Say what you will about Harmony Korine, but there is probably no other contemporary American director who so steadfastly sticks to his vision without compromise. Even this lone attempt at more “mainstream” filmmaking “Mister Lonely” was imbued with Korine’s signature moments of radiant brilliance: the nuns falling out of the plane to Aphex Twin? The lovely slo-mo opening? After last year’s delightfully twisted “Trash Humpers,” 2011 has seen Korine busier than ever. He hit SXSW this spring with his Die Antwoord starring short film “Umshini Wam” and he’s also doing some kind of mysterious kids-in-bike-gangs project with James Franco. There hasn’t been word on his next feature “Twinkle Twinkle” since Marlon Wayans signed on last fall (let’s hope it’s still happening) but the ever creative Korine is already at work on something else that’s totally amazing and totally bizarre.
Hat tip to one of our contributors for bringing this to our attention, as over at Val Kilmer‘s Tumblr page (who knew?) the actor has announced a new project he’s doing with Korine with the working title “Lotus Community Center” and well, we’ll just him explain it. Here’s what he posted:
I am about to create an experimental film with Harmony Korine here in Nashville, where we are rehearsing and where we will film on the 11th of August in a roller skating rink. I will be playing Hector. Harmony says of the character, “I don’t know if he’s ‘crazy’ – I don’t know if I know what that word means anymore… He’s the WORST motivational speaker on earth. That’s for sure.” We went last night to visit Dan Auerbach and friends, of BLACK KEYS fame. He was recording a beautiful woman’s record, but I didn’t catch her name. We soaked up the soul- but not even NASHVILLE’S finest can save HECTOR- motivational speaker sponsored by the -LOTUS COMMUNITY CENTER- (the current title, for our experimental film).
Harmony and I met a couple of years ago in New York with his lovely wife Rachel, and have been talking about a project ever since. This looney monologue is the first opportunity that materialized.
Val Kilmer playing a terrible motivational speaker in an experimental film by Harmony Korine? Um, yes please. You can go ahead and sign us the fuck up. As usual with Korine’s projects, this one seems to have arrived out of nowhere as we can’t really seem to dig up any more info. But man, we are more than ready for Kilmer to deliver his “looney monologue” as Hector. We presume Korine will trot it out at festivals sometime in 2012.