Todd Haynes
Encyclopedia
Todd Haynes is an American independent film
director and screenwriter. He is best known for his feature films Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story
, Poison
, Velvet Goldmine
, Safe, and the Academy Award-nominated Far from Heaven
and I'm Not There
.
movement and its work to both explore and redefine the contours of queer culture in America and beyond."
Haynes’ work is preoccupied with postmodernist ideas of identity and sexuality as socially constructed concepts, and personal identity as a fluid and changeable state. His protagonists are invariably social outsiders whose "subversive" identity and sexuality pits them at odds with the received norms of their society. In the Haynes universe, sexuality (especially “deviant” or unconventional sexuality) is a subversive and dangerous force that disrupts social norms and is often repressed brutally by dominant power structures. Haynes presents artists as the ultimate subversive force, since they must necessarily stand outside of societal norms, with an artist's creative output representing the greatest opportunity for personal and social freedom. Unsurprisingly, many of his films are unconventional portraits of pop artists and musicians (Karen Carpenter
in Superstar, David Bowie
in Velvet Goldmine and Bob Dylan
in I’m Not There).
Haynes's films often feature formal cinematic or narrative devices that challenge received notions of identity and sexuality and remind the audience of the artificiality of film as a medium. Examples include using Barbie dolls instead of actors in Superstar, or having multiple actors portray the protagonist in I'm Not There. Stylistically, Haynes favors formalism over naturalism, often appropriating and reinventing cinematic styles, including the documentary form in Poison, Velvet Goldmine and I'm Not There, the reinvention of the Douglas Sirk melodrama in Far From Heaven and extensive referencing of 1960s art cinema in I'm Not There.
Haynes was born January 2, 1961, in Los Angeles
, and grew up in nearby Encino. His father Allen E. Haynes was a cosmetics importer, and his mother Sherry Lynne (née Semler) studied acting (and makes a brief appearance in I'm Not There).
Haynes is openly gay. He currently lives in Portland
, Oregon
.
at Brown University
, where he directed his first short film Assassins: A Film Concerning Rimbaud (1985), inspired by the openly gay French poet Arthur Rimbaud
(a personality Haynes would later reference in his film I'm Not There). After graduating with a BA in Arts and Semiotics, Haynes moved to New York
and became involved in the independent film scene, launching Apparatus Productions, a non-profit organisation for the support of independent film.
, 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 (the prescription drug Carpenter was reputed to have used to make herself vomit during her illness). 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. The film is also notable for staged dream sequences in which Karen, in a state of deteriorating mental health, imagines being spanked by her father.
Superstar featured extensive use of Carpenter songs, showcasing Haynes' love of popular music (which would be a recurring feature of later films). 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' 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
.
, 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 love story. The film explores traditional perceptions of homosexuality
as an unnatural and deviant social force, and presents Genet's vision of sado-masochistic gay love as a subversion of heterosexual norms, culminating with a marriage ceremony between two gay male convicts. Poison marked Haynes' first collaboration with producer Christine Vachon
, who has since produced all of Haynes' feature films.
Poison was partially funded with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts
. The film subsequently became the center of a public attack by Reverend Donald Wildmon, head of the neo-conservative 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.
, who has become a frequent Haynes collaborator) 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 also 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 (though not entirely unsympathetic) treatment of its main character. Haynes observes Carol coolly through a series of static deep-focus shots, placing her as an invisible woman who appears anesthetized in her materially comfortable but sterile and emotionally empty life.
The ending of the film is highly ambiguous, and has created considerable debate among critics and audiences as to whether Carol has emancipated herself, or simply traded one form of oppression (as a housewife) for an equally constricting identity as a reclusive invalid. 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 widely critically acclaimed, giving Moore her first (and much-admired) leading role in a feature film, and gave Haynes a measure of mainstream critical recognition.
(1998), starring Christian Bale
, Ewan McGregor
, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers
and Toni Collette
. 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 (Bale) 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 (Rhys Meyers), a feather boa-wearing androgyne with an alter ego, "Maxwell Demon", who resembles Bowie in his Ziggy Stardust incarnation, and Curt Wild (McGregor), an Iggy Pop-style rocker. The narrative playfully rewrites glam rock myths which in some cases sail unnervingly 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 (no doubt learning his lesson from Superstar) 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 and glam-rock inspired music written by contemporary rock bands for the film, including Suede
. Velvet Goldmine premiered in main competition at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival
, winning a special jury award for Best Artistic Contribution. Despite initial critical praise and fearless performances from its leads (notably Rhys-Meyers and McGregor, who performed all their musical numbers), the film received mixed reviews from critics and audiences. 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
.
about a Connecticut housewife Cathy Whittaker (Julianne Moore) who discovers that her husband (Dennis Quaid) is secretly gay, and subsequently falls in love with Raymond, her African-American gardener (Dennis Haysbert). The film works as a mostly reverential and unironic tribute to Sirk's filmmaking, lovingly re-creating the stylized mise-en-scene, colors, costumes, cinematography and lighting of Sirkian melodrama. Cathy and Raymond's relationship resembles Jane Wyman
and Rock Hudson
's inter-class love affair in All That Heaven Allows
, and Cathy's relationship with Sybil, her African-American housekeeper (Viola Davis) recalls Lana Turner
and Juanita Moore
's friendship in Imitation of Life
. While staying within the cinematic language of the period, Haynes updates the sexual and racial politics, showing scenarios (an inter-racial love affair and gay relationships) that would not have been permissible in Sirk's era. Haynes also resists a Sirkian happy ending, allowing the film to finish on a melancholy note closer in tone to the "weepy" melodramas of 1940s and 1950s cinema such as Mildred Pierce
.
Far From Heaven won widespread critical acclaim and a slew of film awards, including four Academy Award nominations for Moore's lead performance, Haynes' original screenplay, Elmer Bernstein
's score, and the film's cinematography. Far From Heaven lost in all four categories, but the film's success was hailed as a breakthrough for independent film achieving mainstream recognition, and brought Haynes to the attention of a wider mainstream audience.
, Cate Blanchett
, Marcus Carl Franklin
, Heath Ledger
, Ben Whishaw
and Christian Bale
. Haynes obtained Dylan's approval to proceed with the film, plus rights to use his music in the soundtrack, after presenting a 1-page summary of the film concept to Jeff Rosen
, Dylan's long-time manager.
Each character (none of whom is called Dylan) represents a different aspect of Dylan's life or musical career. Franklin, a teenaged African-American actor, plays a character called Woody, referencing Woody Guthrie
's influence on Dylan's early career, and making a playful visual joke on Dylan's early habit of passing himself off as a drifter from the Dustbowl Southern states and denying his own middle-class Mid-Western origins. Bale plays two roles: an earnest young folk musician involved in the civil rights movement in the early 1960s and dueting with folk singer Alice Fabian (Julianne Moore, impersonating Joan Baez
), and later as a middle-aged born again Christian in the early 1980s. Gere plays a reclusive character called Billy, retreating from the world in an American pastoral, referencing Dylan's interest in American folk mythology and his performance in Sam Peckinpah
's 1973 film Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid
; the sequence also alludes to Dylan's period of exile living in Woodstock in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Whishaw plays a character called Arthur, filmed undergoing an interrogation-style interview about the responsibility of the artist to society; the character is named for and heavily based on the French poet Arthur Rimbaud
, whose work Dylan admired, and whose precocious career as a teenaged genius and rebel Dylan to some extent emulated. Ledger plays Robbie, a Method Actor
involved in a relationship with a painter, Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg
), with whom he has children and subsequently divorces. Claire's character is based on Dylan's former girlfriend Suze Rotolo
and his wife, and the Robbie sequence considers accusations made against Dylan of his misogyny in his life and work. Blanchett plays Jude, a pop singer based closely on Dylan in his mid-1960s "Electric" era and his involvement with Pop Art
and Warhol's Factory
; Jude chases an on-again off-again relationship with socialite/model Coco Rivington (Michelle Williams), a character based on Edie Sedgwick
, with whom Dylan is reputed to have had an affair. The Jude sequence also features David Cross
as Beat poet Alan Ginsberg.
Haynes intended the film to reverse conventions of the film biopic genre, and to represent what he perceived as Dylan's chameleonic musical persona and his resistance to easy interpretation and categorization. The film narrative, dialogue, characters, scenes and visuals are drawn from and heavily influenced by details from Dylan's music, lyrics and personal history. Each storyline in the film is made in a different style, mostly referencing 1960s art cinema, notably Fellini's 8½
, Godard
's Masculine Feminine and Altman's McCabe and Mrs Miller. The film features extensive use of Dylan's music, including songs drawn from Dylan's bootleg recordings, and includes Dylan's original recordings as well as covers by Calexico (who appear in the film), Gainsbourg and other musicians. The beginning of the film features voiceover narration from singer/actor Kris Kristofferson
.
The film debuted at the 2007 Telluride International Film Festival and won widespread critical acclaim. Blanchett's performance received particular acclaim for her uncannily accurate impersonation of Dylan, and won a slew of awards and nominations, including the Volpi Cup
at the Venice Film Festival
, and an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress
.
Haynes has reported in interviews that the film I'm Not There
was praised by Rosen, one of Dylan's sons and others close to Dylan, but he was unaware as to whether Dylan himself had viewed the film.
based on the novel by James M. Cain
and the 1945 film starring Joan Crawford
. The cast starred Kate Winslet
in the title role and featured Guy Pearce
, Evan Rachel Wood
, Melissa Leo
, James LeGros
and Hope Davis
. Filming was completed in mid-2010 and the series began airing on HBO on 27 March 2011.
Independent film
An independent film, or indie film, is a professional film production resulting in a feature film that is produced mostly or completely outside of the major film studio system. In addition to being produced and distributed by independent entertainment companies, independent films are also produced...
director and screenwriter. He is best known for his feature films Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story
Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story
Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story is a 43 minute film about the life of Karen Carpenter. It was directed by Todd Haynes and released in 1987. It was withdrawn from circulation in 1990 after Haynes lost a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by Karen's brother and musical collaborator, Richard...
, Poison
Poison (film)
Poison is a 1991 independent film written and directed by Todd Haynes. It is composed of three intercut stories that are partially inspired by the novels of Jean Genet...
, Velvet Goldmine
Velvet Goldmine
Velvet Goldmine is a 1998 British/American drama film directed and co-written by Todd Haynes. The film tells the story of a pop star based mainly on David Bowie's 'Ziggy Stardust' character and is set in Britain during the days of glam rock in the early 1970s.Sandy Powell received another Academy...
, Safe, and the Academy Award-nominated Far from Heaven
Far from Heaven
Far from Heaven is a 2002 drama film written and directed by Todd Haynes and starring Julianne Moore, Dennis Quaid, Dennis Haysbert, and Patricia Clarkson....
and I'm Not There
I'm Not There
I'm Not There is a 2007 biographical musical film directed by Todd Haynes, inspired by iconic American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. Six actors depict different facets of Dylan's life and public persona: Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger, and Ben Whishaw...
.
Style and themes
The All Movie Guide writes that "Haynes is known for making provocative films that subvert narrative structure and resound with transgressive, complex eroticism…. Although he doesn't characterize himself as a gay filmmaker who makes gay films… Haynes' name has become synonymous with the New Queer CinemaNew Queer Cinema
New Queer Cinema is a term first coined by the academic B. Ruby Rich in Sight & Sound magazine in 1992 to define and describe a movement in queer-themed independent filmmaking in the early 1990s...
movement and its work to both explore and redefine the contours of queer culture in America and beyond."
Haynes’ work is preoccupied with postmodernist ideas of identity and sexuality as socially constructed concepts, and personal identity as a fluid and changeable state. His protagonists are invariably social outsiders whose "subversive" identity and sexuality pits them at odds with the received norms of their society. In the Haynes universe, sexuality (especially “deviant” or unconventional sexuality) is a subversive and dangerous force that disrupts social norms and is often repressed brutally by dominant power structures. Haynes presents artists as the ultimate subversive force, since they must necessarily stand outside of societal norms, with an artist's creative output representing the greatest opportunity for personal and social freedom. Unsurprisingly, many of his films are unconventional portraits of pop artists and musicians (Karen Carpenter
Karen Carpenter
Karen Anne Carpenter was an American singer and drummer. She and her brother, Richard, formed the 1970s duo The Carpenters. She was a drummer of exceptional skill, but she is best remembered for her vocal performances of idealistic romantic ballads of true love...
in Superstar, David Bowie
David Bowie
David Bowie is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for over four decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s...
in Velvet Goldmine and Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
in I’m Not There).
Haynes's films often feature formal cinematic or narrative devices that challenge received notions of identity and sexuality and remind the audience of the artificiality of film as a medium. Examples include using Barbie dolls instead of actors in Superstar, or having multiple actors portray the protagonist in I'm Not There. Stylistically, Haynes favors formalism over naturalism, often appropriating and reinventing cinematic styles, including the documentary form in Poison, Velvet Goldmine and I'm Not There, the reinvention of the Douglas Sirk melodrama in Far From Heaven and extensive referencing of 1960s art cinema in I'm Not There.
Personal life
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, and grew up in nearby Encino. His father Allen E. Haynes was a cosmetics importer, and his mother Sherry Lynne (née Semler) studied acting (and makes a brief appearance in I'm Not There).
Haynes is openly gay. He currently lives in Portland
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
, Oregon
Oregon
Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...
.
Early career
Haynes developed an interest in film at an early age, and produced a short film, The Suicide (1978), while still in high school. He studied semioticsSemiotics
Semiotics, also called semiotic studies or semiology, is the study of signs and sign processes , indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication...
at Brown University
Brown University
Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...
, where he directed his first short film Assassins: A Film Concerning Rimbaud (1985), inspired by the openly gay French poet Arthur Rimbaud
Arthur Rimbaud
Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud was a French poet. Born in Charleville, Ardennes, he produced his best known works while still in his late teens—Victor Hugo described him at the time as "an infant Shakespeare"—and he gave up creative writing altogether before the age of 21. As part of the decadent...
(a personality Haynes would later reference in his film I'm Not There). After graduating with a BA in Arts and Semiotics, Haynes moved to New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
and became involved in the independent film scene, launching Apparatus Productions, a non-profit organisation for the support of independent film.
Superstar
In 1987, while an MFA student at Bard CollegeBard College
Bard College, founded in 1860 as "St. Stephen's College", is a small four-year liberal arts college located in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.-Location:...
, 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 (the prescription drug Carpenter was reputed to have used to make herself vomit during her illness). 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. The film is also notable for staged dream sequences in which Karen, in a state of deteriorating mental health, imagines being spanked by her father.
Superstar featured extensive use of Carpenter songs, showcasing Haynes' love of popular music (which would be a recurring feature of later films). 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' 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
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
.
Poison
Haynes' 1991 feature film debut, Poison, garnered Haynes further acclaim and controversy. Drawing on the writings of "transgressive" gay writer Jean GenetJean Genet
Jean Genet was a prominent and controversial French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but later took to writing...
, the film is a triptych of queer
Queer
Queer is an umbrella term for sexual minorities that are not heterosexual, heteronormative, or gender-binary. In the context of Western identity politics the term also acts as a label setting queer-identifying people apart from discourse, ideologies, and lifestyles that typify mainstream LGBT ...
-themed narratives, each adopting a different cinematic genre: vox-pop documentary, 50s sci-fi horror and gay prisoner love story. The film explores traditional perceptions of homosexuality
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...
as an unnatural and deviant social force, and presents Genet's vision of sado-masochistic gay love as a subversion of heterosexual norms, culminating with a marriage ceremony between two gay male convicts. Poison marked Haynes' first collaboration with producer Christine Vachon
Christine Vachon
Christine Vachon is an American film producer active in the American independent film sector and daughter of noted photographer John Vachon....
, who has since produced all of Haynes' feature films.
Poison was partially funded with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts
National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
. The film subsequently became the center of a public attack by Reverend Donald Wildmon, head of the neo-conservative American Family Association
American Family Association
The American Family Association is a 501 non-profit organization that promotes conservative Christian values, such as opposition to same-sex marriage, pornography, and abortion, as well as other public policy goals such as deregulation of the oil industry and lobbying against the Employee Free...
, 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
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...
's Grand Jury Prize, establishing Haynes as an emerging talent and the voice of a new transgressive generation. The film writer B. Ruby Rich
B. Ruby Rich
B. Ruby Rich is an American scholar, critic of independent, Latin American, documentary and gay films, and a professor of Film & Digital Media and Social Documentation also known as "SocDoc" at UC Santa Cruz. She has also taught documentary film and queer studies during spring semesters at UC...
cited Poison as one of the defining films of the emerging New Queer Cinema
New Queer Cinema
New Queer Cinema is a term first coined by the academic B. Ruby Rich in Sight & Sound magazine in 1992 to define and describe a movement in queer-themed independent filmmaking in the early 1990s...
movement, with its focus on maverick sexuality as an anti-establishment social force.
Dottie Gets Spanked
Haynes' next short film, Dottie Gets Spanked (1993), revealed Haynes' playful obsession with spanking as a form of sado-masochistic sexual activity, and was aired on PBS.[Safe]
Haynes' second feature film, [Safe] (1995), was a critically acclaimed portrait of Carol White, a San Fernando Valley housewife (played by Julianne MooreJulianne Moore
Julianne Moore is an American actress and a children's book author. Throughout her career, she has been nominated for four Oscars, six Golden Globes, three BAFTAs and nine Screen Actors Guild Awards....
, who has become a frequent Haynes collaborator) 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
New Age
The New Age movement is a Western spiritual movement that developed in the second half of the 20th century. Its central precepts have been described as "drawing on both Eastern and Western spiritual and metaphysical traditions and then infusing them with influences from self-help and motivational...
commune in the New Mexico
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...
desert run by an HIV positive "guru" who preaches both that the real world is toxic and unsafe for Carol, and also 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 (though not entirely unsympathetic) treatment of its main character. Haynes observes Carol coolly through a series of static deep-focus shots, placing her as an invisible woman who appears anesthetized in her materially comfortable but sterile and emotionally empty life.
The ending of the film is highly ambiguous, and has created considerable debate among critics and audiences as to whether Carol has emancipated herself, or simply traded one form of oppression (as a housewife) for an equally constricting identity as a reclusive invalid. 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
Self-help
Self-help, or self-improvement, is a self-guided improvement—economically, intellectually, or emotionally—often with a substantial psychological basis. There are many different self-help movements and each has its own focus, techniques, associated beliefs, proponents and in some cases, leaders...
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
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
crisis of the mid-1980s, as a similarly uncomfortable and largely unspoken "threat" in 1980s Reaganist America.
[Safe] was widely critically acclaimed, giving Moore her first (and much-admired) leading role in a feature film, and gave Haynes a measure of mainstream critical recognition.
Velvet Goldmine
Haynes took a radical shift in direction for his next feature, Velvet GoldmineVelvet Goldmine
Velvet Goldmine is a 1998 British/American drama film directed and co-written by Todd Haynes. The film tells the story of a pop star based mainly on David Bowie's 'Ziggy Stardust' character and is set in Britain during the days of glam rock in the early 1970s.Sandy Powell received another Academy...
(1998), starring Christian Bale
Christian Bale
Christian Charles Philip Bale is an English actor. Best known for his roles in American films, Bale has starred in both big budget Hollywood films and the smaller projects from independent producers and art houses....
, Ewan McGregor
Ewan McGregor
Ewan Gordon McGregor is a Scottish actor. He has had success in mainstream, indie, and art house films. McGregor is perhaps best known for his roles as heroin addict Mark Renton in the drama Trainspotting , young Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars prequel trilogy , and poet Christian in the...
, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers
Jonathan Rhys-Meyers
Jonathan Rhys Meyers is an Irish actor and model.He is best known for his roles in the films Velvet Goldmine, Mission Impossible III, Bend It Like Beckham, Match Point and his television roles as Elvis Presley in the biographical miniseries Elvis, which earned him a Golden Globe for Best Actor,...
and Toni Collette
Toni Collette
Antonia "Toni" Collette is an Australian actress and musician, known for her acting work on stage, television and film as well as a secondary career as the lead singer of the band Toni Collette & the Finish....
. Filmed and set mostly in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, 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
David Bowie
David Bowie is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for over four decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s...
, Iggy Pop
Iggy Pop
Iggy Pop is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and actor. Though considered an innovator of punk rock, Pop's music has encompassed a number of styles over the years, including pop, metal, jazz and blues...
and Lou Reed
Lou Reed
Lewis Allan "Lou" Reed is an American rock musician, songwriter, and photographer. He is best known as guitarist, vocalist, and principal songwriter of The Velvet Underground, and for his successful solo career, which has spanned several decades...
. Starting with Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
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 (Bale) 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 (Rhys Meyers), a feather boa-wearing androgyne with an alter ego, "Maxwell Demon", who resembles Bowie in his Ziggy Stardust incarnation, and Curt Wild (McGregor), an Iggy Pop-style rocker. The narrative playfully rewrites glam rock myths which in some cases sail unnervingly 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 (no doubt learning his lesson from Superstar) 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 and glam-rock inspired music written by contemporary rock bands for the film, including Suede
Suede
Suede is a type of leather with a napped finish, commonly used for jackets, shoes, shirts, purses, furniture and other items. The term comes from the French "gants de Suède", which literally means "gloves of Sweden"....
. Velvet Goldmine premiered in main competition at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival
1998 Cannes Film Festival
The 51st Cannes Film Festival was held on May 13-24, 1998. The Palme d'Or went to the Greek film Mia aioniotita kai mia mera by Theo Angelopoulos.- Jury :*Martin Scorsese *Alain Corneau *Chiara Mastroianni...
, winning a special jury award for Best Artistic Contribution. Despite initial critical praise and fearless performances from its leads (notably Rhys-Meyers and McGregor, who performed all their musical numbers), the film received mixed reviews from critics and audiences. Costume designer Sandy Powell
Sandy Powell (costume designer)
Sandy Powell OBE is a British costume designer who has been nominated nine times for the Academy Award . She won the Oscar in 1999 for the film Shakespeare in Love, in 2005 for The Aviator, and in 2010 for The Young Victoria. She has received nine BAFTA nominations, winning in 1999 for Velvet...
received an Academy Award nomination for her costume design, and won the Oscar in the same year for her work on Shakespeare In Love
Shakespeare in Love
Shakespeare in Love is a 1998 British-American comedy film directed by John Madden and written by Marc Norman and playwright Tom Stoppard....
.
Far From Heaven
Haynes achieved his greatest critical and commercial success to date with Far From Heaven (2002), a 1950s-set melodrama inspired by the films of Douglas SirkDouglas Sirk
Douglas Sirk was a Danish-German film director best known for his work in Hollywood melodramas in the 1950s.-Life and work:...
about a Connecticut housewife Cathy Whittaker (Julianne Moore) who discovers that her husband (Dennis Quaid) is secretly gay, and subsequently falls in love with Raymond, her African-American gardener (Dennis Haysbert). The film works as a mostly reverential and unironic tribute to Sirk's filmmaking, lovingly re-creating the stylized mise-en-scene, colors, costumes, cinematography and lighting of Sirkian melodrama. Cathy and Raymond's relationship resembles Jane Wyman
Jane Wyman
Jane Wyman was an American singer, dancer, and character actress of film and television. She began her film career in the 1930s, and was a prolific performer for two decades...
and Rock Hudson
Rock Hudson
Roy Harold Scherer, Jr., later Roy Harold Fitzgerald , known professionally as Rock Hudson, was an American film and television actor, recognized as a romantic leading man during the 1950s and 1960s, most notably in several romantic comedies with Doris Day.Hudson was voted "Star of the Year",...
's inter-class love affair in All That Heaven Allows
All That Heaven Allows
All That Heaven Allows is a romance feature film starring Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson in a tale about a well-to-do widow and a younger landscape designer falling in love. The screenplay was written by Peg Fenwick based upon a story by Edna L. Lee and Harry Lee...
, and Cathy's relationship with Sybil, her African-American housekeeper (Viola Davis) recalls Lana Turner
Lana Turner
Lana Turner was an American actress.Discovered and signed to a film contract by MGM at the age of sixteen, Turner first attracted attention in They Won't Forget . She played featured roles, often as the ingenue, in such films as Love Finds Andy Hardy...
and Juanita Moore
Juanita Moore
Juanita Moore is an American film and television actress. She is the fifth African American to be nominated for an Academy Award in any category, and the third in the Supporting Actress category.-Career:...
's friendship in Imitation of Life
Imitation of Life (1959 film)
Imitation of Life is a 1959 American film directed by Douglas Sirk, produced by Ross Hunter and released by Universal Pictures, starring Lana Turner and John Gavin and features Sandra Dee, Dan O'Herlihy, Susan Kohner, Robert Alda and Juanita Moore as Annie Johnson. Gospel music star Mahalia Jackson...
. While staying within the cinematic language of the period, Haynes updates the sexual and racial politics, showing scenarios (an inter-racial love affair and gay relationships) that would not have been permissible in Sirk's era. Haynes also resists a Sirkian happy ending, allowing the film to finish on a melancholy note closer in tone to the "weepy" melodramas of 1940s and 1950s cinema such as Mildred Pierce
Mildred Pierce
Mildred Pierce is a 1941 hardboiled novel by James M. Cain. It was made into an Oscar-winning 1945 film starring Joan Crawford and a 2011 Emmy-winning miniseries starring Kate Winslet.-Plot :...
.
Far From Heaven won widespread critical acclaim and a slew of film awards, including four Academy Award nominations for Moore's lead performance, Haynes' original screenplay, Elmer Bernstein
Elmer Bernstein
Elmer Bernstein was an American composer and conductor best known for his many film scores. In a career which spanned fifty years, he composed music for hundreds of film and television productions...
's score, and the film's cinematography. Far From Heaven lost in all four categories, but the film's success was hailed as a breakthrough for independent film achieving mainstream recognition, and brought Haynes to the attention of a wider mainstream audience.
I'm Not There
In another radical shift in direction, Haynes' next film I'm Not There (2007) returned to the mythology of pop music, portraying the life and legends of Bob Dylan through seven fictional characters played by six actors: Richard GereRichard Gere
Richard Tiffany Gere is an American actor. He began acting in the 1970s, playing a supporting role in Looking for Mr. Goodbar, and a starring role in Days of Heaven. He came to prominence in 1980 for his role in the film American Gigolo, which established him as a leading man and a sex symbol...
, Cate Blanchett
Cate Blanchett
Catherine Élise "Cate" Blanchett is an Australian actress. She came to international attention for her role as Elizabeth I of England in the 1998 biopic film Elizabeth, for which she won British Academy of Film and Television Arts and Golden Globe Awards, and earned her first Academy Award...
, Marcus Carl Franklin
Marcus Carl Franklin
Marcus Carl Franklin is an American actor. He is best known for portraying an incarnation of Bob Dylan who calls himself "Woody Guthrie" in the Bob Dylan biopic I'm Not There, written and directed by Todd Haynes...
, Heath Ledger
Heath Ledger
Heath Andrew Ledger was an Australian television and film actor. After performing roles in Australian television and film during the 1990s, Ledger moved to the United States in 1998 to develop his film career...
, Ben Whishaw
Ben Whishaw
Benjamin John "Ben" Whishaw is an English actor who trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Whishaw is perhaps best known for his breakthrough role as Hamlet, and his role as the lead character in Tom Tykwer's film Perfume: The Story of a Murderer.-Early life:Whishaw was born and raised in...
and Christian Bale
Christian Bale
Christian Charles Philip Bale is an English actor. Best known for his roles in American films, Bale has starred in both big budget Hollywood films and the smaller projects from independent producers and art houses....
. Haynes obtained Dylan's approval to proceed with the film, plus rights to use his music in the soundtrack, after presenting a 1-page summary of the film concept to Jeff Rosen
Jeff Rosen
Jeff Rosen is the award-winning Creator and Executive Producer of globally viewed children's and family entertainment. Jeff is Creative Head, for DHX Media, Halifax. Television Series include Animal Mechanicals, Poko, Bo on the Go, The Mighty Jungle, and Pirates...
, Dylan's long-time manager.
Each character (none of whom is called Dylan) represents a different aspect of Dylan's life or musical career. Franklin, a teenaged African-American actor, plays a character called Woody, referencing Woody Guthrie
Woody Guthrie
Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Guthrie is best known as an American singer-songwriter and folk musician, whose musical legacy includes hundreds of political, traditional and children's songs, ballads and improvised works. He frequently performed with the slogan This Machine Kills Fascists displayed on his...
's influence on Dylan's early career, and making a playful visual joke on Dylan's early habit of passing himself off as a drifter from the Dustbowl Southern states and denying his own middle-class Mid-Western origins. Bale plays two roles: an earnest young folk musician involved in the civil rights movement in the early 1960s and dueting with folk singer Alice Fabian (Julianne Moore, impersonating Joan Baez
Joan Baez
Joan Chandos Baez is an American folk singer, songwriter, musician and a prominent activist in the fields of human rights, peace and environmental justice....
), and later as a middle-aged born again Christian in the early 1980s. Gere plays a reclusive character called Billy, retreating from the world in an American pastoral, referencing Dylan's interest in American folk mythology and his performance in Sam Peckinpah
Sam Peckinpah
David Samuel "Sam" Peckinpah was an American filmmaker and screenwriter who achieved prominence following the release of the Western epic The Wild Bunch...
's 1973 film Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid is a 1973 Western film directed by Sam Peckinpah and starring James Coburn and Kris Kristofferson. Co-star Bob Dylan composed multiple songs for the movie's score and the album Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid was released the same year.The film was noted for...
; the sequence also alludes to Dylan's period of exile living in Woodstock in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Whishaw plays a character called Arthur, filmed undergoing an interrogation-style interview about the responsibility of the artist to society; the character is named for and heavily based on the French poet Arthur Rimbaud
Arthur Rimbaud
Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud was a French poet. Born in Charleville, Ardennes, he produced his best known works while still in his late teens—Victor Hugo described him at the time as "an infant Shakespeare"—and he gave up creative writing altogether before the age of 21. As part of the decadent...
, whose work Dylan admired, and whose precocious career as a teenaged genius and rebel Dylan to some extent emulated. Ledger plays Robbie, a Method Actor
Method Actor
Method Actor is an eponymous album released in 1988 featuring American singer Eva Cassidy. It was re-released on CD in 2002, six years after her death.- Track listing :# "Getting Out" – 4:19# "Look in to My Eyes" – 4:16...
involved in a relationship with a painter, Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg
Charlotte Gainsbourg
Charlotte Lucy Gainsbourg is an Anglo-French actress and singer. After releasing an album with her father at the age of fifteen, more than twenty years passed before she released two albums as an adult to commercial and critical success...
), with whom he has children and subsequently divorces. Claire's character is based on Dylan's former girlfriend Suze Rotolo
Suze Rotolo
Susan Elizabeth Rotolo , known as Suze Rotolo , was an American artist, but is perhaps best known as Bob Dylan's girlfriend between 1961 and 1964 and a strong influence on his music...
and his wife, and the Robbie sequence considers accusations made against Dylan of his misogyny in his life and work. Blanchett plays Jude, a pop singer based closely on Dylan in his mid-1960s "Electric" era and his involvement with Pop Art
Pop art
Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art...
and Warhol's Factory
Factory
A factory or manufacturing plant is an industrial building where laborers manufacture goods or supervise machines processing one product into another. Most modern factories have large warehouses or warehouse-like facilities that contain heavy equipment used for assembly line production...
; Jude chases an on-again off-again relationship with socialite/model Coco Rivington (Michelle Williams), a character based on Edie Sedgwick
Edie Sedgwick
Edith Minturn "Edie" Sedgwick was an American actress, socialite, model and heiress. She is best known for being one of Andy Warhol's superstars. Sedgwick became known as "The Girl of the Year" in 1965 after starring in several of Warhol's short films in the 1960s...
, with whom Dylan is reputed to have had an affair. The Jude sequence also features David Cross
David Cross
David Cross is an American actor, writer and stand-up comedian perhaps best known for his work on HBO's sketch comedy series Mr...
as Beat poet Alan Ginsberg.
Haynes intended the film to reverse conventions of the film biopic genre, and to represent what he perceived as Dylan's chameleonic musical persona and his resistance to easy interpretation and categorization. The film narrative, dialogue, characters, scenes and visuals are drawn from and heavily influenced by details from Dylan's music, lyrics and personal history. Each storyline in the film is made in a different style, mostly referencing 1960s art cinema, notably Fellini's 8½
8½
8½ is a 1963 Italian fantasy film directed by Federico Fellini. Co-scripted by Fellini, Tullio Pinelli, Ennio Flaiano, and Brunello Rondi, it stars Marcello Mastroianni as Guido Anselmi, a famous Italian film director...
, Godard
Godard
-People:* Agnès Godard, French cinematographer* André Godard , French Iranologist* Benjamin Godard , French composer best known for his opera Jocelyn and salon music* Christian Godard , French comic artist...
's Masculine Feminine and Altman's McCabe and Mrs Miller. The film features extensive use of Dylan's music, including songs drawn from Dylan's bootleg recordings, and includes Dylan's original recordings as well as covers by Calexico (who appear in the film), Gainsbourg and other musicians. The beginning of the film features voiceover narration from singer/actor Kris Kristofferson
Kris Kristofferson
Kristoffer "Kris" Kristofferson is an American musician, actor, and writer. He is known for hits such as "Me and Bobby McGee", "For the Good Times", "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down", and "Help Me Make It Through the Night"...
.
The film debuted at the 2007 Telluride International Film Festival and won widespread critical acclaim. Blanchett's performance received particular acclaim for her uncannily accurate impersonation of Dylan, and won a slew of awards and nominations, including the Volpi Cup
Volpi Cup
The Volpi Cups are the principal awards given to actors at the Venice Film Festival. Formal acting awards were introduced in the second festival . Initially they were called Great Gold Medals of the National Fascist Association for Entertainment. The name Volpi Cup was introduced the following year...
at the Venice Film Festival
Venice Film Festival
The Venice International Film Festival is the oldest international film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica", the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the...
, and an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry. Since its inception, however, the...
.
Haynes has reported in interviews that the film I'm Not There
I'm Not There
I'm Not There is a 2007 biographical musical film directed by Todd Haynes, inspired by iconic American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. Six actors depict different facets of Dylan's life and public persona: Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger, and Ben Whishaw...
was praised by Rosen, one of Dylan's sons and others close to Dylan, but he was unaware as to whether Dylan himself had viewed the film.
Mildred Pierce
Haynes' most recent project was a five-hour miniseries for HBO of Mildred PierceMildred Pierce
Mildred Pierce is a 1941 hardboiled novel by James M. Cain. It was made into an Oscar-winning 1945 film starring Joan Crawford and a 2011 Emmy-winning miniseries starring Kate Winslet.-Plot :...
based on the novel by James M. Cain
James M. Cain
James Mallahan Cain was an American author and journalist. Although Cain himself vehemently opposed labeling, he is usually associated with the hardboiled school of American crime fiction and seen as one of the creators of the roman noir...
and the 1945 film starring Joan Crawford
Joan Crawford
Joan Crawford , born Lucille Fay LeSueur, was an American actress in film, television and theatre....
. The cast starred Kate Winslet
Kate Winslet
Kate Elizabeth Winslet is an English actress and occasional singer. She has received multiple awards and nominations. She was the youngest person to accrue six Academy Award nominations, and won the Academy Award for Best Actress for The Reader...
in the title role and featured Guy Pearce
Guy Pearce
Guy Edward Pearce is an English-born Australian actor and musician, known for his roles as Leonard Shelby in Christopher Nolan's Memento, Lieutenant Ed Exley in L.A...
, Evan Rachel Wood
Evan Rachel Wood
Evan Rachel Wood is an American actress and singer. She began her acting career in the late 1990s, appearing in several television series, including American Gothic and Once and Again...
, Melissa Leo
Melissa Leo
Melissa Chessington Leo , is an American actress. After appearing on several television shows and films in the late '80s, her breakthrough role came in 1993 as Det. Sgt. Kay Howard on the television series Homicide: Life on the Street for the show's first five seasons from 1993 – 1997...
, James LeGros
James LeGros
James LeGros is an American film and television actor. He is known as a star of independent films with a diversified body of work in the early to mid 1990s.-Personal life:...
and Hope Davis
Hope Davis
Hope Davis is an American actress. She has starred in more than 20 feature films, including About Schmidt, Arlington Road, Flatliners, Mumford, American Splendor, The Lodger and Next Stop Wonderland....
. Filming was completed in mid-2010 and the series began airing on HBO on 27 March 2011.
Feature films
- PoisonPoison (film)Poison is a 1991 independent film written and directed by Todd Haynes. It is composed of three intercut stories that are partially inspired by the novels of Jean Genet...
(1991) - Safe (1995)
- Velvet GoldmineVelvet GoldmineVelvet Goldmine is a 1998 British/American drama film directed and co-written by Todd Haynes. The film tells the story of a pop star based mainly on David Bowie's 'Ziggy Stardust' character and is set in Britain during the days of glam rock in the early 1970s.Sandy Powell received another Academy...
(1998) - Far From HeavenFar from HeavenFar from Heaven is a 2002 drama film written and directed by Todd Haynes and starring Julianne Moore, Dennis Quaid, Dennis Haysbert, and Patricia Clarkson....
(2002) - I'm Not ThereI'm Not ThereI'm Not There is a 2007 biographical musical film directed by Todd Haynes, inspired by iconic American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. Six actors depict different facets of Dylan's life and public persona: Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger, and Ben Whishaw...
(2007)
Short Films
- Assassins: A Film Concerning Rimbaud (1985)
- Superstar: The Karen Carpenter StorySuperstar: The Karen Carpenter StorySuperstar: The Karen Carpenter Story is a 43 minute film about the life of Karen Carpenter. It was directed by Todd Haynes and released in 1987. It was withdrawn from circulation in 1990 after Haynes lost a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by Karen's brother and musical collaborator, Richard...
(1987)
Television
- Dottie Gets Spanked (1993) (short film)
- Mildred PierceMildred Pierce (mini-series)Mildred Pierce is a five-part miniseries that first aired on HBO on March 27, 2011. Adapted from James M. Cain's 1941 novel, it was directed by Todd Haynes, and starred Kate Winslet in the title role, alongside Guy Pearce, Evan Rachel Wood, and Melissa Leo...
(2011) (miniseries)
External links
- Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database
- Todd Haynes Fan Site
- The Trouble with Carol: The Costs of Feeling Good in Todd Haynes's Safe and the American Cultural Landscape by Julie Grossman (academic article)
- A Night with Todd Haynes
- "This Is Not a Bob Dylan Movie" (The New York Times)
- "Probing Identity's Reliability:" Gerry Visco Interviews Todd Haynes for Gay City News
- Video Interview with Todd Haynes at CNETTV UK
- Video of Todd Haynes interviewing M blash about the film "Lying".
- The Conversations: Todd Haynes, Jason Bellamy and Ed Howard on the filmography at The House Next Door (August 16, 2010)
- Literature on Todd Haynes