The Not So Unfamiliar World of Trash Humpers

When deciding what film to pick for the “movie that made me fall in love with movies” challenge, a few films quickly came to mind. I thought of Rocky and how it was the first film for “grown-ups” I had ever seen that wasn’t animated or about superheroes. Or the first time I saw Punch-Drunk Love and was swept away by the romantic whimsy PTA puts the woefully anxious Barry in. But for the purposes of this challenge, I decided to go with something I saw more recent that made me fall in love with movies in a completely new way. An experience I haven’t quite forgotten that has shaped myself as a creative and as a film fan. We are talking about Harmony Korine’s Trash Humpers.

You might be asking yourself, “what the hell is Trash Humpers?” and you’d be forgiven for not knowing this obscure experimental film from controversial filmmaker, Harmony Korine, let alone having seen the film. I didn’t even know this existed until early this year. At the beginning of my VFS program I was introduced to Korine’s filmography through Gummo. I was mesmerized by Korine’s depiction of rural, lower class (predominantly white) Americans. His honesty and authentic look at this type of life was something I hadn’t seen depicted quite like this before. It was an ugly film while being entirely human. I was invested and wanted more of this filmmaker. I then stumbled upon Trash Humpers…

Trash Humpers is a 2008 found footage style film that follows a group of elderly ‘Peeping Toms’ (played by 35-year-old Korine himself and his then fiancé in old people masks) through the shadows and margins of an unfamiliar world, all while humping trash along the way. So much trash humping. A good majority of the movie is shaky handheld shots of the characters humping garbage bags, trash cans, dumpsters, etc… There is no narrative, only vignettes of the people they encounter, most of which are real people from the streets in unscripted scenes, and trash humping… That’s the movie, all 78 minutes of it. It’s like something you’d see in a modern art museum and say, “oh that’s interesting… okay that’s enough” and walk away. But there was something in here that I couldn’t help but watch.

In the last 20 or so minutes of the film, there’s a moment where Momma, one of the humpers (played by Rachel Korine), holds a plastic baby doll and tenderly soothes it. She stands in the front yard of a house that looks like it should be torn down. And I’m not sure what exactly triggered this for me, maybe it was how poorly the lawn was kept, or how the paint chipped off the front porch, or the placement of the telephone poles all along the street, I’m not sure, but something about this unfamiliar world became incredibly clear and familiar. I used to work for a company back home in Winnipeg that ran an outreach program where we would donate furniture to people in need. Often these were immigrant families, victims of house fires, or just people down on their luck we’d donate to. We had a warehouse of furniture donated to us from hotels, we’d load up the trucks and deliver whatever we had to these people. In Winnipeg, we have a lot of communities that are on the rougher side. One in particular that is known as the North End. It’s a low-income neighbourhood that unfortunately has been hit by hard drugs, gang activity, and other crimes that has made the area unsafe. Often, most of our deliveries were in this community. When bringing the furniture into some of these homes, there would be 4 or 5 other adults at home just hanging out. This would be a Wednesday afternoon at 1pm. After we’d leave, I’d wonder to myself what these people did after we left. What were their lives like. And not in any kind of judgemental way, but in a genuine curiosity for a lifestyle in one of these communities. That moment in Trash Humpers with Momma and the baby doll brought me right back to that question. It was like I was back in Winnipeg delivering furniture again.

This moment became an incredibly powerful moment for me. It had answered a question I have pondered for years. What were the lives of these people (we’d like to forget about) like? Trash Humpers opened this connection to home. A low budget found footage film about a bunch of 30-year-olds in old people masks humping trash could be something so much more, a window into a not so unfamiliar world. I got it, I understood, but more importantly I felt it.

I fell in love with movies all over again because of the experience with Trash Humpers. It taught me that films could be anything and to put limits and parameters around your movie going experience will only close your mind. A film doesn’t have to be what you think it should be; a film is just what it is. After Trash Humpers, I removed phrases from my vocabulary when approaching movies, phrases like, “it’s just not my cup of tea” or “I don’t like that genre, I think I’ll pass”. Trash Humpers is a film unlike most, in fact I’d say there’s really nothing quite like it, and that excites me. As a creative, the freedom this film gave me to explore new ways of storytelling was an invaluable lesson. If Harmony Korine can make a film with a couple Spirit Halloween masks and a shitty camcorder and evoke an emotion out of me, then there are truly no limits on the art of filmmaking.