THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

SOLOMON (V.O.)

Xenia, Ohio. Xenia, Ohio. A few years ago a tornado hit this place. It killed people left and right. Dogs died. Cats died. Houses split open and you could see necklaces hanging from the branches of trees. People’s legs and neck bones were stickin’ 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. The school was smashed and some kids died. My neighbor was killed in half. He used to ride dirt bikes and his three-wheelers. They never found his head. I always thought that was funny. People died in Xenia. Before dad died he got a bad case of the diabetes.

Korine/Screenplays

October is early, but not too early to acknowledge Harmony Korine’s ”Gummo” as the worst film of the year. No conceivable competition will match the sourness, cynicism and pretension of Mr. Korine’s debut feature. Turned loose with a camera and the Emperor’s new clothes, the writer of the vastly better ”Kids” creates an aimless vision of Midwestern teen-age anomie, complete with drugs, garbage, dead cats and neat tricks like turning off Granny’s respirator. When it comes to boy wonders exploring the cutting edge of independent cinema, the buck stops cold right here.

Maslin/Times

“The area we were filming in was outrageous,” she shivers.  “So poor, men of 32 with no teeth, shotguns, human waste – one house I couldn’t even go in because I gagged.  We were trying to cast locals on the street and half of them couldn’t even read or write.”

Chloe Sevigny in The Face, Winter 1996