Harmony Korine doubled down on his thoughts about the current state of the film industry at a Venice press conference on Saturday, saying that “we’re starting to see Hollywood crumble creatively” because it’s “so locked in on convention.”
As he puffed on a cigar, causing smoke to invade the conference room, Korine — seated next to his designer Joao Rosa and a neon green-masked Gaspar Noé — waxed lyrical about how the industry is misusing its youth.
“Hollywood needs to encourage — they don’t need to, but they would be smart to — encourage the youth, the kids. Why we’re starting to see Hollywood crumble creatively is because they’re losing a lot of the most creative minds to gaming and to streaming,” he said. “They’re so locked in on convention and then all those kids who are so creative are now just going to find other pathways and go to other places because movies are no longer the dominant art form.”
Korine is on hand to premiere “Baby Invasion,” his latest experimental — and experiential — project after last year’s “Aggro Dr1ft.” He teased that festival audiences will only be getting a “base layer” of the overall experience that that will be offered once the movie comes out.
“When we release the film, there’ll be a way to watch it through your phone, but there’ll be certain codes within the movie that’ll take you to other movies,” he said. “So the film, what you’re seeing, is just a base layer film. There’ll be three or four other sub films.”
The film — in which a group of mercenaries disguised with baby faces invade mansions of the wealth and powerful — has an out-of-competition midnight bowing on the Lido tonight.
“It’s horror, right, because what they’re doing is horrible, but they’re also so cute,” Korine said of the baby-faced invaders. “They’re so adorable to watch. But these little children are just menaces, just vile creatures.”
The director said he used real security footage from some of his friends who had been robbed as a basis for the movie, which didn’t have a traditional script or cast. “Some of the cast were actually people that tried to rob a lot of friends of mine,” he said. “Once they were arrested, we cast them and it just added that extra sense of reality.”
Like “Aggro Dr1ft,” “Baby Invasion” is styled like a first-person shooter, and was made using AI and video game engines. While “Aggro Dr1ft” starred Travis Scott (in the rapper’s first major film role), “Baby Invasion” features an original score by the elusive electronic musician Burial. When asked by Variety how Burial came on board the project, Korine didn’t want to reveal too much out of “respect,” but said that he has never actually met or spoke to him.
“I mean, Burial’s amazing. He’s a legend. We got in touch with each other, but I never actually met Burial and I never actually spoke with Burial,” he said. “So it was all done through Discord messages, and we’d kind of talk on PS5. And then the music was sent through PS5.”
In 2023, “Aggro Dr1ft,” which was shot entirely in infra-red, featured twerking strippers and demon-like crime lords chanting “dance bitch,” earned a 10-minute standing ovation, one of the longest at the festival. But it also prompted walkouts at both the premiere and press screening.
Korine has been coming to Venice since his early years as a filmmaking, screening his directorial debut, “Gummo,” at the fest in 1997. The film was not well received by critics at first, but later won a special mention from Venice’s FIPRESCI jury. “Spring Breakers” also had its world premiere at Venice in 2012, where it received the Future Film Festival Digital Award.
