"Gummo" Dislike and praise, shadow and light, Harmony Korine's shocking debut work

The shooting scene was more chaotic than the movie

``Gummo'' is described as chaotic, but the shooting scene was even more chaotic. One house that Harmony liked was inhabited by a family with a huge number of cockroaches. In the movie, there is a shocking scene in which every time a picture frame on the wall is moved, a large number of cockroaches hidden behind it come to life, but in reality, most of the cockroaches escaped before filming began. Jacob Reynolds said, ``It was like a swarm of insects in Hamunaptra .''

Jacob, who played the role of Solomon at the age of 12, was kept in a bathtub full of sewage for 16 hours in the famous bathroom scene. Jean-Yves Escoffier, the cinematographer, was also in the bathtub, rolling the camera, and shouting something, but it was in French, so Jacob had no idea what it meant. The reason Solomon's hands are so swollen in the cut is because he was in the bathtub for 16 hours.

"Gummo" (c)Photofest / Getty Images

The building where they were filming was so filthy that the staff refused to enter the house and boycotted filming for two days. In the end, a compromise was reached by providing them with protective gear, but Harmony and Escoffier saw them as weaklings and continued filming them in light clothing as if to harass them.

A long sequence in which drinking adults engage in arm-wrestling includes a man who has just been released from prison. Wanting them to be themselves, Harmony and Escoffier decide to lock them in the kitchen and let them do whatever they want. Only Escoffier entered the kitchen carrying the camera, and Harmony and the others outside had no monitors and had no idea what was being filmed.

As a result, a famous scene was born in which the violent tension and humorousness are almost at odds with each other, and I am humbled by the unexpectedness that Harmony arranged. Meanwhile, the bizarre second half of the same scene, in which a man wrestles with a chair, was made possible by bringing in his friend, skateboarder Mark Gonzalez, whom Harmony praises as a ``master of chair wrestling.''

If you do something bad, you'll be paid $1,000 on the spot.