy Kelton Orbison was an American singer-songwriter, well known for his distinctive, powerful voice, complex compositions, and dark emotional ballads. Orbison grew up in Texas and began singing in a rockabilly/country & western band in high school until he was signed by Sun Records in Memphis...
, which had been previously mentioned by Tummler as the song his older brother would sing (the brother eventually went to the "Big City" and abandoned him). The final scene involves Solomon and Tummler shooting the sisters' cat repeatedly with their air rifles in the rain with jump cuts to Bunny Boy kissing the teenage girls in a swimming pool. The film ends with Bunny Boy running towards the camera through a field holding the body of the dead cat, which he displays prominently.
Cast
- Jacob Sewell as Bunny Boy
- Nick Sutton as Tummler
- Jacob ReynoldsJacob ReynoldsJacob Reynolds is an American film actor born in St. Petersburg, Florida who began acting at age four. His career started with an American television commercial for Ritz Crackers, but he is perhaps best known for his role as Solomon in the cult film Gummo. In 2007 he appeared in the Gotham Award...
as Solomon - Jack Latham as Darby
- Chloë SevignyChloë SevignyChloë Stevens Sevigny is an American film actress, fashion designer and former model. Sevigny gained reputation for her eclectic fashion sense and developed a broad career in the fashion industry in the mid 1990s, both for modeling and for her work at New York's Sassy magazine, which labeled her...
as Dot - Harmony KorineHarmony KorineThe story is told from the perspective of a young man suffering from untreated schizophrenia, played by Ewen Bremner, as he tries to understand his deteriorating world. Julien's abusive father is played by Werner Herzog...
as Boy on Couch - Max PerlichMax Perlich-Biography:He was born in Cleveland, Ohio. His mother was a teacher and his father, Martin Perlich, a writer and radio programming director and announcer, worked for a time with the Cleveland Orchestra. The Perlich family moved to Los Angeles, California when Max was four...
as Cole - Linda ManzLinda ManzLinda Manz is an American actress, mainly active between 1978 and 1985.-Career:In 1976, at the age of fifteen, she was cast by Terrence Malick to play the young narrator in his second film Days of Heaven, which was released in 1978...
as Solomon's Mom - Mark GonzalesMark GonzalesMark Gonzales , also known as "Gonz" and "The Gonz," is an American professional skateboarder and artist. He is known in the skateboarding world as a pioneer of modern street skateboarding, currently skateboarding's most popular form....
as Chair Wrestler - Michael Banks as the Redneck
- Matt Hunt as the Child Molester
- Kris Hickey as the Bum
- Ruby Furze as Ruby Furze
Pre-production
In writing Gummo, Korine abandoned traditional three-act plot structure and worked to avoid creating characters of a clear-cut moral dimension. In favor of a collage-like assembly, Korine focused on forming interesting moments and scenes, that when put in succession would become its own unique narrative. To justify such a chaotic assembly, Korine set his film in Xenia, Ohio which had been hit by a tornado in 1974.To help him achieve his vision, Korine sought out French cinematographer Jean Yves Escoffier. His work on Leos Carax's
Leos Carax
Leos Carax is a French-born film director, critic, and writer. Carax is noted for his poetic style and his tortured depictions of love. His first major work was Boy Meets Girl , and his notable works include Lovers on the Bridge and the controversial Pola X...
Les Amants du Pont-Neuf
Les Amants du Pont-Neuf
Les Amants du Pont-Neuf is a 1991 French film directed by Leos Carax, starring Juliette Binoche and Denis Lavant. The title refers to the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris...
made a tremendous impression on Korine. Escoffier, who liked the script, worked on Gummo for a fraction of his usual rate.
During the months of pre-production, Korine scouted for locations in his hometown of Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville is the capital of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Davidson County. It is located on the Cumberland River in Davidson County, in the north-central part of the state. The city is a center for the health care, publishing, banking and transportation industries, and is home...
, filming unusual and distinctive homes to shoot in. Korine often approached people on the street, in bowling alleys and in fast food restaurants and asked them to play a part in his movie. Korine notes, "This is where I grew up. These people are interesting to me, and I'd never seen them represented on screen in a true way."
Chloë Sevigny
Chloë Sevigny
Chloë Stevens Sevigny is an American film actress, fashion designer and former model. Sevigny gained reputation for her eclectic fashion sense and developed a broad career in the fashion industry in the mid 1990s, both for modeling and for her work at New York's Sassy magazine, which labeled her...
designed the costumes for the film, mixing pieces that people already owned with items bought at local thrift stores.
Casting
Korine cast the film almost entirely with local non-actors. Old friends were eager to help Korine, such as the two skinhead brothers, skateboarder Mark GonzalesMark Gonzales
Mark Gonzales , also known as "Gonz" and "The Gonz," is an American professional skateboarder and artist. He is known in the skateboarding world as a pioneer of modern street skateboarding, currently skateboarding's most popular form....
, and little person Bryant Krenshaw. Some exceptions include Korine's then-girlfriend Chloë Sevigny
Chloë Sevigny
Chloë Stevens Sevigny is an American film actress, fashion designer and former model. Sevigny gained reputation for her eclectic fashion sense and developed a broad career in the fashion industry in the mid 1990s, both for modeling and for her work at New York's Sassy magazine, which labeled her...
, Linda Manz
Linda Manz
Linda Manz is an American actress, mainly active between 1978 and 1985.-Career:In 1976, at the age of fifteen, she was cast by Terrence Malick to play the young narrator in his second film Days of Heaven, which was released in 1978...
, and Max Perlich
Max Perlich
-Biography:He was born in Cleveland, Ohio. His mother was a teacher and his father, Martin Perlich, a writer and radio programming director and announcer, worked for a time with the Cleveland Orchestra. The Perlich family moved to Los Angeles, California when Max was four...
.
On Linda Manz
Linda Manz
Linda Manz is an American actress, mainly active between 1978 and 1985.-Career:In 1976, at the age of fifteen, she was cast by Terrence Malick to play the young narrator in his second film Days of Heaven, which was released in 1978...
Korine stated, "I had always admired her. There was this sense about her that I liked - it wasn't even acting. It was like the way I felt about Buster Keaton
Buster Keaton
Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton was an American comic actor, filmmaker, producer and writer. He was best known for his silent films, in which his trademark was physical comedy with a consistently stoic, deadpan expression, earning him the nickname "The Great Stone Face".Keaton was recognized as the...
when I first saw him. There was a kind of poetry about her, a glow. They both burnt off the screen." (See Days of Heaven
Days of Heaven
Days of Heaven is a 1978 American romantic drama film written and directed by Terrence Malick and starring Richard Gere, Brooke Adams, Sam Shepard and Linda Manz. Set in the early 20th century, it tells the story of two poor lovers, Bill and Abby, as they travel to the Texas Panhandle to harvest...
) Gummo was her first screen appearance in 16 years.
Korine spotted his two main characters while watching cable television. Korine noticed Jacob Reynolds
Jacob Reynolds
Jacob Reynolds is an American film actor born in St. Petersburg, Florida who began acting at age four. His career started with an American television commercial for Ritz Crackers, but he is perhaps best known for his role as Solomon in the cult film Gummo. In 2007 he appeared in the Gotham Award...
as an extra in The Road To Wellville. "He was so visual... I never get tired of looking at his face." The character of Solomon, played by Reynolds, is described in Korine's script as looking "like no other kid in the world."
Nick Sutton (Tummler) was spotted on a drug prevention episode of The Sally Jesse Raphael Show called "My Child Died From Sniffing Paint". In the show they ask Sutton where he thinks he will be in a few years, to which he responds, "I'll probably be dead." Recalls Korine, "I saw his face and I thought that was the boy I dreamed of, that was my Tummler. There was a beauty about him." Producer Scott Macaulay on Sutton stated, "He's this person that Harmony sort of found and put in the middle of this movie, which is at times realistic and at times magical. I think of Nick as being Harmony's equivalent of Herzog's
Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog Stipetić , known as Werner Herzog, is a German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor, and opera director.He is often considered as one of the greatest figures of the New German Cinema, along with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Margarethe von Trotta, Volker Schlöndorff, Werner...
Bruno S." (See The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser is a 1974 West German drama film written and directed by Werner Herzog about the legend of Kaspar Hauser. Its original German title is Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle, which means "Every man for himself and God against them all"...
& Stroszek
Stroszek
Stroszek is a 1977 film by German director Werner Herzog. It was written in four days specifically for Bruno S. and was shot in Berlin, two towns in Wisconsin, and in North Carolina. Most of the lead roles are played by non-actors.-Plot:...
).
Korine cast his actors not by how they read lines, but by the visual aura they put off.
Filming
The film was shot in some of Nashville's poorest neighborhoods. Producer Cary WoodsCary Woods
Cary Woods is a film producer. He produced the first films by Alexander Payne, M Night Shyamalan, Doug Liman, Harmony Korine, Kevin Williamson. Woods helped to fuel the rise of the independent films...
comments, "we're essentially seeing the kind of poverty that we're used to seeing in Third World countries when news crews are covering famines, [but] seeing that in the heart of America." One small home housed fifteen people and several thousand cockroaches. Bugs literally crawled up and down the walls. Korine comments, "we had to take out stuff to be able to put the camera in the room." At times, the crew rebelled against filming in such conditions and Korine was forced to purchase hazmat suits for them to wear. Korine and Escoffier, who thought this was offensive, "wore Speedos and flip-flops just to piss them off."
Korine encouraged improvisation and spontaneity. To achieve this, Korine had to establish a mode of trust. "If an actor is a crack smoker, let him go out between takes, smoke crack, and then come back and throw his refrigerator out the window! Let people feel they can do whatever they want with no consequence." Producer Scott Macaulay commented the improvisational methods yielded deep results for everyone involved. "For a lot of the non-actors, you sensed that it was a very emotional experience for them, and that they were tapping into something important." Korine adds, "I wanted to show what it was like to sniff glue. I didn't want to judge anybody. This is why I have very little interest in working with actors. [Non-actors] can give you what an actor can never give you: pieces of themselves."
Korine wanted each scene to be shot with different visual looks and styles. While many scenes are shot in traditional pre-planned 35mm, Korine handed out 8mm
8 mm film
8 mm film is a motion picture film format in which the filmstrip is eight millimeters wide. It exists in two main versions: the original standard 8mm film, also known as regular 8 mm or Double 8 mm, and Super 8...
, 16mm, Polaroid
Instant film
Instant film is a type of photographic film first introduced by Polaroid that is designed to be used in an instant camera...
, VHS
VHS
The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....
and Hi-8 cameras to his crew, friends and family to achieve an enhanced collage-like style. "I wanted everything to feel that it was done for a reason. Like they shot it on video because they couldn't get it onto 35mm or they shot it on Polaroids because that was the only camera that was there... I felt like shooting each scene on its own terms and then making sense of it afterwards. And I felt that the styles would blend, that there would be a cohesiveness."
On the last day of shooting, Escoffier shot the chair-wrestling kitchen scene alone with a rigged boom on his camera. Some people had just gotten out of prison and Korine felt the performance would be greater if he wasn't in the room. The crew shut all the doors and turned off all the monitors, so no one knew what was going on. In between takes, Korine would run in and get everyone hyped up. At the end of the scene there is a moment of silence where no one knows what to do next. Korine comments, "When I saw that in the dailies, it amazed me, because Jean Yves really captured that awkwardness, that sad silence; it was beautiful."
Korine shot Gummo in just four weeks during the summer of 1996, most of the film being shot on the very last day of production. This was due to the crew waiting for rain.
The last scene that was shot for the movie is the one with Korine starring a heavily intoxicated and homosexual boy on a couch with a midget.
Any scenes appearing to show violence against animals were simulated, sometimes using prosthetic animals.
Editing
Korine worked with editor Chris Tellefsen to synthesize the pre-planned footage with the "mistakist" footage. Korine comments, "We go from scenes that are completely thought out, almost formal, scenes that resonate in this classical film sense, and then we go to other scenes where it's like, total mistakes, stuff shot on video where the kids forget there's a camera there and talk about how much they hate niggers."Korine used footage from literally any source he could find that fit his aesthetic. "That cat tape was a tape that a friend of mine had given me, of him doing acid with his sister. They were in a garage band and there was a shot of their kitten. That [phasing] was an in-camera mistake."
The final film is about 75% scripted.
Music
Gummo's soundtrack paints a wide canvas of American pop-culture, ranging from MadonnaMadonna (entertainer)
Madonna is an American singer-songwriter, actress and entrepreneur. Born in Bay City, Michigan, she moved to New York City in 1977 to pursue a career in modern dance. After performing in the music groups Breakfast Club and Emmy, she released her debut album in 1983...
's "Like A Prayer," from Almeda Riddle's field recording of the traditional children's song "My Little Rooster," to the stoner metal of the California band Sleep
Sleep (band)
Sleep is a stoner doom metal band from San Jose, California. Active during the 1990s, Sleep earned critical and record label attention early in their career. Critic Eduardo Rivadavia describes them as "perhaps the ultimate stoner rock band" and notes they exerted a strong influence on heavy metal...
. Other popular songs include Buddy Holly
Buddy Holly
Charles Hardin Holley , known professionally as Buddy Holly, was an American singer-songwriter and a pioneer of rock and roll...
's "Everyday" and Roy Orbison
Roy Orbison
Roy Kelton Orbison was an American singer-songwriter, well known for his distinctive, powerful voice, complex compositions, and dark emotional ballads. Orbison grew up in Texas and began singing in a rockabilly/country & western band in high school until he was signed by Sun Records in Memphis...
's "Crying" which closes the movie, and is directly referenced in the dialogue.
Metal bands such as Absu, Burzum
Burzum
Burzum is a musical project by Varg Vikernes . It began during 1991 in Bergen, Norway and quickly became prominent within the early Norwegian black metal scene...
, Bathory
Bathory (band)
Bathory was a Swedish heavy metal band, formed by Quorthon in 1983. They are regarded as pioneers of both black metal and viking metal. Quorthon remained the main songwriter and member of Bathory for more than two decades. Bathory was permanently ended after Quorthon's death in 2004...
, Bethlehem
Bethlehem (German band)
Bethlehem is a German extreme metal band from Grevenbroich, formed in 1991 by Jürgen Bartsch and Kläus Matton. Before starting Bethlehem, Bartsch and Matton used to play in a German Thrash metal band called Morbid Vision...
, Brujería
Brujeria (band)
Brujeria is an extreme metal band formed in Tijuana, Mexico in 1989. Their name comes from the Spanish word for "witchcraft". Their songs, which are sung in Spanish, are focused on Satanism, anti-Christianity, sex, immigration, narcotics smuggling, politics....
, Eyehategod
Eyehategod
Eyehategod is an American sludge metal band from New Orleans who formed in 1988. They have become one of the most well known bands to emerge from the NOLA metal scene...
and Spazz
Spazz (band)
Spazz was an influential American powerviolence band active between 1992 and 2000. The trio released numerous records within this time, many of which are now highly collectible due to their relative rarity...
are also featured. Korine later showed interest in black metal
Black metal
Black metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal music. Common traits include fast tempos, shrieked vocals, highly distorted guitars played with tremolo picking, blast beat drumming, raw recording, and unconventional song structure....
subculture in his 2000 visual series The Sigil of the Cloven Hoof Marks Thy Path.
Themes
The film explores a broad range of issues including drug abuseDrug abuse
Substance abuse, also known as drug abuse, refers to a maladaptive pattern of use of a substance that is not considered dependent. The term "drug abuse" does not exclude dependency, but is otherwise used in a similar manner in nonmedical contexts...
, violence
Violence
Violence is the use of physical force to apply a state to others contrary to their wishes. violence, while often a stand-alone issue, is often the culmination of other kinds of conflict, e.g...
, homicide
Homicide
Homicide refers to the act of a human killing another human. Murder, for example, is a type of homicide. It can also describe a person who has committed such an act, though this use is rare in modern English...
, vandalism
Vandalism
Vandalism is the behaviour attributed originally to the Vandals, by the Romans, in respect of culture: ruthless destruction or spoiling of anything beautiful or venerable...
, mental illness
Mental illness
A mental disorder or mental illness is a psychological or behavioral pattern generally associated with subjective distress or disability that occurs in an individual, and which is not a part of normal development or culture. Such a disorder may consist of a combination of affective, behavioural,...
, poverty
Poverty
Poverty is the lack of a certain amount of material possessions or money. Absolute poverty or destitution is inability to afford basic human needs, which commonly includes clean and fresh water, nutrition, health care, education, clothing and shelter. About 1.7 billion people are estimated to live...
, profanity
Profanity
Profanity is a show of disrespect, or a desecration or debasement of someone or something. Profanity can take the form of words, expressions, gestures, or other social behaviors that are socially constructed or interpreted as insulting, rude, vulgar, obscene, desecrating, or other forms.The...
, homophobia
Homophobia
Homophobia is a term used to refer to a range of negative attitudes and feelings towards lesbian, gay and in some cases bisexual, transgender people and behavior, although these are usually covered under other terms such as biphobia and transphobia. Definitions refer to irrational fear, with the...
, sexual abuse
Sexual abuse
Sexual abuse, also referred to as molestation, is the forcing of undesired sexual behavior by one person upon another. When that force is immediate, of short duration, or infrequent, it is called sexual assault. The offender is referred to as a sexual abuser or molester...
, sexism
Sexism
Sexism, also known as gender discrimination or sex discrimination, is the application of the belief or attitude that there are characteristics implicit to one's gender that indirectly affect one's abilities in unrelated areas...
, suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
, grief
Grief
Grief is a multi-faceted response to loss, particularly to the loss of someone or something to which a bond was formed. Although conventionally focused on the emotional response to loss, it also has physical, cognitive, behavioral, social, and philosophical dimensions...
, prostitution
Prostitution
Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...
, animal cruelty, euthanasia
Euthanasia
Euthanasia refers to the practice of intentionally ending a life in order to relieve pain and suffering....
and racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
. Korine avoided any romantic notions regarding America, including its poor and mentally handicapped.
Korine comments on the film's pop-aesthetic, saying: "America is all about this recycling, this interpretation of pop. I want you to see these kids wearing Bone Thugs & Harmony t-shirts and Metallica hats - this almost schizophrenic identification with popular imagery. If you think about, that's how people relate to each other these days, through these images." Dot and Helen are modeled after Cherie Currie
Cherie Currie
Cherie Currie is an American singer, actress and chainsaw artist. Currie was the lead vocalist of The Runaways, a hard rock band from Los Angeles in the mid-to-late 1970s.-Life and career:...
. "I wanted them to seem like homeschool kids... sort of guessing and coming up with these hipster things. They almost make a homeschool hip language. I wanted this inbred vernacular."
The film has a strong vaudevillian influence. The name of the character Tummler is taken directly from the vaudevillian term given to lower-level comics of the day. "The guys that would check you into a hotel room, take your coat, and at the same time throw a few one-liners out. They're like the warm-up, the lowest level comedian. The tummler." (See Borscht Belt
Borscht Belt
Borscht Belt, or Jewish Alps, is a colloquial term for the mostly defunct summer resorts of the Catskill Mountains in parts of Sullivan, Orange and Ulster counties in upstate New York that were a popular vacation spot for New York City Jews from the 1920s through the 1960s.-Name:The name comes from...
)
Robin O'Hara argues that while people naturally look for points of reference to describe Gummo (such as Herzog
Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog Stipetić , known as Werner Herzog, is a German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor, and opera director.He is often considered as one of the greatest figures of the New German Cinema, along with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Margarethe von Trotta, Volker Schlöndorff, Werner...
, Cassavetes
John Cassavetes
John Nicholas Cassavetes was an American actor, screenwriter and filmmaker. He acted in many Hollywood films, notably Rosemary's Baby and The Dirty Dozen...
, Arbus
Diane Arbus
Diane Arbus March 14, 1923 – July 26, 1971) was an American photographer and writer noted for black-and-white square photographs of "deviant and marginal people or of people whose normality seems ugly or surreal." A friend said that Arbus said that she was "afraid.....
, Fellini
Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI , was an Italian film director and scriptwriter. Known for a distinct style that blends fantasy and baroque images, he is considered one of the most influential and widely revered filmmakers of the 20th century...
, Godard
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....
, Maysles
Albert and David Maysles
Albert and David Maysles were a documentary filmmaking team whose cinéma vérité works include Salesman , Gimme Shelter and Grey Gardens . Their 1964 film on The Beatles forms the backbone of the DVD, The Beatles: The First U.S. Visit...
and Jarman
Derek Jarman
Michael Derek Elworthy Jarman was an English film director, stage designer, diarist, artist, gardener and author.-Life:...
) that Korine's art really is his own. "He is an original, in every sense of the word." Korine comments on the film's aesthetic: "We tried very hard not to reference other films. We wanted Gummo to set its own standard."
Release
Gummo premiered at the 24th Telluride Film FestivalTelluride Film Festival
The Telluride Film Festival was started in 1974 by Bill and Stella Pence, Tom Luddy and Jim Card in the town of Telluride, Colorado, United States. It is operated by the National Film Preserve....
on August 29, 1997. During the screening, numerous people got up and left during the initial cat drowning sequence. Several festival appearances followed including International Film Festival Rotterdam
International Film Festival Rotterdam
The International Film Festival Rotterdam is an annual film festival held in various cinemas in Rotterdam, Netherlands held at the end of January. It is approximately comparable in size to other major European festivals such as Cannes, Venice, Berlin, and Locarno...
where it won the KNF Award for "best feature film in the official section that does not yet have distribution within the Netherlands," and Venice Film Festival
54th Venice International Film Festival
The 54th Venice International Film Festival was held on 27 August - 6 September, 1997.- Jury :* Jane Campion * Ronald Bass * Véra Belmont * Peter Buchka * Nana Dzhordzhadze...
where it received a special mention from the FIPRESCI
FIPRESCI
The International Federation of Film Critics is an association of national organizations of professional film critics and film journalists from around the world for "the promotion and development of film culture and for the safeguarding of professional interests." It was founded in June 1930 in...
jury. It was picked up for distribution by Fine Line Features
Fine Line Features
Fine Line Features was the speciality films division of New Line Cinema. It produced, purchased, distributed and marketed films of a more "indie" flavor than its parent company...
, and saw a limited release with an R rating (edited from the original NC-17 version) in the United States on October 17, 1997 for pervasive depiction of anti-social behavior of juveniles, including violence, substance abuse, sexuality and language.
Response
Gummo currently holds a rating of 34% on Rotten Tomatoes.A short excerpt from Gummo was shown after the opening sequence in the 1998 Hype Williams film Belly
Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog Stipetić , known as Werner Herzog, is a German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor, and opera director.He is often considered as one of the greatest figures of the New German Cinema, along with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Margarethe von Trotta, Volker Schlöndorff, Werner...
praised the film and spoke of being especially moved by the bacon taped to the wall during the bathtub scene.
The film's portrayal of "poor white trash
White trash
White trash is an American English pejorative term referring to poor white people in the United States, suggesting lower social class and degraded living standards...
" has garnered both glowing reviews and thunderous condemnations for its disturbing content and unusual style, which is simultaneously hyperrealistic and surreal
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
.
Director Lukas Moodysson
Lukas Moodysson
- External links :*...
listed it as one of his top ten films for the 2002 Sight and Sound Poll and director Megan Spencer
Megan Spencer
Megan Spencer is an Australian documentary film maker who specializes in the 'guerrilla video' style of documentary portraiture. Based in Bendigo, she is also a prominent film critic, journalist and radio presenter.-Biography:...
.
Filmmaker Gus Van Sant
Gus Van Sant
Gus Green Van Sant, Jr. is an American director, screenwriter, painter, photographer, musician, and author. He is a two time nominee of the Academy Award for Best Director for his 1997 film Good Will Hunting and his 2008 film Milk, both of which were also nominated for Best Picture, and won the...
on Gummo writes, "Venomous in story; genius in character; victorious in structure; teasingly gentle in epilogue; slapstick in theme; rebellious in nature; honest at heart; inspirational in its creation and with contempt at the tip of its tongue, [Gummo] is a portrait of small-town Middle American life that is both bracingly realistic and hauntingly dreamlike."
The Diary of Anne Frank II
The Diary of Anne Frank Pt II is a 40-minute three-screen collage featuring the same actors and themes as Gummo, and can be considered a companion piece.Korine comments, "I could probably make another two movies with the excess footage [from Gummo]. Some of this material I'm going to use in this art work... the problem you run into doing multimedia projection is that a lot of the time, the style takes over. It threatens and reduces the content. It becomes almost like a music video - mixing all these forms for no reason."