Mark Harris (journalist)

Mark Harris (born November 25, 1963) is an American journalist and author. He is best known as writer of the book Pictures at a Revolution, and as a columnist and former executive editor of Entertainment Weekly.[1] He is also known for his 2014 book Five Came Back, which was turned into the Netflix series of the same name. Harris is married to the playwright Tony Kushner.

Mark Harris
Born (1963-11-25) November 25, 1963
Alma materYale University
OccupationJournalist, author
Spouse(s)
​
(m. 2008)​

Harris has written for The New York Times, Fortune, The Guardian, Grantland, and Slate. He is currently a columnist and feature writer for New York, where he often writes about the intersection between pop culture and politics.

Harris graduated from Yale University in 1985.[2]

Books

In 2008, Harris published Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood, an examination of how the American film industry changed with the 1960s. Writing in The New York Times Book Review, the author Jim Shepard called the book "full of pleasures ... He seems to have talked to virtually everyone who’s still around, and to great effect ... Mark Harris's legwork and intelligence transport us gratefully back to that exhilarating moment when it was all still about to occur."[3]

In February 2014, Harris published Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War. The work is an examination of five U.S. film directors – John Ford, William Wyler, John Huston, Frank Capra, George Stevens – and their frontline work during the Second World War. The book was well received, with The New York Times calling it, "a tough-minded, information-packed and irresistibly readable work."[4] The trade publication Booklist wrote, "It's hardly news that the movies affect and are affected by the broader canvas of popular culture and world history, but Harris – perhaps more successfully than any other writer, past or present – manages to find in that symbiotic relationship the stuff of great stories," calling the book, "narrative nonfiction that is as gloriously readable as it is unfailingly informative."[5] In 2017, the book was adapted into a three-part Netflix docu-series Five Came Back.[6]

His third book, Mike Nichols: A Life, was published in February, 2021.

Personal life

Harris is married to the playwright Tony Kushner. In attendance at the couple's May 2003 wedding were director George C. Wolfe, playwright Larry Kramer, Mike Nichols and Diane Sawyer, actresses Linda Emond and Kathleen Chalfant, and, The New York Times reported, "dozens of aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews, many of them crying."[7]

The couple's marriage was the first same-sex commitment ceremony to be featured in the Vows column of The New York Times.[8] In the summer of 2008, they were legally married at the city hall in Provincetown, Massachusetts.[9]

Bibliography
  • Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood (2008)
  • Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War (2014)
  • Mike Nichols: A Life (2021)[10]

References
  1. "Mark Harris". Entertainment Weekly. June 6, 2011. Retrieved February 28, 2017.
  2. "Truth, art & propaganda: Lessons from Mark Harris's WWII epic for Netflix". Columbia Journalism Review. March 31, 2017. Retrieved May 13, 2019.
  3. Jim Shepard, "When Mrs. Robinson Met Dr. Dolittle", The New York Times Book Review, February 17, 2008.
  4. Thomas Doherty, "Cameras Shooting in Battle: Five Auteurs and Their World War II Films Mark Harris's Five Came Back Covers Auteurs in Combat", The New York Times, March 2, 2014.
  5. Bill Ott. "Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War", Booklist, February 15, 2014.
  6. "Exclusive: See the Trailer for Netflix's New Documentary About World War II and Hollywood". Time. Retrieved February 28, 2017.
  7. Lois Smith Brady, "Vows: Mark Harris and Tony Kushner", The New York Times, May 4, 2003.
  8. McCarter, Jeremy (May 28, 2009). "Tony Kushner's Day: The playwright at the heart of America's cultural moment". Newsweek. Retrieved May 5, 2011.
  9. Stockwell, Anne (October 8, 2012). "Love Stories: Tony Kushner and Mark Harris". Advocate. Retrieved October 12, 2012.
  10. Wolcott, James (February 2, 2021). "Mike Nichols's Brilliant Career". New York Times. Retrieved February 4, 2021.
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