Gummo (1997)

Lonely residents of a tornado-stricken Ohio town wander the deserted landscape trying to fulfill their boring, nihilistic lives.

Director:

Harmony Korine

Writer:

Harmony Korine

Stars:

Jacob Sewell, Nick Sutton, Lara Tosh

4 wins & 2 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Jacob Sewell	...	Bunny Boy
Nick Sutton	...	Tummler
Lara Tosh	...	Girl in Car
Jacob Reynolds	...	Solomon
Darby Dougherty	...	Darby
Chloë Sevigny	...	Dot (as Chloe Sevigny)
Carisa Glucksman	...	Helen
Jason Guzak	...	Skinhead #1
Casey Guzak	...	Skinhead #2
Wendall Carr	...	Huntz
James Lawhorn	...	Cowboy #1
James Glass	...	Cowboy #2
Ellen M. Smith	...	Ellen
Charles Matthew Coatney	...	Eddie
Harmony Korine	...	Boy on Couch

Storyline

Xenia, Ohio, is a small poor and boring city that never fully recovered after a tornado in the 1970s. Teenager Solomon and his slightly older friend Tummler, have nothing to do but kill time, buying glue to sniff and get high.

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Plot Keywords:

ohio | cat | tornado | gay | small town | 

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Taglines:

From the creator of KIDS

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Genres:

Drama

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for pervasive depiction of anti-social behavior of juveniles,including violence, substance abuse,sexuality and language

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

24 November 1997 (Australia)

Also Known As:

Os bons Malandros

Filming Locations:

Nashville, Tennessee, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$1,300,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend:

$19,820 (USA) (17 October 1997)

Gross:

$19,820 (USA) (17 October 1997)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Fine Line Features, Independent Pictures (II)

Technical Specs

Runtime:

89 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Footage scattered all over the film was shot by local residents and Harmony Korine, during pre-production and location scouting.

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Goofs

A crew member's feet are visible kicking a wire at the bottom of the screen during the "chair wrestling" scene in the kitchen.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Solomon: [voiceover] Xenia, Ohio. Xenia, Ohio. A few years ago, a tornado hit this place. It killed the people, left and right. Dogs died. Cats died. Houses were split open, and you could see necklaces hanging from branches of trees. People's legs and neck bones were sticking out. Oliver found a leg on his roof. A lot of people's fathers died, and were killed by the great tornado. I saw a girl fly through the sky, and I looked up her skirt. Her skull was smashed. And some kids died. My ...

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Connections

Spoofed in Julien Donkey-Boy (1999)

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Soundtracks

"Give the Human Devil His Due"
Written and Performed by Mystifier
Courtesy of Osmose Productions

User Reviews

Trash masquerading as something important

A film doesn't have to have a plot, or likable characters, or a message. However, it seems to me there should be some point to making a film, and some reason for an audience to sit through it. Gummo lacks any reason for existing, other than to portray the Director as some kind of very cool artiste who most of us are too dense to understand.

Drop any idea that this film is some kind of cinema verite. This was not real life. These were actors, or in some case locals recruited to be in the film, improvising from some ideas and/or scripts supplied by the Director. Handheld cameras and bad sound are used to create the illusion of a documentary, but this is actually the real life of white trash as imagined by the Director. It's totally fake. The people in this movie are unremittingly portrayed as stupid, libidinous, hillbillies with nothing better to do than to sniff glue, hit on each other (in every sense of the word) and murder cats. For some reason they all have strong southern accents although they are supposed to be Ohio. They do things that are outlandish enough that they are entertaining to watch at times, but it doesn't add up to anything worth watching.

If you want to see a true cinema verite style film in a similar setting, try "Roger and Me", Michael Moore's documentary about the attempts of people in Flint, Michigan to stay afloat after the local automobile factories had shut down. If you want to see a more compelling fictionalized version of this movie, try "River's Edge", based on a true story of a group of teenagers near Sacramento who all knew the location of a murdered classmate's body, which they visited and gawked at, but which none of them revealed to their parents or the police.