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An Independent Direction: Catching up with Kate Harrison

Nina Ondine
Women's Film Forum
November 12, 2001

Katherine Harrison is not having a very good day. When we met up with the 34 year old director, there were technical difficulties with editing footage of her most recent project, the "A Woman's Touch" charity concert for the victims of the World Trade Center disaster, her lunch had not arrived and once again, the tabloids were insisting that her father, former Beatle George Harrison, was on his death bed. Harrison was trying to take it all in stride and apologized for her less than cheery mood. Luckily, the technical troubles were soon sorted out, the food brought in and as she told us with a cheeky grin, "Dad is not dead yet."

Harrison, or Kate as she's known to friends and family, is used to this kind of media frenzy. The dark haired, blue-eyed daughter of Beatle George and his wife, Honeybear drummer/film score composer Annie Kent, she's been through it a million times before. "Sex, drugs, law suits, divorce, cancer, knife wielding schizophrenics," she says ticking off each one on her fingers. "We've been through them all. Have I forgotten anything?" Before we even can talk about her own projects, she insists on clearing up a few important facts about her famous father.

For the record, she states categorically that her father is fine, having just recorded a song with her brother Dhani for Jools Holland's upcoming "Small World, Big Band" album as well as working on a long threatened release of his own. "He's debating on whether or not he wants to do videos. If he does, he knows he's got a director at his beck and call". There's been no recurrence of the cancer her father suffered from (and was successfully treated for) in 1997 but as she explains "Every time Dad shows up anywhere in the world for a checkup, people automatically assume the worst. It's positively disgusting." In fact, he was with her inside the director's booth at the taping of "A Woman's Touch", which was held in New York City's Radio Music Hall on October 27th. She claims "I had to lock him in there with me to make sure he didn't go out on stage." The concert, coordinated by Harrison's aunt, Rory Kent and her Honeybear band mate Sandra Ludlow, had the stipulation of "No boys allowed" and apparently, they weren't taking any chances.

"We all had to leave our men at home," she explained. Her father, however, had other ideas. "He hates the idea of sitting around in hotel rooms on his own so he begged to come along." He was eventually granted dispensation, "But only if he stayed out of the way. Aunt Rory was very insistent that this be a women-only event, lock stock and barrel. Women musicians, women doing sound and production, woman director. It was a charitable event but it was also a political statement. For years women in rock 'n roll have been treated as second-class citizens. Even at Paul [McCartney]'s thing [The Concert for New York], there were very few women included and those who were are all flavours of the month. Not that I don't love Macy Gray or whoever else he had there but what about someone who has been around for more than two or three years? All of the best male performers there were veterans like the Who or the Stones. Even Bon Jovi's been around for years. No one ever thinks to let women do anything more than sing back up or shake a tambourine."

Harrison cites such huge charity events as Live Aid and even her father's own Concert for Bangladesh as examples of the inequity. "We just wanted to right things especially when so many women were affected by the tragedy. There are a lot of single mums suffering and we wanted to let them know that we're all in this together. It's not that we think men aren't doing enough - we just wanted to show that women can do more than just stand on the sidelines and wring their hands." Along with the concert footage, there will be documentary style footage of the women who have been working at Ground Zero since the disaster struck; police women, firefighters, Emergency Medical Service workers and members of the New York City Port Authority.

While Harrison doesn't consider herself to be a feminist per say, she freely admits that she's "all about equality. I just don't like labels, to be honest. There are too many preconceptions built in when you call yourself anything whether it's feminist, vegetarian, environmental activist, whatever. I'm just me and I suppose you just have to take me as I am." The same holds true of her vision as a director of such independent films as "Centered" and the soon-to-be-debuted "Durga's Tears". "I could never have worked with a big studio on those projects because they just would have torn them to shreds. The whole concept of testing and surveying your audience to dictate the story and to make it more sellable is just ridiculous. You have to have the freedom to say what you want as a storyteller, right wrong or indifferent."

She says she learned that lesson from spending her time hanging around her father's now defunct film company, HandMade Films, which produced some of the best independent films in the 1980s, English or otherwise. "No one would touch Monty Python's "Life of Brian" so Dad just dug up the money and gave it to them. Stuff like "The Missionary", "Mona Lisa" or even "Time Bandits". The major studios would have turned them all into blow 'em up action pictures. It's like prostituting yourself just to get a film credit. It's horrible."

Of course, her name has been linked to several big budget studio projects including the film version "Neverwhere", based on the fantasy novel by her close friend Neil Gaiman. Harrison declined to discuss it further since she said "it's still in the negotiation stages" and would only consider it if given "complete control with no studio interference".

Her need for independence goes way beyond her directorial duties though. While other children of rock stars might go into modeling or music, she chose to go about it the hard way. "I didn't just walk into a studio and demand someone give me a job. I worked my way up like anyone else. Went to film school, pounded the pavement, begged people for work - but always something I could do, not that I just assumed I'd be allowed to do. And eventually they did. I never asked my parents for help because that would have been too easy. "

Of course, she admits she did have some advantage over people without any connections. She did know some people in the industry and her name- and face - were hardly unknown. For a while, she was seen out and about with her aunt Rory at parties and clubs all over the world. "I definitely was not getting along with my parents at that point and Rory was the best mother substitute I could find. Not that I didn't love them but I needed to go out and explore the world and my parents couldn't give that to me. They'd already been there, done that and had rejected it in favour of domesticity. Not that I blame them. I just couldn't hack it for myself."

Born in 1967, Harrison was virtually rock royalty from the moment she was conceived, the golden child of a Beatle and a Honeybear. Unfortunately, her childhood was chaotic as the pressures of fame threatened to destroy her parents' marriage. While she doesn't want to go into details for her parents' sake, she reiterates what was all over the news at the time. "They had issues, they split up, they got back together, they split up again. I was 6 years old and suddenly being shuttled between London, New York and L.A or traveling around somewhere on tour with mum or going on trips to India with my dad. I kept switching homes and schools and parents and partners of parents." While both her mother and father were "very loving and very supportive", she says "it was hard to cope. Sometimes I'd just be dumped with friends or grandparents for a spell because I had to stay in school while they got to play."

Although an only child at the time, she says she considers her close friend Sarah Jones (daughter of Sandy Ludlow and her ex-husband Davy Jones) as a sister. "We spent a lot of nights together at her house being watched by a nanny while our mums went out and about. We kind of kept each other sane." Then, in 1977, things suddenly changed again. A life-threatening illness brought her parents back together again, this time for good.

"It was the best of times and the worst of times. I finally got what I wanted - our family back together again, but things changed so dramatically that it was like living in another world. Sort of like being thrown back into Kansas after you've been to Oz for a while. I went from living in hotels in big cities to living in the middle of the country. I was just bored silly." Within a year or two, the 11-year old Kate also had to deal with another new problem, the arrival of baby brother Dhani.

"Let's face it, I was angry and just a bit jealous. I'd been an only child for eleven years and now I had a rival. Even worse was the fact that Dhani had been born into a whole different family with two very different parents. His life was stable; mine had been so crazy. And I just wasn't happy with that." Within a few years, she was acting out, running with a fast crowd and making everyone around her miserable. At the age of 16, she applied to film school in London, packed up and "just left". While the education was beneficial, she admits she hardly applied herself the way she should have. "I just was tired of being reined in. I needed to be doing, not being told what to do." So she began spending time at the offices of her father's film company, keeping an ear open for projects that sounded promising. She was willing to do anything on set just to be there. Her persistence paid off; she eventually landed production assistant jobs on the set of "A Private Function" and "Mona Lisa". From there, she bounced around doing freelance work for any company that would hire her.

Her aunt Rory took her under her wing, taking her to clubs and parties where Harrison admits she had "too good a time". She worked hard and she played hard, her name often showing up in connection with the biggest names and the best parties in gossip columns around the world. Her parents, however, were not amused. "They'd been through the mill and were very happy keeping a low profile. They were very unhappy with me at the time because they could see where it was leading to. They'd already been there. Unfortunately, I was over 18, stubborn as a mule and bent on proving them wrong about nearly everything."

Eventually, "I got tired of the spotlight and all the superficiality. I got past it all. Luckily without hurting anyone, including myself." In the early 90s, She came back to England, move onto the family enclave in Henley-on-Thames, got serious about her career and hasn't looked back since.

"I'm very close to my family now. It was never a case of not loving them or vice versa - we just needed some space. But it's been great to mend fences and be back home." Considering the turmoil her family has suffered in the past few years, she says "I'd be miserable if I hadn't been around when they needed me most." She was on the premises the night Michael Abrams broke into her parents' house, nearly killing her dad, admitting "That was probably the scariest night of my life - none of us has gotten over it yet." Still, she is happy to let the past go, preferring to focus on the future.

She's also done work with or for both parents; she was involved with the massive "Beatles Anthology" project, directed several Honeybears videos and persuaded her mother to do the score for "Durga's Tears". As for that pesky baby brother, she says "Dhani and I get along famously. There's nothing I wouldn't do for him and vice versa. It just took me way too long not to see him as a threat." She says "he's the brains in the family, having just graduated from Brown University [in Providence, Rhode Island]. He's a Leo and that means some day, he's going to rule the world. He's already got the fan club," she says with a grin referring to the hordes of young women who have created websites in his honor.