At the South by Southwest premiere of Manglehorn at the Paramount in Austin, director David Gordon Green (executive producer of Hot Sugar’s Cold World, also playing at SXSW) told everyone how he came to cast Korine as the owner of a sketchy massage parlor who tries to get his former Little League coach, AJ Manglehorn, to come in for a rubdown.
As it turns out, Korine got “discovered” at SXSW. “I was sitting in the audience watching Spring Breakers two years ago,” said Green, who lives in Austin and shot much of Manglehorn near his home. “He was doing a q&a when we were writing the movie and I was thinking, ‘That guy’s amazing.’ I mean, I’ve known him for a long time socially but seeing him on stage… He actually had stage presence and charisma and strange eccentric qualities that I thought would be worthwhile to be filmed.”
David Gordon Green (Photo: Daniel Maurer)
As you can see, Gary is just as prone to jibber jabber as Korine is during his absurdist interviews, and you get the sense that Harmony came up with many of his lines off the cuff.
“He was always game for anything,” Green said of Korine. But that came with a downside: “He couldn’t do the same thing twice, which was a questionable quality in an actor. But with unique editing style you can overcome those obstacles.”
Back at the casino, Gary brags about the six tanning beds at his new “salon” and shows Manglehorn a hilarious business card depicting Korine’s face on a musclebound body. “I look like a Lebanese strongman, I got some nice tits in there,” Gary says.
Green found it “really strange and helpful” to be directing a fellow director. He described the time he had to shoot a fight scene without having a lot of Pacino’s time. “Harmony would go, ‘Well, just be vague and ambiguous about the fight and just shoot it from the other side of the van, shoot it under the car.’ I’d be like, ‘Great idea, let’s do that.’”
In case you’re wondering, Pacino got involved after Green tried and failed to rope him into an ad campaign and then ended up getting Paul Logan to write a script for him. Pacino liked it. “Which was the weirdest thing to hear from Pacino,” Green said. “‘Come over to my house, eat strawberries and talk about Manglehorn.’”
Like a couple of Green’s other movies, Prince Avalanche and Joe, the film is about men who are “always looking at themselves and what manhood is to them in their strange awkward masculinity,” Green said. Though Korine and Pacino have a great rapport on camera, their scenes are pretty brief. Ultimately, the movie is about Manglehorn’s self-defeating obsession with an old flame who won’t return his love letters, and the bank teller (Holly Hunter) who tries to lure him out of his ennui. Chris Messina (Danny Castellano on The Mindy Project) plays the son with whom Manglehorn has a tense, almost competitive relationship.
Fans of Pacino will appreciate seeing him in this contemplative role. And fans of Korine will enjoy seeing him the best role he’s had since he coined the phrase “ecstasy, feeling the effects-tasy” in Kids.
