Mary Harron
Encyclopedia
Mary Harron is a Canadian
filmmaker and screenwriter
best known for her films I Shot Andy Warhol, American Psycho
and The Notorious Bettie Page
.
, Canada, Harron grew up with a family that was entrenched in the world of film and theater. Her father, Donald Harron, is an actor, author, director, comedian, and writer. Harron’s first stepmother, Virginia Leith
, was discovered by Stanley Kubrick
and acted in one of his first films. She also had featured roles in other movies such as the 1956 version of A Kiss Before Dying
and The Brain That Wouldn't Die
. Leith's brief acting career partly inspired Harron's interest in making The Notorious Bettie Page
. Harron’s stepfather is Stephen Vizinczey
, a novelist and screen writer, and another of her stepmothers is the singer Catherine McKinnon
. Harron’s sister, Kelley Harron, is an actor and producer.
Harron moved to England when she was thirteen and later attended St Anne's College, Oxford University. Whilst in England she dated Tony Blair
, who would later become the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
. She then moved to New York City
and was part of its 1970s punk
scene. She helped start and write for Punk
magazine as a music journalist – she was the first journalist to interview the Sex Pistols for an American publication. During the 1980s she was a drama critic for The Observer
in London for a time.
In addition to her films, Harron was also the executive producer of The Weather Underground
, a documentary looking at the radical activists of the 1970s. She has also worked in television, directing episodes of Oz
, Six Feet Under, Homicide: Life on the Street
, The L Word
and Big Love
. She is currently developing a film based on the book Please Kill Me which details the 1970s New York punk scene of which she was so much a part.
She lives in New York with her husband, filmmaker John C. Walsh, and their two children.
' failed assassination attempt on Andy Warhol
. Explaining her interest in Solanas' life, Harron states:
While Solanas was never able to produce her play, Harron was able to make her movie and was able to tell Solanas' story. I Shot Andy Warhol does not glorify Valerie Solanas; it pleads her case by showing that she was the product of a larger system of cruelty, and was not a lunatic, but a frustrated member of society.
, released in 2000, is based on the book of the same title
by Bret Easton Ellis
, notorious for its graphic descriptions of torture and murder. The protagonist, Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale
), is a wealthy broker working at the fictional mergers and acquisitions firm Pierce & Pierce, a nod to the name of Sherman McCoy's employer in Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities
. The New York Times Stephen Holden wrote of the film:
, released in 2005, is about the 1950s pinup model who became a cult icon of sexuality and who helped popularize pornography. Harron shows Page
as the daughter of religious and conservative parents, as well as the fetish symbol who became a target of a Senate investigation of pornography. For this project, as well as for I Shot Andy Warhol, Harron had to do historical research and interviewed several friends of Page’s, as well as her first husband. Page was legally bound to another project and was thus unable to do an interview, but not being attached to Page meant that Harron was free to create a subjective representation of her. Harron saw Page as an unwitting feminist figure who represented a movement for women’s sexual liberation, ironically similar, yet dissimilar to Solanas. About the film, Harron says in an interview:
Like Page, Harron also does not follow a strict feminist ideology, but has instead openly explored issues, instead of tying herself to a single perspective on gender. She is not aiming to create political films, but may end up doing so anyway, in her attempt to express a woman’s point of view. She says in an interview:
Executive producer:
Researcher
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
filmmaker and screenwriter
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...
best known for her films I Shot Andy Warhol, American Psycho
American Psycho (film)
American Psycho is a 2000 cult thriller film directed by Mary Harron based on Bret Easton Ellis's novel of the same name. Though predominantly a psycho thriller, the film also blends elements of horror, satire, and black comedy...
and The Notorious Bettie Page
The Notorious Bettie Page
The Notorious Bettie Page is a 2005 American biographical film directed by Mary Harron. The screenplay by Harron and Guinevere Turner focuses on 1950s pinup and bondage model Bettie Page.-Plot:...
.
Overview
Born in Bracebridge, OntarioBracebridge, Ontario
Bracebridge is a town and the seat of the Muskoka District Municipality of Ontario, Canada.The town was built around a waterfall on the Muskoka River in the centre of town, and is known for its other nearby waterfalls . It was first incorporated in 1875...
, Canada, Harron grew up with a family that was entrenched in the world of film and theater. Her father, Donald Harron, is an actor, author, director, comedian, and writer. Harron’s first stepmother, Virginia Leith
Virginia Leith
Virginia Leith is an American film and television actress.Born in Cleveland, Ohio, she starred in a few films, with her most productive period coming in the 1950s....
, was discovered by Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...
and acted in one of his first films. She also had featured roles in other movies such as the 1956 version of A Kiss Before Dying
A Kiss Before Dying (1956 film)
A Kiss Before Dying is a 1956 American color film noir, directed by Gerd Oswald. The screenplay was written by Lawrence Roman, based on Ira Levin's 1953 novel of the same name, which won the 1954 Edgar Award for "Best First Novel." The drama stars Robert Wagner, Jeffrey Hunter, Virginia Leith,...
and The Brain That Wouldn't Die
The Brain That Wouldn't Die
The Brain That Wouldn't Die, also known as The Head That Wouldn't Die, is a 1962 science-fiction/horror film directed by Joseph Green and written by Green and Rex Carlton. The film was completed in 1959 under the title The Black Door, but was not released until May 3, 1962, when it was renamed...
. Leith's brief acting career partly inspired Harron's interest in making The Notorious Bettie Page
The Notorious Bettie Page
The Notorious Bettie Page is a 2005 American biographical film directed by Mary Harron. The screenplay by Harron and Guinevere Turner focuses on 1950s pinup and bondage model Bettie Page.-Plot:...
. Harron’s stepfather is Stephen Vizinczey
Stephen Vizinczey
Stephen Vizinczey is an author and writer.- Early career and influences :Vizinczey's first published works were poems which appeared in George Lukacs's Budapest magazine Forum in 1949, when the writer was 16. He studied under Lukacs at the University of Budapest and graduated from the city's...
, a novelist and screen writer, and another of her stepmothers is the singer Catherine McKinnon
Catherine McKinnon (actress)
Catherine McKinnon is a Canadian actress and folk/pop singer.McKinnon began as a child performer, making her first radio appearance at age eight and her television debut at age 12. She subsequently studied music at Mount St...
. Harron’s sister, Kelley Harron, is an actor and producer.
Harron moved to England when she was thirteen and later attended St Anne's College, Oxford University. Whilst in England she dated Tony Blair
Tony Blair
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...
, who would later become the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the Head of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister and Cabinet are collectively accountable for their policies and actions to the Sovereign, to Parliament, to their political party and...
. She then moved to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
and was part of its 1970s punk
Punk subculture
The punk subculture includes a diverse array of ideologies, and forms of expression, including fashion, visual art, dance, literature, and film, which grew out of punk rock.-History:...
scene. She helped start and write for Punk
Punk (magazine)
Punk is a music magazine/fanzine created by cartoonist John Holmstrom, publisher Ged Dunn and "resident punk" Legs McNeil in 1975. Its use of the term "punk rock," coined by writers for Creem magazine a few years earlier, led to its worldwide acceptance as the definition for the new bands that were...
magazine as a music journalist – she was the first journalist to interview the Sex Pistols for an American publication. During the 1980s she was a drama critic for The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
in London for a time.
In addition to her films, Harron was also the executive producer of The Weather Underground
The Weather Underground
The Weather Underground is a 2002 documentary film based on the rise and fall of the American radical organization The Weathermen. Using much archive footage from the time as well as interviews with the Weathermen today, the film constructs a linear narrative of the militant organization.The film,...
, a documentary looking at the radical activists of the 1970s. She has also worked in television, directing episodes of Oz
Oz (TV series)
Oz is an American television drama series created by Tom Fontana, who also wrote or co-wrote all of the series' 56 episodes . It was the first one-hour dramatic television series to be produced by premium cable network HBO. Oz premiered on July 12, 1997 and ran for six seasons...
, Six Feet Under, Homicide: Life on the Street
Homicide: Life on the Street
Homicide: Life on the Street is an American police procedural television series chronicling the work of a fictional version of the Baltimore Homicide Unit. It ran for seven seasons on NBC from 1993 to 1999, and was succeeded by a TV movie, which also acted as the de-facto series finale...
, The L Word
The L Word
The L Word is an American co-production television drama series originally shown on Showtime portraying the lives of a group of lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people and their friends, family and lovers in the trendy Greater Los Angeles, California city of West Hollywood...
and Big Love
Big Love
Big Love is an American television drama that aired on HBO between March 2006 and March 2011. The show is about a fictional fundamentalist Mormon family in Utah that practices polygamy...
. She is currently developing a film based on the book Please Kill Me which details the 1970s New York punk scene of which she was so much a part.
She lives in New York with her husband, filmmaker John C. Walsh, and their two children.
I Shot Andy Warhol
Harron's first movie, I Shot Andy Warhol, released in 1996, is the partially imagined story of Valerie SolanasValerie Solanas
Valerie Jean Solanas was an American radical feminist writer, best known for her attempted murder of Andy Warhol in 1968. She wrote the SCUM Manifesto, which called for male gendercide and the creation of an all-female society.-Early life:Solanas was born in Ventnor City, New Jersey, to Louis...
' failed assassination attempt on Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
. Explaining her interest in Solanas' life, Harron states:
- "For Solanas, there was this fierce, outsider quality to her unhappiness and frustration. That was a time in my life when I was frustrated myself in my work. I wanted to direct. I had the idea years before I got to direct myself. So I think there were elements of my own frustration and elements of what it was like growing up with an unfair attitude towards women... and Valerie was an extreme example of that. There was also the intellectual interest of how someone can be so brilliant and her life goes so wrong, and also, that she was so forgotten and misunderstood. In both cases, I felt like Valerie had been consigned to history as this lunatic, almost nothing written about her."
While Solanas was never able to produce her play, Harron was able to make her movie and was able to tell Solanas' story. I Shot Andy Warhol does not glorify Valerie Solanas; it pleads her case by showing that she was the product of a larger system of cruelty, and was not a lunatic, but a frustrated member of society.
American Psycho
Harron’s second movie, American PsychoAmerican Psycho (film)
American Psycho is a 2000 cult thriller film directed by Mary Harron based on Bret Easton Ellis's novel of the same name. Though predominantly a psycho thriller, the film also blends elements of horror, satire, and black comedy...
, released in 2000, is based on the book of the same title
American Psycho
American Psycho is a psychological thriller and satirical novel by Bret Easton Ellis, published in 1991. The story is told in the first person by the protagonist, serial killer and Manhattan businessman Patrick Bateman. The book's graphic violence and sexual content generated a great deal of...
by Bret Easton Ellis
Bret Easton Ellis
Bret Easton Ellis is an American novelist and short story writer. His works have been translated into 27 different languages. He was regarded as one of the so-called literary Brat Pack, which also included Tama Janowitz and Jay McInerney...
, notorious for its graphic descriptions of torture and murder. The protagonist, Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale
Christian Bale
Christian Charles Philip Bale is an English actor. Best known for his roles in American films, Bale has starred in both big budget Hollywood films and the smaller projects from independent producers and art houses....
), is a wealthy broker working at the fictional mergers and acquisitions firm Pierce & Pierce, a nod to the name of Sherman McCoy's employer in Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities
The Bonfire of the Vanities
The Bonfire of the Vanities is a 1987 novel by Tom Wolfe. The story is a drama about ambition, racism, social class, politics, and greed in 1980s New York City and centers on four main characters: WASP bond trader Sherman McCoy, Jewish assistant district attorney Larry Kramer, British expatriate...
. The New York Times Stephen Holden wrote of the film:
- From the opening credits, in which drops of blood are confused with red berry sauce drizzled on an exquisitely arranged plate of nouvelle cuisine, the movie establishes its insidious balance of humor and aestheticized gore.
The Notorious Bettie Page
The Notorious Bettie PageThe Notorious Bettie Page
The Notorious Bettie Page is a 2005 American biographical film directed by Mary Harron. The screenplay by Harron and Guinevere Turner focuses on 1950s pinup and bondage model Bettie Page.-Plot:...
, released in 2005, is about the 1950s pinup model who became a cult icon of sexuality and who helped popularize pornography. Harron shows Page
Bettie Page
Bettie Mae Page was an American model who became famous in the 1950s for her fetish modeling and pin-up photos. She has often been called the "Queen of Pinups"...
as the daughter of religious and conservative parents, as well as the fetish symbol who became a target of a Senate investigation of pornography. For this project, as well as for I Shot Andy Warhol, Harron had to do historical research and interviewed several friends of Page’s, as well as her first husband. Page was legally bound to another project and was thus unable to do an interview, but not being attached to Page meant that Harron was free to create a subjective representation of her. Harron saw Page as an unwitting feminist figure who represented a movement for women’s sexual liberation, ironically similar, yet dissimilar to Solanas. About the film, Harron says in an interview:
- "Clearly Bettie is a very inspiring figure to young women because she had a strong independent streak. She did what she wanted to do and she wasn't just doing it for men. . . But I think it's a huge mistake to think of her as a conscious feminist heroine. As far as I can see, she didn't have an agenda, ever. She just followed her own path unconsciously. I don't think she thought of herself as a rebel in any way. She was kind of in her own world of dress-up."
Like Page, Harron also does not follow a strict feminist ideology, but has instead openly explored issues, instead of tying herself to a single perspective on gender. She is not aiming to create political films, but may end up doing so anyway, in her attempt to express a woman’s point of view. She says in an interview:
- "I feel that without feminism, I wouldn't be doing this. So I feel very grateful. Without it, God knows what my life would be. I don't make feminist films in the sense that I don't make anything ideological. But I do find that women get my films better. Women and gay men. Maybe because they're less threatened by it, or they see what I'm trying to say better."
Filmography
Director and screenwriter:- I Shot Andy Warhol (1996)
- American PsychoAmerican Psycho (film)American Psycho is a 2000 cult thriller film directed by Mary Harron based on Bret Easton Ellis's novel of the same name. Though predominantly a psycho thriller, the film also blends elements of horror, satire, and black comedy...
(2000), written with friend and actress Guinevere TurnerGuinevere TurnerGuinevere Turner is an American actress, writer and director. She was born in Boston, Massachusetts. She is best known as the screenwriter of such films as American Psycho and The Notorious Bettie Page and for playing the lead role of the dominatrix Tanya Cheex in Preaching to the Perverted.-... - The Notorious Bettie PageThe Notorious Bettie PageThe Notorious Bettie Page is a 2005 American biographical film directed by Mary Harron. The screenplay by Harron and Guinevere Turner focuses on 1950s pinup and bondage model Bettie Page.-Plot:...
(2005) - The Moth DiariesThe Moth Diaries (film)The Moth Diaries is a 2011 Irish-Canadian horror film directed by Mary Harron based on a novel by the same name by Rachel Klein.-Reception:The film was shown Out of Competition at the 68th Venice International Film Festival.-Cast:...
(2011)
Executive producer:
- The Weather UndergroundThe Weather UndergroundThe Weather Underground is a 2002 documentary film based on the rise and fall of the American radical organization The Weathermen. Using much archive footage from the time as well as interviews with the Weathermen today, the film constructs a linear narrative of the militant organization.The film,...
(2002)
Researcher
- BBCBBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
documentary on Andy WarholAndy WarholAndrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
TV work
- In 1989, Harron directed a BatmanBatmanBatman is a fictional character created by the artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger. A comic book superhero, Batman first appeared in Detective Comics #27 , and since then has appeared primarily in publications by DC Comics...
special for the BBCBBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
series The Late Show which charted the character's history from comic book to feature film. - Homicide: Life on the StreetHomicide: Life on the StreetHomicide: Life on the Street is an American police procedural television series chronicling the work of a fictional version of the Baltimore Homicide Unit. It ran for seven seasons on NBC from 1993 to 1999, and was succeeded by a TV movie, which also acted as the de-facto series finale...
(1993, episode "Sins of the Father") - Winds of Change (1994)
- OzOz (TV series)Oz is an American television drama series created by Tom Fontana, who also wrote or co-wrote all of the series' 56 episodes . It was the first one-hour dramatic television series to be produced by premium cable network HBO. Oz premiered on July 12, 1997 and ran for six seasons...
(1998, episode "Animal Farm") - PasadenaPasadena (TV series)Pasadena is an American primetime soap opera originally broadcast in the U.S. from September to November 2001 on Fox.-Summary:The series starred Alison Lohman as Lily McAllister, an initially naïve young woman who witnesses a stranger's suicide and begins to investigate the secrets being hidden by...
(2001) - The L WordThe L WordThe L Word is an American co-production television drama series originally shown on Showtime portraying the lives of a group of lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people and their friends, family and lovers in the trendy Greater Los Angeles, California city of West Hollywood...
(2004, episode "Liberally") - Six Feet Under (2005, episode "The Rainbow of Her Reasons")
- Big LoveBig LoveBig Love is an American television drama that aired on HBO between March 2006 and March 2011. The show is about a fictional fundamentalist Mormon family in Utah that practices polygamy...
(2006, episode "Roberta's Funeral") - Fear ItselfFear Itself (TV series)Fear Itself was a horror/suspense anthology television series shot in the city of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, with some additional shooting in the city of St. Albert and the town of Devon, Alberta. It began airing on June 5, 2008 on NBC....
(2008) TV Series (Episode "Community")
External links
- Marry Harron interview at NPRNPRNPR, formerly National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting...