Harmony Korine’s Zinester Past Revealed/Reissued

BY Brock ThiessenPublished Nov 14, 2008

Before going on to film flying nuns and Julien donkey-boys, apparently director Harmony Korine was quite the little zinester. In fact, back in the ’90s, the cinematic brains behind such films as Kids and Gummo released over a dozen fanzines, selling them through various New York galleries, often with artist Mark Gonzales helping out on the art front. Now, that old hobby is leading to the new anthology The Collected Fanzines, which, as the title suggests, is a collection of these early zines.

"They were never meant to be collectible," Pitchfork quotes Korine as saying, "just low-concept, laugh-inducing juxtapositions of words and images, images and images, lists, monologues, cartoons, free verse, jokes, half-thoughts, fake/real interviews, innuendo and Matt Dillon's phone number."

The Collected Fanzines is set to be released on November 18 courtesy of Drag City, who will issue the anthology both as one contained paperback and as a limited edition box set. The latter will contain precise replicas of the original zines, which have titles such as My Friend or Sheep Boy, Oh Death Where Is Thy Sting and Pocahontas Monthly, and a bonus poster featuring "Harmony’s own reflections on each issue,” Drag City says.

Previously Korine entered the publishing world with the 1998 book A Crackup at the Race Riots, in which you can find such gems as a photo of MC Hammer at age 11, famous quotes such as, "I gave up bowling for sex — the balls are lighter and I don’t have to wear shoes” (Roscoe Arbuckle), and fictional letters from Tupac Shakur (or at least we always assumed they were fictional).

Harmony Korine on David Letterman

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