I still have high hopes that this film will come to fruition. Back in September 2016, James Franco interviewed Harmony Korine for Office. As of December 2016, it looks like Franco is no longer involved, but then who really knows what is happening with The Trap. Here’s an extract below:
JF — So let me jump into the writing scripts real quick—famously you wrote Kids in about three weeks, and you wrote Spring Breakers pretty fast too. … But now, the scripts that you’re writing since Spring Breakers are taking a long time. At one point you said something like “The scripts I write, I write really fast because they’re a blueprint.” But now it seems like they’ve become something else.
HK — Yeah, you’re totally right. What it is is, both of these scripts grew. So, I wrote The Trap, which is a movie that we were going to make last year, and that took a couple months, it took a while but we got it all together, it was a big film—or, it is a big film—lots of actors, a pretty full-on, muscular genre film, kind of violent. Then, I think like a month out of shooting, I had an issue with one of the actors—or there was an issue with one of the actors—and I had to replace that actor, but then the person I replaced him with, I had to wait on his schedule, and in that time another actor…it was like a domino effect. So they wanted to push the film back for another year, which I’m fine with. It’s not that I completely lose interest, but in that period I was just antsy. So all last year I was like, I’m not just going to wait on that film, I’m going to write something else and see what happens. Then I wrote this movie, it’s about done now, so this one seems—it’s like anything else, whatever’s new you’re the most excited about. So I’m still going to make The Trap, I just might make it after this other film. The main thing, you know, it probably has taken me longer to write because the stories are more ambitious, and the budgets are bigger, and the scope is maybe bigger. So I guess in some ways I feel like I have to put more into these scripts, because it’s kind of like I’m asking for more. If it were up to me I’d just write a very bare bones, skeletal thing and then riff around it. But it’s more difficult to put these bigger films together, so when I start writing it really takes hold. It becomes more like a novel, and that’s like what these became, they’re slightly more epic, more involved, and they also become a lot more about the place. I found myself maybe being overly descriptive with certain things, they’re almost like mini books now. So that’s what happened. But honestly, a lot of it comes down to the scope of them, and the size of them. Because I like the idea of pushing the vision into something bigger. I never really feel satisfied, I always feel like what I’ve done is only like, an infinitesimal amount of what I could possibly do. If I could really do what I wanted, I could do such serious damage. It would be amazing.
…
JF — Now, as far as working with actors, if you look at all your films, you’ve worked with a lot of non-actors, you’ve worked with a lot of first time actors, and so in The Trap, it was really one of the first times you were going to—and maybe you were even forced, like you had to for budgetary reasons—work with A-list actors. Is there a reason?
HK — Yeah, well for one I am really greedy now, and I want as many people to see the films as possible. I don’t want them to be limited, and so with that movie, it felt like it was time to go for it, and work with all these big names. But I also spent months casting real people, that were amazing, like real characters, you know? So it was going to be a kind of mix, and I was going to really make the other people disappear into this world, in a way. So it’s still a mix. But it’s hard enough even making movies, getting movies financed with names. So as much as I love working with non-actors, the economics of it is prohibitive. And it’s fun for me when people who wouldn’t normally see this type of film see the movie, in some ways that reaction is more interesting than just kind of dumping it and having the same people watch it. It’s more exciting for me. I spent so many years making films when I was a kid, and I love those movies, I love the way that they seem to have some kind of like cultural effect. But yeah, you want to spread your wings and see how far you can fly.
Click on the link for the full interview.
