Pint sized spy Michelle Trachtenberg

Going on 11, brings kids book series heroine Harriet to screen life by Rita Zekas

From Toronto Star - July 5th, 1996

ISPY with my little eye was a game we played as kids.

But Harriet The Spy, lead character of the charming movie opening Wednesday, took it much further. To the ends of her neighborhood.

Harriet M. Welsch is an enterprising and agile 10- year-old who skulks around the neighborhood armed with a spy kit and caboodle - giant magnifying glass, sneakers, oversized slicker - hanging from drainpipes to peer at her family, friends and neighbors and record her observations in her secret spy notebook.

She wants to be a writer. Nothing escapes her scrutiny, no matter how trivial or candid, which ultimately causes a blow-up among her friends and fellow six graders.

Her trusted confidante and ally, her nanny, Golly, has left abruptly and cannot counsel her. Harriet gets busted. Her parents make her surrender her sacred notebook.

She's the spy who came in from the scold.

Director Bronwen Hughes handpicked Michelle Trachtenberg to play Harriet over thousands of hopefuls.

Trachtenberg is a Grade 5 honor student in Brooklyn, New York. She gives her age as "11'ish. I'm 11 on October 11."

She's been acting since she was 3 years old. Everyone told her mother, Lana, a former actress turned puppeteer, how cute her daughter was, how she should be in movies. So she took her to an agent and before you can say kootchie koo, she'd bagged her first commercial.

"It was for Wisk and I was a daughter who had to throw fake cranberry juice on my father," Trachtenberg says over her home phone

She's made another 99 commercials since. She also plays autistic Lily Montgomery on All My Children.

The movie is based on Louise Fitzhugh's best-selling books. Trachtenberg had read the Harriet books and loved them. In fact, she surmises that she got the role because she relates so much to Harriet.

"One: we both dress alike - baggy jeans, shorts. Two: we both love tomato sandwiches. Three: we both like to read and to write. I have a diary and write in bed, I write stories like Harriet did. I'd like to be a writer if I'm not successful as an actress. I'd like to write and direct and star in movies.

"But we're different in our own sort of ways. Harriet is very into spying. I used to spy on my neighbors and friends but I didn't have all her gadgets - I only had notebooks and my mom's opera glasses. And Harriet never had a great bond between her mother and father because they're at parties all the time. I don't have a Golly, my mommy is my Golly."

One of the highlights of the film for Trachtenberg was acting with Rosie O'Donnell, who plays Golly. A kid fave, O'Donnell was winner of the 1995 Kids Choice Award, receiving 26 million votes from Nickelodeon viewers. The film is the first collaboration between Nickelodeon and Paramount Pictures.

"I saw her in Flintstones (as Betty Rubble) and was very happy when I heard she was playing Golly, she was one of my favorite actresses. The best part is that we formed a special bond and it showed in our scenes together."

And Trachtenberg "kind of" knew Eartha Kitt, who plays Agatha K. Plummer, a flamboyant and eccentric neighbor on her spy route.

"She was Cat Woman on Batman. I love cats. I have one named Casey. When I did Adventures Of Pete & Pete (a Nickelodeon series) the guest star was Adam West. Now I've met both Batman and Cat Woman."

Toronto native Hughes is making her feature directorial debut with Harriet. She's directed award-winning commercials; music videos for such stars as Aaron Neville and Amy Grant; a CTV doc on Elvis Stojko; and film shorts for Kids In The Hall that made their way down to Los Angeles and got her a power agent and film offers.

She is 32, has no kids. She scoffs at the old adage: don't work with kids or animals. She did both. There is one character, played by Don Francks, who has cats in the double digits and Kitt's character had a yappy fur thingee.

"I had no problems with the kids at all," she insists, over the phone from Los Angeles where she was doing post production. "People who say that pick the wrong kids. Our kids were completely into the moment, they don't carry any kind of baggage, they'll try anything. It was a joy, they are not vain or worried if they look goofy. They go for it.

"The casting agent knew of Michelle and we saw her the first day. I loved her right away but the reasoning was, if we found her the first day, what would we find on day 40?"

Hughes had never read the books.

"My parents are British, I read Enid Blyton, a British children's writer. But I connected to the girl and the script, it spoke to me. I knew it was liberating, they were timeless kid traumas I could relate to."

That said, she still did some tinkering.

"We gave it edge," she explains, "it was written in '64 and Harriet had a prim and proper relationship with adults. Kids are more savvy and opinionated today and we had to be sure kids would find her cool."

Good Golly Miss Rosie also needed a makeover.

"She's different than the book's nanny, she needed to evolve, speak to contemporary kids. In the book, the nanny is more strict and formal. Rosie brings that contemporary, necessary humor and street smarts infused with wisdom. Rosie said, `I don't want to do anything that's not kid positive and I only want to do female positive projects.' "

The book is set in Manhattan but the film was shot in Toronto because the Manhattan cost would be prohibitive. It's Anytown, U.S.A. and the wonderful Welsch house is only an allusion.

"The exterior was on Roxborough and we built the house in a grungy warehouse in Etobicoke right in the flight path of the airport."

Hughes grew up in Toronto, in the 'burbs of Scarborough and West Hill.

"I was Harriet The Spy," she recalls . "It was like a personal epiphany. I think people who have a creative streak are always wondering if they're weird or different or should fit in more. People with a creative pull do things that may not necessarily slide into the mainstream, they question why am I not running with the `In' crowd. That's what Harriet is doing, she wants to be a writer but she wants to fit in.

"I was definitely an outsider, I was a gymnast and it was go straight to the gym, then go home. I had no outside activities, I was the last person to be invited to the prom. I hung out with a few people who were also eccentric, and an eccentric who was a science geek (not unlike Harriet's pal, Janie)."

She says she came late to the cinematic trough.

"I was not a movie buff, I took black and white photos for myself. When it came time to pick a university, I almost went to Carleton for journalism but it was minus 40 out so obviously I couldn't go there. I visited the York (University) film department and that's where film put its hooks in me. I started going to the rep theatre seven nights a week, twice a day with my best friend, Luke."

As for Hughes' next project, she's mulling over offers.

And going to movies.