Harmony Korine

Skateboarding was everything to us growing up. It changes the way you see the world: you spend all day looking for ditches.

Here's the thing that people don't understand: I don't really care. I've never been a careerist. It's not a strategy. I react to certain characters and story lines and specific mode of filmmaking.

When I was a kid, I loved Nicholas brothers films. It was like skateboarding. Even Gene Kelly: I always preferred him to Fred Astaire, just because he was more athletic, like skateboarding.

I tried working odd jobs that had nothing to do with creating, and it was difficult for me. In the end, I just always loved movies. When I'm making a film, I feel most alive, like I'm doing the right thing, and I'm in the place where I need to be.

When I was a child, the temptation to sin was always a romantic option. This romantic option led me to the cinema, a place where sin was welcome.

When I'm directing films, I mostly try to create an environment on set that mimics what's in my mind as to the tone and feel of things. I try to create a place where you feel that anything's possible.

I use to live on this street when I was a kid where there was an old person retirement home, and all of the old people would listen to that band Herman's Hermits, and they would wear white nursing shoes. And they would throw away stacks of VHS tapes, and I would go through the trash and take them.

I was born 'Harmony,' and it was weird because when I was a little kid, I was picked on so much that when I was 13, I changed my name to Harmful. I thought it was a tougher name, so I had it legally changed. And then, I don't know, it just didn't seem to catch on, so... legally, my name is still Harmful, but I just said I'll go back to Harmony.

I do have friends who make movies, but for the most part, I never really wanted to feel like I was part of an industry.

I've always liked street lights, and I've always photographed them. I probably have a collection of two to three thousand photographs of them, just around the city, mainly at night.

I never liked socially conscious rap. I like rap that's physical, that's about a beat and bass and repetition.

I had a guidance counsellor who made me take an aptitude test, and told me I should be a bricklayer.