Steve Cuden: On today’s StoryBeat:

Mark Jonathan Harris: I’m attracted to stories about problems, created by adults that children have to deal with problems not of their own making. Children didn’t create war. You don’t go into foster care because of something you did, it’s because of some of your parents did. But you have to cope with these circumstances. And so I’m, interested in resilience.

Announcer: This is StoryBeat with Steve Cuden. A podcast for the creative mind StoryBeat explores how masters of creativity develop and produce brilliant works that people everywhere love and admire. So join us, as we discover how talented creators find success in the worlds of imagination and Entertainment. Here now is your host, Steve Cuden.

Steve Cuden: Thanks for joining us on StoryBeat We’re coming to you from the Steel City, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My guest today, Mark Jonathan Harris, is a three time Oscar winning and Emmy nominated filmmaker, as well as an award winning author of ten books, a distinguished professor of Film of, four decades, and an acclaimed journalist. His newest book, Misfits, is a collection of wonderfully character driven short stories. I’ve read misfits and can tell you the book comprises twelve dynamic stories about offbeat characters grappling with personal encounters as they try to live their disconnected lives. I highly recommend this insightful set of stories to you. Mark started his professional career covering crime for the famed City News bureau of Chicago. He also reported national news for the Associated Press before making tv documentaries. For several years, Mark was a contributing editor to newest magazine. He also wrote articles, essays and reviews for national newspapers and magazines, including TV Guide, American Heritage, the New York Times, the LA Times, and the Washington Post. He’s also published five award winning novels for children. Mark’s early films document some of the most important political issues of the 1960s. Huelge is a portrait of Cesar Chavez’s United Farmworkers union and the first year of the Union’s historic Delano grape strike. The Redwoods, which won an Academy Award for best short documentary, presents the Sierra Club’s successful case for establishing a Redwoods national park and the foreigners explores the work of a group of Peace Corps volunteers confronting the contradictions of us foreign policy as they try to bring social change in Colombia. Two films Mark wrote and directed that explore the holocaust won oscars for best feature documentary. The long way home documents what happened to the survivors of the concentration camps immediately following their liberation and into the arms of strangers. Stories of the kinder transport chronicles Britain’s rescue mission of 10,000 children shortly before World War two. The US Library of Congress selected into the arms of strangers for permanent preservation in the National Film Registry. Among Mark’s other notable, nominated and award winning films, unchained memories, readings from the slave narratives, Darfur now breaking the war for democracy in Ukraine, and Foster. He was also a consulting producer for the five part Peabody award winning series Asian Americans. For 40 years, Mark taught filmmaking at the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California. He also taught for seven years at the School of Film and Video at Cal Arts. And in 2010, the International Documentary association honored him with its scholarship and preservation award for his educational work. So, for all those reasons and many more, it’s a great privilege for me to have Mark Jonathan Harris as my guest on StoryBeat today. Mark, welcome to the show.

Mark Jonathan Harris: Thanks, Steve. Thanks for inviting me.

Steve Cuden: Oh, it’s a great pleasure to have you here. So let’s go back in time just a little bit. Where were your earliest inspirations and influences? What brought you to writing and being a journalist in the first place?

Mark Jonathan Harris: Well, I think if I look back on, why I became a writer is that from an early age, I told stories. I had a, ah, very difficult, mother, and it was very difficult to, contradictor. Okay, so, early on, I developed an alter ego, an imaginary brother. Morris, I don’t remember this. When my mother tells the story that she was getting me dressed to go someplace where I’m sure I didn’t want to go. And in the middle, I turned to my imaginary brother and I said, you shouldn’t say that. And then my mother said, what did Mora say? And I said, he said, you stink. So I couldn’t really speak directly to my mother. I needed, an alter ego, another character to express, my feelings to my mother. So maybe that was early on you.

Steve Cuden: Had an imagination early on that led you to other characters.

Mark Jonathan Harris: It did. So I think I found that it was finding my own voice. And actually, in terms of making documentary films and being a journalist, you often look for other people to say the things that you believe. You look for characters who are like you, who are willing to speak truths that you might not want to say yourself.

Steve Cuden: And so when did you start to write? Was it as a young boy?

Mark Jonathan Harris: I wrote in college, but I also, at the same time, I fell in love with the movies in the sixties. The sixties were a time of, that was the introduction of foreign films to America. There was, french new wave, Truffaut Godard. there was Igmar Bergman in Sweden, Antonioni Fellini, in Italy. And, I just fell in love with that cinema. And that, was a new language for me. But I really didn’t know at that time how to get into the Film business.

Steve Cuden: So few do.

Mark Jonathan Harris: And at that time, Film school was not the gateway to the industry that it later became. It was only in the sixties, when George Lucas was at USC, Coppola was at UCLA, and Marty Scorsese was at NYU. The Film school really became one way to enter the business. In fact, when I graduated from college, I was interested in becoming a filmmaker, and there was an advisory group of people, alumni, who listed themselves as possible mentors. So I went to New York, and the Rochemont brothers did the marsh of times, and it was Dennis de Rochemont. And he was sitting behind this large desk, and I said, I want to become a moviemaker. And he said, your father very rich. I said, no. He said, have you written a best selling novel yet? I said, no, not yet. He said, those are the only two ways I know to get into business. Your father is rich enough to finance your Film, or Hollywood buys your book and you go along with it to Hollywood.

Steve Cuden: And how old were you at this time?

Mark Jonathan Harris: I was 21. And I thought that, well, I needed to find another way.

Steve Cuden: And so then what drew you to becoming a journalist, which is what you did first?

Mark Jonathan Harris: Well, that was another possibility. And also I was looking for Life experience. I, was sick of academia. I never expected years later, to end up, in academia.

Steve Cuden: That’s ironic.

Mark Jonathan Harris: Yes, it is. I have a funny story about that. And journalism was a way to get more experience. And I moved to Chicago to work for the famed city news bureau. And they give you very little training. They throw you out in the Street. My first day as a reporter, I went to the Maxwell Street police station, parked outside, went in and said to the death, sergeant, anything going on? He said, no, it’s a slow day, kid. I walked outside and my car had been stolen. That was my first actually published StoryBeat: In the Chicago Tribune. two paragraphs. Reporters, welcome to the news. Yes. Happens to you as well as other people.

Steve Cuden: So how close would you say journalism is to making documentaries? It’s actually kind of a kin, isn’t it?

Mark Jonathan Harris: Very much so. You’re trying to find the story and journalism certainly affected, my writing style, because you learn as a journalist to find a salient detail, to write compactly, concisely, to find the details that make stories come alive. So, I think my journalism training certainly spilled over into my writing.

Steve Cuden: And then you eventually, we’ll talk much more about this in a bit, but you eventually go off to write, for instance, misfits, which is somewhat fictional, if not totally fictional, but it feels kind of journalistic. It feels like that. So that has to be a part of how you developed your fictional side as well.

Mark Jonathan Harris: I think definitely, documentaries and journalism, I mean, are very similar. One you’re writing words and the other you’re writing with images. You’re trying to find the images to tell your story So I was very fortunate to have opportunity to, get a job at a television station. And I started actually in the news side doing short five minute pieces, and then I got the opportunity to do longer pieces.

Steve Cuden: So the short pieces that you started doing, were those written or found? Did you go out?

Mark Jonathan Harris: They’re found. You find a story they’re human interest stories. That’s what I was interested in. But I was also, I was making films in the sixties, which is a time of tremendous turmoil here in this country. Civil rights struggle, Vietnam war, and that’s really how I came to do the first significant film I made, which was about Cesar Chavez and the grape strike. That was the civil rights struggle of the West coast.

Mark Jonathan Harris: Farm workers trying to form a union.

Steve Cuden: So you clearly, it’s quite obvious there’s a theme throughout your entire career where you deal with, as you say, human interest or socially conscious or socially relevant stories. Where did that passion come from? Where did that start from being a journalist or prior to that?

Mark Jonathan Harris: I think prior to it, I think I’m a child of the sixties. You know, my politics were formed certainly in the sixties. You know, at that time we thought we could bring about a revolution in this country. Naively, I’m not so sure you didn’t. Well, we made some significant changes. Not the revolution that we.

Steve Cuden: And by the way, when I say you, I mean me too. I’m of that age as well.

Mark Jonathan Harris: Yeah. So, well, you look at our politics today, you wonder, you definitely have.

Steve Cuden: To wonder, if you look at today’s politics, there’s no doubt. Okay, so what kind of stories, when you’re looking for stories to do, because they’re obviously in your world, they’re everywhere. You can look out the window and find all kinds of stories. But what types of stories do you purposefully avoid?

Mark Jonathan Harris: That’s an interesting question. I think the key to being a successful filmmaker is to find stories in which you, find a personal connection. The hardest films that I’ve ever made are, ones that I’ve done, frankly, to pay the rent, and where I really couldn’t find a way, in, a personal way, in they were work for hire where there was nothing at stake. For me emotionally, those are the hardest films, so I try to avoid them. I try to avoid films. Fortunately, as my career developed, I was able to have more choice in my projects. So that’s one thing. And I’m always looking for characters. I think casting in documentary films is essential.

Steve Cuden: Casting?

Mark Jonathan Harris: Casting, yes. It’s as essential in documentary films as it is in fiction. You have to find characters that the audience who wants to root for or can identify with or who wants to follow.

Steve Cuden: I find what you just said a moment ago about you have to find your way in for yourself. And that means that you have in your documentary work, which I assume is true in journalism as well, some kind of a personal slant to it. It doesn’t have to be a completely biased slant, but there’s something that attracts you to a story so that’s got to come out in the creation of it.

Mark Jonathan Harris: Absolutely. I’ve made films long enough now to hand, you know, written children’s books, to look at the subjects that I’m attracted to. and certainly my children’s books, and to some extent in my films, too, I’m attracted to stories about problems created by adults that children have to deal with, problems not of their own making into the arms of strangers. Foster children, they didn’t create war. You don’t go into foster care because of something you did. It’s because of some of your parents did, because of their neglect or abuse. but you have to cope with these circumstances. And so that’s been one theme of the work that I’ve done. I’m interested in resilience. So the long way home is a Film about the Holocaust, but it’s really nothing about why did the Holocaust happen. It’s how do you survive a catastrophe like that? How do you rebuild your lives? And that’s similar in a way, to foster care. You’re thrown into foster care. How do you cope with that? How do you come out of that? With some sense of personal integrity, hope.

Steve Cuden: And with your feet on the ground?

Mark Jonathan Harris: Yeah, absolutely. I think those are the kind of stories that I’m attracted to.

Steve Cuden: So let’s talk for a moment about misfits, because I think what you’re saying ties in very nicely here. I think the twelve stories and misfits have sensibility toward that in them. They’re not necessarily about those exact things that we just mentioned about children and how do they deal with their situations, but there’s a little bit of that in there, and the themes seem to come through. So tell the listeners more about misfits. Tell us about what it’s actually about. What is the purpose of you having written these twelve stories?

Mark Jonathan Harris: Well, some of the stories actually emerged from my work as a filmmaker, my films. I, did foster. There’s a story in the book about a lawyer who, in her relationship with a foster kid. and that was a leftover question for me from the Film. And it was really a question to myself, how far would I go to change someone’s life? Another story mute, is about a father who’s trying to cope with the fact that his son is not the son that he imagined, that his son is autistic.

Steve Cuden: On the spectrum, that’s called mute, correct?

Mark Jonathan Harris: Yes, mute. Other stories, or the stories are all about kind of fraught encounters between unlikely people, people of different generations, people of different ethnicities. They’re all stories about people who are somewhat disconnected, alienated, trying to find connection in the world. And also they are, in some ways, finding unexpected answers to their problems in different places. And so that’s connected to what I was talking about before, resilience. And the stories, revolve around, issues of climate change, inequality, racism, all the problems that we’re facing today. And those are some of the same problems that I deal with in my documentaries.

Steve Cuden: And that’s why it comes out as journalistic, in a way, because it feels so much in touch with what’s going on right now.

Mark Jonathan Harris: Right. The stories are very contemporary. There are issues that are bothering me or haunting me. and, I’m trying to get at them through fiction. A lot of these stories were written during the pandemic, when it was very difficult to make films you had to make, because especially documentaries, everybody is masked. There were so many obstacles to making a decent documentary, under Covid that I said, I’m going to write stories now. I’ve always written, but this was a good time. I can’t make films. So let me write these stories. But these are the same kind of issues that I would deal with in Film.

Steve Cuden: Mm For sure. So are any of the stories actually based on real stories or real people? I know you’ve got my favorite StoryBeat: In the book is the one with Oppenheimer in it. So you have a real character, Oppenheimer?

Mark Jonathan Harris: Yes.

Steve Cuden: Jay. Robert Oppenheimer.

Mark Jonathan Harris: But, yeah.

Steve Cuden: Were any of the other stories, are they actually about real people that you knew?

Mark Jonathan Harris: Not directly.

Steve Cuden: All fiction then?

Mark Jonathan Harris: It’s all fiction. And I certainly didn’t know Oppenheimer. But I imagine this conversation running into Oppenheimer in the bar. And these were questions that I would like to ask Oppenheimer. And so Oppenheimer was long dead by the time I, got to have this conversation with him. And it brings up the same kind of moral concerns and issues. and it’s trying to relate the personal to the political in. A lot of my films are dealing with political issues through personal experiences. You know, another Film, a good example of this is breaking point, the, war for democracy in Ukraine, which I co directed with Ola Rotimi’s Sanyan, who is a very well known ukrainian director. and we were looking to try to see how the events in Ukraine affected ordinary people. And we were looking not for politicians, although there are a few in the Film, people who then became involved in politics. We were looking for people who Life was transformed by the events of the Maidan, the revolution of dignity. And then either it went into the army, went into politics, trying to change their society. So we had a clear idea of the kind of people we wanted to find. What I said earlier, often you look for people to say the things that you want to say, and casting is really very important. You, look through a lot of people to find the relevance.

Steve Cuden: So casting, as you say, is so important to what you do. But when you’re making a documentary, much like when you’re writing something new, fictional, you don’t really know how it’s going to exactly turn out. You may have an idea and so you’re finding it. Could you tell, as you were writing the twelve stories and misfits? Can you tell, as you’re making a documentary, as you’re going, that this is going to work out well? Or is it always a mystery till you get to the end?

Mark Jonathan Harris: Well, you want to surprise yourself. If you surprise yourself, then there’s a good chance you surprise the audience or, your viewer. I write very much to discover, so I didn’t know that. I didn’t set out to write a book. I started writing stories, and then suddenly one day I realized, wait a minute, I have a dozen stories here, that can make up a book. And then the stories seem to comment on each other in some way.

Steve Cuden: So you had no intention of writing the book as a compilation of stories at all?

Mark Jonathan Harris: No. Maybe at a certain point, when I had about nine or ten stories, I thought, maybe I have a book here. And then the question is how to put the book in order. And, no, I didn’t start out with that idea.

Steve Cuden: You have to program the book like you would edit a movie. It’s got to be in the right order.

Mark Jonathan Harris: Exactly. Yeah. And so my editor and I worked a lot on that and figured out the right order. But the exciting thing about documentaries is that you don’t know what you’re going to find. And that’s why I’m addicted to the documentary experience. You put a camera on your shoulder and provide you access to people and worlds. Otherwise you would be impossible to enter or very difficult.

Steve Cuden: When you start to make a documentary, are you trying to contrive it in some way? To start? Are you trying to get to a point and that’s what you’re driving towards?

Mark Jonathan Harris: Well, you have an idea of a kind of a structure, generally work out a kind of treatment, which is a fallback. Okay, if all these things happen, I have a film. But David Mazos is a famous quotation is if the documentary you end up making is the one you started out to make, you haven’t been listening.

Steve Cuden: That’s true.

Mark Jonathan Harris: So it is a journey of exploration. You have an idea, but you don’t know what people are going to say to you. You don’t know what kind of accents you’re going to find.

Steve Cuden: Much like you don’t know what the characters are going to say to you when you’re writing your fiction.

Mark Jonathan Harris: Exactly. I don’t know. And some days you sit down and it’s like, well, what’s going to happen today? And sometimes nothing happens. That’s discouraging.

Steve Cuden: Does it feel like fishing to you?

Mark Jonathan Harris: A little bit? I’m not a great fisherman, but, yeah, it does. You cast your line and, what are people going to say? What are they going to do next? And often they do surprise you. I’m surprised.

Steve Cuden: So then what are the biggest challenges you think that you typically go through both in writing stories and in making movies? What are the big challenges?

Mark Jonathan Harris: The big challenge, I think, is identifying what this story is really all about. So I do a lot of revision. I edit. My film’s a long time. I do a lot of revision in my stories. You know, it’s like, okay, what is this? It’s a constant effort to refine and clarify.

Steve Cuden: My training was that you which was ran counter to everything you’re taught in english classes. my training was, and I teach the same, which is don’t try to figure out your theme and your premise until after you’ve written at least one draft.

Mark Jonathan Harris: Exactly.

Steve Cuden: And then look at what you’ve written, and then you can figure out what the theme and premise are. And then you make sure that’s infused through the whole story

Mark Jonathan Harris: Yeah, absolutely. You know, and when you get to the end of the first draft, I read it, it’s, oh, this is what it’s about. And then you cut away what doesn’t contribute to that and try to make sure that it all fits together.

Steve Cuden: so how do you think that storytelling, because you’ve been a storyteller your whole life, how do you think that storytelling helps readers and audience members make sense of the world?

Mark Jonathan Harris: Well, I think that’s why basically we tell stories, is to try to make sense of the world. One of the children’s books that I did come the morning is about homeless, family. I wanted to do something about homelessness.

Mark Jonathan Harris: You went to school at USC. You know The Neighborhood?

Steve Cuden: I do.

Mark Jonathan Harris: Driving and driving south central laden increasingly I saw, homeless families, mothers and their children with shopping carts. And it was impossible to ignore. So I wanted to learn more about that. And I thought, maybe I’m going to make a Film about that. Then when I started to research, this, I realized that, the idea of being in a Film and labeling, identifying yourself as homeless was very stigmatizing for a lot of people. They didn’t want to do that. So I thought, okay, well, better to write a book about it. so I actually, as a journalist, I started out, I thought, okay, I’m going to just go downtown and hang around and find out what’s, going on, what people had to say. So I dressed in my, like my worst clothes, my guard clothes, you know, holes in my jeans, you know, hanging around this Street, corner where there were other homeless people. And within five minutes, somebody came up to me and hit me up for money. And I said to him, how do you know I have money? He said, well, look, your beard is trimmed. He said, your glasses look expensive. He says, you don’t smell like you’ve been living on the streets. So I thought, okay, this is not the best way to research this. And so I changed my strategy and I went to, there was Salvation army shelter, for families. And I went there twice a week in the evening at dinner. And I said I was interested in talking to people about their experience, if they were interested. And this is what the whole idea of story people wanted to talk because they were trying to figure out how their Life had ended up this way.

Mark Jonathan Harris: You know, talking to a sympathetic stranger or somebody who was just willing to listen, help them to try to make sense of their own experience and to find some way to put their lives in perspective.

Steve Cuden: And you’re having a huge problem with that in Los Angeles now, am I correct? The homeless.

Mark Jonathan Harris: Absolutely.

Steve Cuden: Gigantic.

Mark Jonathan Harris: It’s huge. It’s gotten worse and worse. Yes.

Steve Cuden: Do you think that when you hit the streets like that, you’re acting like a journalist again?

Mark Jonathan Harris: well, I was thinking participant, you know? But no, no, I mean, I think it was much better for me to say, not to disguise myself and just say, I’m a journalist and, you know, people tell their stories. I’ve had this experience. It can be therapeutic to tell your story to other people.

Steve Cuden: Oh, sure. Well, that’s what therapy is, isn’t it?

Mark Jonathan Harris: Yeah, it’s. And then it helps you to reframe.

Steve Cuden: Your narrative, your personal narrative.

Mark Jonathan Harris: Yeah. And also it’s like, I mean, a lot of the stories and misfits are about feeling. People feel alone, isolated. And it’s trying to. Stories help you see that you’re not alone, completely isolated. There are other people like you. The other people are experiencing similar kinds of problems.

Steve Cuden: Am I correct? All twelve stories are of centered in Los Angeles. Is that correct?

Mark Jonathan Harris: Yeah, most, most, I think except for a couple.

Steve Cuden: Except for a drink with oppi, which takes place, what, in Santa?

Mark Jonathan Harris: Yeah. And then there’s another one that takes place at a summer camp that’s not in Los Angeles.

Steve Cuden: So why LA? Because you live there, or was there something about LA that was important?

Mark Jonathan Harris: A couple of things. I mean, I’ve lived in LA for the last 50, years.

Steve Cuden: Right.

Mark Jonathan Harris: So LA is my home. I know it. but also I see, I see Los Angeles as a kind of Ellis island of the 21st century, where you have every possible subculture and immigrant group, from Samoans to Chinese to Mexican Americans to Central Americas. In my characters in my book, somebody’s from El Salvador or somebody’s from, they’re from all different countries and, different generations. And this, is LA. I was in the airport the other day, I was flying something and I thought, wow, look at the mass of people and the diversity of people. The Republicans should just come to the airport in LA and see that the world that they’re talking about, huh? Doesn’t quite exist anymore. Certainly not in places like Los Angeles or New York.

Steve Cuden: No, it’s the great melting pot.

Mark Jonathan Harris: Yeah, it really is. And you know, I also, teach at USC. My students from Nigeria, they’re from China, they’re from Europe, they’re from all around the world. It’s a very, it’s a very multicultural, multiethnic place.

Steve Cuden: Are you hoping in your work that it will be to convince people to come to your point of view?

Mark Jonathan Harris: No, I don’t know. I’m not writing to, I think, convert anyone. I’m writing really for discovery and I’m writing it. You mentioned before, it’s like reporting to report, this is the world. You want a glimpse of the world as it is. I’m trying to report it and write about the world as I see it. And that’s similar to documentary films. And I ran the documentary program at USC for a long time, and that’s part of where I learned more about LA, because my students were making films about the korean community. during the riots, they made a film. We had a group of people, some made films from the korean perspective, some made films from the black perspective, some made films from the white perspective. Then we put them all together. It was like, you know, trying to start a conversation. and when I started out in the sixties, I was much more political in the sense I want to make a film that’s going to bring about political change. Now, I realized that that was somewhat unrealistic. You know, films can bring about a change, but you look at, I mean, Al Gore did inconvenient truth and we still have, a world of climate deniers.

Steve Cuden: but it’s interesting if you go back and watch that movie now, he’s prescient in many ways.

Mark Jonathan Harris: He is prescient, but a lot of people, of course, still didn’t pay attention. So it’s hard to believe that a Film alone is going to change the world. It’s not this, you shouldn’t try, but my expectations for social or personal change have, been lowered, greatly lowered through.

Steve Cuden: The reality of what my friend Ron Sargent once called the sledgehammer of the marketplace.

Mark Jonathan Harris: Yes, that’s part of it. And just reality. It’s really hard to change people’s minds. But you also don’t know the effect that you can have. one story when I was making into the arms of strangers, one of the women that we interviewed had not told her story very much to anyone. She had not told her story to her children because she wanted to, I guess she didn’t want to inflict that pain upon them. But at the time we found her, she was willing to tell her story It was later in her life, her kids were grown up, he told her story and she had a horrendous childhood, in Germany. Her first story that she tells is that she gave a birthday party, eleven, and she was jewish. Nobody came to the birthday party. then her father was killed on Kristallnacht. She, was put in an orphanage. She was sent to England. Never saw her mother again. M anyway, she told the story and with far more emotion than she expected. And months later, when the Film was finished, I met with her again and she said, you know, before I told my story to you, I used to have nightmares. She said. After I told my story she said, I stopped having nightmares.

Steve Cuden: Wow. Because she’s been building that up in her mind for so long.

Mark Jonathan Harris: And just to be able to tell that story you know, it’s. And all that she had repressed for so long, that pain, it helped her. It freed her from nightmares. So you don’t know what effect your films are going to have either on, the subjects that are in them or on, people who view them.

Steve Cuden: Absolutely. You really don’t know. And you don’t control that in any way, shape or form other than to put out the work. And that’s what you do. You know, speaking of your two Oscar winning Holocaust movies, documentaries, I’m wondering, do they relate in any way to a drink with Oppie? Because after all, he created the bomb that ended the war, that freed them out of the concentration camps.

Mark Jonathan Harris: Yeah, I think they’re related in some ways. but not directly. Well, definitely not directly, but, yeah, I think it’s that same sensibility it deals with, the same kind of moral questions is how can we inflict such pain on so many people? I mean, it’s about genocide in a way. genocide, certainly in the Holocaust, but here, I mean, how can we kill so many innocent people? I mean, you talk about, can your films make a difference? You know, after making films about the Holocaust, one thing that I came away from that feeling is that this should never happen again. Yet that’s why, I got involved in making the Darfur movie about Darfur, because again, we’re seeing this inhumanity repeated. And look today, look at what’s happening in Israel and Palestine and in Africa.

Steve Cuden: And elsewhere in Africa.

Mark Jonathan Harris: Yeah. I mean, these ancient hostilities and grudges, it makes you wonder how much we have evolved as human beings. You know, we have IA, we have the Internet, we have all these, and we’ve developed nuclear power, all this. But our human psyche hasn’t kept up with the advances in technology and science.

Steve Cuden: This is very ancient stuff that goes back to the beginning of humanity.

Mark Jonathan Harris: Yeah. Yeah.

Steve Cuden: We’ve never gotten off of it.

Mark Jonathan Harris: Right.

Steve Cuden: Which is sad. And so that’s probably what’s driving you to continue to tell these stories, I assume.

Mark Jonathan Harris: It’s certainly part of it. And it’s also trying to understand, because.

Steve Cuden: You’Re not writing science fiction, you’re not writing fantasy stories. It’s not sword and sorcery. You’re writing about real people and their real problems.

Mark Jonathan Harris: even my children’s novels were about, children coping with divorce, children coping with homelessness, with dislocation. so, I mean, they were coping with the real problems that we’re all dealing with.

Steve Cuden: So let’s talk about your writing process, because that’s what this show is all about, is how do you do this? When you’ve got a story that you say, okay, this is what I want to focus on, and I want to write this. I want to make a documentary of it. In either case, you’re still coming at it as a storyteller. Where do you begin? Do you begin by sitting down and looking at the various elements that you’re going to put in it? Do you start to outline it? How do you start?

Mark Jonathan Harris: I generally start with characters.

Steve Cuden: Characters.

Mark Jonathan Harris: I think much of my work is character driven. When I talked before in documentaries to finding the characters, it’s like the question you ask, from whose point of view are we telling this StoryBeat? And this is true in Film. So from whose point of view are we seeing it, and what are we seeing in films? It’s very much, what are we seeing?

Steve Cuden: But you will still have to have it come through a character’s point of view, don’t you?

Mark Jonathan Harris: Right. Yes, it’s definitely so. It’s like, in fiction, you can get much more inside a character’s head, it’s consciousness, than you can in Film. We only know what a character feels through what he does, his actions, and what he says. but you can get into a person’s consciousness more easily in fiction. But I start with a character, and then what’s the conflict? There’s a StoryBeat: In the book of misfits about the main character is a salvadoran, illegal immigrant who’s taking care of a bitter old lady who wants to die. And, she realizes that the woman wants to die. Amelia, the salvadoran caretaker, the woman she’s taken care of, wants to starve herself to death. And Emilio M. Who has experienced starvation and knows that that’s a sin in her worldview, is trying to prevent that. And it’s a story that’s the clash. So that, in a way that developed for my mother, who, had lived to be 100, and in their last year wanted to die, really. She was tired of living. and she didn’t have a salvadoran caretaker, but the woman who was taking care of her was very catholic. And we’re not continent. My mother’s trying to starve herself to death. that’s a sin. Only God knows the time for you to die.

Steve Cuden: I mean, that’s fascinating stuff. When you have characters, you’ve decided, I’m going to focus on this character or that character. How do you then make that character three dimensional? What do you go through?

Mark Jonathan Harris: Sometimes I write, monologues. I often wear censors down, just free associated. How does Amelia think about the world? And I just, you know, it’s like, what does Amelia think about this or that? What is it? What is m. You know, just character sketches, just for myself. What kind of tv does she watch? You know, when did she come here? And, you’re just creating a character from whole cloth, but you’re trying to make a full dimensional character, and a lot of that comes out of the stories in scenes. So I try to write scenes because I’ve learned that from making films. That’s how these stories develop. I often told my students that where I start the story start writing is not always where the finished story starts. Maybe half the time it starts at another place. When I get through the first draft, I say, oh, well, maybe a better place to start this would be someplace else. But you start writing and you see what happens. And then when you go back and revise, it’s like, well, maybe, I need to start this, launch this story at a different place, either earlier or later or.

Steve Cuden: Do you outline?

Mark Jonathan Harris: No, rarely outline. You just go, yeah, yeah.

Steve Cuden: And you have great success with that?

Mark Jonathan Harris: Honestly, short stories are easy. I’m working on a novel now, and I am outlining a little more, but I was a bad chess player, in the sense that I could see two or three moves ahead, but I could see five moves ahead. I could see. And so it’s futile for me to try to plot a novel out that way. I just can’t.

Steve Cuden: Do you write purge drafts or do you write slowly?

Mark Jonathan Harris: I write. I try to. I believe in shitty first drafts.

Steve Cuden: Shitty first drafts?

Mark Jonathan Harris: Yeah. And sometimes, sometimes they come fast, but they come often more slowly because I’m thinking through the characters as I do it.

Steve Cuden: Do you know Anne Lamott’s book on writing?

Mark Jonathan Harris: Yeah, yeah.

Steve Cuden: She says the title of a chapter is shitty for yes.

Mark Jonathan Harris: Yeah, definitely. I took that from her. I’m sure.

Steve Cuden: I have taught forever and I believe wholeheartedly that the craft of writing is that first draft is coming up to the end of a first draft. And then the art of writing is in all the subsequent drafts. That’s where you create the real art.

Mark Jonathan Harris: Yeah.

Steve Cuden: Same for you, I assume.

Mark Jonathan Harris: Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

Steve Cuden: Okay. So what for you then, as you’re writing, you write really great dialogue. What for you makes great dialogue? Great. How do you get there?

Mark Jonathan Harris: That’s a good question. I know. I think you have to have, an ear for dialogue.

Steve Cuden: It has to be innate.

Mark Jonathan Harris: Yeah. I think it’s hard to teach because I’ve taught writing too. It’s hard to teach good dialogue. But it’s also, you listen to other people speak. And, you know, I often I have a notebook, and I jot down phrases or things that I hear. You know, just people speaking. And I save up that I might be able to use. and, you know, I’ve done a lot of interviewing of people. And you pick up the rhythms of the way people speak.

Steve Cuden: That’s important, isn’t it? The rhythms of the way a character speaks?

Mark Jonathan Harris: Yeah, definitely. And so that’s that’s part of it. But I can’t explain exactly how I do it, frankly.

Steve Cuden: Do you write every day now?

Mark Jonathan Harris: Now that I’ve retired, I, ah, from teaching, although I’m making another Film. Finish up another Film right now. we just recorded the narration Friday with Martin Sheen.

Steve Cuden: Wow. Look at you. So you clearly are capable of handling multiple projects at one time, including teaching and other things in your life. What do you do to keep the trains running?

Mark Jonathan Harris: I’m disciplined.

Steve Cuden: What does that mean? Does that mean you have a set time for doing things or what do you mean by disciplined? You don’t slough off. You just go do it.

Mark Jonathan Harris: I don’t like to leave things unfinished. So I make lists and priorities and I get up early. My best times are in the morning. And, I try to accomplish a certain amount each day. How do, I do it? I think part of it is I’m interested in everything that I do. You ask early on in our conversation, what’s the hardest, thing to do. And I said stuff in which I’m not emotionally involved. I don’t feel that I have any. That doesn’t really resonate for me. But now everything that I’m doing, I like that enables me, I think, to be able to be productive. If I didn’t like what I was doing, I don’t think I would be able to continue to do it.

Steve Cuden: It keeps it fresh for you? Yeah, I think that’s really critical. If it’s not fresh, it’ll come out as being stale in the end product, I think.

Mark Jonathan Harris: Yeah, I’m writing a novel now. ambitious in a lot of ways. I don’t know if I can pull.

Steve Cuden: It off well, are you still fascinated by it? Are you starting to lose steam?

Mark Jonathan Harris: No, no, I’m, definitely fascinated. Trying to think if I can pull all these strands together. It’s like juggling. You throw all these balls in the air. Can you catch them? I don’t know yet.

Steve Cuden: Well, a lot of the work that you’ve done over time, not just, well, writing to a certain extent, but certainly making movies, they all come with a little bit of different sorts of pressure that you have, time constraints, you’ve gotten financial constraints, etcetera. There’s pressures on you as a creator. How do you handle pressure in your life? What do you do?

Mark Jonathan Harris: I play tennis. That’s one thing. I take long walks. Film business. I am, still making films, but I am not raising money. I am, That’s not what I am.

Steve Cuden: You’re letting others do the raising for you.

Mark Jonathan Harris: Yeah, I’m not spending the rest of my time raising money. I find that very difficult.

Steve Cuden: So then how do you get the money? What do you do?

Mark Jonathan Harris: I have a good producer, or I get other people to, I’m a task of projects. And if they get the money, we can go ahead. If not, I’ll go to a meeting, but I’m not going. Several years, ago, I was trying to get a project done, and we were having a fundraiser in San Francisco, and I said, my wife, you want to come to this fundraiser? And she said, I’ve spent years watching you go hat man. It’s not interesting.

Steve Cuden: I think that’s the worst part about being in the Film business, is trying to raise the capital.

Mark Jonathan Harris: It is.

Steve Cuden: And there are people that are good at it and they’re fascinated by it, but most people are that are in the art end of it are not that interested in it. It’s not that interesting.

Mark Jonathan Harris: Yeah, well, it’s not my strength or my interest.

Steve Cuden: But you’re now at a point in your life and career where they’re more or less coming to you or trusting that you’re going to do what you say you’re going to do.

Mark Jonathan Harris: Yeah. The other thing that I do, I am involved in executive producing, projects that some of my students, my m talented students are developing. They’re out there, their hustling to get it done. And I work as a kind of consultant on their films and executive producer. It’s like I show up, I act as a kind of guarantor. It’s like, okay, they’ll come through.

Steve Cuden: So one of the issues with documentaries in general, other than a very few number of documentarians, is they rarely make any money.

Mark Jonathan Harris: It’s true.

Steve Cuden: How does one become a documentarian and stick to it when the chances of you becoming, let’s say, rich in the Hollywood sense is probably not going to happen unless you’re one or two famous documentarians?

Mark Jonathan Harris: you have to be passionate about what you’re doing. M but you also have to have a way of paying the rent. Paying, the mortgage, for me, I taught that was one way of stabilizing my income, because developing these projects, even to sell takes, you know, the filmmaker bears the development cost, you know, because if you go to Netflix, if you go to HBO, which I’ve been fortunate to do, you have to already have a project that is viable, which means you have to have access, you have to find the characters, you have to have the arc of the story to convince people to give you money. And so all that takes time. So, teaching was one way of stabilizing my income. I wrote other things. You know, I’ve always been versatility. but many of the, documentary filmmakers that I know, young filmmakers, they also edit or they shoot, so they have a way of, paying their rent while they develop their own projects.

Steve Cuden: So, obviously, you’ve won three oscars, which is amazing. I mean, to win one is amazing, but you’ve won three. And I’m wondering, even though you won those three, I’m assuming that didn’t catapult you into another level, or does it do that for you as a documentarian?

Mark Jonathan Harris: The Oscar helped me to keep working. My first Oscar, I was young. I thought, oh, this is easy. I was also part of the sixties, and I had to kind of chip on my shoulder, and I wrote a piece I was, writing at the time. I was doing movie reviews for the National Catholic Reporter, and, I was not there at the Oscar ceremony because Martin Luther King was assassinated, and the ceremony was postponed for a couple of days. And I had planned reservations to go to South America, Peace corps. It was really, really difficult to change, and the articles in newspapers said we weren’t going to win, so it didn’t seem worth staying around or changing all the plans. So I did not learn that I’d won an Oscar till I was in Columbia. And I wrote a piece looking at the Oscars from the point of view of an impoverished village in, the colombian Andes. And they titled, entitled the piece where the timid honor the shallow. So it’s like, all right, so that was not probably a, very good career move. And then I discovered it was that, I was fortunate to have won the Oscar, but it was, you know, that they didn’t grow on trees. So when I won the second Oscar, I knew how to use it better, enabled me to keep working.

Steve Cuden: And the third one was kinder transport. Yes.

Mark Jonathan Harris: Yeah. So it was 30 years between the first Oscar and the second, and three years between the second Oscar and the third.

Steve Cuden: I certainly remember that was a huge sensation when it won the Oscar. Yeah, I remember that vividly from that night and then subsequent to it. It was a huge sensation within the, the industry itself.

Mark Jonathan Harris: I’ve been privileged to, work on really good projects, but my wife had bought a great dress for the first Oscar ceremony. 30 years and two kids later, that dress was not only out of style, but it didn’t fit anymore. And she, to this day, she resents the fact that we didn’t go to the first Oscar ceremonies.

Steve Cuden: That’s, fashion for you, right?

Mark Jonathan Harris: But I promised her, I said, we’ll get back. It took about 30 years.

Steve Cuden: I’ve been having an absolutely wonderful, fascinating conversation with Mark Harris about writing and making documentaries in the movie industry and teaching, which I find tremendously fascinating. We’re almost an hour into the show. We’re going to wind things down now. I’m just wondering, in all of your experiences, and you’ve had many, are you able to share with us a story that’s either weird, quirky, offbeat, strange, or maybe just plain funny. More than you’ve already told us, because you’ve told us a few.

Mark Jonathan Harris: I have one story about how, I got into teaching. I never expected to become a teacher, but when I got to Los Angeles, a job that was promised me fell through, and we had just moved here. I just wrote a check to the moving company, and I said to my wife, we better like it here because it’s going to be years before we can afford to move again. Anyway, a week later, I got a call from a friend. They, were looking for a teacher at California Institute of the Arts. Someone was going to leave absence. Classes, were going to start in two weeks. Could I come up show? I went there, showed my films. They were desperate to find somebody. I was desperate for a job. They hired me. This was calarts in the seventies. I said, what do you do as a teacher? They said, oh, you supervise films. Maybe you can teach a course, a documentary, but you supervise films. So they gave me a list of my students. They gave me an office. I sat in the office. The first student came in, he lit a joint and passed it to me. I’m looking at my sheet. It’s like, what do you do? Are you supposed to smoke with him? Are you supposed to buy for them? That was the seventies, the Calarts, my introduction to teaching. I thought, oh, this is not exactly what I expected it to be.

Steve Cuden: It was more familiarly in those days, I think, if I’m remembering right, known as the University of Disney. Correct.

Mark Jonathan Harris: It was. It was, yes, it was. And Disney was started, it was somewhat appalled by what they had wrought, and.

Steve Cuden: But they put in that, on that campus, one of the most innovative theaters ever created, which was the modular theater.

Mark Jonathan Harris: Yeah. I mean, a lot of wonderful stuff was going on there.

Steve Cuden: Indeed.

Mark Jonathan Harris: But that was my introduction to teacher. So there are many stories I could tell, but that one is like,

Steve Cuden: If you’re going to start off as a teacher, I guess if somebody’s going to pass you a joint that’s telling you everything you need to know.

Mark Jonathan Harris: Welcome.

Steve Cuden: All right, so, last question for you today, mark, you’ve shared with us a huge amount of advice along the way, but I’m wondering if you have a single solid piece of advice or a tip that you like to give those, perhaps your students or those starting out in the business, or maybe they’re in a little bit trying to get to that next level.

Mark Jonathan Harris: I think you have to have persistence. Persistence is really important. there are three things to succeed in the field business. I think, you have to have talent. You have to have some luck. But if you have talent, you have to persist. You have to believe in yourself. I think for me, you have to be willing to listen to feedback. The students who are most successful that I’ve taught learn to process feedback and to take from it what’s valuable and to discard what isn’t, because you’re going to get during your career, so many notes, so much advice from so many different people, and some you just have to close your ears to. But other advice, you have to listen. You have to be willing to adapt and to listen. And the idea that as a, filmmaker, as a writer, or anything you’re perfect is an illusion.

Steve Cuden: I think that that’s absolutely accurate. And I think your first two pieces there are spot on. And for sure I’ve told many people, many students, over time, whatever you do with the notes you’re going to get because you’re going to get notes, take the notes, take them all. Some will help you, some won’t. Take what works and throw the rest away.

Mark Jonathan Harris: Right. Exactly. Yeah. And it’s tough to learn.

Steve Cuden: It is tough to learn because everybody thinks it’s their precious baby that’s being.

Mark Jonathan Harris: Attacked and you don’t know who to listen to. and what people tell you. If five people tell you, or even two or three that something’s not working, it’s probably not working. If three people tell you you’re drunk, you’re probably drunk.

Steve Cuden: Absolutely.

Mark Jonathan Harris: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. but, their solutions, and I tell my students, listen to what I say is problematic, is not working. But don’t listen to my solutions because that’s my taking your material and saying what I would do with it. That may not be your vision at all. You have to find your own solution, to what is not working.

Steve Cuden: I think that’s just spectacular advice. Mark Jonathan Harris, this has been a wonderful, fascinating, fun, fast hour on story and I can’t thank you enough for your time, your energy and your wisdom today. I greatly appreciate it.

Mark Jonathan Harris: Thanks, Steve. It’s been a pleasure, my pleasure talking to you.

Steve Cuden: And so we’ve come to the end of today’s StoryBeat If you liked this episode, won’t you please take a moment to give us a comment, rating, or review on whatever app or platform you’re listening to? Your support helps us bring more great StoryBeat episodes to you. story is available on all major podcast apps and platforms, including Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, iHeartRadio, tunein, and many others. Until next time, im Steve Cuden and may all your stories be unforgettable.