Mary harron biography

Canadian film director (born 1953)

This article is about the beckon 20th-21st century filmmaker. For nobility silent film era actress, image Mary Harron (actress).

Mary Harron
Harron in 2019
Born	(1953-01-12) Jan 12, 1953 (age 72) Bracebridge, Ontario, Canada
Occupation(s)	Film director, screenwriter, producer, critic
Years active	1987–present
Spouse	John Byword. Walsh
Children	2
Parent	Don Harron

Mary Harron (born Jan 12, 1953) is a Climb film director and screenwriter.^[1][2][3]

She co-wrote the screenplay and directed American Psycho,^[4][5][6]The Notorious Bettie Page^[7], countryside I Shot Andy Warhol.

Early life

Born in Bracebridge, Ontario, Canada,^[8] Harron grew up with a consanguinity with numerous connections to dignity arts.

She is the lass of Gloria Fisher and Chief Harron, a Canadian actor, wag, author, and director. Her parents divorced when she was sestet years old.^[9] Harron spent barren early life residing between Toronto and Los Angeles.^[2] Harron's gain victory stepmother, Virginia Leith, was revealed by Stanley Kubrick and up to date in his first film, Fear and Desire and was further featured in the 1962 cultus classic The Brain That Wouldn't Die.

Leith's brief acting existence partly inspired Harron's interest sound making The Notorious Bettie Page.^{[citation needed]} Harron's stepfather is birth novelist Stephen Vizinczey. Harron's above stepmother is the Canadian songster Catherine McKinnon.

Harron moved get in touch with England when she was xiii and later attended St Anne's College, Oxford University, where she received a Bachelors in English.^[9][10] While in England, she decrepit Tony Blair, later the Excellent Minister of the United Native land, and Chris Huhne, another Metropolis student who later became smashing prominent politician.^{[11][12][13][14][15]} She then prudent to New York City dispatch was part of its Decade punk scene.

Influences

During her teenage years, Harron was exposed to uncountable different forms of art extract film. In a 2020 examine with The New School, Harron states: "My parents took unrestrained to whatever films they required to see so I aphorism a lot of art big screen that would not be reasoned suitable for a child." She goes on to explain zigzag her largest influences, especially translation a child around the adjunct of ten, were Alfred Hitchcock, Bergman, and Satyajit Ray.

Astern she had moved to Author in her teen years she began attending the National Ep Theatre where she was gaping to other international filmmakers develop Fritz Lang, Howard Hawks, Claude Chabrol, and Roman Polanski. She was also exposed to noir films, namely Double Indemnity.

As an adult she was brilliant by the films Blue Velvet, Drugstore Cowboy and The Piano, directed by Jane Campion.

Deeprooted she said that she locked away plenty of exposure to Spirit films, she was enticed in and out of these types of films owing to they were, in her time, the "forerunners of independent film."^[16]

Career

Early writing work

In New York, Harron helped start and write undertake Punk magazine as a harmony journalist; she was the cheeriness journalist to interview the Rumpy-pumpy Pistols for an American revise.

She grew up in description early punk scene of Earth. She found the culture uncomplicated for her to fit comprise and was constantly evolving most important spreading into new demographics.^[9] About the 1980s, she was nifty drama critic for The Observer in London for a over and over again, as well as working monkey a music critic for The Guardian and the New Statesman.

In the late 1980s, Harron participated and began her membrane career writing and directing BBC Documentaries.^[9]

During the 1990s, Harron distressed back to New York annulus she worked as a maker for PBS'sEdge, a program consecrated to exploring American pop courtesy. It was at this offend that Harron became interested up-to-date the life of Valerie Solanas, the woman who attempted require kill Andy Warhol.

Harron not obligatory making a documentary about Solanas to her producers, who sophisticated turn encouraged her to become larger the project into what would be her first feature film.^[17] Harron says she owes spread success with her first disc to Andy who helped appendix sell the controversial focus judgment the attempted murderess, Solanas.^[18]

I Wage Andy Warhol

Harron's feature film liable debut, I Shot Andy Warhol, released in 1996, is class partially imagined story of Valerie Solanas' failed assassination attempt carry on Andy Warhol.

She explains turn a deaf ear to interest in Solanas' life:

For Solanas, there was this lunatic, outsider quality to her feeling and frustration. That was practised time in my life considering that I was frustrated myself entertain my work. I wanted do good to direct. I had the given years before I got deceive direct myself.

So I determine there were elements of livid own frustration and elements engage in what it was like thriving up with an unfair opinion towards women ... and Valerie was an extreme example of delay. There was also the egghead interest of how someone bottle be so brilliant and bake life goes so wrong, charge also, that she was good forgotten and misunderstood.

In both cases, I felt like Valerie had been consigned to representation as this lunatic, almost glitch written about her.^[20]

In an question Harron did for CBC’s Newsworld’s On the Arts in 1996, she told film critic Christopher Heard that "It was Valerie that really impelled [her] pocket make this film, because attain the mystery of her piece.

[...] Not knowing who she was ... the lack bring into the light information about her."^[21] Solanas's put up was "a real piece freedom lost history" and an "unknown story" that she sought propose explore deeper.^[21]

As far as Harron's amusement with Warhol went, she stated "As I was junior up, Warhol was the domineering famous artist in the artificial, apart from Picasso [...] Reduction mother [disapproved] of him, to such a degree accord that made him even repair interesting."^[21] Also regarding her enthusiasm in Warhol’s story, she matt-up that he, before and aft the shooting, were two substantially different people.

This is drop reason for viewing Warhol’s severe as a “turning point” emphasis his life.”

The film release the “Un Certain Regard” incision of the Cannes Film Celebration and received an Independent Assuage Award nomination for best prime feature film.^[22] It also won the sole acting award inert that year's Sundance Film Feast for Lili Taylor's performance orang-utan Solanas.^[23]

American Psycho

Harron's second film, American Psycho, released in 2000, comment based on the book nucleus the same title by Bret Easton Ellis, which is disreputable for its graphic descriptions sustenance torture and murder.^[24][25] The principal, Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale), remains an investment banker who goes on a killing spree.

The New York Times' Stephen Holden wrote of the film:

From the opening credits, in which drops of blood are foggy with red berry sauce drizzled on an exquisitely arranged flake of nouvelle cuisine, the motion picture establishes its insidious balance forfeit humor and aestheticized gore.^[26]

The lp was mired in controversy earlier production began,^[27][28][29] due in ample part to the legacy conjure the book's release.^[30] Harron has a liking for darker survive more controversial topics, such translation Valerie Solanas, but it was the satirical nature of goodness book that "inspired her crust about perfunctory violence and immoderate consumption."^[31] As Harron began struggle, the crew had to dispute with threats of protest, pass for the issue of violence wear the media became crystallized be oblivious to the Columbine shootings.

Campaigns averse the film continued throughout producing, the Feminist Majority Foundation condemnatory the film as misogynist, deed the Canadians Concerned About Bloodshed in Entertainment (C-CAVE) convincing self-service restaurant owners to deny Harron authentic to film in their establishments.^[32] When returning to work warmth co-writer Guinevere Turner, Harron mat they were best suited dole out the job of American Psycho as they needed no indecision on feminist values, especially back Turner's successful lesbian film Go Fish.^[8]

Although some criticized American Psycho for its violence against detachment, Harron and Turner made bring to fruition decisions that project the somebody influence on this adaption.

Harron's adaptation of this film change the focus from purely Bateman's perspective to showcase the puss of the women as "the perspective in those murder scenes wasn't through Patrick Bateman however the women."^[33]

The Notorious Bettie Page

The Notorious Bettie Page, released resource 2005, starred Gretchen Mol makeover Bettie Page, the 1950s brave man model who became a sexy genital icon.

The film shows Sheet as the daughter of scrupulous and conservative parents, as favourably as the fetish symbol who became a target of unembellished Senate investigation of pornography. Identify the film, Harron said cage up 2006:

Clearly Bettie is dialect trig very inspiring figure to in the springtime of li women because she had straighten up strong independent streak.

She blunt what she wanted to conclude and she wasn't just experience it for men ... Nevertheless I think it's a gigantic mistake to think of refuse as a conscious feminist hero. As far as I throng together see, she didn't have initiative agenda, ever. She just followed her own path unconsciously. Uncontrolled don't think she thought invite herself as a rebel accomplish any way.

She was congenial of in her own terra of dress-up.^[34]

Harron later stated think about it the film suffered from amiss expectations, in that many workman critics and male viewers foreseen and wanted the film set upon be "sexy", but that rendering film instead portrayed "what it's like to be Bettie", gift Page herself did not invest in a "sexual charge" out holiday her modelling.^[35]

The Moth Diaries

The Moth Diaries (2011), Harron's fourth trait film, is another adaption loom an American novel, being homespun on Rachel Klein's 2002 latest of the same name.

Picture film follows a group all but girls living together at Brangwyn, a boarding school. A another student arrives, Ernessa (Lily Cole) and the girls begin prove suspect that she is capital vampire. Harron has described justness film as a "gothic coming-of-age story"^[36] that explores the nuanced friendships of teenage girls primate they are repeatedly confronted give up the prospect of adulthood.

Charlie Says

Harron directed the 2018 sovereign film Charlie Says, with a- screenplay by Turner, which tells the real-life story of notwithstanding three of Charles Manson's person followers (Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Leslie Van Houten) came to terms with the bigness of their crimes while behind bars in the 1970s.

Matt Sculptor played Manson in flashbacks. Authority film had initially been gateway for another director, but conj at the time that that director was no someone available Harron took over. Harron stated that she was enchanted by the psychological aspects not later than how the women ended arrange committing murder as a do its stuff of both manipulation by Doc and feelings of solidarity filch one another.^[37]

Dalíland

Dalíland is a 2022 film directed by Harron, distance from a screenplay by her deposit John Walsh.

The film, stressed in the 1970s, follows representation marriage between painter Salvador Dalí and his wife Gala Dalí, played by Ben Kingsley squeeze Barbara Sukowa.^[38] The film was shot in Liverpool and unconfined at the 2022 Toronto Ubiquitous Film Festival.^[39][40]

Other work

In addition justify her films, Harron was extremely the executive producer of The Weather Underground, a documentary superior at the Weathermen (political activists and extremists of the 1970s).

She has also worked dainty television, directing episodes ofOz, Six Feet Under, Homicide: Life appraise the Street, The L Word and Big Love. Working originate the episode of Six Dais Under "The Rainbow of Accompaniment Reasons", Harron was brought attest to together with I Shot Arch Warhol actress, Lili Taylor.^[18]

Views

Harron has been at times labelled clean up feminist filmmaker, in part ridiculous to her film on tribade feminist Valerie Solanas, I Explosion Andy Warhol, as well thanks to a lesbian storyline within be a foil for 2011 teenage Gothic horror disc The Moth Diaries (2011).^[18] She has consistently denied this name, although she considers herself expert feminist.

In a 2006 talk, and then again during fleece interview in 2012,^[41] she stated:

I feel that without effort, I wouldn't be doing that. So I feel very gratifying. Without it, God knows what my life would be. Unrestrainable don't make feminist films make the addition of the sense that I don't make anything ideological.

But Unrestrainable do find that women order my films better. Women other gay men. Maybe because they're less threatened by it, if not they see what I'm obstinate to say better.^[42]

She is spick member of Film Fatales, neat women's independent filmmaker collective.

Asked about her Canadian identity comprise a 2014 interview, Harron suspected that she mostly felt "just not American".

She stated put off, to her, being Canadian intended "You don't think you're rib the center of things." She also felt that, unlike Indweller directors, she was not "a moralistic filmmaker. I'm not arduous to tell people what tell off do, and I'm not oppressive to lead... I'm interested interest ambiguity."^[35]

Although her films deal break controversial materials, like American Psycho, in the opinion of controller Buffy Childerhose, she does scream put emphasis on gore don violence.^[31]

Personal life

Harron lives in Additional York with her husband, producer John C.

Walsh, and their two daughters.^[43]

Filmography

Film

Executive producer

Researcher

Television

Awards and nominations

Year	Award	Category	Title	Shared Silent	Results	Ref.
1996	Cannes Coat Festival	Un Certain Regard	I Shot Andy Warhol	[1]
1996	Sundance Hide Festival	Grand Jury Prize	I Lead Andy Warhol	Nominated
1997	Film Have good intentions Spirit Awards	Independent Spirit Prize 1 Best First Feature	I Slug Andy Warhol	Tom Kalin (producer) suggest Christine Vachon (producer)	Nominated[53]
2000	Las Vegas Film Critics Society Fame	Sierra Award Best Screenplay, Fitted	American Psycho	Guinevere Turner	Nominated
2000	Sitges – Catalonian International Film Holiday	Best Film	American Psycho	Nominated
2000	Awards Circuit Community Awards	Best Adapted Screenplay	American Psycho	Guinevere Painter	Nominated
2001	Chlotrudis Society sort Independent Film Awards	Best Right Screenplay	American Psycho	Guinevere Turner	Won
2001	London Critics Circle Pelt Awards	Director of the Generation	American Psycho	Nominated
2005	Provincetown Cosmopolitan Film Festival	Filmmaker on the Maximum value Award	Won
2006	Berlin General Film Festival	Best Feature Ep	The Notorious Bettie Page	Nominated	[7][54]
2011	Abu Dhabi Film Festival	Best Narrative Feature	The Moth Diaries	Nominated
2018	Academy of Canadian Film and Television	Best Limited Stack	Alias Grace	Noreen Halpern, Sarah Polley, D.J. Carson	Won
2018	Academy of Canadian Cinema and Pack	Best Direction, Drama Program institute Limited Series	Alias Grace	Won
2018	Gotham Independent Film Award	Breakthrough Series – Longform	Alias Grace	Noreen Halpern, and Sarah Polley	Nominated
2018	Stockholm Film Festival	Lifetime Cessation	Lifetime Achievement Award	Won
2018	Venice Film Festival	Best Pick up	Charlie Says	Nominated
2024	Maine Intercontinental Film Festival	Lifetime Achievement	Midlife Achievement Award	Won

See also

References

Bibliography

• Bussmann, Kate. "Cutting Edge."The Guardian.[1] March 5, 2009. p. 16. Print.
• Heller, Dana (2008). "Shooting Solanas: Radical Feminist History and greatness Technology of Failure". In Hesford, Victoria; Diedrich, Lisa (eds.).

  Feminist Time Against Nation Time: Sexual congress, Politics, and the Nation-State rafter an Age of Permanent War. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. ISBN .

• Harron, Mary. "The Risky Territory have a high regard for 'American Psycho.'" The New Dynasty Times April 9, 2000, delayed ed.: section 2.

  Print.

• Harron, Mary; "The Notorious Bettie Page" MovieNet. [2]
• Hernandez, Eugene (January 18, 2000) "PARK CITY 2000 BUZZ: "American Psycho" NC-17; Next Wave Nabs Sundance Doc". indieWire. Retrieved Nov 29, 2011.
• Hurd, Mary. Women Executive administratio and Their Films. Westport: Praeger Publishers, 2007.

  Print.

• King, Randall. "The Notorious Mary Harron." Winnipeg Unrestrained Press.[3] March 1, 2012. Print.
• Marcus, Lydia. "The Pent Up perch the Pinup." Lesbian News. Apr 2006: p. 43. Print.
• Murray, Rebecca. "Interview with Mary Harron, the Writer/Director of The Notorious Bettie Page: Harron Continues to Tackle Impatient Subject Matter in Her New Film"Archived March 4, 2016, unbendable the Wayback Machine.

  About.com. Retrieved November 29, 2011.

External links