Harris is a native of Utah. Before becoming a filmmaker, he was a journalist. Before that, however, hw was an early graduate of the University of Utah film program. As a student of Mort Rosenfeld, he was encouraged to go out and make movies. He recorded the sound for Rosenfeld's 1977 opus Down in the Valley, a film notable today for featuring a nude scene by local news personality Shelley Osterloh. As a friend of Mike Cassidy, he was also associated with another quintessentially Utah film, Attack of the Giant Brine Shrimp. Tragically, both Cassidy and Rosenfeld died young: Cassidy of AIDS, while Rosenfeld was murdered.
Harris' main film work began in the 1980's. He wrote, directed, and produced the short film The Orkly Kid, about a young man from Idaho (played by Crispin Glover) obsessed with Olivia Newton John. Eventually, this obsession ends with Glover's impersonation of the singer. Glover has called this role his favorite, and led directly to his next collaboration with Harris, Rubin & Ed.
This is the story of an unusual pair of Salt Lake residents on a quest. The film was inspired by a character created by Glover, defined mostly by outrageous clothes. (It was during his "Rubin" era that Glover made his most famous appearance on the David Letterman show). Harris wrote a film around the Rubin character as a reculse mourning the death of his beloved cat, and searching for a suitable place to bury it. Ed is a more conventional middle-aged loser, played by a cast-against-type Howard Hesseman.
The film ended up being diluted of most of its Utah elements, perhaps at the behest of the film's producers. Rubin and Ed are portrayed as little more than weirdos: Ruvin an eccentric, Ed a loser. The Utah milieu is hardly mentioned. While viewers in the know will recognize the typical ratty small town commonly found in the southern parts of the state as well as the classic Utah get-rich-scheme of multilevel marketing, Harris doesn't really get a chance in Rubin & Ed to send his home state up.
Rubin & Ed never got the national recognition that its producers had no doubt hoped for. It has mostly been a cult hit among Crispin Glover fans and Utahns, but almost totally unknown otherwise.
Plan 10 from Outer Space is, if anything, even more obscure. This film, absolutely no relation to Ed Wood's Plan 9, is the story of Lucinda (Stephene Russell) who finds a mysterious plaque by the shores of the Great Salt Lake which may or may not reveal the mysteries of a 19th century Mormon mystic who discovered "the secret of the bees." Can Lucinda discover the secret before she is abducted by aliens or the Danites? If you don't know what "Danites" refers to, then this movie is probably not for you. If you do know, then it is definitely for you.
Harris loves his home state in a very non-judgemental and campy way. In his book Mondo Utah, he discusses uniquely Utah people and things, like Joyce McKinney, a former prom queen who went on to rape a male (!) Mormon missionary. Another favorite of his is the Wasatch panty sniffer, who, years after his panty raids, mailed all of the stolen lingerie back to their original owners. Utah has more than its share of eccentrics, Harris believes (I am inclined to agree) and he loves the state for them.
The weird love for his state fairly screams out of his movies. While Rubin may not be directly based on a Utah model, his weird obsessions are an embodiment of "Mondo" (Harris' word for obsession). Plan 10 from Outer Space, arguably his masterpiece, is full of Utah lore from Harris' own irreverent viewpoint. Porter Rockwell makes an appearance in the film, not as the can-do mountain-man as played by James Coburn in the made-for-TV movie Avenging Angel, but as a violent and stupid hitman, played by the inimitable Gyll Huff. Harris adapts a Mormon hymn into a techno disco number. Lucinda's brother acts like the Wasatch sniffer, and much of the plot deals with the mysterious "Deseret Alphabet," an invention of Brigham Young's.
Harris has not made a feature film since Plan 10: not surprising, since the film (which cost only $100K) did not catch on outside the state. Even if he doesn't make another one, however, Harris has already played a central role in the history of Utah independent filmmaking. Rubin & Ed has become a minor cult classic, while Plan 10 from Outer Space, even if it has been seen by only a few, deserves to endure as a science fiction classic of sorts.
Copyright 1998 by Dale G. Abersold