What makes Handsome Harry and Variety Tribeca Must-Sees?
Variety is already becoming a classic. It has New York in it, but it’s the New York we don’t see anymore, so the locations we shot are very much part of the character of the movie: Yankee stadium, Fulton Fish Market, Times Square before Giuliani cleaned it up, South Street. These are places that have historical significance, but have been commercialized. Also, Variety was a seminal film in that it looked at desire and pornography from a woman’s point of view. It left a mark on the culture that has persisted since 1984. Handsome Harry also continues my interest in sexuality and gender, but it looks at male sexuality—something we don’t often see—and the raw emotions of the characters. It’s also about the search for truth, which is something we all need to think about in our lives. It’s our duty as citizens to search for personal truth, and also for truth in a larger sense. What’s the craziest thing that happened while making one of your films? In Variety, being thrown out of a porn store
