Trash Humpers

Harmony Korine had at one point considered leaving the film on unmarked VHS tapes left in random locations to be discovered as a mystery to the unsuspecting public. Korine also considered distributing the film via mailing it to police stations, but this idea was abandoned when such a release strategy would mean the film would not retain copyright.

The film was shot and edited entirely on VHS. Filming was near-constant and lasted only a couple of weeks. Korine claimed that once everyone was in their costume, they did not take off the costumes until filming was done. Korine claimed: "We'd walk around and sleep under bridges or behind a strip mall somewhere. We'd get these big tractor tires and make a nest to sleep in." Once principal photography was done, Korine edited the film on two VCRs. When it was all said and done, it only took Korine a month to shoot and edit the film.

The film originally started out as a group of photographs. Harmony Korine would go out late at night and dress his assistants in crude masks that resembled burn victims. He would photograph them fornicating with trash and vandalizing various things using only the worst cameras he could find. The photos came out so creepy that he started thinking, "Maybe this could be a movie".

There were only four months between the start of shooting and the film's premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in 2009.

When Harmony Korine was asked about the violent characters in the film, he said, "It's kind of like an ode to vandalism. There can be a creative beauty in their mayhem and destruction. You could say these characters are poets or mystics of mayhem and murder, bubbling up to the surface. They do horrible things, but I never viewed them as sad characters. They're comedic, with a vaudevillian horror element to what they do. They dance as they smash things and set them on fire. They're having a great time."