Harmony Korine has cited Alan Clarke as a major influence.
From an interview Korine did with Mike Kelley in 1997
"Korine: You know who I love and who no one really knows about? Alan Clarke, the British director. He’s a real influence. He did Scum, Made in Britain, and this film Christine about a girl growing up in council flats with size 14 feet. She walks around with a cookie tin under her arm and hooks her friends up with dope. She’ll go into houses and kids will be there with a box of Ritz crackers on the television. You’d have these really long tracking shots of her walking. The film was just sort of about what her days were like. And he used real people or people who seemed right. He did this other film I like, Elephant, which is just 16 separate executions, one after the other. There are all these steadicam shots. You see a hit man walking through a gymnasium, walking up stairs and corridors –
Kelley: Are these first-person POV shots?
Korine: Exactly. And then [the hit man] would shoot the janitor, and he’d fall on a pile of jockstraps. But the intention wasn’t comedy. After he died in 1988 of cancer, there was a retrospective of Clarke’s work at MOMA. There were only about ten people in the audience. I was watching Elephant, and in the beginning it was a little disturbing. And then I started to find humor in the repetition – watching some Indian carwasher get his hand blown out on a squeegee. I start cracking up, and this British bastard in front of me turns and says, “Don’t you know what this represents? This is the IRA, you son of a bitch!” He wanted to kill me. I liked that idea. He thought it was about the IRA, and I thought it was about Ritz crackers."
From Dazed & Confused, 1998
Dazed: How did you come across Alan Clarke, because he’s quite obscure in America?
Korine: If someone said to me who is the greatest director or my favorite, I would say Alan Clarke without hesitation. His stories, without ever being derivative, and without ever having a simple ABC narrative are totally organic, precious and amazing. It was nothing but him. In a strange way I don’t even like talking about him in the press or to people because he is the last filmmaker or artist that is really sacred. But especially in America no one knows who he is, even in England there is very little attention.
From Sight & Sound Magazine, April 1998 (Posted on Nick Wringly's site)
By the way, Nick, I'm looking forward to exploring your work about Alan Clarke on that site. I just saw Contact the other night and now consider it one of my favorite films. I love how he boiled everything down. The lack of music is powerful. Thanks for this great resource on an amazing director.
