Bettie Page was notorious for her salacious pictures as a pin-up model, and Mark Mori’s “Bettie Page Reveals All” shows a far less decadent side to the flamboyant pin-up girl from the 1950s. Told from the perspective of Page herself, Mori’s documentary showcases the small beginnings of Page’s life in Tennessee to the free wheeling cardinality of her days as a model for Playboy and beyond.
Director Mark Mori took time to chat with The Eagle’s David Kahen-Kashi about the making of the film.
Eagle: What inspired you to make “Bettie Page Tells All?”
Mark Mori: Well, I did not know who Bettie Page was. But I was having lunch with my entertainment attorney in Los Angeles in 1996 and he showed me a pre-publication copy of “Bettie Page: The Life of a Pin-Up Legend.” And her image was so familiar, even kind of haunting, but I didn’t know her name though I knew the face. Then when I saw the book and read the story and realized that I could get introduced to her and meet her, and I told him I wanted to do the documentary about her, then it moved quickly from there. So I have to say I was in the right place in the right time and the right moment in history. At another point, it might have not have been possible to get to her.
E: How influential was Bettie Page in the history of pin-up girls?
MM: I think her influence was, even with so much you can do in an hour and a half film, her influence is still not fully realized. She’s the patron saint of many sub-cultures, and of course inspired Paris fashion designers for at least more than 20 years. She’s kind of a low-culture and that aspect of the high-culture has embraced her. But she’s like a river under American and Western culture. I think you can trace some of the influence of punk and punk fashion to Bettie. All kinds of artists have found inspiration in her. I found more than 80 original songs about Bettie and of course young women today, and now for the second generation of young women, find a sense of sexual confidence and sexual freedom by identifying with Bettie.
E: So what was the process of making the film? Where did you start?
MM: I kinda started knowing in the beginning that Bettie did not want to go on camera. I started with the idea of eventually getting her on camera. I would spend money on a makeup artist and a hair person and I didn’t understand how strongly Bettie felt about not appearing on camera in the beginning. So as time went by I started recording these audio interviews as part of research. And in the beginning I was just filming the things that seemed like they needed to be filmed. The book release party, I interviewed Paula Klaw, who ran Movie Star News after her brother Irving past away, and that was good cause I got her six months before she died.
Then I interviewed the camera club photographer Art Aimsy before he died, that was in 1996. Then in ‘97, I filmed a Victoria Secret lingerie show inspired by Betty and so I was filming these things because they seemed like they needed to be filmed, not because from any sort of preconceived concept of what the documentary would be. So then I ended up having to put it aside for a while because I was able to get a script and able to get Martin Scorsese to direct and Liv Tyler to play Bettie Page, this was around 2000. That project was in development for a long time and then didn’t end up moving forward, like many things in Hollywood, so it was only in recent years I went back to the film and I developed a concept that I could use Bettie’s audio interviews as the narration, she could narrate her own story, which would be appropriate. I thought that her voice and her personality could drive the film.
This interview has been condensed for style and clarity purposes.
