Cameron Jamie interviewed Korine about Gummo:
Jamie: Let's talk about that, the spontaneity of the two guys who start play-fighting in the kitchen. It starts out soft and playful, and then you are confronted with a real fight.
Korine: Right. They were out of breath from working out and I asked them to go over to stand in the kitchen, and the next thing I knew, they started fighting. They go at it, they're smiling, they're beating each other, they're bloody... That's the first real fight I think anyone's ever seen in a movie from beginning to end with no edits. We didn't do any sound manipulation or anything. I've seen them fight each other way worse. I've known those brothers since I was a kid. All those guys eat are frozen pizzas.
Jamie: There's a scene with a tennis player - when you show him in slow motion, his haircut makes him look like Vanilla Ice or something. You seem to have a great affection for people and how they become influenced by cosmopolitan cultural influences or social codes that have trickled down to the suburbs. Have you noticed how Country and Western fashion right now is this hybrid design that looks like a cross between certain 80s New Wave break-dancing fashion and the traditional Country and Western look?
Korine: Exactly. In the South you'll see kids with rat-tail haircuts and Bone Thugs & Harmony T-shirts, but at the same time, they go home and their parents talk about how they hate blacks. The kids will be racists, but they will totally love Eazy-E or Too Short. That's the space
Gummo exists in. For a lot of people it's hard to understand; they either that I'm making fun of someone and trying to be ironic, or they think there's some kind of inside joke. The truth is I admire that kind of thing. It's what I love. I spent all my life in the South, and what I love about middle America is this Pop schizophrenia. Middle America is what's exciting, not the cities.