Harmony Korine is no stranger to shaking things up cinematically. Korine famously caused controversy with his screenwriting debut, Kids. Now he's back raising eyebrows and temperatures, as teased in the Spring Breakers red band trailer.
The film stars Vanessa Hudgens, Selena Gomez, Ashley Benson and the filmmaker's wife Rachel Korine as a quartet of college girls who will do anything to get to spring break... including armed robbery.
One of Korine's biggest challenges was filming real spring breakers doing their thing in Ft. Lauderdale. If it appears utterly insane on screen, it was just as much for Korine wielding his camera. "It was chaos. It was crazy. It was wild," Korine said in our exclusive video interview. "They were tearing hotels down and destroying things.”
Also a little on the crazy side is the performance of one of his stars, James Franco. The actor portrays Alien, a wanna-be South Florida rapper/drug dealer who takes the four girls under his wing for a little Spring Breakers fun. Korine worked with Franco for almost a year on the character, but nothing could have prepared him for the actor once he arrived on the set.
"I couldn’t believe it," Korine said. "I spent a year just sending him images and talking to him, designing the character. I never saw him do it. He didn’t want to rehearse. When he put in the cornrows and the gold teeth and I heard the accent… I was like ‘whoa.' He was a maniac."
The female stars couldn't agree more when it comes to the magic of Franco, as they told us in our Spring Breakers stars exclusive interview!