BAFTA a Life in Pictures: Todd Haynes 25 November 2015 at Princess Anne Theatre, BAFTA, 195 Piccadilly, London

BAFTA A Life In Pictures: Todd Haynes 25 November 2015 at Princess Anne Theatre, BAFTA, 195 Piccadilly, London

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. inordinate, a massive impression on me. Welcome to this evening’s Life In Pictures And sort of you know, began to sort of with Todd Haynes. This evening’s event is inflict some bizarre psychosis I think, that being filmed, so please ensure that all required a creative response, a creative mobile phones are switched to silent or answer. And an obsession started with airplane mode, and please refrain from Mary Poppins when I was three years old. any photography. Now please join me in What better way to start? But there welcoming this evening’s host, Ian would be certain movies that would just Haydn Smith. become my sort of stimulus for these sorts of periods of my life as a kid, and they, [Applause] yeah they became… And then I started to make my own versions of them. The Ian Haydn Smith: Good evening Zeffirelli Romeo and Juliet was probably everyone, and welcome to this Life in the next huge obsession when I was Pictures with Todd Haynes. In 1988 when seven, around the year you were, ’68, so Todd Haynes was releasing Superstar: that’s how old I was. And that was the The Karen Carpenter Story, the German first film I sort of made as a kid and really filmmaker Wim Wenders published a put a lot of energy and production and collection of his early essays. He called obsession into, playing all the roles the book ‘Emotion Pictures’, and I can’t except… I even tried playing Juliet, and think of a better tittle that sums up the my mum did a test in Super 8 so we entirety of Todd Haynes’ body of work. could try double exposure in the house, I His is a cinema of intelligence, elegance did a sort of painting of the Capulet ball and wit, also of satire, but it’s a cinema on the wall, and I pop on at one point of pure emotion, whether it’s the dressed as Juliet. I don’t know where heartbreak and betrayal of certain that film is. But ultimately I used a friend characters, or other characters trying to to play Juliet and I played all the other find their identity in the world. Let’s take roles in different little tunics that I made a look at some of his films. out of towels. So something like that I would say. [Clip plays] IHS: You were always destined in your Can you please welcome Todd Haynes. eyes to be a filmmaker, because it’s interesting watching the films where [Applause] you've written the screenplays, there’s such a novelistic feel to them I wondered Todd Haynes: That was beautiful. if at any point in time you were considering segueing into actual, just IHS: It’s lovely. It’s all yours. Okay, I’ve got becoming a writer? a picture in my head, I’ve had it quite a while, of a young boy on a rare rainy TH: Not really, no. I think, and I have to day in Los Angeles in the late 60s, say I always feel, and still do, that my perhaps going into the early 1970s, work is not really about invention, it’s flicking through TV channels and really about interpretation. I don’t know suddenly comes across an afternoon that I, I mean you know, I also know that matinee of George Cukor and William for directors that I love, sometimes it’s the Wyler, and gets incredibly excited by this thing that best characterises what they whole world of melodrama and do is the thing they don’t see women’s pictures. And then a week later themselves, and I recognise that that he suddenly discovers Douglas Sirk and might be true for me as well. But I do feel Max Ophuls on another channel. Was that my role, or my sort of practice I that your youth? guess, is one of looking at the world and resorting it, and putting in a context, but TH: Well, I think you might be attributing not really, not inventing it. And maybe too much to my youngest, my younger there are writers of course who would fall years. A Lot of those influences were into that category, but I think images filmmakers I encountered a little bit later, and something that happens between but certain films presented themselves to the viewer and the screen with music me at a very young age and made an and sound and that temporal

1 BAFTA A Life In Pictures: Todd Haynes 25 November 2015 at Princess Anne Theatre, BAFTA, 195 Piccadilly, London experience is something that’s hard for the same month, and I managed to get me to shake. a screening at a very small little East Village theatre that coincided with these IHS: So let’s jump forward a few years. reviews. All of a sudden my film was You’re at art college and you make something everybody wanted to show Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, around the country, because The Village which pretty much is the last seven years Voice had that kind of currency, cultural of Karen Carpenter’s life, starring Barbie currency. And so to me it was all dolls as all the characters. There’s deliriously new and exciting and thrilling, litigation and a copyright infringement and the film started to reach audiences lawsuit that prevents the film from being outside of experimental film audiences, shown. I’m curious about the impact on and I found that there was an interesting you as a budding filmmaker and your fluency and interest among different career, and also the notoriety of the film, audiences for this kind of work. And it the impact of that on you as well. excited me, and I was like, “Wow, that’s cool. I would like to keep doing this.” TH: You mean because of the legal Because I assumed, the reason I started intervention? Oh you know, look, I was at the Bard programme is I thought I would a point in my career where just simply make experimental films and teach in a getting something shown was an event, college like Leslie Thornton at Brown, was a new experience for me. And so who’s amazing, and that was going to making Superstar and then trying to find be absolutely fine for me. I never thought a place that would show it in New York I would have a career making films for City was the first challenge. It came out the marketplace, and that that would of an interesting, I think transition in become my career. experimental film in the United States. Out of the sort of 70s, 60s and 70s IHS: So we’re going to stay with notoriety formalist era that kind of eschewed now, and also moving into genre with narrative, genre, spectacle, pleasure, your feature debut, 1991’s Poison, which Hollywood, and worked more purely in won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. formal interests, right? And by the 80s And it interweaves three narratives, firstly certain experimental filmmakers, and I there’s ‘Horror’, in which a scientist has think this was starting to happen both in successfully distilled the human sex drive experimental realms and in mainstream into a liquid form, unfortunately he think films like in the films of David Lynch, it’s his coffee and drinks it. Then we have where there was sort of a cross- ‘Hero’, which is a parody of TV pollination of influences and ideas. Sally sensationalist documentaries. And then Potter made a film called Thriller that was we have ‘Homo’, which is a film inspired an experimental film that I saw in by the writings of Jean Genet, and also college, and it started to engage with the author’s own 1950 short film Un genre but within experimental syntax. Chant d’Amour. So this is Poison. And that really got me going I think, and that was something that I brought to [Clip plays] Superstar, but at the time Superstar didn’t quite make sense to the sort of [Applause] establishment of experimental film, venues in like New York City, like the TH: That was me as the prison guard. Collective for Living Cinema which I [laughs] revered, and all I wanted for my movie to get shown there. So I knew, we all IHS: The film opens with the intertitle, “The knew that the rights issues was an entire world is dying of panicky fight,” imminent problem and its days were which strikes me as summing up pretty numbered, but when J. Hoberman of much the conservative reaction in The Village Voice wrote a review of America when they found out that the Superstar, because I’d sent a tape to The National Endowment for the Arts had Village Voice and I knew how to do given you $25,000 to complete the film. press releases because I’d worked in Were you surprised by the level of galleries, and Barbara Kruger wrote an controversy that the film attracted? article in Artforum, and they came out

2 BAFTA A Life In Pictures: Todd Haynes 25 November 2015 at Princess Anne Theatre, BAFTA, 195 Piccadilly, London

TH: Well no. I don’t think any of us were things could happen and sort of surprised about any level of panic during discoveries could be made along the those particular years, because there way. And Poison also, alongside and was a lot bigger stuff going on than the maybe partly as a result of the reaction to Poison. And it was a controversy with the far right gained provocation the film, and it was an attention, and kind of discovered a invitation, it was a, it was sort of an larger audience than I really ever attempt to defend an embattled expected it to have. minority community that was starting to accept some of the terms of blame and IHS: And this is a film that then became culpability for that epidemic. And I grouped, and you as a director became thought, who better to look to for grouped with people like Tom Kalin, Rose guidance than Genet, even if it was Troche, Gregg Araki, Gus Van Sant, going to be very self-consciously filtered Jennie Livingston, with this very diverse through my own very American interest movement that became New Queer in genre. But looking at the whole notion Cinema. What was it like, because you of the outsider, looking at the whole talk about currents at that point in time, notion of the transgressor in all of these it was striking being over her, being stories, that basically all three stories interested in film and suddenly hearing were the same stories, but they were told about this movement and slowly these in different ways. And that hopefully it films were filtering through into cinemas made you question or think about how in the UK. And it was extraordinary, the way stories are told embodies because a lot of them were playing with attitudes and prejudice and orientation, genre, but like this film which starts off on social orientation, that we all are a comedy level, it takes us down into a affected by and maybe don’t notice. very, very dark shadowy world.

IHS: The critic Dennis Lim suggested that TH: Well that mantle, or that classification you never intended to be assimilated that was given, that was a journalist, B. into the mainstream, but you infiltrated it Ruby Rich’s way of describing this instead. And I’m curious with your movement that had everything to do interest in genre, and subverting genres, with the AIDS crisis, and a lot of people if you sort of wanted to reach out to were coming out of direct activism like people, people would recognise, myself as well, but were responding to it particularly ‘Horror’, this sort of parody of with narrative or creative responses. I felt 1950s sci-fi/horror movies, but at the that that was never a reductive term, I same time give them something else as always felt that that actually described well. not only those artists, and you know people like Derek Jarman and Isaac TH: Yeah, and I think I was also just Julien who were British filmmakers, and realising that although experimental Derek Jarman of course who was a strategies and radicals like Genet or predecessor to this period and who was whatever were influences and ways of an inspiration to all of us, that it really sort of empowering me, I was also very defined not only a moment of much a product of that culture myself, filmmaking and a sort of an urgency, and that those genres and those which is sort of rare in our world of traditions and those movies were running narrative film in general, a kind of through my bloodstream like everybody necessity and urgency to speak out and else. But that I also felt that rather than have this response. But also an engaged just feeding them back to the audience, audience that was there, and maybe for I started to really feel after Superstar and the first time, I mean there was always definitely after Poison that audiences gay, the arthouse audience was always were smart, and they were, they could maybe partly a gay audience or was a take on challenges. And what it codeword for the gay audience, but revealed in the process of looking at a now it was being defined exactly as that, movie and watching a story, when there a New Queer cinema audience that was were certain things that were obstacles going to buy tickets and go see these to our normal just feeding the market or movies. And so it created a market as the gut of the viewer, that interesting

3 BAFTA A Life In Pictures: Todd Haynes 25 November 2015 at Princess Anne Theatre, BAFTA, 195 Piccadilly, London well as a force of a need to express about your relationship, it strikes me that these ideas. a better word would possibly be enabler, to work so closely with someone across IHS: I’ve mentioned directors, but the whole of a career, it’s someone who obviously there’s a key person within the shares a vision with you. And in some mix of this trend, and it was the producer ways I can imagine that sharing that Christine Vachon. I want to move onto vision is also something of a benefit for her, because she is one of the most you, someone you can bounce ideas important people in American cinema in off. the last 30 years, but I thought it might be good to first of all see a clip from your TH: Very much so. She’s also the dragon next feature, Safe from 1995, in which slayer. You know she is out there dueling Julianne Moore plays Carol White, a with the powers that be about the woman who contracts an environmental financing, and increasingly that, and this illness. And this is a key scene in the film, happens with producers and directors, it’s also one of my favourite scenes in the very best pairings of them, it puts us 1990s American cinema, the scene in different places often in the course of where the girl is sat on Julianne’s lap. This making a film. But that’s why there’s a is a key scene that bridges the horror of remarkable level of trust and faith in the earlier part of the film, and we move what, we’re both after the same ends. It slowly more into satire. This is Safe. means that we’re always bound together, because she often has to see [Clip plays] the big picture while I’m zeroing in on the specifics of getting a shot done. And [Applause] you need both, there’s no way these films could get made without both things In any time I find it amazing that that film being addressed. got made, and what I’ve read about it, it seems like the perfect collaboration IHS: The other major collaborator in this between a director and a producer. film obviously is Julianne Moore, and up until that point in time probably best TH: I don’t know how that film would known internationally for appearing in have got made without Christine. I Short Cuts, Robert Altman, and Vanya on mean, even after Poison and a lot of 42nd Street. anticipation for my next film, this was a very, very tough sell this story. The story of TH: That followed Safe. a woman who gets environmentally ill, she gets sicker and then she gets sicker, IHS: Sorry. and then she goes to a recovery place and just gets sicker. The end. It was TH: That’s alright, but closely. tough, and you know it took us two years to get the financing together. We IHS: I’m just curious about the way that needed a million dollars, and that was a you work together because she is, in all big step up from Poison, but Christine just of her works, she is an actor who is willing kept saying, “We’re going to get it. to go the full length with a role. We’re going to get it.” I would have given up, I just was like, my career had TH: I mean this idea of Carol White on just started and I didn’t really know if it paper, you know there was a lot of really was going to be a career, and this conceptual questions about was a very different turn from Poison. But identification and talk about obstacles her persistence, her conviction, her to identification. This was a very, this was support, which has remained so seminal an almost invisible subject, not the to our relationship all these years, and so normal person who carries you through a really my entire career is owed so much story. And she walked in, she read it, to Christine’s tenacity and perseverance. somehow got her hands on the script and read it, and felt like, she says, she’s IHS: It’s interesting when you think people said to me, “You know I think, I knew talk sometimes disparagingly of this what it needed to be in my head, and I stereotype of a producer, and thinking was just going to go read for him, and if I

4 BAFTA A Life In Pictures: Todd Haynes 25 November 2015 at Princess Anne Theatre, BAFTA, 195 Piccadilly, London was wrong, I was wrong.” But she just, the recovery industry and its language. she knew man, she just knew. And she And so you’re kind of going, “Yeah, this is came in and she read this voice, and all what a movie like this is supposed to do,” of a sudden - talk about the difference but every signal tells you it’s not the right between the written word and someone answer. And so it’s sort of like watching right in front of you. But the thing about your narrative expectations drive a Julianne, and I have to say this is true character back into repression, and that about so many, it’s true about Cate narrative closure often is exactly that in Blanchett, it’s true about so many of movies. And we want it, we won’t feel these incredibly courageous actors I’ve resolved walking out of the theatre until worked with, they know how to, they we get it, but there’s a cost to it at times respect a certain distance from the on the choices that characters make, viewer. They don’t have to gain your and that was something I wanted to trust or your, they don’t have to be explore in Safe. But there’s something in likeable, there’s nothing obsequious the middle of the movie that’s the most about the way they address the viewer hopeful maybe, where she’s you know in the film. She knows how to maintain a at odds with everything, she’s not distance and trusts that the viewer is agreeing to the terms yet, and she’s not going to find a way to her, and that was saying, “Yes, I made myself sick, you just so true with Carol White. And there know, because I didn’t love myself was almost no other way to play it, but it enough and all of that.” took such confidence and such a sense of absolute, you know a completely, IHS: And this distance is also thoroughly fleshed out idea of who this accentuated by, not just the way that woman was. you’ve shot the film, which has this Kubrickian glacial distance, but also Ed IHS: And you’re right in the way that you Tomney’s remarkable score. very briefly described the trajectory of the film. This is a character who doesn’t TH: Yes, thank you for mentioning it, I play to any of the conventions of think it’s such a huge and essential part character that normally gains an of the film and how it works. I mean just audience’s sympathy. noticing it just then felt like it was reverberating from beneath us. And of TH: Yeah, no, hardly. I mean if anything course there was a Brian Eno temp score all of the things that people say about through the entire movie. Carol throughout the course of the story, “Oh it’s all in your head.” “You’re making IHS: Doesn’t every film have a Brian Eno yourself sick.” “It’s psychosomatic.” Just temp score. not being trusted at any level, if anything that keeps feeding the audience’s TH: Doesn’t every film, and I’ve worked mistrust of her as a viable character on all sides of Brian Eno’s amazing who’s worthy of your investment as a trajectory as an artist in my films. But he viewer. And in some ways Carol figuring really, and there’s one Brian Eno song I out what is going on with her and taking couldn’t give up, a piece of music that’s certain steps toward addressing it helps in the movie I couldn’t give up. But Ed give the viewer a way of caring about really made it his own, he really found, her in the process. But it kind of comes and he loves Eno like we all do and it’s full circle, where she follows that an influence, but he really made it his trajectory through, and this is very much own. in line with not only perhaps things Douglas Sirk does in his films. But the TV IHS: Let’s actually go on to more Brian movie, disease movie of the week, that Eno now who appears musically in your basically puts the onus on the subject to next film, Velvet Goldmine from 1998. It’s come to some kind of redemptive a fictional account of the glam rock era understanding of who they are through with two characters who may or may not acceptance of their illness, and be David Bowie and Iggy Pop. We’re acquiescence to it in a way, and that’s going to see a, the first appearance on what Carol does in the last act of Safe in stage by Curt Wild, played by Ewan this centre for recovery, this emblem of McGregor, who does a fantastic

5 BAFTA A Life In Pictures: Todd Haynes 25 November 2015 at Princess Anne Theatre, BAFTA, 195 Piccadilly, London impression of Iggy Pop, and also gives that to be still a radical act and still the current onscreen exhibitionist, exciting. And something about the 70s Michael Fassbender, a run for his money, was ready for it, and it did affect, it did as you will now see. enter the United States in all these, you know Elton John and all these other [Clip plays] bands that had to sort of follow in the footsteps of Bowie. But it became this [Applause] sort of delirious mimicry of gender, of fame, because Bowie basically I love one of your descriptions of the film performed his fame before he really was as being, “lubed-up and coated with an international star, and identity. And glitter.” Unlike a lot of other films in the questioning identity and destabilising 90s that were made about the 1970s, identity has definitely been a continued which feel falsely nostalgic, there’s a real interest of mine in my movies. love in this film. Could you talk about your own relationship with that era and IHS: It’s interesting that you’ve said that the glam era particularly. the 70s was a time, essentially the last progressive decade of the 20th Century, TH: Well that era, I mean you know I but sadly almost 20 years on from this film missed it. I was, I’m an American, it it seems like the last progressive decade wasn’t the same cross cultural, the same up till now. sort of massive commercial event as it was in the UK. I learned a great deal TH: I know, we just keep thinking, “Oh my about the history of glam, the history of God, Reagan was the worst thing that queer articulation, representation, happened,” and then George Bush theatre, art from the British, Oscar Wilde happened, and now Marco Rubio and onward. And, but this really was a story Ted Cruz is happening, and you know about a love affair between American Donald Trump, it definitely… and the UK, and of course this is the, Ewan represents the American factor, IHS: Yeah, it’s so much better here. I’m that rejection of 60s ideology that came curious about how you locate the at the very end of the 60s in the form of emotional core of this film, because you The Doors and Jim Morrison, and have a narrative that begins with Oscar obviously The Stooges and MC5 and Wilde, is constructed sort of around the bands like that. But it took David Bowie narrative structure of Citizen Kane, and and his unique accumulation of so many yet what I find astonishing with this film is different references and ideas that were just how emotionally engaging it is. in the cross currents of that moment. Gay rights liberation of the early 1970s, TH: Well I think that’s because of the, you and just the continued questioning that know Christian Bale’s character, and was starting in the 60s that was Christian Bale’s performance. Because eventually going to enter identity itself what was so cool about glam rock also and sexual identity. I mean glam rock was that it gave, it engaged, it brought presupposes sexual ambivalence in the fan into an active participation with every viewer, every listener of the music the spectacle, and asked you to dress you know, and that in and of itself, that up, and asked you to take part in it. It’s insistence on a sort of destabilised notion why like Rocky Horror Picture Show of self. Because it was questioning you became this cult ongoing phenomenon, know gender, it was questioning because audiences would dress up in sexuality, and what it did because it was the transvestite garb and interact with this bisexual imagination, and this what was going on on screen. And so androgynous imagination, it implicated that was why the Citizen Kane structure everybody. And I found that even in the made sense, I wanted the stars to be like 90s when it came out, you know I was Kane, who’s being described and ready for the, to be, get the gay filtered through all these various community excited again after Poison, conflicting points of view. But in this case and they were all a little like, “Hmmm,” the spotlight’s turned around on that because bisexuality destabilises all, you silhouetted journalist who’s interviewing know gays and straights alike, and I find everybody and ultimately becomes

6 BAFTA A Life In Pictures: Todd Haynes 25 November 2015 at Princess Anne Theatre, BAFTA, 195 Piccadilly, London about him and his emotional investment, just give her the script and sort of say, and what it opened up, the possibilities “Go for it”? that it opened up for him, even if where we find, the framing story is in 1984 where TH: Well no, we you know, she, I think she everything has been closed back down loves it that I care about all those details, again. I think it means something to her. It’s true for every creative department that I IHS: Yes, I find it quite fascinating that know of and heads of departments, when people talk about Christian Bale production designers and costume they talk about American Psycho, but I designers and DPs, you know I think think it started her. And yes Ewan everyone wants to feel that they have a McGregor and Jonathan Rhys Meyers foundation that they’re on, that there’s a are amazing, but the two people who strategy, that there’s a language, and really stood out for me here is him and then, and that you know the director Toni Collette. does care about every element that they bring to it. And in a period film like TH: I know, I so agree. I think they cement this, and in a film where we’re quoting the film, they give you the emotional Douglas Sirk, and where clothes and throughline for the film. When he packed decor and lighting and music almost up his Arthur Stuart costume and said speak louder, and almost contribute to goodbye I just, I kind of wept. Because I, the oppression and the diminishing of the you know everyone was like, “Oh I’m so characters in the story, or speak their in love with Johnny, and Ewan’s so hot in desires in ways they can’t you know, all the movie,” and it’s all true, and I love of it’s essential. I mean we had, you how much girls love Velvet Goldmine, it’s know we had meetings that went on for so consistent how much it’s affected days about colour alone, but Mark teenage young women, but I think I was Friedberg the production designer, in love with Arthur all the way through. Sandy, and Ed and I, and this was the first film that Ed Lachman shot of mine as IHS: The other star of the film is the well. So it was, but then there are costume designer, Sandy Powell, and accidents that happen where she before we talk about her… designs all those dresses in autumnal colours, and of course autumn was a TH: She is the star of the film. theme in the script and you hope you’re going to get some autumn you know IHS: Let’s have a look at another while you’re shooting in New York in the example of her work from 2002, this is Far Fall, but the fact that those women From Heaven. It’s a beautiful, walked out to the exterior of the house devastating portrait of marital and the colours are identical to the breakdown and also prejudice in 1950s colours that she had already dressed American. This is Far From Heaven. them in, those were little gifts that you know you can never even control no [Clip Plays] matter how much attention you’re paying to detail. [Applause] IHS: You mention Douglas Sirk, and My heart always sinks when I’m required you’ve talked over the years of your love to pick a clip from a film that Sandy of Sirk’s films. What I find fascinating with Powell’s designed the costumes for this is that it is a wonderful homage to because it’s virtually impossible to pick Douglas Sirk, but it strikes me that it’s one single clip. She’s remarkable, both quite possible one of the most Velvet Goldmine, Far From Heaven and experimental mainstream films ever now Carol as well, she is quite made, and yet it doesn’t ever get astonishing. acknowledged as that.

TH: She is quite astonishing. TH: I so agree with you, and it sort of blew me… You know I was so proud that, and IHS: How much information or how much shocked that the film reached a wider collaboration do you have, or do you audience of anything I’d done to date.

7 BAFTA A Life In Pictures: Todd Haynes 25 November 2015 at Princess Anne Theatre, BAFTA, 195 Piccadilly, London

And yet we were vigorous, we stayed imperceptible the shifts that happen in true to that artificial form, that their personalities. expressionistic language that his films display so beautifully, that you know TH: Yes, I mean although I think that humbled Fassbinder when he first saw happens in Sirk too in these astonishing them into, all of a sudden, post, beyond turns of you know the kids in All That that sort of ’68 Marxist fraternity that he Heaven Allows being so concerned that was a part of, and distinguished himself Jane Wyman’s going out with Rock from that fraternity, from the Godardian Hudson until she breaks up with him, and traditions by addressing the domestic then all of a sudden they’re like, “Mum, stories and female-driven narratives that we sold the house, we’re getting began to characterise his career as well. married,” and no one cares, gives a shit, But yeah, I just couldn’t believe, it was you know. And she was like, “What? I just like to me, it was like, “Yes, the form still broke up, I just changed my whole life for works!” Because it’s one of the most, you you.” But The Reckless Moment is just one know people have dismissed it, the of, and Ophuls in general is just such an melodrama. It’s still, the term is a inspiration, there are a lot of references derogatory one. But there’s a story also woven into Far From Heaven. In fact, the that I love, a woman who had gotten a only shot I literally lifted from any film was screener of Far From Heaven and hadn’t the shot of Julianne breaking down and had a chance to watch the movie but crying finally after she says goodbye to had read about it. And she had I think a Raymond at his house, and it’s literally, I three year-old daughter, and the kid was just watched the scene of Joan Bennet asleep on her lap watching the film, or breaking down. Because that pent up she thought the kid was asleep. And she performance in Reckless Moment is so got to the end of the movie at the trains astonishing, and she holds it in for the station scene, and she looked down and whole film, and then finally when James her little girl, I think it was a girl, was Mason dies and he offered her a crying. And she said, “Honey, what’s the potential way out but it was too late, matter? Are you okay?” And the little kid and she breaks down and cries and it’s said, “Mummy, how come that nice lady just an incredible moment. can’t be with that nice man?” And I thought, “Wow,” that is amazing to me, I IHS: You mentioned cinematographer Ed don’t know if I’ll ever achieve that again Lachman. Let’s move onto him next, but in my films. Something that where it first we’ll see a clip from I’m Not There in operates in very complex levels of 2007. It’s a fictional account of Bob critique, and maybe Brechtian Dylan’s life through six alter egos, distanciation and all of that stuff that Sirk characters. And here we start with Jack, really was informed by, and then it also Christian Bale playing the first of two operates at the purest, simplest, truest Dylan alter egos. It includes Arthur level. Rimbaud played by Ben Whishaw, and it introduces us to Jude, Cate Blanchett. If IHS: Part of the element, again coming we could show the clip please. back to Julianne Moore, but not just Julianne, the whole cast, are the [Clip plays] performances. And I find it interesting that your retrospective you’ve recently [Applause] had at the Lincoln Center, and you were asked to pair one of your films with By any standards this is an extraordinary another film, and interestingly you didn’t film, and before we move onto the go with Sirk, you went with Max Ophuls’ narrative and the casting, could you talk The Reckless Moment. Which, to watch about the colour palette that you the scenes with Patricia Clarkson employed, because there are some admonishing her friend is interesting richly beautiful colours with the Woody because for me it is more like Ophuls in a Guthrie scenes, and then we move onto way, that you have these subtle the black and white and… changes in personality, the people you thought were quite nice, it’s almost TH: Well it was, it was you know, it was quite a thesis project that I took on and

8 BAFTA A Life In Pictures: Todd Haynes 25 November 2015 at Princess Anne Theatre, BAFTA, 195 Piccadilly, London then I was… I mean look I had been appropriate visual language and stylistic refused the rights to Karen Carpenter’s vehicle for each of the stories. And so it music and it had condemned Superstar was a thrilling experience, because I got to a life of you know suppression. David to research not only those films and Bowie said no to all the songs I wanted in those filmmakers, but of course all the Velvet Goldmine, which I ultimately think Dylan music, and all of the you know sort made for a better film. But I wanted to of poetic and literary references that make a movie about Bob Dylan and I were informing him as much as I could. thought there’s no way to do fake But so it was an amazing experience, versions of Dylan songs, without getting and Ed did just such an exquisite job. the rights there’s just simply no way. And you know of all the people, the scariest IHS: And was Cate Blanchett the first of of them all, I went to him through his your characters to come on board? manager and Jeff said, “Just write it out you know and don’t mention like ‘voice TH: You know I think it might have been of a generation’, and don’t say genius.” Richard Gere, and who played that And so I wrote as much you know of sort weird you know cowboy recluse version of lugubrious and sort of sophomoric or of Dylan, the Billy the Kid character, as if sort of you know uncommercial, which it Billy the Kid never did because there’s is, a description of the concept. theories that suggest as much, that Billy Suppositions on a film concerning Dylan, didn’t die to the gun of Pat Garrett. And and sent it to Bob with my movies you Richard Gere was so lovely and so know, which he took on his trailer at generous, and he agreed to do it for so some point and watched I assume, little money that it made all of the other because he likes weird movies and art actors have to follow suit, and they all films and stuff. And you know a month had to do it for a song so to speak. And it later we get a call from Jeff Rosen was just you know, it was the only way saying, “Yeah, you got the life rights and we could really get it done. But I had to all the music.” And basically it was this sort of, I had to sort of hound Cate a little gift, you know saying, there was a point bit. I knew she could do something where we had to keep extending the extraordinary with this challenge, but she rights because I was still writing and was you know, she was like you know, researching and all that, and I said to “Really? You think so?” And then we’d sit Jeff you know, I called him up and I said, and watch the clips of Dylan from ’66, “Jeff, you know this is an intense thing, I and see that androgynous body and feel like I have a responsibility,” because that jittery you know strangeness that I I’m the first person to have ever been think, because it’s such a famous given the rights to tell Dylan’s story in any moment the year he went electric that way yet on film, except for him. And Jeff it’s lost some of the shock value that it said, “Oh Todd, don’t worry about that. must have had at the time. And you see This is your own weird, unique thing. All it in the great Scorsese documentary No you have to do is do that.” And I’m like, Direction Home, because he draws from this is Bob Dylan’s manager. This is the all the Pennebaker footage, the colour keeper of the gate, you know. He says stuff, and really he had just, once again, no to everybody, and I was given this so utterly transformed from the Dylan of extraordinary freedom, and I still really Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back only a can’t believe that, I still can’t believe I couple of years, only a year before. So have the music in it that I have, and it’s just phenomenal how much of a those actors and… But you asked about shapeshifter he really was. the look. And so the 60s became the sort of you know bracket of what, because IHS: There’s a line from Far From Heaven there was so much that happened in the that I think applies to this, but also I’m 60s with Dylan, and all of those personas aware of time, we have to move on to sort of had their roots in the 60s, even if Mildred Pierce, that I think applies to that some of it dips into the early 70s, sort of film as well. One of the characters said, the Vietnam era. But I wanted to look at “Do you think we can ever see beyond and use and draw from the rich the surface of things?” and it’s language of 60s cinema which was something I think that applies to so many explosive at the time, and try to find an

9 BAFTA A Life In Pictures: Todd Haynes 25 November 2015 at Princess Anne Theatre, BAFTA, 195 Piccadilly, London of your films, but if we can see this Super 16, Ed and I just did it again on sequence from Mildred Pierce please. Carol. So it really was like making a film for the small screen. [Clip plays] IHS: Actually, you mention Carol, let’s [Applause] sort of move into that and then we can talk about both. If we can show a clip There is one thing with this miniseries that from Carol please. whether we’re looking at the surface or underneath is no doubt the Monty, Guy [Clip plays] Pearce’s character, is dodgy as hell. [laughs] Could you talk about the [Applause] pleasures of actually having the freedom of working across a much more Have there ever been so many fabulous expansive time period, well of six hours cheekbones in one single movie? The pretty much, five or six hours. reason I wanted to bring Mildred Pierce and that together is that, as James M. TH: Yeah, almost six hours. Cain was trying to do something different, Patricia Highsmith was as well IHS: To explore these characters. And with her novel The Price of Salt. And this also the challenge of taking a very, very was the first time that you came onto a well-known story from the Joan Crawford project that was already in motion, what version. was that experience like for you?

TH: Well the novel was so different, and TH: Well it was extraordinary. It was a there were so many components of it learning experience like all of them have that were not part of the brilliant, been. But, and I had a great relationship beautiful Curtiz film that is really sort of a with Phyllis Nagy who wrote the you know compression of the whole adaptation, beautiful adaptation of the thing as films often are, but also kind of novel which is such a great novel. And putting it back into the noir, half noir half for me this was really addressing the melodrama, which he was trying to shape and form and tradition of the love leave behind when he wrote Mildred story in movies in ways I felt I never had Pierce. But I read it right as the financial really exclusively looked at in other films markets were starting to tumble in the that I’d made. And really what that led States, and I just felt like, wow, this is to is a real focus on point of view, and exactly, it’s the depression era, it’s nine how much point of view sort of anchors years of the depression, and it felt like you in great love stories, most, usually to such an opportunity to speak about the more vulnerable party, and what’s what was happening in the world interesting about Carol is how that shifts. through this great vehicle. But yeah, it So I worked with Phyllis a bit on the script was such a great challenge, it was new and brought a few, some structural to me to work in long form, episodic changes to it, the Brief Encounter sort of narrative. I brought, Jon Raymond was structure for people who know that the person, my friend from Portland beautiful film and will see Carol, or may who’s a great writer and dear friend, have seen Carol. But yeah, you know and he was the one telling me to read what’s funny is that even when it’s your the book, and we wrote it together, own script there’s a point where you just adapted it together. And working with discard it, you have to. In fact every HBO was the first time I think I felt like I stage of filmmaking is a process of was sort of working under the sort of solid discarding everything you expected it to foundation of a studio, but one run by be and trying really, really hard to look at really smart people who wanted to do what it is, because it’s always little challenging work. So the whole different and you have to allow for that experience, but I also brought Kate you know. And so what you see on set is Winslet and all these other people, and different from the script, and what you Ed Lachman and all these people who see in your dailies is different from what had never done TV. And we shot it on you saw in the flesh, and the dailies are Super 16, that was the first time I used not the same as the first cut, and then

10 BAFTA A Life In Pictures: Todd Haynes 25 November 2015 at Princess Anne Theatre, BAFTA, 195 Piccadilly, London you learn how the cuts start to play with moral you know stories about society, showing people the film. And so each, and why society gets in the way of you just have to be sometimes ruthless people. But yeah it was really a fantastic with yourself and you have to let your experience, and I had less time to favourite scene go because it isn’t prepare because it had all come to me supporting the whole experience. And so in a bundle with Cate already attached, you know, not to say that, whatever, it’s but it was a no brainer. just part of the process, but Phyllis was a partner through the whole thing, as were IHS: Let’s take some questions from the these two extraordinary actors. And Ed audience. I think we have time for a Lachman and his amazing couple of questions. You can put your cinematography, and again working hand up and we’ve got some roving with Sandy, and Judy Becker who mics. Is there anyone? This gentleman designed it who also designed I’m Not there. Anyone else we can pass the mic There. to over this side? And there’s someone down here as well, if you could keep IHS: You mention the two performances, your hand up please. Yes, hello. and it’s impossible to sort of put one above the other, but it’s fascinating to Q: Hello Mr Haynes. My name’s Nick and see the binary performance that Cate I’ve just graduated from film school, I Blanchett gives of both being herself specialised in directing. And it’s only being Carol, but also being Carol been a few months but so far that isn’t through Therese’s eyes. And then you’ve proving the most employable skill, and I got Rooney Mara who, for me this is the was just wondering because we kind of most extraordinary performance she’s skipped over that in what we’ve just given so far because it is the quieter, it is talked about, or what you’ve just talked the less showy performance, and it’s in about rather, what your advice was, many ways the tougher performance would be from your experience about perhaps, but it’s extraordinary what she directors starting out? does with it. TH: I sort of always kind of say the same TH: It is. That is really how you are carried thing, and it’s just, you know and it through the story, and it’s the simplest doesn’t necessarily give you any specific character and maybe the simplest story you know secrets, it’s really just, and I that she’s ever been in of the movies I’ve think it’s maybe easier today when seen her do, all of which have impressed there’s so many different ways that me, each performance. But I thought, people can make work. You know on wow, what would Rooney who knows the computer and digitally, and you how to play down and be quiet and know you can edit at home and all of draw the viewer into the smallest nuance those things, is just to do it and make as we’ve seen her do with other roles, work, because it’s always a problem- what would she do with this you know solving process. And when you much simpler character? I think externalise that process and have Fassbinder who loved Sirk, Fassbinder something to show people and get their number two, this should be like a drinking reactions, like to me it’s really about, game every time I mention Fassbinder or some people might think I have this you Sirk, he said that the simplest stories are know all these intellectual ideas or the truest stories. And in many ways whatever sometimes in my films, but I that’s what makes great love stories so really, I’m really always informed by what powerful is that they relate directly to our viewers say when they look at cuts of own experience, and they summon the mine, or when I show my movies and I yearning that we’ve all had for people in travel with them and I get feedback our lives at different times. And it’s partly from audiences and critics and stuff. It due to how you postpone satisfaction really fuels me and says, “Yeah, I can do and create obstacles that keep the that now, and I can go there now,” you lovers from satisfying their desires, and know. So it becomes hard evidence make an audience think back and go, about how stories can be told and that “Oh, if only things were different.” They there are many different ways of telling often become stories about society, stories and you know I’ve tried to do

11 BAFTA A Life In Pictures: Todd Haynes 25 November 2015 at Princess Anne Theatre, BAFTA, 195 Piccadilly, London some different styles and approaches in sometimes there’s specific solutions, these films, but really it’s just so much, I sometimes people suggest, aren’t just learn so much each time. And in a exactly the right ones, but you know way, and I feel this with great actors and you’ll find the right answer based on all the great people I work with, each what the feelings are and what the time you start you kind of feel like you’re consensus is of people looking at the doing it for the first time anyway, you cuts. So yeah, it’s an invaluable process, kind of forget that you’ve done it before, essential. and somehow that stripping down process gets you somewhere new each IHS: I chose a number of adjectives to time. describe your films in the introduction, and I didn’t actually use the word Q: You’ve talked quite a lot tonight empathy. To give two examples, Kyle about genre and your interest in genre. Chandler in Carol and Dennis Quaid in Are there any particular genres that you Far From Heaven, you could have easily haven’t yet explored that you would like portrayed these people as two to address? dimensional characters, and one of the things that’s remarkable across the TH: Well, the next film I’m hoping to make whole body of your work is the empathy is called Wonderstruck and it’s based on you have for people. There’s no right a Brian Selznick graphic novel that he and wrong, there’s not a moral construct made for young people. He did the, he that you’re laying on top of these wrote Hugo, Hugo right? [The Invention people. There’s an attempt to of] Hugo Cabret, that became understand everyone and the place Scorsese’s Hugo. And I’ve never made a they’re at and where they’re going. film for younger audiences, and it’s carried by three twelve year-old kids TH: Thank you. I mean the Kyle Chandler basically, and it’s another love letter to a performance in Carol and the character city, in this case New York and its past, so of Harge Aird is owed so much to things I’m excited about that Phyllis was doing in the script. Patricia Highsmith is quite hard on the men in the Q: Hi, thank you for this evening. I’m here book, and she bought such empathy studying screenwriting actually, and and such complexity to their dilemmas something you just said, the whole on the page, so it started there, there is process of discarding what you no question. But Kyle does such a expected something to be and beautiful job, and you know that’s the discovering what it is. I wondered if you thing about these female-driven films had a process for the way that you do that are hard to get financed because that? Do you take it to friends, do you, or women are the lead characters, you what you do to help yourself strip away know ridiculously. But they’re also hard to everything and just see the heart of what find men to play second to women, and you’re working on? you know absurdly, because they’re just not accustomed to it, and so it asks TH: Yes, I have screenings, we have something very special in these actors screenings of cuts. And you know, and I already to take part in these films. And work, and the editing process is one of for Dennis Quaid it was a complete and my favourites, and my editor Affonso total departure from anything he’d done Goncalves on both Mildred Pierce and before, and he was so lovely and he Carol you know is the person I’ve been paid such close attention, he watched working with mostly recently, and he’s an all the Sirk movies. You know there’s such amazing, brilliant editor. But we show it to a subtle, vulnerable, committed colleagues and friends, and people we performance in that. And Kyle as well, know and people we don’t know. We and he was such a pleasure to work with don’t do like you know test screenings on Carol, thank you. that studios do, but we have questionnaires, and I don’t want to see IHS: If you want to find out more, or a who’s telling me what their comments different viewpoint on Todd’s films, the are, and it’s intensely informative. And PictureHouse cinema on Monday the 7th you hear consensus, and you know of December, there is a BAFTA Craft

12 BAFTA A Life In Pictures: Todd Haynes 25 November 2015 at Princess Anne Theatre, BAFTA, 195 Piccadilly, London

Masterclass with costume designer Sandy Powell. Also the wonderful Criterion, the US DVD label have just released a beautiful remastered version of Safe, along with one of your very early shorts, The Suicide from 1978. And I wouldn’t just recommend that you watch that, I would recommend with Carol coming out you start with Carol and do what I’ve done, spend a week working your way through one of the most sophisticated, elegant and articular filmmakers at work today. Can you please join me in thanking Todd Haynes.

[Applause]