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MRS. HARRIS is written and directed by playwright Phyllis Nagy, who is making her
feature film directorial debut.
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Writer/director Phyllis Nagy.
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HBO:
The Scarsdale murder caused a huge sensation at the time it was
actually happening. Were you aware of the events as they unfolded?
Phyllis Nagy:
I was quite young, but as you say it was quite sensational. It really
captured people's imaginations in a way that I don't think murder trials had
captured their imaginations. At least not in my
childhood. And part of the reason I think that it did
capture that attention was because of the defendant
at the center of the trial. Jean Harris herself. An
extremely unlikely candidate to be at the center of a
murder trial. A middle aged woman who was very
respectable and who had a career. I recall several
women who were accused of murder in New York in
the seventies and they were not at all like Jean
Harris. They didn't have careers. They weren't
professional. They were prostitutes or women
scorned in another sense. Jean Harris was entirely
charismatic obviously to the press and to a lot of
people who followed the case.
HBO:
Why do you think it's relevant to people today?
Phyllis Nagy:
Well, I could give a flippant answer to that which is that murder still occurs and
crimes of passion still occur which is true. But I think
actually it's relevant because it speaks to something
deeper, a pulse that's deeply felt in our culture. It's
about societal rents and tears and class divides and
ethnic divides and all of the things that this story
touches on are obviously still of great relevance
today.
HBO:
There's something almost Shakespearean about her, like Lady Macbeth.
Phyllis Nagy:
If I were going to pick a Shakespeare play for Jean Harris I'd
probably pick Measure for Measure.
Because that's a play about justice. It
has at its center an extraordinarily
intelligent woman who is undone by
emotional circumstances. Jean Harris
herself would say, and does say that
while she was responsible for Hy's death,
she did not intend to kill him. Which I
myself believe as well. I don't think
there's any one reason anyone can point
to in this to say well certainly another
woman drove Jean mad, or Jean was
depressed or Jean was on drugs. I think
all of those things by themselves reduce
the actual mystery of why she might have
done it. I think they all contributed but
not one of those things can be held up as
a flag of any kind.
HBO:
Hy Tarnhower is such a strange character. How did you relate to him - both as a
writer and directing?
Phyllis Nagy:
Well I actually find Hy Tarnhower entirely attractive as a character. And as a
man and I think in order for me to have written him
with any amount of empathy or perspective, I had to
actually believe that. And I do. I think that he was a
man who could not help being who he was. He was
honest; brutally honest perhaps. And if that makes
him odd and beguiling and sometimes unattractive so
be it. But I think he's also a very good match for
Jean. Who has all of those qualities as well.
HBO:
The film seems to straddle various different genres. Love story, murder mystery,
crime of passion, drama. Did you think about any of these as you approached it?
Phyllis Nagy:
I can't say that I did. What I wrote and how it came out is
exactly how it had to come out. It's all of those things.
It's also quite funny. So if you throw all of those things
into the mix, I don't know what you have but it's
probably not a genre that we can identify perhaps.
HBO:
The documentary-style interviews with friends and family in the script. What do
you think that provided?
Phyllis Nagy:
I wanted to have the people involved in the events of the
story between Jean Harris and Hy Tarnhower talk to us from perhaps
the safety of perspective, and time affords that kind of perspective. So having
these people talk to us about events that happened five years previous to the
time the documentary sections are filmed gave us an interesting way to
explore the notion of perception. And how people's perception of events are
perhaps different from the actual events themselves and how time affects that.
So that was one thing. I also wanted a section of the film
which basically asked the audience to
bear witness along side the characters in
the documentary. The people who are
actually speaking directly to the
audience. And it's a way of involving the
audience in the way that a jury say at a
trial would be involved in watching the
trial. So that's why.
HBO:
Another feature of this film is the incredible visual detail. Do you think there's a
sense in which this story requires this kind of detail, or
was it just the way it happened to be written.
Phyllis Nagy:
Well that's an interesting question. I think the answer is both. It was the only way
that I knew how to write it. So I didn't find anything
unusual about that. I do think that if you are putting
together a dramatic narrative for film that, in a sense,
the images that one creates to tell the story have to in
a story like this not so much complement the dialogue
scenes but to sort of contradict them. To very
carefully build a scenario whereby you get some
excitement generated by the collision between the
scenes themselves and the presentation of them.
HBO:
Do you have any sort of overarching strategies that you can share, like the look
of the film?
Phyllis Nagy:
Yes, actually we do. We talked about from very early on in
preproduction three distinct looks for the
film, if you will. One is the documentary
strand which we're shooting on sixteen
millimeter and using very specific kind of
camera styles. Hand held cameras
usually in one long take, sometimes not.
And then what I call the sort of heart of
the film which is the story of Jean and
her life with Hy. Jean herself once
remarked that her life began and ended
with Hy. And I've taken that very much
to heart when I wrote the script. And
now that I'm directing it I'm taking it even
more seriously. We have a kind of
beautiful lush, look to everything. Every
scene that involves Jean and Hy. Every
moment that Hy is alive including the
scenes in which we recreate the murder
or show it in a very vivid color. The
moment Hy disappears from Jean's life,
the color is drained; everything is drained
of color basically. And so we talked about
creating the picture in those broad
strokes and the production design and
the costumes have complemented the
whole way. So it's pretty exciting.
HBO:
The executive producers are women and obviously you're a woman, do you think
that this is the kind of story that resonates particularly
with women?
Phyllis Nagy:
I'm sure it does. But I would hope that it will appeal to men equally. I think there's
more than a little bit of Hy in a lot of men and in a lot
of women I know. And similarly I think there are a lot
of people, not just women but men as well, who will
recognize the nature of the obsessive relationship
discussed in the film through Jean and Hy.
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