By Christopher Cappiello

Gretchen Mol and director Mary Harron discuss sexuality, religion, and the mystery of The Notorious Bettie Page.

For more than 10 years, while she was directing films like I Shot Andy Warhol and American Psycho, Canadian-born filmmaker Mary Harron was trying to get The Notorious Bettie Page made. It started in 1993 when a friend gave her copies of The Bettie Pages, old Bettie Page fanzines, and suggested she make a short film about the cheery Christian girl from Tennessee who almost accidentally became an icon of Eisenhower-era fetish photos. After a long struggle to find financing, Harron and screenwriting partner Guinevere Turner got backing from HBO and shot the film over 32 days in 2004. A year earlier, they had found their Bettie, surprising many by selecting blond Gretchen Mol to play the smiling pin-up queen with the signature raven hair and famous black bangs.

"I remember I had seen the E! True Hollywood Story of Bettie's life," Mol reveals, when asked what she knew of Bettie before landing the role. "The first 45 minutes of the program was image after image of this completely joyful, exuberant, spirited woman posing with a whip, or whatever she was doing, and she always had that twinkle in her eye," she says, fascinated by the juxtaposition of Bettie's perkiness and the kinkiness of the photos. "And then at the very end she came on and she had the black screen so that nobody could see her. I remember being struck that the voice didn't go with the images. She had that earthy Southern accent and she had this melancholy quality in her voice. I think that was what drew me into wanting to play her."

Indeed, it is the incongruity of Bettie Page's story that makes her life so compelling. A seemingly simple country girl from Tennessee, she divorced her first husband and left home as a very young woman, eventually landing in New York to pursue acting and modeling. A chance encounter with a police officer and amateur photographer on the beach led to a modeling career in which she seemed uncannily at home in increasingly risqué settings. Like countless LGBT people, Betty's life started in a very conservative religious environment, and led her to a path of sexual expression that many would consider "deviant."

While many gay people spend decades trying to resolve those two seemingly disparate parts of themselves, Harron and Mol came to see that they actually weren't so divergent in Bettie.

"There was something almost mystical in what she brought to her posing,"Mol shares. "She kind of went to this higher place. And you can see it in the photos. She did seem involved in something bigger."

Harron adds, "Gretchen began to see in playing the role that Bettie's sexuality and her religious impulses were almost the same thing, manifestations of the same thing. That she was someone who was looking for transcendence, and when she was posing -- particularly when she was posing naked out of doors, which she really loved -- there was something that she got there. She was reaching something. There's something in these photographs, an emotional quality, that translates really intensely -- her joy in what she's doing."

In addition to the mysterious joy of Bettie Page, "there's this very strong lesbian subtext to the photos," says Harron, whose resume includes directing episodes of The L Word and Six Feet Under. "It's part of the naiveté of the era. Irving Claw [whose company produced most of Page's fetish photos and films] would never have any men in the photos because he worried that that would look too much like pornography and he would get in trouble. So it's kind of an accident, but they all have a very strong girl-on-girl subtext," she explains with an affectionate laugh.

Although shot on a tight schedule and even tighter budget, The Notorious Bettie Page surrounds Mol with a stellar constellation of supporting actors. Lily

Taylor, who starred as would-be assassin Valerie Solanas in Harron's I Shot Andy Warhol, plays Irving Klaw's wife, Paula, with a cigarette dangling from her mouth and a hilariously thick New York accent. Many of the film's smaller roles are played by such widely respected talent as David Strathairn, John Cullum, Austin Pendleton, and Jefferson Mays, Tony-winner for I Am My Own Wife. "It's wonderful!" Mol enthuses about the revolving door of amazing talent that came on the set. "And it's what you dream about when you first take on this idea of being an actor. It makes everyone's work easier and it makes everyone's work better. I just love how Mary cast this film."

"I'm always astonished in New York what great actors will come in for relatively small roles," Harron adds. "If you're shooting in New York, there are always actors who are doing theater, so for them, they're in New York anyway. And people can come in and do a couple of scenes because it kind of fits in with their world."

Among the New York stage actors populating the world of Bettie Page is Sarah Paulson, who plays Bunny Yeager, the photographer who took some of the most iconic images of Bettie in the Florida sunshine with wild animals. Paulson turned heads last spring when her girlfriend, Broadway vet Cherry Jones, thanked her in her Tony Award acceptance speech. "I just love Sarah Paulson!" Mol shares. "She's just amazing and so much fun on set. We were in Miami, and being on location with people is always really fun because you don't go home. You're kind of stuck, and end up knowing people even more. We just had such a great time. She has that kind of quality where, without even trying, she's funny. I find her to be very funny and I think she's such a great actress."

The film is artfully designed, and Harron shot most of it in black and white, using bright, saturated color only when Bettie goes to Florida for outdoor photo shoots. "From almost the first time I wrote it down, it was black and white," the director recalls. "It was years! Because the reputation was that you can't finance a film made in black and white. I'm sure George Clooney had the same response when he tried to get his film done," she says, laughing at the irony of the success of Good Night, and Good Luck. "After the film was made, I realized it would have seemed almost like pornography if you had shot it in color. That it needed the distance that black and white gave it. Also, it wasn't just a film about her, it's a film about the past, it's a film about a particular era in time and it was very important for the film to signal that era from the very first moment."

Page lives anonymously these days, refusing public appearances and allowing her photos from 50 years ago to speak for her. But her legacy endures. "The lack of shame that she had about posing naked was inspiring to me," Mol says with genuine modesty. "And I think that's why her image is still so revered today. Because she gave permission for people to have and embrace their sexuality and sensuality."