The Notorious Bettie Page

[MacGuffin]

Trailer here.

Release Date: April 14th, 2006 (limited)

Cast: Gretchen Mol, Lili Taylor, Jonathan M. Woodward, David Strathairn, Cara Seymour

Director: Mary Harron (American Psycho)

Writers: Mary Harron & Guinevere Turner (American Psycho)

Premise: The story of the super successful 1950's pin-up model, Bettie Page, one of the first sex icons in America, and the target of a major Senate investigation--based on her highly provocative bondage photos.

[modage]

this looks good, but probably a good made for HBO movie that will go to theatres good.  like Inside Deep Throat.

[hedwig]

harron
mol
taylor
pin-up model sex icon
provocative bondage photos


i'm there.

[Sal]

this looks good, but probably a good made for HBO movie that will go to theatres good.  like Inside Deep Throat.

I wouldn't put it down that far yet...a good made for HBO movie would be what, in example?  My Life in Umbria (or whatever that was titled)?  Picturehouse has a good slate so far, I dont see them dropping the ball distributing this one either..

[JG]

Was A Bronx Tale made for HBO?  I really liked that.  Kinda got me into movies. 

[godardian]

I adore Mary Harron--I hold in very high regard both I Shot Andy Warhol AND American Psycho--so I expect this to be excellent.

[MacGuffin]

Mary Harron should be hailed as a goddess here on SuicideGirls. Just being the multi-talented director of I Shot Andy Warhol, American Psycho and multiple episodes of Six Feet Under would secure that status. But now she’s upped the ante by doing the biopic The Notorious Bettie Page which focuses on the Bettie’s rise from small town girl to 50’s pinup and bondage queen.

Daniel Robert Epstein: You have said that you were interested in the fact that Bettie Page was a religious person but that you’re not a really religious person yourself.

Mary Harron: I don’t have a personal sense of God or a belief in God but I think I have religious impulses and that yearning she had.

DRE: I just interviewed Exene [Cervenka]. One thing that she said was that she doesn’t mind that woman are taking off their clothes for the camera but it bothers her that they’re famous for only taking off their clothes. That point is made in your film because the pinups hurt Bettie’s career, what’s your opinion on this?

Harron: I don’t know about that. If you’re transcendently good looking, I think that’s ok. For me it’s more about not harming them as a person. Movie stars are going to be famous for an image so I don’t think necessarily that’s destructive. With Bettie it is wrong that she was being blamed for the downfall of America.

DRE: When I spoke with Lili [Taylor] I asked her about the connection between Valerie Solanis and Bettie Page because they both desperately wanted to be famous.

Harron: Yes, that’s a very strong connection. They were both looking for some sort of transcendence in celebrity. That somehow it would take them into another world or another place and transform them in some way. They are both disappointed by their dealings with celebrity.

DRE: It seems like most people are.

Harron: Yeah. People think that celebrity will make the pain go away, like heaven.

DRE: Once you have a lot of money and are famous you realize there are a lot of other problems that come along.

The scene in the beginning of the movie where the undercover agent busts the guy who sells him the bondage photos is very relevant. It was especially for me because I cover a lot comic books. There are cases going on, literally, right now where they send agents into comic book stores asking for the X-rated or adult material. Then they bust the guy on the spot.

Harron: Oh really? I didn’t know that was happening now!

DRE: There’s a thing called the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund which was created to fight those cases.

Harron: Is it somebody under age asking for it?

DRE: Sometimes they send in people underage to try to buy the books. But oftentimes they don’t like the adult comics to be in plain sight. It has to be under the counter. Then of course it differs from state to state. Does it just boggle the mind that people do this?

Harron: Yeah it does. I got that idea from talking to this guy named Jay Gertzman who has written a lot about the history of Times Square and the history of the porn industry. He told me that those raids would happen. But I have to say I thought it was a thing of the past. I’m absolutely amazed that this happens today especially with comic books because I’m a big fan of graphic novels. It sounds so 1950’s.

DRE: How was it working with Lili [Taylor] again?

Harron: It was great. It was wonderful and I wrote that part with her in mind. I thought it would be fun for her to do something lighter because the last one was so intense and dark. I knew that she had this great comic talent so I thought it would be fun to transform her into Paula.

DRE: Do you do these kinds of films because you’re worried that people like Valerie and Bettie will fall into obscurity?

Harron: I think that was truer of Valerie because nobody was interested. When I started, there was absolutely nothing written about her. There was hardly anything about her available. This was before the internet so I had to go comb the periodical section in the library. But one thing I can say is that you can’t make a grand thesis about them. You can’t say “Oh, they exemplify their time in this way” because they both have such odd stories.

DRE: It didn’t seem like Valerie, Bettie and the Klaws were trying to break down any barriers but that it was just signs of the time. They were all visionaries.

Harron: I guess what they have in common is that Bettie and Valerie both did their thing during periods of transition. With Bettie, it was the last era of va-va-voom 50’s sexuality. It’s a very sexy era while at the same time in movies no one is ever shown having sex and people have separate beds. No one ever talked about sex but everything’s very sexual and the world is about to be broken up by Playboy and everything that came about in the 60’s. Valerie was an early feminist at a time when no one was talking about feminism. Five years later everything will break open and someone like Valerie would have found a home. A lot of people would have been talking about the stuff she was talking about. So in some ways their free thinking was a little bit too early. At the same time Valerie saw herself as a visionary but I don’t think that Bettie did. I don’t think Bettie was prone to that kind of analysis at all.

DRE: To go back to that beginning scene again I bet all those guys browsing around the porn shop were Republicans. Like Bill O’Reilly, I think they attack certain people because they’re afraid they’re going to reveal what’s in them. While other people embrace it because of what it reveals within them.

Harron: Even in regards to this movie, I’m interested in this stuff because it happened 50 years ago. I don’t see it as all that challenging but I was amused at what annoyed people about the film. I always feel that since there’s so much Puritanism in the culture, they wanted Bettie to be punished more. They wanted to see more of a story of somebody’s downfall. A young woman came up to me after one of the screenings in LA and said, “It’s so nice to see a pinup that doesn’t end up chopped up in pieces in a suitcase because every time you see one of those girls on Law & Order they end up dead in the closet.” There’s that weird puritan strain in the culture that since they’re strippers, they must die.

DRE: There are so many women on SuicideGirls who have Bettie style. In your research were you amazed by how many people imitate her style?

Harron: Yeah, it’s bizarre. That’s the one thing that I was talking about with [co-writer] Guinevere [Turner] yesterday. Someone was interviewing us and talking about why Bettie is so popular. Guinevere said, “Well for one thing, it’s just very easy to imitate that hairstyle.” That and also the bondage because without that there’d be no huge cult of Bettie Page. If it was just leopards or just nude on the beach, I don’t know if it would be such a big cult and if it was just bondage I don’t think it would be as big.

DRE: How do you think those bondage pictures affect people?

Harron: One of the big things in the Senate hearings is, what are the corrupting effects of an image? Their fear is that if a young person saw an image of bondage then that could create perversion in them. Whereas I think you have to have predilections but the predilections obviously can be fueled by seeing pictures, so I don’t know. The internet has obviously created a place where everyone is finding their niche. On the other hand, I’m a mother and there’s a theme of child pornography on the internet that I find very upsetting.

DRE: I spoke to Legs McNeil last year and he doesn’t seem too happy about the screenplay for Please Kill Me. But of course, he doesn’t seem happy about much.

Harron: No, he’s such a grouch. He didn’t like it, yeah. He’s such a curmudgeon, but he’ll be happy when it comes out and it’s a huge success.

DRE: You came up doing journalism for punk magazines and now your films appeal directly to that same crowd, how was it possible to keep that sensibility?

Harron: I don’t know but I’m sure it’ll run out soon [laughs]. There is not much of a counter culture but there are things that people will always be interested in music and art. I kept thinking of the people that I admire like David Lynch and David Cronenberg who still have a sophisticated take on things. I hope I will when I’m older.

DRE: You mentioned directing Prison Break, which I love, but I’m surprised you want to do that show.

Harron: I watch the show but I haven’t got a job on it yet though I did go to interview for it. I like the idea of being able to do something that really has a lot of action. I also want to get away from my own sensibility and shoot in a different style with a lot of handheld cameras. It’s a very visceral show and the things I’ve done have been very cool and distant in some ways. The other thing I’d like to do is Battlestar Galactica. That’s a great and really interesting show. It’s done stuff with that genre that you have never seen done before. I want to have the experience of doing something completely different.

[godardian]

I adore Mary Harron.

After reading that interview, which only confirms how much Mary Harron rocks, I was going to make a little post, "Mary Harron ROCKS," etc. But I think I said it before, so... I just needed to say it again. She's awesome. I think I might go re-watch American Psycho now.

[MacGuffin]

When I spoke with Mary Harron last summer, she told me that while she was auditioning women for the role of Bettie, “After Gretchen Mol came in no one else would do.” After years of seeing Mol is supporting roles I wasn’t convinced. Well Mol is amazing in The Notorious Bettie Page. She creates a complex character that actually seems to enjoy posing. She creates the dynamic of a religious woman who does what she does best and that’s posing in bondage and cheesecake photos.

Daniel Robert Epstein: When Bettie Page poses in the film she seems like the happiest person ever, was that in the script?

Gretchen Mol: It was in the feeling of the script. But also you can’t look at those photographs of her and not believe that she was tapping into some joyous part of herself when she was posing.

DRE: Did you see what Bettie Page did as a feminist act?

Gretchen: Because I’d read interviews with her I knew that she didn’t take that on herself. She wasn’t trying to do anything but her job and she had this non-judgmental spirit. People were always able to look at Bettie Page and see what they needed her to be and she gave them that permission to do so. So in that way she’s a feminist but I don’t think she was ever trying to be.

DRE: What about you personally?

Gretchen: Looking back on it, yes I think she was highly evolved in her way of seeing her own sexuality. She didn’t see the shame or the harm in doing the things that she was doing. In that way I would call her a feminist.

DRE: You really became her onscreen, how were you able to channel her so well?

Gretchen: It was that lack of self consciousness that she had when she was posing. I thought if I can get 60 percent of that I’d be in good shape. Well maybe that wouldn’t have been enough [laughs]. But I really knew that was the key to her talent in front of the camera. She had that complete, healthy attitude about her own nakedness and her lack of shame. With knowing that, she seemed to be able to create that for herself in front of the camera while in her own life maybe she knew that she wasn’t as successful.

DRE: Was she ahead of her time with that unselfconsciousness or was she just naïve?

Gretchen: I don’t think she was naïve. The attitude of the 1950’s was to pick and choose what you looked at deeply. Nobody was going to force that on her. She didn’t really come in contact with the people that were looking at and using her photographs. For her it was a job and I don’t think she was naïve about it but I think she was doing her job as best as she could and she was not judgmental about the men or the people that were interested in bondage photography and fetish.

DRE: Did you get to meet Bettie Page?

Gretchen: I didn’t. But there was a lot of source material for me. There were so many photographs and there were a couple of interviews which helped me find her voice, which was very important. There were loop reels as well so at a certain point it became about letting go of all of the information and stepping into her shoes.

DRE: Was it hard to get into her head?

Gretchen: It was because there were a lot of contradictions. As you said, there were some things that seemed naïve and then there was another part of her that showed she’s very aware of it all but not wanting to look at it. I think her psychology was very interesting which made it not the typical biopic.

DRE: Bettie comes off smarter than any other character in the film, was that part of your thinking?

Gretchen: I didn’t really approach it that way, although I felt that I had such a respect for Bettie’s point of view. She was smart in that she didn’t have those prejudices. She seemed to be evolved past the typical sexual bondage of the 1950’s.

DRE: She could have gone on to be Marilyn Monroe but she was stuck in that world.

Gretchen: She could have done stag films but she didn’t. She could have slept with the producer and been ambitious about her movie career, but she didn’t. So it would be interesting to see what she would do today. She was so able to tap into her true creative self when she was posing for photographs that she wasn’t able to do with her acting. This was a time when actors were digging into their own psychologies and using that drama in their work and Bettie wasn’t able to do that.

DRE: How was being in Bettie’s bondage wear for the movie?

Gretchen: Well I look at those photographs and she always had a wink and a twinkle behind her eye. They didn’t have the darkness that you might think. When you look at pictures like that today there certainly is a darkness in the world of S & M but I didn’t feel that this is what they were doing. She gave you that permission in her pictures.

DRE: The movie shows that she was molested by her father. Was her posing for those photos an act of rebellion?

Gretchen: I wanted to be careful with connecting those dots. Yes if you look at women in a sexual trade, many of them have had some form of abuse but that would have been simplifying Bettie Page too much. There is so much more complexity than that but that certainly factored into it. What’s interesting to me is that not only did she end up in this world but she excelled in it in such a unique way. She seemed to be getting as much out of it as the audience.

DRE: Would this film have been much different had it been directed by a man?

Gretchen: Probably. Based on Mary’s past work, I knew what she was interested in from this character and that’s what I was interested in as well.

DRE: Is the film entirely accurate?

Gretchen: It’s very accurate. Bettie will tell the stories that are show in the movie. Even with how subtle the thing with her father is, that’s about as much as you’ll ever find about that. She would talk about it but you’re not sure what exactly happened.

DRE: Was there anything about Bettie that surprised you personally but didn’t wind up in the film?

Gretchen: There’s a Richard Foster biography of Bettie Page which goes into her later life after her modeling heyday when she had suffered some breakdowns. It was an interesting choice of Mary’s to focus on the 1950’s and Bettie Page almost as a catalyst.

DRE: Young actresses in the business are almost seen as objects than as actual artists. What was your experience?

Gretchen: I never felt that way about myself. Sure there’s the media and you do have to be careful of that. I’ve been pretty lucky in that I have a good family and I know my limits.

DRE: Have you gotten calls from Playboy and would you do it?

Gretchen: I wouldn’t. There were inquiries because of the movie and because Bettie was a pinup in Playboy.

DRE: Have you been getting more interesting scripts since this film has been shown?

Gretchen: It’s hard to know really how it’s going to happen, but the career ebbs and flows and now there’s a nicer feeling of interest than there has been at other times.

DRE: Back when Rounders was being released there was a lot of buzz about your career, did that hurt or help you?

Gretchen: It’s been so long now. But I don’t have any regrets. I’ve been able to learn from my experiences and try to get take the value from them.

DRE: What are you working on now?

Gretchen: Right now I’m working on a film called Trainwreck: My Life as an Idiot. It’s a dark comedy with Seann William Scott and my cousin Tod Harrison Williams is directing it.

[godardian]

Harron's perception of Page made me flash on a Belle and Sebastian lyric, from "Sukie in the Graveyard," off their new album. It seems to be about a very similarly-spirited girl:

"She had an A1 body and a face to match
She didn't have money, she didn't have cash
With the winter coming on, and the attic cold
She had to press her nose on the refectory wall
They served steamed puddings she went without
She had to pose for life with all the scholars of art
She didn't feel funny, she didn't feel bad
Peeling away everything she had
She had the grace of an eel, sleek and stark
As the shadows played tricks on the girl in the dark"

...sorry, the aspiring Comparative Literature student in me always has to bring in something from another medium for a mix 'n match.

[w/o horse]

I fell asleep towards the end for a little bit but I kind of wish I hadn't.  The court hearing dragged on I felt.

Gretchen Mol is absolutely adorable, irresistible.  It ends on a great line too, I fucking love it when movies end on a great line.  If you were around for the 90s indie film scene you know what to expect.  A good movie.

[ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ]

It's good that Harron has some great films like I Shot Andy Warhol and American Psycho in her credentials so I can justify seeing Gretchen Mol as Bettie Page without being a total pervert.

[modage]

off topic: mary harron directed this past sundays Big Love.  do you watch Godardian?

[godardian]

off topic: mary harron directed this past sundays Big Love.  do you watch Godardian?

Arrggh, no! I always got excited when I saw her name under the director credit of "Six Feet Under" episodes, though. It was a fairly large number, if I recall.

[w/o horse]

Mary Harron is all good and well, but it's the name Christine Vachon that got me into my seat.