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Pitching it hadnt been easy.
In her infamousSCUM Manifesto, Solanas had advocated killing all men.
People were like, This is crazy, Harron recalled.
Not just crazy but bad, evil.
The film turned out to be a hit at Sundance, but making movies never got easier for Harron.
Her second film,American Psycho, was greeted with a mix of admiration and scorn.
Some critics got it.
But most reviewers failed to find it funny.
Harron doesnt mind that shes never been worshipped as a genius.
Women directors dont have the danger of going mad with power, she told Vulture.
I actually think thats an advantage.
Its better to live in the real world.
It was a week or so before the city began to shut down.
Its the 20th anniversary ofAmerican Psycho, as Im sure youre aware.Yes, I am aware.
Ill make a run at say something interesting about it.
Do you feel burnt out talking about it?A little bit.
But I also have to be grateful for it.
There were people lining up around the block.
And then the audience sat there in stunned silence.
Did anyone laugh?No.
Except for our little group.
I was there andChristian [Bale]was there and Andy Marcus, the editor.
We were the only people laughing in the theater.
And now I think people know to laugh.
People know that a lot of it is satirical.
And I was amazed at the reviews ofJoker.
It had a class theme you very rarely find in American films.
What did you make of the conversation around it?It was so ludicrous.
These attacks always focus on some kind of art movie.
They never focus on the extreme violence in mainstream entertainment.
I loveJohn Wick, but its far more violent and has far more mayhem thanJokerorAmerican Psycho.
Actually, both of them have a small amount of violence.
Its just that that violence is disturbing.
It wasnt a fun sex scene its about prostitution, its a transaction.
People dont have the fun element to make the violence okay.
The moral panic is about quite serious films.
Whats your theory on that?Because it doesnt slide down as easily as, you know, Marvel.
Marvel, you might blow up most of Manhattan and people love that.
People are very uncomfortable with moral ambiguity.
And theres an element where youre identifying with him.
Then everything settles down.
Its crazy to me that everyone talks aboutAmerican Psychoin such reverent terms.
Is it the culture thats changed?No, because look atJoker.
I dont think the cultures changed.
People just had time … no, thats not true.
People dismiss films that are disturbing to them, saying, Oh, its not doing anything new.
Oh, we know all this.
Oh, its boring.
People said that aboutAmerican Psycho.
Blah blah blah, its boring, so familiar.
It was seen very specifically as a film about the 80s, and of course its a period film.
Those guys didnt go away.
And theres a dark sensibility I had from a young age.
Im sure my family life had something to do with it seeing good times going bad.
That gave me a feeling that things will always go dark at some point.
There was a lot ofadult dramain my life that my sister and I were just tagging along after.
We moved to a big house in Beverly Hills for two years.
Then my parents marriage broke up.
My father left my mother for this starlet, Virginia Leith.
She just died recently.
She was in Stanley KubricksFear and Desire she was a very wild person an alcoholic.
Do you appreciate that?I do.
I actually think thats an advantage.
Its good for maintaining a sense of reality?Its better to live in the real world.
So how did you first get into writing?I did journalism at Oxford.
I wrote film reviews and features.
My third year, I was the editor of the university paper.
I shared the editorship with Patrick Wintour, who was the younger brother of Anna Wintour.
My last year of college, I published a bit professionally.
After college, I ended up in New York for a bit, writing forPunkmagazine.
What are your favorite memories of the punk scene?I went to interview theSex Pistols.
These little kids are nuts.
Theyre all like 16.
I was 23 or something.
I never found [punk] particularly decadent.
But really, its a lot of people sitting around talking about what they saw on television.
There wasa certain amount of ordinarinessabout it that people never seem to capture.
Eventually, someone offered me a job as a researcher for a pop-music show.
I researched stories and I wrote questions for all the top celebrity interviews Boy George or Madonna.
I would never ask them about their work.
I would ask them things like: What do you think about death?
How much is in your bank account?
I was renting a room inAdam Curtiss house.
But eventually, I got there.
It took five years of working as a researcher before I got to direct anything.
The stuff I was making for the BBC wasnt straight documentary some of it was satirical.
I worked withJames Wolcottand made a couple of films with him that I thought were very funny.
But Id been spending a lot of time in New York before that.
I did the research for a documentary onthe Wooster Group.
I really got along with [its co-founder] Elizabeth LeCompte.
She said, I want you to write a script with me.
That was huge for me.
So that was your first crack at a feature film?In a way, yeah.
One of them was a satirical film about advertising.
Id been trying to sell them and got no interest.
That was one reason Liz asked me she knew I was writing scripts on my own.
Id stay in Spalding Grays loft when he was away.
He and Elizabeth used to be partners.
And Id work with Elizabeth.
I learned a lot from her she was fearless.
We were just going to ignore rules, and I really got a lot from that.
It was all about Warhols sensibility.
There was something mysterious and dangerous about the Factory.
And I loved that.
Ive always loved outcasts.
What did you think of Andy?He was very sweet, actually shy and vulnerable.
After about 20 minutes, he made someone else do the interview.
Brigid wants to talk.
Hey Brigid, come on over.
He made Brigid Berlin do the interview.
So you had heard aboutValerie Solanasa little bit in that context?Yes, and she seemed very funny.
I had done a lot of interviewing with people from the Factory for that piece I wrote.
I already knew a great deal about the Factory and about Warhol.
Id read a thousand interviews.
Id seen all this footage.
I met all these people.
And the one person theres almost nothing about was Valerie Solanas.
When I read this manifesto, it was like bolts of lightning.
I showed a friend higher up at the BBC theSCUM Manifesto.He thought it was hilarious.
He said, Ill give you 100,000 or 150,000.
See what you’ve got the option to do with that.
I still needed to raise more money, of course.
What was that meeting like?The office was tiny, like a broom closet.
[Producer] Tom Kalin was there too.
And I sat down and explained my idea.
I was used to peoples eyes glazing over.
People would often get upset with me for showing them theSCUM Manifesto.
But they loved it.
Why would people get upset?Because shes suggesting killing men.
And people didnt like that?People were like,This is crazy.
Not just crazy but bad, evil.
I do think we have so much more tolerance for men who do evil things.Thats true.
Nobodys like, Oh, you cant do a film likeTaxi Driver.
I had this moment of thinking,I showed them all.
Thats what happens if you have a first film that does well at Sundance.
Valerie Solanas is havinga big moment now.At the time, feminism was not cool.
Now everyone wants to say theyre a feminist.
But at the time I never denied it.
Where do you think your feminism comes from?It was pretty instinctive.
My mother was very old school in a lot of ways.
She believed men were superior to women with two exceptions my sister and myself.
She was very ambitious for me and wanted me to be an artist.
She wouldve been horrified if I hadnt.
She was very upset that my sister married and had kids early.
At the same time, wed disagree.
She thought feminism was silly.
Still, I always thought I was going to have a career.
Thats how I thought about my future my career, my work, my ambition.
But I always felt like people were saying Are you a feminist?
But Im not teaching moral lessons through my films.
And upset the hierarchy.
No one thought she was important.
No one wrote about her at all, hardly.
It would have been a more tragic film.
I was saying, Why do you only make films about good people?
The same thing happened years later withAmerican Psycho.
I remember I had this conversation withEd Pressman.
I was already writing withGuinevere Turnerby then.
We can pay our rent.
I found it to be a lot harder.It is extremely, extraordinarily violent.
And when I first started reading it, I was like Lalalalala for the first 30 pages.
I could not read it.
And then I thought,Im going to go back in.
This seemed risky, and that made me feel like it was the right way to go.
You and Bret Easton Ellis have traveled different trajectories in the culture in terms of cultural esteem.
What do you make ofwhere hes ended up?I dont know.
I met him throughAmerican Psycho, and I really like Bret.
After I started working on the film, we went out to dinner a couple times.
I had him over.
He was very hands off.
What was he like?He was a sweetheart.
His writing personality and who he is are different.
Hes much friendlier and nicer when you meet him.
Hes like a puppy.
Did you collaborate with him at all onAmerican Psycho?
I know he hadwritten his own script.There were several scripts before I came on.
I read them all, actually!
What did you think of them?I didnt think they were funny.
Its so precise on these privileged people getting the way they speak.
I thought about those earlier scripts,Theyre missing this.
I dont think you’re able to go intoAmerican Psychoand be super-moralistic about it.
Was Brets moralistic?No, his wasnt, but I thought a couple of the other scripts were.
I kind of liked Brets script.
It ended with Bateman tap dancing his way down Fifth Avenue, singing some song.
It was funny, but to me, it wasnt a movie.
But fortunately we ran into the buzzsaw of casting.
The film got turned down a lot.
It was likeI Shot Andy Warholbut even more so, because we were going to bigger companies.
Were there any particularly memorable rejections?I remember someone objecting to the fact that Bateman was homophobic.
But having a very clear psychological explanation isnt of great interest to me.
Why is that?Its deterministic, its simplistic, and I dont believe its necessarily true.
I encountered this a lot with Bettie Page and Valerie Solanas.
Valerie was abused by her father, Bettie Page was abused by her father.
And you didnt want to give them that with Patrick Bateman.Especially not with Patrick Bateman.
Id be having a meeting, and theyd want to know more about his childhood and his parents.
It doesnt matter if his mother was mean to him.
We got on really well, we had very much the same take on it.
I felt like he was a great actor who was going to be a star.
How did you end up casting Bale?I met with a few people and nobody was quite right.
Then I met Christian.
He flew over to New York and auditioned in our living room.
He was struggling with the accent because hed just been doing this Manchester accent forVelvet Goldmine.
But the way he talked about the role he understood it.
There was something unfathomable about both of them.
You would never get to the bottom of who they were.
And Christian was 100 percent, as well as being very funny and physically right.
Had he already done the bodywork?No, no, no, he was this skinny English kid.
I said, Christian, have you ever been to a gym?He said no.
Two weeks later, hes totally transformed.
I had no idea how obsessive Christian was or what I was unleashing with this kind of casual comment.
But then your producersdecided they wanted to cast Leonardo DiCaprio instead.
Do you think theres some sexism at play in how that all played out?Yes.
And I said,That is the stupidest idea I have ever heard.
I felt like he was really not right for it.
And also to have a young star who was the idol of millions of teenage girls?
Because his people would be invested in protecting his brand?Yes.
I felt like it was a terrible idea for him, for the movie, for me.
And did you say all this in that first phone conversation?I might have said a fair amount.
Because DiCaprio wanted a big, famous director.
He had a shortlist like Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese.
I just knew that even if it happened, and I stayed on, it would be disastrous.
I wrote a script that everybodys interested in.
You cant get rid of me!
But of course they could.
I almost grew up in that moment, because I had no idea what money and power can do.
And thats a lesson I internalized: When theres money at stake, you mean nothing.
Did this make you doubt the career path youd chosen?No.
I was very shellshocked and also kind of frightened.
So what did you do then?Christine Vachon was very supportive.
So Igot my point of view out therethat, no, I had not quit.
I had been fired.
So how did you get hired again?
Why did it fall apart?Leodropped out.
They couldnt come to terms on how they wanted to rewrite the script.
They wanted to turn it into more of a Jekyll-Hyde story.
Did they apologize to you for how they handled the whole thing?Not really.
In fact, that wasnt entirely true!
Well just move forward.
Why?Lionsgate still wanted a big star.
This started a whole campaign.
Matt and Ben said no pretty quickly.
And then Ewan McGregor said no.
Theyre going to say no, youve got to be patient, this is a long game were playing.
And I would have been a bit screwed if they had said yes.
So that was three down.
And then Ed Norton and Vince Vaughn.
Ed Norton was the only one I was worried about.
Id said, No, hes not right for this.
He has to beGQ,he has to be model handsome.
And they said, Oh well, thats in the eye of the beholder.
If it was a woman, you wouldnt say it was in the eye of the beholder.
I enjoyed the game.
And victory was sweet.
He didThe Machinistbefore, and then he had a period where he wasnt getting enough work.
I dont think he would have gottenBatmanhad he not doneAmerican Psycho.
I always thought Christians performance [inAmerican Psycho] was fantastic.
I thought that was very funny.
That was the funny thing: Everyone thinks there were, and that is how it was publicized.
I learned a lot through the making ofAmerican Psychoabout myth and media and power politics.
But there were never any protests.
I think CAVE was one woman with afax machine.
Did the threat of protest affect the film at all?It actually was very good for the film.
Instead of using a corporate location, we had to build [a set].
They had to spend another $100,000.
I dont think they had high hopes for the movie.
They complained about how much I was shooting.
Do you mind keeping the camera rolling?
They told me, Well just put white letters on black.
Its like, No, this is a real movie.
And thetitle sequenceis so brilliant.
So what happens to your career afterAmerican Psychocomes out?It did well enough.
Itwasnt a huge success, but it wasnt a failure.
It had some rave reviews.
We had an amazing review in theNew YorkTimes, and that was huge.
Do you think that review changed how people talked about the film?Yes, I think so.
But [the movie] didnt get nominated for anything, obviously.
But at the time, even people who liked it wouldnt have considered it an important film.
The movie had enough prestige that I was going to keep working.
But it proved just as hard to get my next movie made, which wasThe Notorious Bettie Page.
And its like,Really?
Is that what you thought that movie was?
A straight serial-killer genre thing?
I thought the pictures are so hilarious.
Theres Bettie posing in bondage like shes Bettie Crocker in these weird suburban living rooms.
And there it was.
They said, We dont see what you see.
She had this innocence and playfulness.
She was just completely natural in the role.
I dont know why people, producers, studios just have some ideas.
Usually they want somebody more famous.
And theyre not really thinking about whats right for the role.
Ive done other things that have done well.Alias Gracehas done well.
How do you view your TV work overall?
Was TV something you wanted?
No one had those snobberies.
The first shows I did were interesting.
I did an episode ofHomicide, then I did an episode ofOz, an episode ofThe L Word.
But after doing one, I never felt like, Lets do another.
Im going to stay in TV.
I felt,This was great, Im glad I did it, I learned something.
But I think, every career youll rise and fall, and hopefully rise.
I had a period where it felt likeOh boy…
I did a film,The Moth Diaries.It didnt do well.
Id really love to recut that film because it had interesting things in it.
But we had terrible production problems.
We didnt shoot almost 30 percent of the script.
There were problems in editing I felt I cut too much out of it.
People wanted it to be something else, and the bad luck was it came out duringTwilight.
People judged it as though it were a failed teen vampire movie.
I just watched it.
It did feel like Yeah, how did it feel to you?
you might be honest.
It did feel like it could have used more breathing room.
Some of the shifts felt a bit abrupt.
Do you think theres a layer of sexism in the way your films have been reviewed?
Its funny about that, isnt it?
There were so few women working when you started.
Im curious why you think that is.There was Jane Campion.
She was the only director of my generation at that point I really knew about.
Nobody thought women could do it!
No one thought I would make a feature film even I didnt think I would.
Its not an environment where youre being encouraged.
But now there are role models, so its going to be different.
I love the Italian director ofHappy As Lazzaro, Alice Rohrwacher.
So your next project is a horror film on Quibi.
What do you think of Quibi so far?Who knows what will happen with it?
If someone is going to pay me money, and I like the script, then Ill do it.
Horror can be very fun, because horror is anarchic.
you’re free to really have things that are strange and out there.
And it was very well paid.
Theyre saying now theyre going to release it around Halloween.
It allows me to be quarantined with less financial anxiety than I would normally have.
Thank you, Quibi.
