Industry Outsider: Harmony Korine

Harmony Korine made a staggering comeback from the brink of self-destruction and incoherence with this year's Mister Lonely, a cinematic wormhole filled with celebrity impersonators, free-falling nuns, and talking eggs. It was his return to filmmaking after an eight-year hiatus following the release of the divisive (some say misanthropic) Julien Donkey-Boy. Expectations weren't exactly high for the bad-boy of American cinema. Expectations were embarrassingly off the mark.

Later this month, Drag City will release Harmony Korine: The Collected Fanzines, a series of seven amateur publications overrun with rumors about Patrick Swayze, diatribes about youth and lots of swearing. To whet appetites for a full-blown look back at his drug-addled days, cop encounters, and best lies (all featured in the December/January issue of BlackBook), we asked Korine for his favorite nightlife spots. We should have seen this coming: “I only eat fudge when I stay in New York, and I only drink Sprite while I’m in Los Angeles. I never eat out in restaurants for fear of earthquakes and food poison. I only stay at transient hotels that rent by the hour. The last place I stayed had a blood stain on my pillow in the shape of the Virgin Mary.”