Todd Haynes
Todd Haynes is an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. His films span four decades with themes examining the personalities of well-known musicians, dysfunctional and dystopian societies, and lesbian-centric roles.
Haynes first gained public attention with his controversial short film Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, which chronicles singer Karen Carpenter's life and death using Barbie dolls as actors. Superstar became a cult classic. His feature directorial debut, Poison, a provocative exploration of AIDS-era perceptions and subversions, established him as a figure of a new transgressive cinema. Poison won the Sundance Film Festival's Grand Jury Prize.
Haynes received further acclaim for his second feature film, Safe, a symbolic portrait of a housewife who develops multiple chemical sensitivity. Safe was later voted the best film of the 1990s by The Village Voice Film Poll. His next feature, Velvet Goldmine, is a tribute to the 1970s glam rock era. The film received the Special Jury Prize for Best Artistic Contribution at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival.
Haynes gained acclaim and a measure of mainstream success with Far from Heaven, receiving his first Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay. He continued to direct critically lauded films such as I'm Not There, Carol, Wonderstruck, Dark Waters, and May December, as well as the documentary film The Velvet Underground. Haynes also directed and co-wrote the HBO mini-series Mildred Pierce, for which he received three Primetime Emmy Award nominations.
Early life and education
Haynes was born January 2, 1961, in Los Angeles, and grew up in the city's Encino neighborhood. His father, Allen E. Haynes, was a cosmetics importer, and his mother, Sherry Lynne, studied acting. Haynes is Jewish on his mother's side. His younger sister is Gwynneth Haynes of the band Sophe Lux.Haynes developed an interest in film at an early age, and produced a short film, The Suicide, while still in high school. He studied art and semiotics at Brown University, where he directed his first short film Assassins: A Film Concerning Rimbaud, inspired by the French poet Arthur Rimbaud. At Brown, he met Christine Vachon, who would go on to produce all of his feature films. After graduating from Brown, Haynes moved to New York City and became involved in the independent film scene, launching Apparatus Productions, a non-profit organization for the support of independent film.
According to Cinematic/Sexual: An Interview with Todd Haynes, in response to whether his academic background affected his film-making practice, Haynes stated that his high school teacher taught him a valuable lesson: "Reality can't be a criterion for judging the success or failure of a film, or its effect on you. It was a simple, but eye-opening, way of approaching film."
Career
1987–1993: Early work and feature debut
In 1987, while an MFA student at Bard College, Haynes made a short, Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, which chronicles the life of American pop singer Karen Carpenter, using Barbie dolls as actors. The film presents Carpenter's struggle with anorexia and bulimia, featuring several close-ups of Ipecac. Carpenter's chronic weight loss was portrayed by using a "Karen" Barbie doll with the face and body whittled away with a knife, leaving the doll looking skeletonized.Superstar featured extensive use of Carpenter songs, showcasing Haynes's love of popular music. Haynes failed to obtain proper licensing to use the music, prompting a lawsuit from Karen's brother Richard for copyright infringement. Carpenter was reportedly also offended by Haynes's unflattering portrayal of him as a narcissistic bully, along with several broadly dropped suggestions that he was gay and in the closet. Carpenter won his lawsuit, and Superstar was removed from public distribution; to date, it may not be viewed publicly. Bootlegged versions of the film are still circulated, and the film is sporadically made available on YouTube.
Haynes's 1991 feature film debut, Poison, garnered him further acclaim and controversy. Drawing on the writings of gay writer Jean Genet, the film is a triptych of queer-themed narratives, each adopting a different cinematic genre: vox-pop documentary, 50s sci-fi horror and gay prisoner romantic drama. The film explores traditional perceptions of homosexuality as an unnatural and deviant force, and presents Genet's vision of sado-masochistic gay relations as a subversion of heterosexual norms, culminating with a marriage ceremony between two gay male convicts. Poison marked Haynes's first collaboration with his longtime producer Christine Vachon.
Poison was partially funded with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, "at a time when the agency was under attack from conservative groups for using public funds to support sexually explicit works". This, along with the film's sexual themes, was a source of controversy. The film subsequently became the center of a public attack by Reverend Donald Wildmon, head of the American Family Association, who criticized the NEA for funding Poison and other works by gay and lesbian artists and filmmakers. Wildmon, who had not viewed the film before making his comments publicly, condemned the film's "explicit porno scenes of homosexuals involved in anal sex", despite no such scenes appearing in the film. Poison went on to win the 1991 Sundance Film Festival's Grand Jury Prize, establishing Haynes as an emerging talent and the voice of a new transgressive generation. The film writer B. Ruby Rich cited Poison as one of the defining films of the emerging New Queer Cinema movement, with its focus on maverick sexuality as an anti-establishment social force.
Haynes's next short film, Dottie Gets Spanked, explored the experiences of a quiet and gentle six-year-old boy in the early 1960s who has various indirect encounters with spanking, most significantly involving his idol, a TV sitcom star named Dottie. The film was aired on PBS.
1995–1998: Rise to prominence
Haynes's second feature film, Safe, was a critically acclaimed portrait of Carol White, a San Fernando Valley housewife who develops violent allergies to her middle-class suburban existence. After a series of extreme allergic reactions and hospitalization, Carol diagnoses herself with acute environmental illness, and moves to a New Age commune in the New Mexico desert run by an HIV positive "guru" who preaches both that the real world is toxic and unsafe for Carol, and that she is responsible for her illness and recovery. The film ends with Carol retreating to her antiseptic, prison-like "safe room", looking at herself in the mirror and whispering "I love you" to her reflection.The film is notable for its critical treatment of its main character. Julie Grossman argues in her article "The Trouble With Carol" that Haynes concludes the film as a challenge to traditional Hollywood film narratives of the heroine taking charge of her life, and that Haynes sets Carol up as the victim both of a repressive male-dominated society, and also of an equally debilitating self-help culture that encourages patients to take sole responsibility for their illness and recovery. Carol's illness, although unidentified, has been read as an analogy for the AIDS crisis of the mid-1980s, as a similarly uncomfortable and largely unspoken "threat" in 1980s Reaganist America. Safe was critically acclaimed, giving Moore her first leading role in a feature film, and gave Haynes a measure of mainstream critical recognition. It was voted the best film of the 1990s by the Village Voice's Critic Poll. The film historian David Thomson later described it as "one of the most arresting, original and accomplished films of the 1990s".
Haynes took a radical shift in direction for his next feature, Velvet Goldmine, starring Christian Bale, Ewan McGregor, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and Toni Collette. The film's title takes its name from David Bowie's song "Velvet Goldmine". Filmed and set mostly in England, the film was an intentionally chaotic tribute to the 1970s glam rock era, drawing heavily on the rock histories and mythologies of glam rockers David Bowie, Iggy Pop and Lou Reed. Starting with Oscar Wilde as the spiritual godfather of glam rock, the film revels in the gender and identity experimentation and fashionable bisexuality of the era, and acknowledges the transformative power of glam rock as an escape and a form of self-expression for gay teenagers.
The film follows the character of Arthur an English journalist once enraptured by glam rock as a 1970s teenager, who returns a decade later to hunt down his former heroes: Brian Slade, a feather boa-wearing androgyne with an alter ego, "Maxwell Demon", who resembles Bowie in his Ziggy Stardust incarnation, and Curt Wild, an Iggy Pop-style rocker. The narrative playfully rewrites glam rock myths which in some cases sail close to the truth. Slade flirts with bisexuality and decadence before staging his own death in a live performance and disappearing from the scene, echoing Bowie's own disavowal of glam rock in the late 1970s and his subsequent re-creation as an avowedly heterosexual pop star. The film features a love affair between Slade and Wild's characters, recalling rumors about Bowie and Reed's supposed sexual relationship. Curt Wild's character has a flashback to enforced electric shock treatment as a teenager to attempt to cure his homosexuality, echoing Reed's teenage experiences as a victim of the homophobic medical profession.
Haynes was keen to use original music from the glam rock period, and approached David Bowie before making the film for permission to use his music in the soundtrack. Bowie declined, leaving Haynes to use a combination of original songs from other artists, such as Brian Eno and Roxy Music, and glam-rock inspired music written by contemporary rock bands for the film, including Shudder to Think. Velvet Goldmine premiered in main competition at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival, winning a special jury award for Best Artistic Contribution. Despite the initial critical praise, the film received mixed reviews from critics. Costume designer Sandy Powell received an Academy Award nomination for her costume design and won the Oscar in the same year for her work on Shakespeare In Love.