Hal Hartley

Hal Hartley is a quirky but genuine talent who has made his mark as an award-winning independent filmmaker. His films are modestly scaled, seriocomic portraits of chance encounters between disparate outsiders--characters who typically engage in elliptical exchanges, debating everything from philosophical issues to the workings of internal combustion engines, but don't always learn anything from their discourses or their adventures. Hartley's deft, offbeat comedy is highlighted by circuitous, layered bantering, with punchlines coming late, if at all. The visual correlatives to this non sequitur-laden wit have ranged from a shot of a nun wrestling a policeman to the ground to a camera pan which reveals heavy metal "soundtrack" music to be emanating from the electric guitar of a minor character. Hartley's deadpan, episodic narrative style would seem to betray the influence of Jean-Luc Godard, though his camera is less experimental, his comedy more assimilable and his politics less overt.

Hartley's gallery of indecisive but intelligent characters includes an ex-convict who sets the town talking about what his crime might have been ("The Unbelievable Truth" 1989); a literature professor who spends most of a semester on one paragraph of Dostoyevsky (the PBS project "Surviving Desire" 1992); a manic, bitter electronics whiz who carries a hand-grenade in his pocket ("Trust" 1990); two very different brothers who search for their long-missing radical father ("Simple Men" 1992); and an amnesiac who enlists the aid of a former nun to help him discover his past ("Amateur" 1994).

Some critics have accused the director of making the same film again and again. With "Flirt" (1995), he did just that, depicting three love stories (including one homosexual) utilizing the same dialogue and structure. Moving from New York to Berlin to Tokyo, Hartley examines the essence of love refracted through different characters with ultimately the same results. A flirtatious lover brings about the destruction of his or her own beauty. "Henry Fool" (1997) has been lauded as his best film to date, reiterating his themes of reinvention and the serendipitous experiences that reconstitute relationships.

• Also Credited As:
  Hal Hartley Jr, Ned Rifle
• Born:
  November 3, 1959 in Lindenhurst, New York, USA
• Job Titles:
  Director, Composer, Editor, Producer, Screenwriter

Family

• Brother: Pat Hartley.
• Cousin: Bob Gosse.
• Father: Hal Hartley Sr.
• Mother: Eileen Hartley. (nee Flynn) died when Hartley was 11

Education

• State University of New York at Purchase Film School, New York

Milestones

• 1985 Completed his student thesis film, Kid
• 1989 Made feature directing, screenwriting, producing and editing debut with The Unbelievable Truth
• 1991 Short films, the 10-minute Ambition and the 17-minute Theory of Achievement , broadcast on PBS Alive From Off Center
• 1992 Surviving Desire , his first work made expressly for TV, broadcast on American Playhouse on PBS
• 1993 Made short film Flirt ; later incorporated into the 1995 feature of the same title
• 1994 Wrote and directed Amateur
• 1995 Helmed the tripartite Flirt , which incorporated the 1993 short of the same name
• 1997 Garnered critical acclaim for Henry Fool ; screened at Cannes where it won the screenplay award
• 1999 Made the short The Book of Life
• 2000 Directed and wrote and the short Kimono
• 2001 Debut as playwright with Soon , produced in Los Angeles
• 2002 Wrote and directed No Such Thing , an adaptation of Beauty and the Beast
• 2005 Helmed the feature The Girl From Monday about a time in the near future when citizens are happy to be property traded on the stock exchange
• 2007 Helmed Fay Grim, a sequel to his 1997 film Henry Fool starring Parker Posey as a single mom thrown into a world of international espionage
• After his mother s death, went to live with various relatives
• Began freelancing on commercials and feature films
• Left art school in Boston; made eight super-8 films before enrolling in the film department at SUNY, Purchase
• Raised in Lindenhurst, Long Island, NY