Today, we’d like to introduce you to Roberta Hanley.
Thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
By the time I got to college, I had lived more outside us than inside – and I used to worship America as a foreigner looking in from afar, so for me, America was so free and fun – I think Putin always thought we were the most entertaining fun loving and I do agree – America is a blast! So, I became a writer by writing stories about my life in my letters to my grandparents in America. They loved the letters from Hong Kong and Tokyo, Rio and Geneva, and London.
With all that foreign travel in politically different countries with different cultures and tribes – I think I could write a script knowing the way people lived and seeing the unique, different paths of life and people. I always liked blending in and being invisible so that I could see out of myself and observe and learn. I was put ahead four years, so I was always behind, catching up and then surpassing – getting to college around my 16th birthday. I was so thrilled to go to America for college, and I just missed my own country, I guess. So, I returned with some twisted accent from London, and I became an American girl, and that was around when I met Chris.
I felt I wanted to do so much, and I was bursting with energy. Chris and I met when I was 17. He seems to understand me, and we both seem to forgive things for us both to do to be sometimes the first in a field or groundbreaking ideas. Chris and I made movies about the people we believed in and with books by the novelists I worshipped always – so we could connect with Amis, Brett Ellis, Laura Restrepo, A.M. Homes, JT Leroy, Iceberg Slim, Tennessee Williams, Jeff Noon, and the images of the types of characters we wanted to expose. I assume it was deflecting attention away from myself.
I studied literature and went to theatre and museums constantly, and I wanted to communicate in films. Architecture came later – design being easy for me as I had seen so much growing up – having taste was second sense and something I have gotten a lot of attention for. My parents gave me style, I guess. They were stunning and had a beautiful time in love together, and then they died.
As much as I have been in the spotlight for writing and producing movies, 38 films, I notice that now I just have so much attention for the invisible house. And that got me thinking during the pandemic when I moved out to Joshua Tree for three years. It got me thinking about how can it all come full circle and all of it explodes in my mind I think I want to just include architecture – untouched land, – and films – with all the directors and actors and how can I have plans to illuminate the Invisible House in films? And now we have it – “The Invisible House” film is next – and it has to be sci-fi!
It has to be – so, we have one film written by an AI and generated by an AI, and we plan to give that to the audiences! It’s amazing turning back towards films and storytelling in this world and the meta world and how it all connects to what I want to say – and leave in my name.
So, the sojourn into the desert and the rocks of Joshua’s lands will come full circle, and I will make sense of it all and connect everything to everyone – something I like to do. Inspire everyone with everyone- expose everything – know everything there is to know and the hard one – remember it and pass it on – love and leave.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story. Has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what challenges have you had to overcome?
I think because I wasn’t from a show biz family, I had no idea what to do to get into movie making and meeting film and literary people – after college at age 20, when I got out, I didn’t know one person who had ever made a film! Now, 38 films later, I just plan to make another 38 more – and to never stop. I relate to the young audience. That’s the key to my success. I never plan to grow up.
The biggest setback was for us to survive London Fields, a film based on the novel by Martín Amis – but it’s stars, Amber Heard and Johnny Depp, were in deep trouble with each other, and the film was just something they could fight over – so we never really got the movie finished and released even though it was shot – and mixed – it was one of our best – right up there with American psycho – I would love everyone to see it!
I think seeing us dragged through the court case on TV was surreal – “Destroy the Film!” was one disturbing quote on TV. In my view, they were in a dirtbag white trash-style love and are probably still in love – it’s just nothing like the love I know or would ever want!
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe you can tell us more about your work next?
I am most proud of my screenwriting and casting – I was most proud of cracking the difficult code I discovered the DNA to American Psycho and writing it off that shocking book. I knew the book so well that I found a difference between the English print of the novel and the American publisher’s print.
The English version had omitted one line when all the American psychos went to a U2 concert in a limo in New Jersey. Above Bono’s head on stage in lights were the words “I AM THE DEVIL.” I guess that’s what Pat Bateman saw, at least. I told Brett, but he didn’t know. I spent many years writing it. And Mary Herron spent two weeks polishing it and then stole my credit.
I didn’t know anything about filing with the WGA once the film was edited – it was my first adaptation, really, and I didn’t know how the credits worked.
Have you learned any interesting or important lessons due to the COVID-19 crisis?
I think everyone got lonely and learned self-reliance – and sorrow. I wrote screenplays on AI and studied it completely went down the rabbit hole – started my science fiction writing!
We just went to Joshua tree what I call wilderness – and we stayed busy and invented something creating what we never expected to – building the Invisible House and because we didn’t want to make a film and suffer it – we applied the same logic we applied to filmmaking to our now famous and respected architectural house. We broke every rule. Did uncompromising work. Didn’t listen to anyone who wanted us to quit.
I didn’t know the real estate business that much either, and in a short while, the Invisible House became the most famous house in the world, with 4.5 billion people seeing it – even a tribesman in the Maasai mara in Kenya with a Speer in his hand looked at my iPhone and saw the house and said I know that house?!
I think the difference is that the view out to nature is unrelenting, without one wall blocking a view of the national park and our untouched land. Nature is changing, animals are migrating, and life is going forward on multiple levels.
Pricing:
- 3,000-3500$ for a stay and 1,000$ per hour for a shoot or commercial.
Contact Info:
- Website: Invisible.house
- Instagram: @Theinvisiblehouse
Image Credits
Roberta Hanley and Chris Hanley
