Harmony Korine has hardly been inactive as of late, but the fact that it’s been more than three years since Spring Breakers‘ release — four since its festival premiere — breeds a sense of waiting among devotees. (It doesn’t help that his stacked picture, The Trap, fell through not long before shooting was to commence.) The wait, or at least that sense of stasis, may very well be reaching its end: The Playlist got word that Korine, speaking during a Q & A with the Miami Beach Cinematheque, has announced movement on Tampa, which adapts a debut novel penned by Alissa Nutting. And, boy, does it sound right up the man’s alley.
Its Lolita-esque, Florida-set tale concerns Celeste, a middle-school teacher who finds herself deeply attracted to Jack Patrick, a 14-year-old student. As will be noted many a time, Slate‘s 2013 countdown of the year’s best novels ended their Tampa capsule with these words: “Someone hire Harmony Korine to make the movie, ASAP.”
He may end up doing so for HBO, though that comment was, it seems, made in passing, and there’s no indication that Tampa‘s in an advanced stage of development. For one thing, it won’t be right away: up next is something else, again Florida-set, that he’d recently described as “closer to a cross between a Cheech and Chong movie and that movie Scarecrow.”
For a longer rundown of Tampa, read a synopsis below (via Harper Collins):
“In Alissa Nutting’s novel Tampa, Celeste Price, a smoldering 26-year-old middle-school teacher in Florida, unrepentantly recounts her elaborate and sociopathically determined seduction of a 14-year-old student.
Celeste has chosen and lured the charmingly modest Jack Patrick into her web. Jack is enthralled and in awe of his eighth-grade teacher, and, most importantly, willing to accept Celeste’s terms for a secret relationship—car rides after dark, rendezvous at Jack’s house while his single father works the late shift, and body-slamming erotic encounters in Celeste’s empty classroom. In slaking her sexual thirst, Celeste Price is remorseless and deviously free of hesitation, a monstress of pure motivation. She deceives everyone, is close to no one, and cares little for anything but her pleasure.”
Pick up Tampa here.