James B. Harris

For the ten years that they were friends and creative partners, nobody knew film director Stanley Kubrick better than producer James B. Harris.

“You want very much to be a director,” Harris told Stanley, “and I want very much to produce.”

They shook hands and Harris Kubrick was born. Three classic films grew out of their partnership: The Killing, Paths of Glory and Lolita.

They came to a friendly parting of the ways at Dr. Strangelove (1964). Harris ventured forth to direct his own unique, passionate, dazzlingly realized – and critically acclaimed – body of films: The Bedford Incident (1965); Some Call It Loving (1973); Fastwalking (1982); Cop (1987); and Boiling Point (1993). His work alongside Kubrick with stars such as Kirk Douglas, James Mason, and Peter Sellers had well prepared Harris to direct and draw great work from Richard Widmark, Sidney Poitier, Donald Sutherland, Richard Pryor, Charles Bronson, James Woods, Dennis Hopper, Viggo Mortensen, Wesley Snipes and many others.

Harris is not only a unique filmmaker, admired by other filmmakers and writers the world over – among them, Warren Beatty, Bertrand Tavernier, Quentin Tarantino, and James Ellroy – but he is, at over 90, a thriving, sharp-eyed, sharp-witted working filmmaker who is as ambitious, if not more so, than colleagues half his age and younger. Harris is hard at work on producing his next project, “Mr. White’s Confession,” which is based on Robert Clark’s Edgar Award winning novel. Joining him are producers Mark Burman, and Susan Canova Vercellino.