Director/writer Harmony Korine at Cannes Photo by Matt Carr

READ MORE: Mister Lonely review

The enfant terrible screenplay writer (Kids, Ken Park) and director (Gummo, Julien Donkey-Boy) is back with his most nuanced and commercially accessible film to date. Mister Lonely, starring Diego Luna, Samantha Morton, Werner Hertzog, James Fox and Anita Pallenberg, as well as a host of friends and family (including his wife), is Korine's third feature. It follows a sad-sack Michael Jackson impersonator (Luna) who falls for a Marilyn Monroe impersonator (Morton) at a car show. He joins her and her husband Charlie Chaplin and their daughter Shirley Temple in a commune in the Scottish highlands. In this surreal world of escapism, everyone is famous and no one gets old. Having survived two house fires and an addiction to heroin and methadone, Korine has settled down, is married and feeling creative once again. "I feel good. I have a simple life," he says. "I have a beautiful wife. I live in Nashville because I grew up there and have friends there, and it is easy to live, and there are a lot of colleges. As long as I have movie theatres and bookstores and I can buy music. That is all I need."

...on filmmaking
I have done everything. I have written books, I have published books of photographs, done art shows and done music. When I look at the extra-curricular things that I have done, they always seem secondary to me. They are fun. I would write a book because I couldn't make it to a movie. Or I would write a poem because it wasn't a film. Or I would draw a picture because it was more instant. Movies take a long time to get together and I still needed some kind of creative outlet. But for me, movie [making] is the great art form.

Diego Luna in Mister Lonely Courtesy of IFC Films

...on Diego Luna in Mister Lonely
I never wanted the movie to be about Michael Jackson. It is not about Michael Jackson. It is about the person impersonating him, the person that works as him. So it was important for me that the viewer was not watching and thinking: "Wow. That's Michael Jackson!" I liked the idea of him being Mexican, him having a different kind of accent, different skin color. So you are always aware that there was a person underneath. And Diego has a kind of innocence.

...on Paris (living there and shooting part of Mister Lonely there)
My house burned down in America and I needed to split. I needed to get out. I lived in Paris for a while. I had a very similar experience to [the character of] Michael. My teeth were falling out. I wasn't leaving the house very much. I didn't know the language. Paris is a very beautiful place. It is an amazing city. And at the same time I was having a horrendous experience there. There is something bizarre about being in such a beautiful place, around all of these monuments and lights and attractive people and great food, but barely being able to communicate and comprehend, being extremely isolated. At that point, I would sit in my room. I couldn't remember my friends' phone numbers so I would [try to] think of some phone numbers and write like 45 digits under each name on all my walls. I started flipping out.

...on homage
I have never been so much into homages. I would rather just rip something off, to be honest with you. I'll leave homages to Quentin Tarantino. He's got that covered.

...on performers
I have an admiration for show people. I have always loved carnival people, showmen, people who go out there and stand on a stage and sweat for you, or dance for you and perform for you.