San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Creative collaboration’s success spans decades
Todd Haynes and Christine Vachon kept missing each other when they were at Brown University in the 1980s, even though each was aware of the other’s reputation. But they finally met later that decade and haven’t been apart since.
Vachon has produced all of Haynes’ films, from his first feature — the $25,000-budgeted “Poison,” a foundational film in the New Queer Cinema movement that premiered at the 1991 Sundance Film Festival — through his latest movie “May December,” starring Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore.
With a catalog that includes “Velvet Goldmine” (1998), “Far from Heaven” (2002), the HBO miniseries “Mildred Pierce” (2011), “Carol” (2015) and “The Velvet Underground” (2021), Haynes and Vachon rank as one of the great director-producer relationships of modern cinema. Last month, the Mill Valley Film Festival created the inaugural lifetime achievement award for collaboration in their honor.
“I remember going to Australia for ‘Poison’ and we were flying in coach for 20 hours and couldn’t have been happier,” Vachon said as the two sat for a Chronicle interview at the St. Regis Hotel in San Francisco during the festival last month.
Haynes nodded in agreement.
“I didn’t have any expectations of having a career as an independent filmmaker,” Haynes said. “I was just taking it film by film, expecting that I’d eventually end up teaching film in order to have the freedom to make the kind of films I wanted to make.
“I think we both assumed, frankly, that we were going to have other jobs for the rest of our lives.”
They’ve come a long way together — and they’re not flying coach much anymore.
Haynes, who lives in Portland, Ore., is one of the industry’s most sought-after filmmakers. He has directed three performers to Academy Award nominations for acting, including Cate Blanchett twice (“I’m Not There” and “Carol,” the latter also drawing a supporting nomination for Rooney Mara) and Moore (“Far From Heaven”).
“Todd’s career and his access to actors, money, etc., has changed significantly,” Vachon said. “Now when I call an agent and say, ‘So Todd Haynes has a new script,’ they say ‘Yes.’ And I’ll say, ‘I haven’t even told you what it is yet.’ And they’re like, ‘My actor’s going to want to do it. It doesn’t matter what it is.’ ”
Vachon, who lives with her wife, visual artist Marlene McCarty, and their daughter in New York, doesn’t just produce Haynes’ films. Through Killer Films, which she established in 1995, Vachon has had a hand in some 80 movies by other directors including Kimberly Peirce (1999’s “Boys Don’t Cry,” for which Hilary Swank won the first of her two Oscars); John Cameron Mitchell (“Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” 2001); Robert Altman (“The Company,” 2003) and Paul Schrader (“First Reformed,” 2017).
In 2023 alone she was a producer on five movies, including Celine Song’s“Past Lives,” believed to be an awards contender this season, and Rebecca Miller’s “She Came to Me.”
Vachon said “May December,” with a script written by Samy Burch, was originally sent to Portman as a project to star in and direct. Instead, Portman sought out Haynes.
The story is about an aging small-town former high school teacher named Gracie who once had an affair with a student and served prison time for it. That student is now her husband. Portman plays Elizabeth, an actress who has been cast to play the teacher in a movie, and arrives to get to
(R) is in select Bay Area theaters and is available to stream on Netflix. know her subject.
The story is reminiscent of, if not identical to, that of the late Mary Kay Letourneau, who began an affair with her student Vili Fualaau when he was just 12 years old before marrying him shortly after being released from prison. It touches on Haynes’ recurring themes of shifting identity and alternate lifestyles frowned upon by mainstream society.
To play the former teacher, Haynes and Vachon immediately sought out Moore, marking their fifth collaboration.
After “Poison,” it took years for Vachon and Haynes to put together the financing for “Safe,” about a suburban housewife who becomes ill due to the chemicals in the environment around her. Moore had just become a bankable actress in the mid-’90s, and took a chance on the young filmmakers.
She has been there for them ever since.
“We entered each other’s lives as these already formed or mostly formed creative entities that found something in the other person,” Haynes said. Moore “is somebody who understands how to use unbelievable quietness to convey meaning in the medium of film as an actor. She has a confidence in her about how to modulate that and to underplay that and to hold back and leave empty spaces for the
“I can’t imagine ever not producing (director Todd Haynes’) movies. In 10 years, we’ll probably be doing the same damn thing.”
Christine Vachon, producer and longtime collaborator
audience to fill in.”
Haynes added that Moore seemed like a good fit for the filmmaking duo as all three are “drawn to characters who are somewhat inscrutable in ways that beg questions from the audience, that don’t answer more wishful ideas about heroic protagonists who save the day. Something a little more human and vulnerable.”
Moore’s Gracie in “May December” is certainly that. She is a control freak, but she is insecure and tries to subtly influence her portrayal by Elizabeth (Portman), who has her own issues.
Haynes said his approach was influenced by films that dealt with “interesting, strong and disturbing female subject matter,” including Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 classic “Persona,” which informs some of the visual style of “May December.”
He also said he didn’t hesitate to make the film despite the “current cultural climate” that would accuse Gracie of “grooming.” After all, the film is about messy, complicated lives.
“There is a merging of the two women and the fascination of watching that process, not really knowing where the power lies between the two,” Haynes said. “The preset ideas that we bring to a story like this get chipped away at in the most interesting way.
“It, to me, was like what movies always used to be: These provocative places that took you somewhere you weren’t completely comfortable, (that) made you want to talk about the film afterwards (with) your friends and debate.”
Haynes and Vachon are already planning their next project, although they declined to reveal it. Likely, there will be another one after that, and then another.
“I can’t imagine ever not producing Todd’s movies,” Vachon said. “In 10 years, we’ll probably be doing the same damn thing.”