Harmony Korine has never made “normal” films. Even his most straightforward feature, probably 2019’s “The Beach Bum,” is pretty subversive by traditional standards. But then you look at things like “Gummo,” “Spring Breakers,” and “Trash Humpers,” and you realize Korine just clearly doesn’t have any interest in making anything the general public would embrace. So, it makes sense that his new film, “AGGRO DR1FT,” is shot 100% in infrared and features all the subversion you would expect. And according to Korine, the only thing that would bring him back to traditional filmmaking is Terrence Malick.
READ MORE: Harmony Korine Isn’t Sure How To Describe ‘Aggro Dr1ft’: “Maybe It’s Not Even A Movie”
Speaking to GQ, Harmony Korine talked about his distaste for the traditional Hollywood studio system and just run-of-the-mill features, in general. He opened up about his disinterest in films that “waste all this time” with dialogue at kitchen tables. And thus, you shouldn’t expect any of his future films, including the upcoming “AGGRO DR1FT,” to follow narrative feature film storytelling norms. Apparently, the only thing that would make the filmmaker interested in actually crafting a normal feature film is a script by Terrence Malick.
“It’s possible,” Korine said of returning to traditional filmmaking. “Terrence Malick wrote a script that he wants me to direct. It’s a really, really beautiful script. And that’s maybe one of the only things that I could imagine pulling me back into like actual, traditional moviemaking.”
He continued, “But even then, the hard part now is just the idea of looking through a viewfinder and filming, like, people speaking at a table. All this dialogue always gets in the way. All these things that you don’t really care about. I don’t know. That would be a special case. I always loved him, and his movies were such a big deal for me as a kid, and even still now. But that would maybe be the one thing.”
A couple of things stand out in that statement. First, it’s incredible to know that Malick has another script floating around that he wrote for someone to direct. That’s great news considering it takes so damn long for the filmmaker to finish his own work. And second, Malick wrote a script for Harmony Korine! The idea that Malick wrote something and figured Korine would be the perfect filmmaker to bring it to life makes you wonder what the hell this script contains. It would have to be something really interesting and somewhat wild for Malick to conceive of Korine to helm.
Regardless, even though it exists, it really doesn’t sound like Korine has any real intention on making it happen. Reading the very interesting GQ profile paints the picture of a filmmaker who just doesn’t find any great joy creating films. The work he’s doing now is just as strange and unique as the stuff he was creating decades ago. That said, if a studio wants to make an offer to Korine to film this Malick script, I’d be first in line to watch.
