Gummo
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Gummo is a 1997 American experimental drama film written and directed by Harmony Korine, starring Jacob Reynolds, Nick Sutton, Jacob Sewell, and Chloë Sevigny. The film is set but was not filmed in Xenia, Ohio, a Midwestern American town that had been previously struck by a devastating tornado. The loose narrative follows several main characters who find odd and destructive ways to pass time, interrupted by vignettes depicting other inhabitants of the town.
Korine's directorial debut, the film was shot in Nashville, Tennessee, on a budget of $1 million. Gummo was not given a large theatrical release and failed to generate large box office revenues. The film generated substantial press for its graphic content and stylized, loosely woven narrative. It is often regarded as one of the most well-known cult films.
Plot
A young boy named Solomon narrates the events of the tornado that devastated the small town of Xenia, Ohio. A mute adolescent boy, known as Bunny Boy, wears only pink bunny ears, shorts, and tennis shoes on an overpass in the rain.
Tummler, a friend of Solomon, carries a cat by the scruff of its neck and drowns it in a barrel of water. The film then cuts to a different scene with Tummler, in a wrecked car with a girl. They fondle each other, and Tummler realizes there is a lump in one of the girl's breasts. Tummler and Solomon then ride down a hill on bikes. In narration, Solomon describes Tummler as a boy with "a marvelous persona,” whom some people call "downright evil.”
Later, Tummler aims an air rifle at a cat. Solomon stops him from killing the cat, protesting that it is a housecat. They leave and the camera follows the cat to its owners' house. The cat is owned by three sisters, two of whom are teenagers and one who is pre-pubescent. The film cuts back to Tummler and Solomon hunting feral cats, which they deliver to a local grocer who intends to butcher and sell them to a local restaurant. The grocer tells them that they have a rival in the cat killing business. Tummler and Solomon buy glue from the grocer, which they use to get high via huffing.
The film then cuts to a scene in which two foul-mouthed young boys dressed as cowboys destroy things in a junkyard. Bunny Boy arrives and the other boys shoot him "dead" with cap guns. Bunny Boy plays dead and the boys curse at him, rifle through his pockets, then remove and throw one of his shoes. They grow bored of this and leave Bunny Boy sprawled on the ground.
Tummler and Solomon track down a local boy who is poaching "their" cats. The poacher, named Jarrod Wiggley, is poisoning the cats rather than shooting them. When Tummler and Solomon break into Jarrod's house with masks and weapons with intent to hurt him, they find photos of the young teen in drag and his elderly grandmother, who is catatonic and attached to life support machinery. Jarrod is forced to care for her, which he had earlier opined was "disgusting.” Seeing that Jarrod isn't home, Tummler and Solomon decide to leave. Tummler then discovers the grandmother lying in her bed, states that it is "no way to live," and turns off the life support machine.
A number of other scenes are interspersed throughout the film, including: an intoxicated man flirting with a gay dwarf; a man pimping his disabled sister to Solomon and Tummler; the sisters encountering an elderly child molester; a pair of twin boys selling candy door-to-door; a brief conversation with a tennis player who is treating his ADHD; a long scene of Solomon eating dinner while taking a bath in dirty water; a drunken party with arm- and chair-wrestling; and two skinhead brothers boxing each other in their kitchen. There are also a number of even smaller scenes depicting Satanic rituals, footage seemingly from home movies, and conversations containing racial bigotry.
The next scene in the movie is set to the song "Crying" by Roy Orbison, which had been previously mentioned by Tummler as the song his older sibling, who was a transsexual, would sing (the sibling eventually went to the "Big City" and abandoned him). The final scene involves Solomon and Tummler shooting the sisters' cat repeatedly with their air rifles in the rain with jump cuts to Bunny Boy kissing the teenage girls in a swimming pool. Bunny Boy runs towards the camera through a field holding the body of the dead cat, which he shows to the audience, breaking the fourth wall.
The final scene shows a girl, who shaved her eyebrows earlier in the movie, singing "Jesus Loves Me" in bed next to her mom (or sister). The film finally cuts to black as the girl singing is told to "dial it down" and go to bed.
Cast
- Jacob Reynolds as Solomon
- Nick Sutton as Tummler
- Linda Manz as Solomon's mother
- Chloë Sevigny as Dot
- Carisa Glucksman as Helen
- Darby Dougherty as Darby
- Jacob Sewell as Bunny Boy
- Mark Gonzales as Chair wrestler
- Max Perlich as Cole
- Daniel Martin as Jarrod Wiggley
- Harmony Korine as Boy on couch
