Mary Harron
The late twentieth century brought a growing number of filmmakers who worked across directing, writing, and producing, often handling several roles on a single project. Mary Harron, born on January 12, 1953, in Bracebridge, Canada, was one such figure — a Canadian filmmaker who worked in English and pursued all three of those roles across her career. Her education took her to Morley College and then to St Anne's College, two institutions that shaped her path before she moved into the film industry.
Harron worked as a film director, screenwriter, and producer, and her notable credits reflect that combination of roles. American Psycho is among her most discussed works, a project on which she served in both a directing and screenwriting capacity. Alias Grace is another notable credit, again placing her at the center of a project that drew on her skills across more than one discipline. The two works together suggest a consistent pattern: Harron brought both a director's eye and a writer's hand to the projects she took on, rather than operating in a single lane.
That dual involvement in writing and directing gave her work a particular character, since the same person shaping the script was also shaping what ended up on screen. Harron's status as a film producer on top of those two roles meant she was engaged with her projects at multiple levels of production. Both American Psycho and Alias Grace stand as the concrete anchors of a body of work that kept her active as a Canadian filmmaker working in the English language, contributing to screen projects where she held meaningful creative responsibility across the production process.
Quotes by Mary Harron
Mary Harron's insights on:
Punk rock, when I was a part of it, was called 'the underground.' There was something very attractive in all the hidden places, the hidden histories.
I don't think there is any one route to directing.... Other than that I think you just have to think 'By any means possible' and take any job you can that will get you experience. I also did a lot for free. I got paid virtually nothing for my first film, but it changed my life.
I really dislike it when women reject feminism; that's ridiculous. I am a product of feminism. Without feminism I would not be making films.
There's no need to be tragic or destroy yourself or jump off a cliff. That's no longer the paradigm I wish to follow, or that anyone should follow. It is not necessary to be tragic. It's bullshit that women can't have it all. Why not? Other people do.
When people see the conventions, they think they're going to get the straightforward genre - I don't give them that and they get mad. People see that and they think I don't understand the conventions because I'm not a good filmmaker.
I make unpopular versions of popular things. I make a horror film and it's not a horror film. None of my genre movies function as genre movies.
People make films about all kinds of relationships, but they won't do these extremely intense platonic love affairs that happen between young girls. In a way they are more intense than anything else you ever have, and that's what I wanted to make a film about, though it was in the context of a horror film.
I was lucky with my first film because it had Warhol in it. That was the selling point.