With Gummo I wanted to create a new viewing experience with images coming from all directions. To free myself up to do that, I had to create some kind of scenario that would allow me to just show scenes, which is all I care about. I can't stand plots, because I don't feel life has plots. There is no beginning, middle, or end, and it upsets me when things are tied up so perfectly.

Herzog, Werner. "GUMMO'S WHAMMO.” Interview. 1999.

Korine claims the storyline is deliberately weak. "I can't stand the idea of plot. It's nothing to me. All I remember from movies - from life even - are certain characters and scenes.

Deussing, Ryan. "Harmony Korine’s America” Interview. 1997.

“It was a very visual approach, like the idea of a photograph,” says Mr. Korine. “Say I wanted to see a blind girl sitting on a toilet seat. That was the image I would start with, then I'd go over what would happen and what should happen in the scene and direct the actors in that way. Most of the dialogue is improvised.”

Vognar, Chris. "Harmony Korine shows signs of growing in julien donkey-boy” Interview. Dallas Morning News, 1999.

Letterman: And what story are you telling with “Gummo”?
Korine: Okay. Well, it's not really one story, because that's the whole thing. I don't know care about plots.
Letterman: That's right, in the linear sense. It's more slices of life.
Korine: Well, like I think every movie there needs to be a beginning, middle and end, but just not in that order (laughter), and like when I watch movies, the only thing I really remember are characters and specific scenes. So I wanted to make a film-making system entirely of that, really random.
Letterman: Right. You would like the phone book better if it were not alphabetized, right?
Korine: Yes, I like the phone book. It's good (laughter).

Korine, Harmony. The Late Show with David Letterman, produced by CBS, New York, October 17, 1997.

And if you get something emotional from one scene in the film -- if there's one image you can take away from the movie after you leave - then it's a success.

Source Unknown.

I know that people say that there's no narrative in vaudeville, but I think there is a narrative and there's a definite narrative in Gummo. It's just maybe more hidden, it's more the idea that the narrative comes through the idea of association, just by virtue of the scenes being kind of run along, put next to each other, that a narrative forms. It's like looking at a book of private photos. There's a picture of you in front of a castle or maybe a monument. And next to that is a picture of your grandfather on the toilet. And next to that is a picture you took of Michael Jackson. If you looked at them on their own without knowing the context, then they would seem singular or random. But just because one is next to the other, a kind of narrative comes through. That goes along with Gummo. That's how Gummo was written.

Walczak, Antek. “Harmony Korine with Antek Walczak.”, Harmony Korine Interviews, Edited by Eric Kohn, University Press of Missisipi, 2015, pp. 50-51.