Leslie Harris 1961–

Screenwriter, film director

At a Glance…

Moved to New York City to Pursue Interest in Film

Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. Produced on a Shoestring Budget

Recognition and Breakthrough Began at Sundance Film Festival

Depiction of a Young Woman’s Struggle

Distinguished Herself from Hollywood and Other Independent Filmmakers

Films by African American Women Still Rare

Sources

Leslie Harris is a promising young American filmmaker whose first feature-length film, Just Another Girl on the I.R.T., concerns a teenage girl’s coming of age in the Brooklyn projects. The movie achieved recognition and acclaim for its writer-director at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival, a major event that provides exposure for independent filmmakers. After being awarded the Special Jury Prize for Distinction at Sundance, Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. was released nationally in February of 1993 to good reviews. The Washington Post called it a “breakthrough film,” while Rolling Stone called Harris “a bracing new voice.”

Just 32 years of age when Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. was released, Leslie Harris was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and grew up in what might be called a lower-middle class family. Her father was a stock clerk at Standard Oil, and her mother took in foster children to help make ends meet. The family lived in the inner city. Along with her two older brothers, Harris was “not quite a child of low-income projects, but she was raised in a family where money was tight and working hard was necessary just to keep one’s head above water,” according to the Washington Post.

Her interest in films can be traced to her mother’s influence; Harris and her mother often watched movies on television together. Harris’s mother also encouraged her early interest in painting and writing and stressed the need for Leslie to finish college. The future filmmaker gained additional exposure to films by tagging along with her older brothers, sometimes “sneaking into movies I shouldn’t,” she recalled for the Washington Post.

While in high school, Harris continued to develop an interest in film, spending her spare time exploring avant-garde fare at Cleveland’s Case Western Reserve film division and the Cleveland Institute of Arts Cinematheque. Although she attended an integrated high school, Harris was not spared from episodes of racially motivated mayhem. She described a page in her high school yearbook for the Washington Post that “had a picture of a helicopter hovering over our schoolyard,” explaining, “At one point we had to be locked in our classroom to be protected from angry people in the neighborhood who didn’t want blacks coming into their schools.”

Harris’s two older brothers both started college, but each quit after a year. She was able to attend Denison University in

At a Glance…

Born in 1961 in Cleveland, OH; youngest of three children. Education: Denison University, B.F.A., 1982; studied film at New York University.

Worked for advertising agency in New York City during summer of junior year at Denison; relocated to New York City after graduating in 1982; worked at various jobs in New York while writing first feature-Jength film script; Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. released by Miramax in 1992.

Awards: Received grants from the American Film Institute and National Endowment for the Arts; Special Jury Prize for Distinction for Just Another Girl on the I.R.T., Sundance Film Festival, 1993.

Addresses: c/o Miramax Films, 375 Greenwich St., New York, NY 10013.

Granville, Ohio, with the help of scholarships and financial aid. While there she made a few animated films and some short live-action movies. She graduated with a degree in fine arts in 1982, becoming the only member of her family to earn a college degree.

Moved to New York City to Pursue Interest in Film

During the summer of her junior year at Denison, Harris worked at a New York City advertising agency as part of a program for minorities. After she graduated from Denison, she moved to New York to work for the same agency and pursue a film career. During the next few years, she worked in advertising, directed some commercials for hair salons, and began working on her script. Harris eventually left the ad agency when it became clear she wouldn’t be directing commercials for any of their accounts. She wanted to find a position that would allow her time to work on her script, so she told her potential employers that she couldn’t type (even though she could). As a result, she took temporary positions answering telephones and acting as a receptionist. In between calls, she continued working away at the script for her first feature film.

While doing temp work, Harris also took an evening job at the film laboratory of a non-profit agency. The second job was necessary for her to pay her bills, and it also gave her access to much-needed film equipment that would help her complete her own film project. She worked steadily on her script, often writing until four o’clock in the morning. It was during this period that she also took some film classes at New York University and became part of the independent film community there.

Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. Produced on a Shoestring Budget

While Harris was finishing up her script, she was also busy tracking down loans and grants to finance the actual making of the film. She began with a $150 grant and eventually raised $130,000. Sources of funds included grants from the American Film Institute and the National Endowment for the Arts. She approached other independent-minded people in the arts for financial support. Among those who helped back the film were novelist Terry McMillan, author of the best-selling Waiting to Exhale; independent filmmaker Michael Moore of Roger and Me fame; and music critic-film director Nelson George, known for CB4.

The $130,000 was enough to make a rough cut of the film. She began by shooting sample scenes with her cast and crew on weekends. A rough cut was completed in just 17 days, with Harris editing the film in her Brooklyn apartment. She took it to the New York-based independent film distributor Miramax, and members of the staff were impressed enough to provide an additional $500,000 to finish the film. Miramax also agreed to distribute the film throughout the United States.

Recognition and Breakthrough Began at Sundance Film Festival

Founded by actor Robert Redford, the Sundance Film Festival has become the “nation’s major showcase for independent films,” according to the New York Times. Held in January of each year in Utah, the festival attracts independent filmmakers as well as corporate executives and agents from Hollywood, New York, and elsewhere, who are looking for new films to distribute and new directors to sign. Approximately 80 new films were shown at the 1993 festival, with 32 of them in competition for awards.

As Redford told the New York Times, the festival’s role is “championing new talent who have offbeat films.” It helps independent filmmakers keep their “vision intact” and prevents them from being swallowed up by Hollywood too soon. Harris was understandably excited when Redford singled out Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. as “typical of Sundance’s diversity,” After showing photographs of her and Redford to Entertainment Weekly, she said that “he was glad to see Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. in the festival because I was representing another viewpoint.”

After her film won the Special Jury Prize for Distinction, Harris received offers from Hollywood that she was unsure about accepting. She signed with a major talent agency to handle her bookings, and Just Another Girl on the I.R. T. was released the next month by Miramax in New York, Los Angeles, and other cities. The excellent critical reception of the film at Sundance helped it achieve wider distribution than it would have received otherwise.

Depiction of a Young Woman’s Struggle

The Washington Post called Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. a “breakthrough film” for its point of view and its “strong-willed, complex female lead.” Played by newcomer Ariyan Johnson, the lead character, Chantel Mitchell, is a young woman who lives and goes to high school in Brooklyn; at the beginning of the film, Chantel rides the I.R.T. subway each day to uptown Manhattan, where she works in a gourmet food shop. As the Los Angeles Times noted, “She is smart and smart-mouthed.” She gets good grades in school and aspires to leave high school a year early to start college and eventually become a doctor.

Harris told the Washington Post, “I saw this film as a chance to undo stereotypes about the inner city and African American teenage girls. It was a chance to give young women identity.” Harris took pains to make Chantel a balanced character, neither a saint nor a victim. As the filmmaker told the Los Angeles Times, “She’s not an easy character. She makes mistakes. She’s materialistic and afraid. And compassionate. And confused.”

Harris has noted that stereotypes of female characters have been perpetuated even in the films of her black male counterparts, including Spike Lee, John Singleton, and Matty Rich. She stressed in interviews that the problem of authenticity for female characters cuts across races. “Women are still being portrayed as objects, or victims whom men must rescue,” she commented in the Washington Post. In creating Chantel, Harris “wanted a character who had her own plan for life.”

Actress Ariyan Johnson noted another aspect of stereotyping for the Washington Post. “It’s funny,” she said. “In black films, light-skinned women are almost always the trinkets and darker-skinned women the strong ones. I was glad to help break down that stereotype with this role.” Harris noted that she had originally envisioned a woman with darker skin playing Chantel, but it was Johnson who impressed her the most.

Harris didn’t develop Chantel as a character to voice a particular moral position, but “just to explore the stresses facing teens on the streets today.” In the film, Chantel faces real tests of life, including an unwanted and unexpected pregnancy and the possibility of abortion. She and her girlfriends are notably uninformed about proper methods of birth control. The consequences of their ignorance as shown in the film are “wrenching scenes of confused teens struggling with pregnancy and even, at one point, abandoning a newly born child by tossing her out in a garbage bag on the street,” noted a Washington Post writer. Harris told the newspaper that she knew a lot of teenage girls who had gotten pregnant and had their babies. “Like Chantel, they were confused and they were into a lot of denial.”

Distinguished Herself from Hollywood and Other Independent Filmmakers

Harris described Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. as “a film that Hollywood dared not do.” She told the New York Times, “I think this film almost had to be done outside the Hollywood system. I was tired of seeing the same old images of African American women in movies.” She gave the Chicago Tribune four reasons why the film could not have been made in Hollywood: First, it was written and directed by a black woman. Second, the lead actress is a strong, independent, and not completely sympathetic character. Third, there is a shocking birth scene with an unexpected plot twist. Finally, the main character’s spirit is intact at the end of the movie, while most Hollywood films punish the female character for making mistakes.

Since her film was not a violent one, Harris rejected comparison of her work to John Singleton’s Boyz N the Hood. (Some writers have dubbed Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. “Girlz N the Hood.”) She described her motivation to the New York Times, “It got frustrating seeing films about drugs, gangs, and violence. All those movies are from the male perspective. That’s what gave me the impetus to do this film.”

Films by African American Women Still Rare

In February of 1993 Leslie Harris became the third African American woman to have a film released nationally. The first was Julie Dash, who wrote and directed the 1992 film Daughters of the Dust; the second was Ruby Oliver with Love Your Mama. In an article on black women filmmakers, the New York Times reported that Women Make Movies, a New York City-based independent distributor, screens a thousand films by women each year. Only five percent, or 50, of those films are directed by African American women.

In an article on independent women directors, black as well as white, the Washington Post discussed four notable films released in 1992-93. In addition to Harris’s Just Another Girl on the I.R.T., there was Allison Anders’s Gas, Food, Lodging, Stacy Cochran’s My New Gun, and Tamra Davis’s Guncrazy. Harris and these other independent filmmakers are all part of a group that has brought more diverse views to today’s cinema. As Harris told the New York Times, “Cinema needs to open up.”

Sources

Chicago Tribune, April 4, 1993, sec. 13, p. 10.

Entertainment Weekly, February 12, 1993, p. 15; March 19, 1993, p. 43.

Essence, April 1993, p. 50.

Glamour, March 1993, p. 176.

Los Angeles Times, April 20, 1993, p. F-1.

New York Times, January 26, 1993, p. C-11; February 21, 1993, p. 17.

Rolling Stone, February 18, 1993, p. 66.

Washington Post, March 21, 1993, p. G-1; April 2, 1993, p. D-1.

Additional information for this profile was obtained from an interview conducted by Terry Grosz on Fresh Air, WHYY-FM (Philadelphia), and broadcast over National Public Radio in the fall of 1993.

—David Bianco