Trash Humpers is Harmony Korine’s latest film, shot and edited entirely on VHS and featuring a “loser-gang cult-freak collective” that smashes TVs, eats pancakes with dishwashing liquid instead of syrup, hangs out with overweight singing hookers, and yes, humps trash. Korine speaks on the phone from Nashville but got up mid-interview to try to tase a convict on a bike for throwing lemons and limes at his house. This interview by Lainna Fader

Hello, Harmony. How are you?
Good, good—just … this guy—I guess he’s a convict? He’s on work release, and we found out he’s a very well-known arsonist and he just moved into the neighborhood. He’s been out for a couple of weeks now and all he does is ride up and down the street on a bicycle throwing lemons and limes into people’s yards. I was out on the front porch with my daughter and she was crying and the guy fucking threw a lemon and it hit her head. So I went into the house to get my taser gun just in case he comes back down the street and I can taser his ass.
Have you tasered anyone before?
Yeah. I’ve never tasered anyone on a bicycle before. I’ve tasered my dog because he was chewing on my daughter’s toe. That’s it though.
Tell me about Trash Humpers.
I don’t really know how I would describe it. I’d say it’s not really a movie. It’s more of a found artifact or something that’s been discarded— tossed in the trash. It’s something like a VHS tape you can imagine being buried in the dirt somewhere, or shoved up the asshole of a dead mule, or maybe stuffed in the guts of one of the Jonas Brothers. Does that make sense?
Yeah. Did you ever consider distributing it by just leaving it somewhere for people to find instead of giving it a proper release?
Definitely. I was going to leave it on people’s porches randomly. I was going to send it in the mail to different places—police stations, a school for the blind, a couple high schools, a place mechanics would congregate, a lesbian disco by my house, a funeral parlor, an amputee temple, a place where people watch a lot of sitcoms and horror films in reverse. The kind of place that you can imagine Puerto Rican peach pickers—you know, orchard pickers— would hang out.
Why didn’t you do that?
In the end it’s just too much energy. My wife had a baby and we were so busy with diapers and people committing some petty crimes. I felt like I didn’t have enough energy to promote it, to distribute it like that. Hey, hang on. I think I see that son of a bitch! Hold on. Fuck! [Runs out] Fuck! [His daughter starts crying]
Did you get him?
One second. [Talking to his daughter] Are you okay? Aww, don’t be scared! It’s okay!
I had tied this tree branch from this big tree. It was jimmy-rigged so that when this guy rolls by I would pull a string and the branch would fall on his head and destroy him, but I obviously missed.
[Talking to his daughter, who’s started crying again] Don’t cry! It’s okay. We’ll get him next time! It’s okay! I know, you hate that guy. Here, you want some chocolate? Let me give you some chocolate.
Okay. Keep asking.
Was there a specific reaction you were trying to get from the audience with Trash Humpers?
No, I never really do that kind of thing. I hope people will enjoy it and I hope that it’s the kind of thing that they’ll make mandatory viewing in public school. For me to think about that kind of thing, it’s the kind of thought that can drive a man crazy. It’s the kind of thing that can make a man want to jump off a bridge or cut an ear off.
Where’d the masks come from? They’re terrifying.
It’s an elaborate prosthesis. It took the inventor fourteen years to make them.
Did you have to convince your wife to play one of the Trash Humpers or was that the original plan?
It was the original plan but it still took a little bit of convincing. Not that much convincing though. She was pretty into it.
Trash Humpers won best film at the Copenhagen Documentary Film Festival despite it not actually being a documentary. How’d that happen?
Well, I think it’s the first movie to embody every genre perfectly to a T. It’s the future of documentary, as well as the future of comedy, horror, drama, melodrama and the embodiment of silent films, color films, black-and-white films, A-movies, heterosexual films, action movies, karate films and musicals.
There’s a lot of dancing in the film, particularly in the scenes with the most destruction.
I just like dancing and I like the way it looks when people move. When we used to vandalize houses, we would always dance the entire way there and the entire way back, so it’s an accurate representation of the way we used to do things.
How much of the film is based on your actual experiences—things you personally witnessed?
About 63 percent. I wanted to make a comedy. I wanted it to be the future of comedy. I mean that it’s really, really funny and it was intended to cause extreme belly laughs. Also, I feel like it’s in the lineage of the Marx Brothers, the Three Stooges, Buster Keaton, Shirley Temple, Don Ho—the guy that plays the ukelele—and a couple of famous senators who lit themselves on fire in the ’50s.
You’ve said your next project is a comedy too.
I can’t really say what it’s about because then I could jinx it. It’s going to be the type of thing that puts me into the next world. I’m trying to get Harrison Ford right now, so if he commits it’s a done deal. If not, we’ll try to get Morgan Freeman to put breast implants in and play the lead.
Why Harrison Ford and Morgan Freeman?
Well, it’s about a tranny that looks like Morgan Freeman who gives himself amazing breast implants. He’s a plastic surgeon from Delaware. Harrison Ford because he’s my all-time favorite.
You’ve said that you don’t think about the meaning in your films—you don’t question things, you just follow the truth. What is the truth?
If I told you, I could never meet you. I just don’t question things too much. I was born with an understanding of the light and the righteous path and that’s all I ever pay attention to. I only adhere to one law—the law of the gut, the law of the erection, the law of the pure ejaculate, and it goes up and it goes down, like everything in life.
Who is your favorite rapper?
I only like hip-hop music that speaks to the lowest common denominator. I hate anything that even comes close to social consciousness. I don’t ever want to hear any rapper trying to enlighten me. All I like to do is hear music that is an ode to titty shaking, to ass shaking—robbing, drug-dealing music. I like the most simple kind of music. To me, Soulja Boy is the new Shakespeare. Flocka Flame is like the next level Stephen Hawking. Gucci Mane, he possess rhyme skills that are so elementary that they intoxicate the mind. I love Crunchy Black and Gangsta Boo. That is true American lyrical language. I only listen to music that gets the party going, that inspires you to rob, to watch people shake their asses. I love music that you hear in shake joints in Mississippi.
What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever filmed?
That guy running for politics—Ron Paul. Once I filmed Ron Paul at a convenience store trying to pick up a questionable—uh, let’s just say I don’t know if it was a man or a woman.
What are you planning to do with that footage?
I don’t know. Just holding on to it.
Do you have any plans to return to old projects that you never ended up completing, like Fight Harm and Jokes?
It’s possible, but I’m the type of guy that likes to move on to different things. I used to know a guy who liked to go back and forth between new projects and old projects and that guy died a violent death. I don’t know if I want to do what he did. One thing I promise is that I’m going to get this guy very soon—the guy on the bicycle throwing the lemons and the limes.

HARMONY KORINE’S FILM TRASH HUMPERS IS CURRENTLY SCREENING AROUND THE COUNTRY AND WILL BE RELEASED ON DVD SEPT. 21 BY DRAG CITY. VISIT TRASHHUMPERS.COM.

Not too long ago there was an article about the state of music videos in some relevant culture magazine. The alt suits were basically saying at print time (last year) that it was the best time to make music videos because of no budgets. That was the dumbest shit I have ever heard. If you have never even had money the decline doesn’t affect you. On a REAL level of video making, you are concerned with spending less of your own money and not going to jail. Aside from these videos, this year sucked for videos. Rap videos this year were shit. Rappers are amazing. They go to jail, kill each other, and generally do ridiculous entertaining things. Yet most videos of good songs are the same car/girl/money video. Rage, Gill Green and Hype all need to be in time out. What Needs To Die: VHS videos or VHS video effects/artifacts are the visual equivalents to Auto-Tune. Doing a shitty low budget video that looks VHS is one thing, but actually paying money to make your images look crappy is mind-boggling. Here are some of the year’s best videos that sucked less, in order from when I saw them.
—Paul Rodriguez

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bsXOcK9_Cw]
Depeche Mode ‘Wrong’ (Patrick Daughters)
This is the best thing Patrick Daughters has written since he made Karen O and everyone else cry when he did ‘Maps.’ The cinematographer Shawn Kim photographs downtown L.A. in a realistic beautiful way. Throw in a Liar as your main character and have Spike Jonze being hit by a car for a nice touch.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zol2MJf6XNE]
Animal Collective ‘My Girls’ (Knowmore Productions)
When I first saw this I hated it. Then I realized it was okay. Then compared to everything else this year it got better. AC’s visual presentation is crazed and they are on their own shit. The best AC video is “Water Curses.”

Kanye West ‘Welcome to Heartbreak’ (NABIL)
Kanye’s sweater is dope in this video. I don’t care you hate him. He did “Jesus Walks” with Chris Milk and he has Michel Gondry doing his alternate videos that barely get seen. This video’s visual device is called data moshing. When Kanye found out about Ray Tintori’s clip for Chairlift with data moshing they pushed up ‘Welcome To Heartbreak.’ Artist Takeshi Murata is known for data moshing so when two video clips came out by the same production company some NY art people were crying.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ek3coSedm7o]
Bat For Lashes ‘Pearl’s Dream’ (Nima Nourizadeh)
In this mystic drop Natasha is styled in a look directly pulled from the Margiela Spring ’09 show. Nima went so smart with the art direction and cinematography. Wolves need to be in more videos.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7WAHnZPIX0]
The Horrors ‘Sea Within A Sea’ (Douglas Hart)
I guess this would be the their musical redemption. The visual setup is simple and colorful yet perfectly fitting. Everything gets prime around 4:27.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6gHLHbYVeA]
MSTRKRFT ‘Heartbreaker’ (Vincent Haycock)
The idea of MSTRKRFT and John Legend in one song might sound horrendous if you are not a fan of either. The story is boy likes girl, but can’t have girl. You really see and feel a narrative here, which is rare for a three-minute music video spot. The casting is good (I would recast the girl, though) and has it boy model A.J. English in it. The best part of the video is when A.J. takes his sunglasses off at :40.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt6imgDYoTg]
Wavves ‘No Hope Kids’ (Pete Ohs)
This is pretty standard guy-on-tour video except everyone hates/loves Wavves. The edit could be way better. I am for drug use in videos. Weed is a good start.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_uDoTmokUM]
White Lies ‘Death’ (Crystal Castles Remix) (Tim Walker)
White Lies: nobody cares about them in our country so they paid Crystal Castles to do a remix. Still no one cares. Technically this video is a re-edit from the original. The video is on the mundane UK suburb/Bat For Lashes ‘What’s A Girl To Do’/Donnie Darko vibe. The best shot is at 3:25. I could do without the shitty Photoshop glowing effect.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4OhRVn_b80]
Micachu & The Shapes ‘Turn Me Well’ (Cannot find director—sorry!)
This just feels right.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcqwfFKagH4]
Girls ‘Hellhole Ratrace’ (Aaron Brown and Ben Chappell)
Girls and this video are for the people. The visual device is slow motion/overcranked throughout the whole video. There have been a bunch of these over the years. Off the top of my head: the Cat Power and the Cass McCombs one. ‘Hellhole Ratrace’ has some arc to it even if it’s simple. Who doesn’t want to have fun with your friends in your city? No matter how fucked up you get, I think you will always remember the sunrise.

Yeasayer ‘Ambling Alp’ (Radical Friend)
This is the best video after Patrick Daughter’s ‘Wrong’ for ‘09. The Yeasayer visual presentation is murder and I would not expect anything less. This is the best art direction and best use of effects I have seen in a while in a video. It’s hard to make something without people acknowledging an existing visual reference. So here it goes: the running falling naked people is on Sigur Ros ‘Gobbledigook’/Ryan McGinley. ‘Gobbledigook’ shot by Christopher Doyle is easily one the best-shot videos of all time. The intro graphic shot, the mirror face guy on horse drumming, the boxers and the liquid face drips are my favorite parts. Radical Friend gets respect.

HONORABLE MENTIONS
Not next level enough/progressive, but I still like, or I just like but I don’t back it that hard.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFbE3lHTcuo]
Fuck Buttons ‘Surf Solar’ (Andrew Hung)
Once I drank all their liquor in a hotel room. One of their PR people called me drunk at 4 AM to tell me check this video again.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uVLaGvdAKc]
Coconut Records ‘Any Fun’ (William Strobeck and Mark Gonzales)
8mm and pro skaters.

Young Dro ‘I Don’t Know Y’All’ (Gabriel Hart)
When I get drunk, I talk about who I don’t fuck with. This video is pretty fucking ridiculous.

BEST NON-MUSIC VIDEOS (OR THESE PEOPLE SHOULD MAKE A MUSIC VIDEO)

K-CoreaINC.K (section a) (Ryan Trecartin)
This is one of his two videos released in ‘09. Yes/No. This is fucked.

Hood By Air SS10 (Reid Van Renesse)
Shot in Terence Koh’s A.S.S. gallery. ZOMBY.

Gems for Arielle de Pinto (Margaret Haines)
Margaret asked me to help her work on a film, but I ended up playing a football player who wanted to fuck a slut. Her film also has progressive children, which is in right now. This clip is captured perfectly.

Binare (Marie Hanhnhon)
Pretty strong work by the youth. Zak, the dancer, plays a slave boy in my new music video for Former Ghosts.

Download: Amanda Jo Williams “The Bear Eats Me”

(from the self-released The Bear Eats Me out soon)

L.A. RECORD likes fresh and spicy meat. We couldn’t wait for Amanda Jo Williams to wipe the dust gathered on her Jumbo Western in the long cross-country trek. Her quirky country style lets her be as comfortable strumming songs about sex as she (and her twins) are rhyming about poop. Right now she’s handing out CDs burnt on her computer, leaving them on benches and releasing them in baskets into the L.A. river. If fate will have it, those 24 peanuts of wisdom will wind up on a barstool near you. This interview by Daiana Feuer.

How many songs have you written in one stretch?
A lot. I go through spurts. I’d say one spurt will make twenty to forty songs maybe. But usually I’ll have someone that inspires me. Most of the time, it’s about saving the world. But recently I had a muse, so it made a different type of songs.
Who was your muse?
It was a sexy man.
I like the song about shopping cart sex.
That’s about the sexy man.
Where are you from?
Hogansville, Georgia. It’s close to La Grange. La Grange is a little bigger—that’s why I sometimes tell people La Grange. Hogansville is really small. It’s like an hour and a half south of Atlanta. It’s in the country. Very in the country. Yeah. Like Family Dollar. Horses. Fences. Broken fences.
Did you have horses?
I did. My horse Bobo, he was born there on the property. I saw him being born­—his feet were sticking out. That’s how it happened. Anyways, he was like fifteen, and then two or three years ago he escaped and got hit on the road, like a deer. A woman in her Cadillac—she waited too late to sue my mama. I mean, I’m glad she waited too late to sue.
You can sue someone for hitting their horse?
Yeah, ‘cause it’s not a deer—it’s not wild animals.
Can you talk about the poop song?
My twins, Ginger and Hominy—hominy like grits or corn—we did that together. It’s just like improv. They’re seven. They’re with their father now in Woodstock, New York. It wasn’t too long ago. I knew I was moving out so I created this Myspace page and it has the poop song and stuff that we did together, and videos. They have a really good sense of humor. They’re old souls. Go to their Myspace—it’s called Little Feet Learning Center. It’s my first friend on Myspace, and you can see tons that you wouldn’t believe. I started strumming and we started singing. The melody just came out. Kids that age—they like to talk about poop a lot.
Why did you move to L.A.?
For the music. I came out here in August and I played a show or two and I knew that my music would do well out here and just my personality. I wanted to stay. I’ve played in New York City and it’s just not the same. But out here something just clicked with my soul and my heart. I’m looking for a record label so I can start touring. I think it’s going to happen this year. I can see it. I can. I can kind of see things. I was thinking of burning a bunch of CDs and throwing them, and random people will pick them up—because if you believe in fate and destiny, it will land in the right hands.
What do you mean ‘you see things?’
I’ll ask myself a question about something or someone and I’ll say, ‘Oh, can I see myself doing this or being with this person or so and so?’ And if I can see it right away or if it feels right, I know it’ll come to pass.
What do you plan to do in the springtime?
What goes on in the spring? I think people get horny.
If you were a shelf in a record store, what albums would you want to hold up?
Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson when he sings—well, he can be there anytime because he’s kind of sexy. I guess Gene Wilder if he sang. Do you know the guy that played Ernest played old country songs—Jim Varney? So him—singing bootlegs. I guess Bob Dylan. I like Bob Dylan. Bette Midler singing ‘The Rose.’ George Jones singing ‘She’s My Rock.’ There’d probably be a kid’s song or something.
What imaginary place would you play a show in?
Ooh. Have you heard of the Land of Pan? I think maybe Edgar Cayce says it’s Atlantis…I don’t know if this all the same thing…and then my friend says there’s this place called Lemuria, today. It’s this place, maybe Lord of the Rings-like, you know, with fairies and all these other creatures. And there’s magic. And the waters are really blue and the grass is really green and the sky is very blue. It would be outside. And I would play when it was daylight and then a lot of people would play and it would become nighttime and then the magic stuff really gets intense.
What would it smell like?
Pine needles. Pine straw. Do you know what pine straw is? If you grow up in the South and you don’t have snow, you can slide on pine straw. It’s needles that fall from pine trees and they turn brown. You can slide. They’re really slick. So it smells like that. And all the things that smell good.
All of them?
Yeah, pure things that smell good. What do you mean all of them? No fake colognes or perfumes. That’s sort of scary. You know how you see someone and you pass by ‘em and they have this sort of smell. Because perfume is sort of not natural in a way. Maybe some is—fancy perfume—but it becomes very enclosing. Like a box.
What bathroom accessory do you think you’d be if you were a bathroom thing or hygienic product?
Shampoo, because you go in the hair, but then you get rinsed out, but the smell lingers, so you don’t have to be committed to the person, but they still want you and your essence is still there.
What do you think about the apocalypse?
There is something coming, but for me it’s like the end of something and the beginning of something new. Something incredible. You know how the ‘60s never really took off? People didn’t get out of it what they wanted to get out of it? I think this time people are going to get out what they want. You know about the law of attraction? I mean, feelings and your thoughts really do make your reality. And I’ve noticed in L.A., that it’s very magical here. Manifestations and things happen a lot quicker. There’s something magical about it. And this town is called ‘the angels.’ So, I think there’s a lot of angels here—maybe broken-down ones and sad ones.
Do you believe in ghosts?
Believe in ‘em? They just are. They’re hanging around. And if you can see…Your brain only lets you see certain things. Like your eyes can see a ghost, but your brain just won’t allow you to see the ghost because it would mess up everything you’ve ever believed in. Because someone always said there’s no such thing as ghosts. Because you wouldn’t want to go crazy all of a sudden. So your eyes can see it but your brain won’t let you.
What can you tell me about planets?
Well, you start talking about your signs and the planets and you have people that start saying they don’t believe in that. And I think sometimes people don’t want to believe that the planets have influence over us because they don’t like the idea of being controlled by anything because it’s a free-will universe. It’s like—you’re born at a certain time. You are who you are, so when you’re born, the planets represent who you are. If you get lost about yourself, you can look at your chart. For example, Venus is in my 12th house and that’s not good because it means I have a lot of secret relationships. And I do have secret relationships. And my very first boyfriend—he was a school teacher, when I was a student. Do you ever feel like you’re playing a role, like you’re kind of magical? Like Venus. I’m just using Venus as an example. Or I would say, like, the wise old magician guy. The wizard. You know, the shamans around the world—and then, you know, you ever meet those people that are kind of this ‘older man’? They seem to be alone, but you just know they’re wise and you want to learn from them? There’s different versions of them everywhere.
Have you encountered one recently?
The father of my twins—he’s kind of like that. He’s kind of wizardy. The way he looks. He’s a very good musician. He’s the one that taught me guitar.
What was your first guitar?
I played his. But my Jumbo Western. It’s not fancy—it’s cheap. My friend Ed Mack got this for me before I could play and he got burned up in a fire. It’s funny. My grandmama, she fell in a fire when I was a kid. She was drunk and we had this big hole—she used to put trash in there and burn it. And she was drunk, poking the trash down, and she fell in the fire. But anyway, Ed used to take care of her after she got burned and then he ended up— he had a few strokes, he was skinny—and he ended up with a fire in his house. Sorry. I have these weird stories.
If you had to give up your eyes or your ears, what would you choose?
Ears. ‘Cause hearing runs really bad in my family. We all wear hearing aids. Some of my cousins—who are younger than me—they wear hearing aids. So I think it would be an easy adjustment. If you couldn’t see, you could get hit by a car. If you couldn’t see, how would you know that someone was handsome and you wanted to marry him?
Maybe it would be how their body felt.
Yeah, that’s more important, ain’t it? You ever heard about astral projection? It’s the state between sleeping and waking. You can see through your eyelids. You’d be able to see an astral realm, even if you couldn’t see in this physical plane. You could probably hear though, too. Maybe it’s a question that doesn’t need an answer. I used to ask my mama which of us kids she loved the best. It was something in me that needed to be loved the most out of all of them. But as I got older, I realized it was a stupid question.
Do you see yourself going back to Georgia one day?
I see myself being here. It feels more like home than anyplace. I have to get a job. I love Georgia and I do have to go back there to refresh. It’s just slow and it’s pure.

AMANDA JO WILLIAMS WITH HORSE THIEVES AND CROOKED COWBOY AND FRESHWATER FRIENDS ON FRI., AUG. 14, AT THE COWBOY SHOW AT THE UNKNOWN THEATER, 1110 SEWARD ST., LOS ANGELES. 10 PM / $5 / 18+. KARAOKEFEVER.COM. VISIT AMANDA JO WILLIAMS AT MYSPACE.COM/AMANDAJOWILLIAMSMUSIC.

L.A. RECORD photographer Paul Rodriguez sends this behind-the-scenes video documenting the Bruce LaBruce photo shoot for our July 2009 issue. Read the interview here.

Bruce LaBruce is ready to leave the blood behind but not without one final splatter. A self-described “reluctant pornographer,” Bruce’s films feature as many heart-wrenchingly romantic moments as they do scenes of explicit and extreme sex. For every gut- or stump-fuck, there is a glance or a line so scathingly heartfelt I can’t help but think Bruce LaBruce’s sincerity is his most dangerous weapon. This interview by Drew Denny and video of the shoot by Paul Rodriguez here.

I just read an interview with you in Butt magazine!
Oh yeah—I’ve worked with them a lot. I photographed Ryan McGinley for the cover, and then I wrote the intro to the Butt Book, which is a big thick compilation of the first 15 issues.
I’d love to read that! But we should talk about your show—
It’s completely out of control at this point—
You still have a whole day!
It’s called Untitled Hardcore Zombie Project. It was time for me to have a solo show, and I’d been doing a lot of stuff with zombies and blood over the past—well, since 2002, I guess. I think I’m going to leave behind all the blood and gore after this, but I thought I’d go out in a big explosion. The idea was to make—as an art project—a hardcore zombie splatter porn film. Because splatter and porn—it’s been done, though I’m not sure if there’s been a gay splatter porn. This idea of intersecting the gore and splatter genre—and horror—with porn really intrigues me because of these new ‘torture porn’ movies as they call them, which aren’t really porn but they operate similarly to porn in many ways. And they’re constructed the same way in terms of these narratives which build to orgasmic moments in which people either have sex or get murdered or end up emitting large quantities of fluid. The original idea was to make an actual gay splatter porn for the opening, but we realized we wouldn’t have time to pull it off, so I decided to make it more like a work in progress, and I’m actually shooting it here in August. The star of the show is Francois Sagat, the famous porn star and model. He’s in town, and I’ve been meeting with him and he’s going to be doing a live performance tomorrow with the guy who’s doing the special effects—Joe Castro. We’re experimenting with Francois’ look so we made a prototype for canine teeth and Joe’s going to airbrush him live. I also have five or six photographs that are examples of the bloody work I’ve done over the past few years with models and in movies.
A few of your photos remind me of the Abu Ghraib images.
That was a big inspiration for a lot of people. They were such strong, horrible images. Abu Ghraib was like a horror movie come to life, and that’s what a lot of my work has been lately in terms of the horror stuff—I do these Polaroid performances in which I do an installation then make it look like it’s some sort of abduction scenario or terrorist scenario where someone’s being tortured. Especially when Al Qaeda was at it’s height in terms of visibility, you’d see these videos where they were about to decapitate someone. It was all over the news, and we got accustomed to these scenarios. So I re-enact them but in a kind of gay way. There’s always an undercurrent of homosexuality in these things—like ‘mujahadeen’ has become slang for ‘gay’ or ‘faggot’ in Iraq, and they actually had this TV show where they would find terrorists—it was like a terrorist of the week show—they’d find a terrorist and put him on TV and humiliate him. They’d call him a faggot and say he was homosexual. It’s the idea that people are so used to passively accepting these violent images, so I like to give the public a chance to participate in these kinds of set ups—like one of those violent videos. It’s very cathartic. There’s always a vibe—it surprises me—the vibe is always more therapeutic then negative.
I was definitely surprised by that—Otto is the most recent work of yours that I’ve seen, but Hustler White is still my favorite.
I just saw Tony Ward last night at Diamond Dogs—Brian Rabin’s club—and I hadn’t seen him since we toured with the film in ‘96. He looked exactly the same—he’s so beautiful.
One of the most wonderful things about Hustler White, for me, was how it blurred the line between narrative filmmaking and documentary—you used non-actors and the sex was real. Now you’re re-creating in the public world situations from the media and the war. What’s the idea behind your combination of fiction and documentary?
My films have always—even from my short experimental films that I made in the late ‘80s when I was in the punk scene—they’ve always had a documentary element to them, and I did fanzines and stuff. It was all just taking pictures of friends or Super 8 movies of friends and incorporating them into a narrative or inventing stuff that’s fictionalized. But there’s always a core concept of documenting the scene that I was in. I think I’ve kept that process. Although with Otto, it’s obviously the biggest budget that I’ve had and the most ambitious film I’ve made. I think it’s almost completely fictionalized, although I still found the actor who played Otto on Myspace, and I used Katharina who played Medea—Katharina was a friend I met in Berlin who happened to be a woman filmmaker who made a documentary about horror film. So I still base characters on people I know.
As I watched Otto, I was surprised by how different it was from your other work—until the love scene. When Otto’s remembering his lover, he says he smelled of chlorine then you cut to that shot of them falling into the pool. You do love really well! That moment recalled the sincerity and realism I appreciated in your earlier work.
I always throw in the romance, especially when dealing with a lot of extreme subject matter. Like in Hustler White there’s a lot of sexual torture—or sexual fetish and amputee sex and that kind of stuff. First of all, I think that stuff is really corny if you’re too serious about it. Secondly, I think it’s important for people to know that there are real people with normal emotions participating in a lot of these extreme sexual fetishes all the time—so they’re just really average people. Thirdly, it’s just an unexpected representation. You don’t expect to see these kinds of people in a romantic way or with romantic impulses. In Otto, part of the whole point was a reaction to this new wave of torture porn which is so brutal and non-romantic and really cynical.
I appreciate that you take what is considered ‘subversive’ or ‘extreme’—people and behaviors that are either not represented at all or are exploited to create spectacle—and depict it casually, with a certain amount of respect and even grace. Hustler White exemplifies that sort of representation for me, which is impressive because at that time in the ‘90s, there were all those filmmakers—like Tarantino and his ‘gimp’—exploiting such people and behaviors, using them as a gimmick—
Unfortunately at that time, Tarantino represented the zeitgeist—it happened some time in the ‘90s—where it became a politically incorrect posture… this kind of irony through which you could be misogynistic or you could be homophobic but you were laughing—like it’s an inside joke—but you still do it. You get away with it. It’s still nasty. Those things became acceptable again in a weird way. That’s why I think being sincere almost became politically incorrect. My films—despite the extreme subject matter—there’s always a sincerity behind them.
That’s what shocks people.
A lot of people don’t get it. They think, ‘Oh, he made a movie where one guy fucks the other guy in a hole in his stomach, so he can’t possibly have any kind of romantic ideas.’ Actually, the gut-fucking scene is in a film within the film—which is very romantic. It’s about these two rebel zombies who are on a crusade together, and they’re boyfriends. It’s very romantic.
You mentioned your involvement with the punk scene in the late ‘80s—I’ve always really enjoyed your soundtracks, and I was wondering what your relationship is with these musicians. How do you curate your soundtracks?
For the early ones, I either used music by people I knew, or I would use obscure soundtrack music from the ‘60s and ‘70s and mix it up with really obscure punk music. For my first couple of films, I don’t have a lot of music clearances which is why they’re so hard to get a hold of—people are really reluctant to release them. I’ve done that with all my films. My last two—Raspberry Reich and Otto—I got a lot of music through people I know or friends of friends. With Otto in particular—that was sort of at the height of the popularity of Myspace—I sent out word that I was looking for music for a melancholy gay zombie movie, and I got flooded with so many people saying they’d donate the music for free just in exchange for credit. I ended up with 23 hours of material, and I tried to use as much as I could. We ended up using 55 tracks by 27 different artists. Most of it was for free. I got Antony and the Johnsons and Cocorosie because of my friend Kembra Pfahler who has a cameo in the film—
Who does she play?
She’s in the dance scene. In the DVD extras, there’s a short film of Medea’s that got cut out of the film—it’s called Messy in the Afternoon… it’s a take off Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon, and Kembra features very prominently in that.
You mentioned Raspberry Reich, and I’d like to talk about that—it seems to be your most overtly political film. I’ve read a few interviews in which you discuss how subversive political movements become co-opted by capitalist society then turned into empty signifiers which can be filled by whatever content the market provides—Che Guevara t-shirts and the like.
That certainly came back to bite us in the ass because we got sued by the estate of Korda, the photographer who shot the famous image of Che Guevara—
Everybody else uses that image!
I know! Korda was Che’s personal photographer for ten years. He sued us for a million dollars Canadian for using the image without permission. It was a long protracted thing—we had to go to court, and the suit was launched in France. We had a lawyer in France to deal with it. We ended up having the damages reduced to eight or ten thousand but we had to pay court costs. Technically, we’re not even supposed to show the film anymore. We basically lost. But my American distributor wasn’t named in the suit so I think we’re still distributing it here. The European version had the image right on the box. But they definitely watched the whole thing. The subpoena was fifty pages long—they thought the film defiled the image. There’s so much irony involved because the film is anti-capitalist. It’s about the way capitalism exploits not only Che Guevara but radicalism and terrorism and the Baader-Meinhof Gang. You can read about it—I just posted an article I wrote about it for Black Book. That’s what the film is about—the commodification of radical imagery and the way it’s made fashionable. It’s also about left-wing idealism—how it can turn into dogmatism, and it can also quickly switch into becoming the very thing to which it stands opposed. These left-wing radical groups like the Baader-Meinhof gang start out with lofty ideals about improving the world and equality and class and fighting corporate control, but then they become completely ethically and morally bankrupt when they start killing people. Of course it’s more complicated than that because they consider themselves at war, and the rules of war are different from normal law. But one of the themes that runs through my films is the idea of the oppressed becoming the oppressor and about not practicing what you preach. When I went to university and graduate school, I had a lot of professors who spouted a lot of extreme anti-patriarchal and anti-capitalist rhetoric yet they were in monogamous marriages—
Working in institutions—
And living in nice houses!
What did you study?
I was a film undergrad and then I got an MFA in basically film theory and social and political theory.
I wanted to ask you who you’re reading—in terms of philosophy—because your dialogue and those t-shirts from Raspberry Reich—
Put your Marxism where your mouth is! For Raspberry Reich, I went through all my old notes from university. I steal a lot from Marcuse, and I was always into the Frankfurt School. In Raspberry Reich I also steal from Raoul Vaneigem’s The Revolution of Everyday Life and the Situationists. I’m much more into that practical enterprise of dealing with realpolitik rather than the French Post-Structuralists—
I’m reading Deleuze now—
I should’ve read more of that actually. I took a course called Psychoanalysis in Feminism, and I had to read all of Lacan translated into English—that was what almost killed me.
Let’s get back to your show—if I’m picturing the image right, there’s a flag in the background of one of the photos. Since 9-11, there’s been a void in art that uses that kind of imagery for critical purposes—
Raspberry Reich was a response to what happened to the left in America after 9-11 because the left was silenced. Castrated really. It was amazing—even now people are so quick to call someone a socialist or a communist —like Obama—that’s why in Raspberry Reich people are constantly spouting leftist rhetoric, and the text is flashing across the screen. I wanted to bombard the audience with that imagery and ideology. In terms of the flag, that was from a performance piece that I did in London a few weeks ago—Ron Athey and Lee Adams curated a performance spectacle called ‘Visions of Excess.’ They curated a bunch of international performance artists and it was in the Shunt Vaults under the London Bridge—it’s like a dungeon. It’s a huge space. My piece was an IRA zombie concept—it’s the Irish flag and the British flag. An IRA zombie being tortured by British zombies—you know, the IRA coming back from the dead. It was also this idea of the war going on in Northern Ireland. It seems to have gone away but there were a couple incidents when it was coming back. The idea that war and violence become fetishized not only by the media but by the participants and the whole military aspect becoming very aesthetic and sexy—even for the participants—so there is a certain romance to it as well. There were a couple people who were shocked because it was so directly political. He’s standing in front of the Irish flag. A zombie. Covered in blood. Licking his gun. Also, he’s got a hard-on. So it’s basically terrorist porn!
When you discuss the politics of your films, how much do you concern yourself with gender politics and the politics of sexuality—the decision to work almost exclusively with male homosexuals, for example?
After my first feature—I had been politically correct in terms of my representation of sexuality. It’s partly because of my academic training. I had a couple friends who de-programmed me. They said, ‘You’re policing your imagery. It’s politically correct.’ So I started trying to deal with gender in a much looser way—in Super 8 1/2, Richard Kern, the famous photographer, was in a wig with a strap-on dildo fucking a woman—which was kind of an inside joke because people consider him misogynist. So it was kind of a mind fuck. With Hustler White, we decided to have not a single woman in the movie—partly as an expressionistic thing wherein this fantasy world of johns and hustlers, they are living in this utopian world where they don’t have to deal with women. Then I often have lesbian characters like in Super 8 1/2 and in Otto. I haven’t done as much with the transgendered as I would like. I did a photo series with a pre-op transsexual in Toronto named Nina Arsenault. I don’t know if you’ve seen the photos, but they’re quite extreme because she actually allowed me to photograph her penis which had never been photographed before. She just had one of her breast implants taken out because there was a problem, so there was a scar and just one big breast—and she was covered in blood and carrying a gun. So it was a take on gender terrorism. I’m totally into that. In terms of politics and the gay thing, I always try to carry on that tradition of the gay avant-garde which is going back to Warhol and Morrissey, Kenneth Anger, Jack Smith, Curt McDowell, and John Waters—because I think it’s necessary and I think it’s what sets homosexuals apart—that kind of experimentation and celebration of difference. In terms of more straightforward politics, my husband is Cuban. He grew up in Cuba and didn’t leave until he was in his early 30s—so he makes fun of me for my political posturing. I’m kind of a Marxist sympathizer, and I’m anti-capitalist and anti-corporate which came from my punk training… I did grow up below the poverty line on a small farm, but compared to what was going on in Cuba or in a third world country, I was living an incredibly privileged life. He’s lived the revolution and seen how the revolution went sour, so he’s a good reality check for me.
How long have you two been together?
We’ve been together for four years, married for two years.
Considering the work that you do, isn’t it difficult to be married?
It’s not a monogamous relationship—it’s an open relationship.
Oh, much better—I was shocked!
I’m not into the institution of marriage but he’s Cuban, and I’ve sponsored him for citizenship—so it was done for those reasons. Strangely, it actually made our relationship stronger. But I never would have done it without the immigration angle.
A friend of mine shot porn for a while and says it ruined her sex life—does it affect your sex life?
I make it so rarely. I’m more like an artist who works in porn. I’ve really only made two movies for actual porn companies. Most of my films do have sexually explicit content but I certainly don’t work in the industry so it’s not-—like I know people, friends who are porn stars and directors, who make forty to fifty films a year so they’re constantly saturated with it. It’s like a fatigue—sexual fatigue. Also, it’s not glamorous shooting porn. That’s what I gathered when I made my first industry porn which is Skin Gang. It’s not glamorous—it’s very contrived. The guys are certainly hot and sexy, but they are professionals and they’re doing their job. They take their Viagra, and they have to insert the cock when they’re told to and have to hold it there and keep it hard and turn cheek towards the camera and hold in an awkward position for a long period of time. And then they’ll have anal leakage and someone has to come wipe it up. So it’s not that sexy to shoot—to make. The whole idea is to present this illusion of this seamless fantasy of sexual perfection that climaxes in a fountain of ejaculation. We all know that real sex doesn’t often happen that way.
Does that label bother you—’pornographer’? Hustler White, for me, is an art film in which the sex is real rather than simulated.
Right, but then I did actually make films for porn companies. Skin Gang was nominated for nine Gay Adult Video Awards. Also I wrote a memoir in the late ‘90s called The Reluctant Pornographer. But, yeah, I was just talking to somebody about that the other day. There is a glass ceiling for pornographers. There’s a lot of hypocrisy where people kind of look down—even if they are an avid consumer of porn—when they meet someone who works in porn. I was out with a porn star last night, and he was saying how tired he is of people coming up to him and asking him how big his cock is and taking these kinds of liberties. I experienced that after I made my first two films, and I was having sex in the film. There’s a certain line that you cross which I call the ‘corn-hole line’—once you’ve been penetrated, people look at you differently. They assume you’re immoral, amoral or unethical. I always say—you actually need a very strong moral compass to navigate the porn world because there’s a lot of exploitation that does go on, and there are a lot of damaged people and sexually abused people. So you have to be careful not to be exploitative and to be really responsible for what you’re doing.
Considering the amount of exploitation involved in mainstream filmmaking, this all seems very hypocritical.
The hypocrisy of it is really sad. That’s why I’m making this hardcore splatter zombie movie. The hypocrisy that you can show the most disgusting, over-the-top, gory torture—women being tortured and mutilated—and yet you can’t show two people having sex? If an alien came down from another planet and saw that phenomenon, they would be so disgusted.
Violence—OK. Naked people—not OK?
Right.
I’ve heard you say you incorporate all types of sex in order to depict all types of fantasies that real people have—is there a limit to what you’ll represent?
For one thing, I think porn in general is—it’s the collective unconscious. It allows people to work out their most extreme and most politically incorrect fantasies, which is what I really explored in Skin Flick—which was racially based fantasies of domination and submission and rape. It was kind of a heavy movie. I had a lot of gay black guys contact me on the internet—even though there’s a black man raped by white power skin heads—who were totally turned on by that scene. Then in Hustler White, the white character is gang banged by the black gang. I think anything is fair game. That’s what the function of art should be—to explore those kinds of things. In terms of where else there is to go? Well, I’m not really talking about my next film. I’m working on the script for a larger movie—the title is Gerontophilia—so you can draw your own conclusions.

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Download: Fool’s Gold “Surprise Hotel”

(from the self-titled full-length due Sept. 29 on IAMSOUND)

L.A. Afro-pop band Fool’s Gold—including such vital L.A. musicians as Luke Top and Brad Caulkins, and interviewed by L.A. RECORD here—will be releasing their debut full-length on the formidable IAMSOUND label, noted by us most recently for their work with Telepathe. Excerpted archival interview below:

Do you have an album ready yet?
Luke: I want to call [our full-length] Notes From The Rat Race in Hebrew but I don’t know how to say it.
If you could play anywhere in the world, where would you play?
Lewis: I want to play this music festival in Mali, in the Sahara desert. It’s four hours by 4×4 out in the desert from Timbuktu. It’s the most remote music festival in the world. I think we could probably do it. They have Innuits performing, then French bands. I saw Navajo Indians. It’s in January every year­—it’s called the Festival in the Desert.
Big Search: I want to play on a space station. Why do we have to be world music? Let’s be universal.
Luke: We should play on the border between Israel and Palestine. Bring the two-state solution through sound. One foot on each side of the border. ‘Dear governments of the world, we are Fool’s Gold. Shalom.’