Because I’m a very important man with a library of leather-bound volumes and a collection of the finest lanyards, I was able to attend the American premiere of Spring Breakers last night at SXSW ‘s Paramount Theater in Austin. I’ll have a full review for you eventually, but suffice it to say, the film has lots of nudity, and while I didn’t count, I’d be surprised if it didn’t break South Park: Bigger Longer and Uncut‘s record for most uses of the word “f*ck.” And I don’t think there was a single second of screen time that didn’t involve sex, guns, drugs, money or some combination of the above. To sum up, I’d say: Spring Breakers: Many f*cks spoken, none given.
Director Harmony Korine did a Q & A afterwards, joined by James Franco and all the girls except Vanessa Hudgens, who stayed home sick. And if you’ve ever seen Harmony Korine’s old appearances on David Letterman (video included below) you can imagine how entertaining a Harmony Korine Q & A might be. He wasn’t quite as nutty on this particular night, but the talk still had its highlights. After explaining how the look of the movie grew out of his fascination with fraternity forums and coed porno (“Harmony knows all the weirdest websites,” Franco added, stating the obvious), an audience member asked Korine if there were any scenes that he was particularly fond of that didn’t make the final cut of the film. And let’s just say his answer makes me extremely excited to see the deleted scenes on the DVD. (This is paraphrased, because I didn’t use my tape recorder).
“At one point I had them [the girls] robbing this chubby surfer. They’re screaming at him, and they pull his pants down, and it turns out he has a huge penis, and as they’re yelling at him, he starts to get aroused. And then we see them talking and laughing about it later, and it’s just this really beautiful moment, there’s something almost romantic about it, in a way.”
Yep, a fat surfer with a huge penis getting screamed into a state of heightened embonerment by some nubile teens. But in a romantic way. As if there was any other.
I don’t know what would be better, if this scene actually exists, or if he made it all up as a joke. Regardless, I would love to watch a ten-hour compilation of scenes that Harmony Korine himself deemed too “out there” to make it one of his films. They’d be like Michael Bay’s discarded takes of explosions he found too kablooey.
5:26 of the video: “I have a novel coming out called ‘A Crack Up at the Race Riots,'”
He goes on to describe a story about a race riot in Florida where the Jews sit in trees, while the blacks are led by MC Hammer and the whites by Vanilla Ice. Considering Spring Breakers stars James Franco as a white rapper with shades of Riff Raff and Kevin Federline, who clashes with a rival played by Gucci Mane in Florida, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that Spring Breakers was informed by some of the same ideas.