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.
Harmony Korine
I was free when I was 12 because I got my first skateboard. I've been free ever since.
I always wanted the films to play in malls, and I wanted as many people as possible to see them. I never want them to be marginalized in the kind of rarefied, elitist world. I always have hopes that the films will permeate culture in a big way. A lot of times, I'm wrong, but it's always the hope.
I purposefully try to make films in that grey area, where things are morally ambiguous. It's like life: good people do horrible things, and bad people do good things, and there's beauty in horror and horror in beauty.
I never feel like there's any one point to the film, to anything, to any of the movies I've made.
I look at WorldstarHipHop in the morning, Bossip, Global Grind, and everything in between, but it's all so quick, I don't even think about it. And I've never been a fan of lyrical or socially conscious rap music.
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.
Ever since I was little, I would just make stories up in my mind. It was based on people I saw in the street or someone I would talk to, or I would hear a specific voice.
It's hard to say things without coming off in a certain way, but at a young age, I felt very driven. All I ever wanted to be is a soldier of cinema.
I studied writing at NYU. I graduated high school in Nashville and then went to the creative writing program, and in the first year, that's when I wrote 'Kids.'
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 have a pretty good family. But ever since I was little, I just felt like I wanted to be on my own. It was the same thing about school.
I had these experiences as a kid; I remember certain things happening in school that were horrifying that I would see, certain things of violence or certain things of cruelty, but around that, something might happen afterwards to cause everyone to laugh, and that always blew me away.
Sometimes, when you watch people play a video game, they seem lost in this wormhole, or in a trance.
I don't listen to music made by white people. I especially hate anything where a guitar is used. I don't listen to white people and guitars.
Skateboarding was everything to us growing up. It changes the way you see the world: you spend all day looking for ditches.
Everything has to have some kind of a point for people to breathe easy. What's the point of life? I have no clue, but sometimes there are things that just attract us and pull us in a certain way.
I'm not a video brat. I don't derive all my inspiration through movies. I get it from a lot of other places, too.
I don't even know how people read new fiction anymore because there's so much old fiction that exists that seems great that's unread. It's overwhelming to me. But, I mean, I do read. But there probably haven't been many people less literate than me that have been in 'The Paris Review.'
I tried college and I hated that. I seem to quit everything I do.
Some of the most radical work is being done in the most commercially pop venues, and some of the most boring work is being done in avant-garde territory.
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.
If I see something that's morally ambiguous or ambiguously beautiful or has some pull in some way, I won't censor myself; I always run towards the light.
What I remember myself from films, and what I love about films, is specific scenes and characters.
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.
Cinema sustains life. It captures death in its progress.
Rap is the only interesting music left - it's the only genre that's still pushing itself, and experimenting in a way that I find exciting.
What makes Gucci Mane Gucci Mane is like what made Frank Sinatra Frank Sinatra - it's just him. He's trap's Frank Sinatra.
I've started lots of books, but it's hard for me to finish them.
I had a guidance counsellor who made me take an aptitude test, and told me I should be a bricklayer.
When I had my first camera - I was a child of the '80s. I remember what it was like reusing the same tapes over and over again, and having really bad quality and images kind of bubbling up from under the surface.
I always get sick of these conversations where people are so obsessed with pixels, with high definition, and even with technology in general. I find it just dull and heartless. And so I wanted to use only the worst machines.
You can still make music that people love, but there won't be more innovation. I started listening to electronic music a long time ago. But mostly I listen to rap. I think rap is the most interesting.
I never liked socially conscious rap. I like rap that's physical, that's about a beat and bass and repetition.
I always try to make films in such a way that it's hard to imagine how they came to be, or where they came from.
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've always - honestly - never thought of myself as an independent director.
I've always wanted to be a very commercial director, or I had dreams of making these movies into blockbusters. And with each movie, they tell me it's not that way.
I'd always heard stories about how Harpo Marx was the most talkative of the Marx brothers. I found it interesting that someone you never got to hear speak in films would never not speak in real life.
When I started making movies, I was pretty young, and at the time I felt like there needed to be more confrontation in cinema - or I needed to make something more disruptive - so in the beginning, those movies were me wanting to play with the rules.
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.
My knock with filmmaking is the whole bureaucracy around it, so in some ways, staying outside of it is easier for me.
I've just always liked watching people dance. I can't explain it. It used to just make me laugh.
I never cared about making one coherent masterpiece with a conventional narrative. I always wanted my movies to have images falling from all directions in a vaudevillian way. If you didn't like what was happening in one scene, you could just snooze through it until the next scene.
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.
I've never actually directed anything I haven't made up. I've never adapted anything.
I've never had to pitch a movie to a studio. I usually just let people read the script, then I cast it. I always think pitching is for baseball.
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.
I never really feel wrong while making movies. I know myself, and I know that my intentions are pure and I'm on the side of righteousness.
I don't make movies for the same reason that a lot of people do. I make films because I need to see them exist in a very specific way.
