Mike Kelley / FilmMaker / Fall 1997  With a poetic,
impressionistic take on film narrative, a visual style
incorporating everything from elegantly framed 35mm to the
scuzziest of home camcorder footage, and a startling mixture of
teen tragedy, vaudeville humour, and sensationalist imagery,
Harmony Korine's first feature Gummo is perhaps the only recent
film whose artistic strategies draw as much from the visual art
world as the film world. (A gallery installation of work from
Gummo opens at L.A.'s Patrick Painter Gallery in late
September). We were thus very happy when Mike Kelley - one of
today's most essential and subversive artists - agreed to
interview Korine on the eve of a major gallery installation in
Copenhagen.  Like Korine, Kelley blithely shreds conservative
notions of high and low art as he mounts major gallery shows,
designs album covers for bands like Sonic Youth, and plays in
Destroy All Monsters with Thurston Moore. In fact, one of the
band's songs, "Mom And Dad's Pussy", opens Korine's film.