The Lord of the Edge

As Hollywood wages war over the future of the movies, Harmony Korine and a gang of video game designers and AI artists are holed up in a house near Mar-a-Lago building it.

- ZACH BARON

JUST UP THE BEACH from Mar-a-Lago, Harmony Korine is out on the sand, wearing a horned demon mask, staring at the ocean. Palm Beach in June is humid and a little dazed. I would tell you how one of the most transgressive and perpetually youthful filmmakers of his generation looks now, at 50, but again: horned demon mask. "This is EDGLRD," he says, pointing at it. Pronounced "edgelord." Slightly muffled, vocal-wise, from the mask, but you get the idea. Then he takes it off-face still mischievous, if also a little professorial these days; eyes as gleeful as ever and asks if I want to go inside and see the rest of it for myself.

There are many ways to describe EDGLRD, it turns out, none of them simple. This is the first time Korine or his partners have talked about it publicly. It's a design collective; it's a creative factory; it makes movies that are not really movies, movies that are closer to video games, that sometimes are actually playable as video games. It also makes video-game video games. EDGLRD is using AI in exactly the way that people in Hollywood speculate Al might somehow be used, to help make the things it makes, except it's already doing so. Plus, EDGLRD is prototyping clothes you can wear and clothes that your digital avatar can wear while you play EDGLRD games (that are also sometimes movies). Posters for various characters Korine and his team call Florida Lords-a girl with a hamburger face named Patty Melt; Trinika Young, a Caribbean tech psychic-line the walls of the beach house they're using for an office.