Three years ago, David Paletz became the director of Duke University's Film/Video/Digital Program (FVD), but he felt there was a lack of filmmakers coming to the university. Now, he has somewhat remedied the situation by bringing acclaimed filmmaker Mary Harron, perhaps most famous for directing American Psycho, to Duke for a five-day residency.
Harron's visit, which begins Jan. 27 and lasts until Jan. 31, is part of the new FVD Filmmaker Residency Program created by Paletz as an effort to bring more filmmakers to Duke.
"[FVD] did not bring enough people to Duke who could talk about the profession and what they did and how they make movies," Paletz said. "So I devised two things that have come to fruition this semester. One is bringing filmmakers like Mary Harron, not just for one day."
Paletz's other residency program was to bring documentarian Ted Bogosian, Trinity '73, to teach a weekly seminar, allowing FVD students to be exposed to a filmmaker by trade for the entire semester.
"It's great to have another Dukie talk to Dukies," Paletz said.
Harron's visit is important, however, because it shows Duke's ability to draw veritable filmmakers. In addition to directing American Psycho, I Shot Andy Warhol and The Notorious Bettie Page, she has served as a writer, producer and executive producer on a slew of films. Harron also comes from a background in journalism where she covered the punk scene in the '70s and '80s.
Paletz said he worked for about a year to find someone to inaugurate the program. During the year, he established strict guidelines for the filmmaker.
"For the first person, I didn't want an independent filmmaker whose films you see at Full Frame maybe or elsewhere but don't get national attention. and I didn't want a confirmed, well-known Hollywood person," he said. "However, I was looking for someone who was an independent filmmaker and who takes quirky, very unusual subjects and makes them commercial. And I don't mean makes them commercial in a negative way, but all of her three films have had national distribution, and I thought that's something really odd and unusual."
For Paletz, Harron was also a good choice because of her sex.
"Filmmaking is. traditionally seen in Hollywood as a male occupation, and here's a woman producer, director and screenwriter," he said.
Harron's main films address the role of gender in three unique manners and time periods.
"As a filmmaker, I grew up in a particular time when the role of women changed very much," Harron said. "I was always interested in stories of women against their time because their lives changed so much according to what time they lived in, you know? Bettie Page's life would have been very different if she had been born later. And to an extent all our lives are conditioned by the time we live in."
Though Harron is known for wearing multiple hats, she said directing is still her favorite part of filmmaking.
"My favorite thing is directing films because they're mine, and I get to write them or co-write them, so they're the most personal things I get to do," Harron said. "Television is doing somebody else's scripts. It's more like being an old-Hollywood studio director when they give you someone else's Western, and you would go shoot it."
As a part of Harron's residency, she will be visiting multiple classes and meeting with Duke faculty and students from all different disciplines. Paletz is also trying to get her to hold one-on-one conferences with students looking to go into the film industry.
"We anticipate that at the end of her stay she will be quite tired," Paletz said.
A major part of her visit will be a retrospective of her directing work, present with Screen/Society.
"I think rather than getting to talk to them about their most recent film or one film," said Hank Okazaki, programming coordinator for Screen/Society. "What's nice about having a retrospective and having the person there for a question-and-answer for each film is you get to get a sense of the person's career trajectory and their sense of artistic development and how their approach, the things they are interested in. have developed over time.
For her visit to Duke, Harron will be fresh off a stint as a juror for the dramatic film competition at Sundance with the likes of Quentin Tarantino and Sandra Oh. Because the jurors cannot talk about the films until after the festival, Harron described them as being "shipwrecked for a week together."
Nonetheless, the experience allows Harron to be more immersed in film in a different way than she is used to. Also, given the writers' strike, Harron has not been working for the past few months and is thus out of her normal filmmaking rhythm.
"I'm not as busy as I would have been. so it seemed like a good opportunity because I'm not filming right now," she said.
Though this is the first semester of the Filmmaker in Residency Program, Paletz hopes that it will continue and expand in future years because there is a demand for it.
"I think there's a tremendous interest in film and filmmaking at Duke and I think that's very useful to be able to talk to filmmakers and filmmakers who can talk intelligently about their films," he said.
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