The Cinema of Hal Hartley: Place, Cultural Identity and Indie Authorship
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The Cinema of Hal Hartley: Place, Cultural Identity and Indie Authorship Sebastian Christopher Manley Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of East Anglia, School of Film and Television Studies June 2011 This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with the author and that use of any information derived there from must be in accordance with current UK Copyright Law. In addition, any quotation or extract must include full attribution. Abstract This study considers the films and professional practice of the filmmaker Hal Hartley. Since his earliest features, which in the early 1990s drew substantial praise in the American press, Hartley has been associated with American ‘independent’ cinema. As the overall visibility and commercial value of independent filmmaking have increased, however, Hartley’s own profile has decreased. The primary intent of this thesis is to outline the position occupied by Hartley at various levels and at various points throughout the 1990s and 2000s, within the context of independent cinema. I argue that it is at the closely related levels of place and cultural identity, as much as at the levels of form and genre more frequently discussed in accounts of Hartley and independent cinema, that Hartley’s films are marked to various degrees as distinctive. The films are often further marked as distinctive, I suggest, at the level of industrial position, another dimension of Hartley’s cinema that has received little attention in past studies. The first four chapters of this thesis focus on Hartley’s feature films, discussed in rough chronological order from The Unbelievable Truth to Fay Grim , the latter film representing the culmination of what I argue is an important shift in Hartley’s filmography: from narratives emphasising family and grounded communities to narratives emphasising global travel and social fragmentation. Chapter 5 discusses the short films, which are seen as an important component of the filmography of a distinctly marginal, but also in some ways professionally ‘successful’, filmmaker whose significance has often been underestimated. The thesis as a whole thus stands as, firstly, a new account of Hartley and, secondly, a case study of authorship in independent film, the analytical content of which suggests the field of independent cinema to be larger and more variegated than is sometimes implied in current academic debates. Contents iv List of Illustrations v Acknowledgements 1 Introduction 24 Chapter 1 The Long Island ‘Trilogy’: The Unbelievable Truth (1989), Trust (1990) and Simple Men (1992) 52 Chapter 2 New Horizons: Amateur (1994) and Flirt (1995) 85 Chapter 3 Imaginative Fictions/Social Realities: The Book of Life (1998), No Such Thing (2001) and The Girl from Monday (2005) 118 Chapter 4 From Old Territory to New: Henry Fool (1997) and Fay Grim (2006) 146 Chapter 5 The Short Films: From Kid (1984) to the PF2 Collection 186 Conclusion 197 Appendix A Interview with Michael Spiller 206 Appendix B Interview with Sarah Cawley 211 Appendix C Interview with Steve Hamilton 226 Filmography 232 Bibliography Illustrations 31 Figure 1: Trust 32 Figure 2: Trust 39 Figure 3: Simple Men 40 Figure 4: The Unbelievable Truth 46 Figure 5: Simple Men 69 Figure 6: Amateur 74 Figure 7: Flirt 97 Figure 8: The Girl from Monday 98 Figure 9: No Such Thing 102 Figure 10: The Girl from Monday 104 Figure 11: The Book of Life 105 Figure 12: The Book of Life 112 Figure 13: No Such Thing 114 Figure 14: The Book of Life 116 Figure 15: No Such Thing 122 Figure 16: Henry Fool 127 Figure 17: Henry Fool 127 Figure 18: Henry Fool 137 Figure 19: Fay Grim 138 Figure 20: Fay Grim 140 Figure 21: Fay Grim 173 Figure 22: Accomplice 176 Figure 23: The Other Also 177 Figure 24: Kimono 180 Figure 25: 500 Days of Summer 180 Figure 26: Surviving Desire 183 Figure 27: Accomplice 191 Figure 28: The Unbelievable Truth 191 Figure 29: Simple Men iv Acknowledgements My thanks, firstly, to my supervisor, Christine Cornea, who has steered this thesis through some choppy waters and who has remained insightful, compassionate and inordinately efficient from start to finish. Thanks also to my secondary supervisors, Yvonne Tasker and before her Diane Negra, for their generous support. Both have offered incisive appraisals of my work, and it was Diane who first encouraged me to think about the shift in Hartley’s work at the level of place. I have no experience of other supervisory teams, but I feel this was a particularly good one. I am grateful to the School of Film and Television Studies, without whose first-year PhD bursary I would not have been able to embark on this project. During my period of study the school has run an excellent seminar class for research students, led in successive years by Diane Negra, Rayna Denison and Melanie Williams, which has provided valuable opportunities for obtaining review and advice; my thanks in particular to Oliver Gruner, Erin Giannini and Richard Nowell for their comments. For help with research materials, thanks to Jan Langlo, Donald Larsson, Diane Negra, James MacDowell, Mark Gallagher, Tim Vermeulen and Geoff Andrew. I am very grateful to Kyle Gilman, who provided me with some information about the Possible Films website and The Possible Films Collection, and to my interviewees, who no doubt had better things to do, but who took the time to respond with great enthusiasm and insight to my questions. Steve Hamilton, Michael Spiller, Sarah Cawley: my sincere thanks. Finally, thanks to my family, Eve, Chris and Camilla, for support financial and moral; and to Hal Hartley and many other talented people, for the films. v Introduction The Cinema of Hal Hartley: Place, Cultural Identity and Indie Authorship This thesis is an account of the films and the career of Hal Hartley, one of the most significant contributors to the American ‘independent’ cinema that flowered in the late 1980s and that now occupies a very important (if contested) place in the American film landscape. Hartley’s films have been recognised as key examples of independent cinema, and also as the works of an American auteur. Of the films discussed here, several, including Trust (1990), can be said to enjoy something close to ‘classic’ status within independent film discourse. 1 Others, such as The Book of Life (1998), are largely unknown. All can be described as highly distinctive, this quality (however defined) having particular currency, of course, in the world of independent film – although usually only within certain limits. Hartley’s approach to the business of film production has also been distinctive. At the industrial level, Hartley’s films occupy a diversity of positions: a reflection of both shifts within the industry and, I will argue, a bold effort on the part of the director to retain his authorial independence. Hartley started his career with a very low-budget and well-received feature in 1989 ( The Unbelievable Truth ), and a further two features in the early 1990s: Trust and Simple Men (1992). His entry into the independent film world was made under the watchful gaze of an industry increasingly cognisant of the potential profitability of low-budget ‘alternative’ films, following the sensational commercial success of sex, lies, and videotape (1989) in particular. 2 The distribution companies Miramax and Fine Line Features, later to obtain the label of ‘mini-majors’, exemplified a widespread trend for independents and speciality divisions to invest sizeable marketing budgets into low-budget films such as Hartley’s. 3 With The Unbelievable Truth , Trust and Simple Men – retrospectively grouped as a ‘trilogy’ because of their shared Long Island setting – Hartley 1 Trust ranked 45 th in Filmmaker ’s 1996 list of ‘The Fifty Most Important Independent Films’ (Filmmaker , 5:1 (1996), p. 58), for example. 2 s ex, lies, and videotape was made on a $1 million budget and returned over $24 million at the North American box office (see www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=sexliesandvideotape.htm, last accessed 13 April 2011). 3 Both Miramax and Fine Line Features were involved in the distribution of Hartley’s early features, the former releasing The Unbelievable Truth and the latter releasing Trust and Simple Men . 1 attracted a combination of high-level institutional backing and critical approbation that has not been a feature of any of the later productions of the director’s 22-year-long career (with the possible exception of Henry Fool ), although Hartley has continued to make feature and short films with regularity, securing funds from a range of independent and overseas companies. Of the films that comprise the middle and later sections of Hartley’s filmography, several can be attributed with an attitude to broad cinematic practices that might be described as ‘oppositional’, a questioning of convention that at times goes beyond the ‘offbeat’ and suggests an identification with forms such as art cinema and even the avant-garde. Flirt (1995) is an intercontinental romantic drama split into three separate narrative sections, each playing out, with variations, the same basic script. No Such Thing (2001) offers a discomforting account of corporate commodification and social malaise the critical reception of which was mixed, to say the least. Fay Grim (2006) is an around-the-world espionage narrative that blends political satire and zany farce. An even greater sense of unconventionality characterises many of Hartley’s short films: Accomplice (2009), for example, is a three-minute noir story featuring a voiceover from a central character who is never seen; The Other Also (1997) is a dialogue-free piece composed of semi-abstract images. These later-period films fit, in many respects, somewhat awkwardly into independent cinema.