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Harriet the Spy
Promotional poster
Directed by	Bronwen Hughes
Produced by	Marykay Powell
Written by	Screenplay Doug Petrie Theresa Rebeck Adaptation Greg Taylor Julie Talen Novel Louise Fitzhugh
Starring	Michelle Trachtenberg Gregory Smith Rosie O'Donnell
Music by	Jamshied Sharifi
Cinematography	Francis Kenny
Editing by	Debra Chiate
Studio	Nickelodeon Movies Rastar
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date(s)	United States July 10, 1996 United Kingdom February 21, 1997
Running time	102 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$13 million
Gross revenue	$26,570,048 (domestic)

Harriet the Spy is a 1996 comedy-drama and mystery film adaptation of the 1964 novel of the same name, drawn and written by Louise Fitzhugh, and starring Michelle Trachtenberg as the title character.

This film was produced by Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies, and originally released in movie theaters in July 1996.^[1] This was the first Nickelodeon Movie. In theaters, the pilot episode of Hey Arnold! was shown before the film.

The film was shot in the Florida cities of Fort Lauderdale and Miami, plus Toronto, Canada.

Plot

Harriet M. Welsch is an outgoing 11-year-old girl aspiring to be a writer and a spy. Living a privileged life on the Upper East Side, as practice for her future career she observes others carefully and writes everything she thinks in a notebook.

One day during a game of tag, Harriet loses her notebook and is mortified when her friends find it and Marion proceeds to read all of Harriet's secret thoughts to everyone. The children find some of what she wrote hurtful, and the class forms the Spy Catcher Club. The club meets regularly to think up ways to make Harriet's life miserable, including stealing her lunch and spilling paint all over her during art class.

Out of utter frustration and envy, Harriet drops a note in the Hennesseys' mailbox for Rachel's mother. It states, "All those kids hate Rachel. They just want your cake. Furthermore they will clutter up the backyard and also they constitute a nuisance." The Hennesseys find it and Rachel later announces to the Spy Catcher Club that a crank note was dropped in her mailbox. She summarizes what the note said, and to Harriet's amusement, Pinky Whitehead states, "Well, it's very good cake."

Hurt and lonely, Harriet resorts to childish tantrums and resolves to get back at her former friends by thinking up a special punishment for each one. She gets into trouble when she carries out some of her plans, including cutting off a chunk of Laura's hair. When that fails, Harriet tries to resume her friendship with Sport and Janie as if nothing ever happened, but they both reject her. Spending all her time in class writing in her notebook causes her grades to suffer, and Harriet's parents confiscate her notebook and take her to a psychologist.

Harriet's parents speak with her teacher and the headmistress, and Harriet is appointed editor of the class newspaper. The newspaper becomes an instant success and after some time as the editor, Harriet makes amends to her former friends, offering a printed retraction and saying that the statements in her notebook were unfair statements. Sport and Janie forgive her, and all is well again.

Cast

• Michelle Trachtenberg as Harriet "the Spy" Welsch
• Charlotte Sullivan as Marion Hawthorne
• Gregory Smith as Simon "Sport" Rocque
• Vanessa Lee Chester as Jane "Janie" Gibbs
• Rosie O'Donnell as Ole Golly
• J. Smith-Cameron as Mrs. Welsch
• Robert Joy as Mr. Welsch
• Teisha Kim as Rachel Hennessy
• Cecilley Caroll as Beth Ellen Hansen
• Dov Tiefenbach as Boy with Purple Socks
• Nina Shock as Carrie Andrews
• Connor Devitt as Pinky Whitehead
• Alisha Morrison as Laura Peters
• Nancy Beatty as Miss Elson
• Eartha Kitt as Agatha K. Plummer
• James Gilfillan as Archie Simmons
• Gerry Quigley as Sport's Dad
• Jackie Richardson as Janie's Mother
• Roger Clown as Dr. Wagner

Soundtrack

The original motion picture soundtrack for Harriet the Spy was released on CD and audio cassette on July 23, 1996, 13 days after the film's theatrical release and Jamshied Sharifi is the composer for the movie.

1. "Harriet the Spy" (Jamshied Sharifi)
2. "Trash Tower" (Jamshied Sharifi)
3. "Wack Wack" (Young-Holt Unlimited)
4. "Sous Le Soleil De Bodega" (Les Negresses Vertes)
5. "Harriet Runs" (Jamshied Sharifi)
6. "Golly Leaves" (Jamshied Sharifi)
7. "Sad Harriet/No Cats" (Jamshied Sharifi)
8. "Agatha Exterior" (Jamshied Sharifi)
9. "Agatha Interior" (Jamshied Sharifi)
10. "Uska Dura" (Eartha Kitt)
11. "Arrollando" (Jamshied Sharifi)
12. "Reading The Notebook" (Jamshied Sharifi)
13. "Harriet Confronts Marion" (Jamshied Sharifi)
14. "Crate With Legs" (Jamshied Sharifi)
15. "Evil Harriet" (Jamshied Sharifi)
16. "Her Own World" (Jamshied Sharifi)
17. "Class Vote" (Jamshied Sharifi)
18. "Get Up Offa That Thing" (James Brown)
19. "Coyote Mambo" (Jamshied Sharifi)
20. "Cruisin" (Jamshied Sharifi)
21. "The Secretive Life" (Jill Sobule)

The songs "Ran Kan Kan" by (Tito Puente) and "Straitjackets" by (Los Straitjackets) are absent from the soundtrack.

Differences between film and book

• Among the episodes in the novel cut from the film version was Ole Golly taking Harriet and Sport to meet her reclusive (and presumably mentally ill) mother in Chapter One, and a brief subplot about Harriet and Janie rebelling against their mothers' decisions to send them to dance school to make them more "ladylike".
• In the book, Ole Golly leaves the Welsch household to marry Mr. Waldenstein and move to Montreal. In the film, Ole Golly merely decides it is time to move on, and for Harriet to be more independent. Later in the film, Ole Golly returns for a visit to talk to Harriet about white lies and apologies, rather than writing to her.
• A subplot was added to the film, involving the use of pen ink "foot tattoos" as a symbol of Harriet, Sport and Janie's friendship. When Harriet lost her friends, she was later seen furiously erasing her foot tattoo. When she regained them later in the film, they were seen exchanging foot tattoos again.
• Little Joe Curry, the deliveryman for the Dei Santis' grocery on Harriet's spy route, disappeared from the film version, but his trademark personality traits were given to Ole Golly's beau, Mr. Waldenstein. In the film, Mr. Waldenstein is a delivery boy for the Hong Fat food emporium and passes food through a window to a group of hungry children.
• The film is more racially diverse. Rachel, a white character originally (drawn in the book as having dark hair and freckles and wearing glasses), being portrayed as Asian, and Janie being played by an African American actress, Vanessa Lee Chester; in the book, Janie was a Caucasian girl with blonde hair and freckles.
• In the book, the immigrant family on Harriet's spy route, the Dei Santis, are Italian American. In the film, the family is Chinese American, and the family name is changed from Dei Santi to Hong Fat.

Box office and release

The film was released in US theaters on July 10, 1996, and the film grossed $6,601,651 on its opening weekend, averaging about $3,615 per each of the 1,826 screens it was shown on.^[2] The film went on to gross a total of $26,570,048 by November 10, 1996, and was considered a box office success, earning back double its $13,000,000 budget.

Remake

On November 7 2009, it was revealed that the Disney Channel are to remake the film for television and is due to premiere in 2010. Jennifer Stone from Wizards Of Waverly Place has been cast as the lead character, Melinda Shankar and Aislinn Paul from Degrassi: The Next Generation, Vanessa Morgan from The Latest Buzz and Alexander Conti from Cheaper by the Dozen 2 alongside Stone. The remake is currently in post-production. It was filmed in Hamilton and Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

References

External links

• Harriet the Spy at the Internet Movie Database