Todd Haynes
Todd Haynes
Todd Haynesis an American independent film director, screenwriter, and producer. He is considered a pioneer of the New Queer Cinema movement of filmmaking that emerged in the early 1990s. Haynes first gained public attention with his controversial short film Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, which chronicles singer Karen Carpenter's tragic life and death, using Barbie dolls as actors. Haynes had not obtained proper licensing to use the Carpenters' music, prompting a lawsuit from Richard Carpenter, whom the film portrayed in...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth2 January 1961
CityEncino, CA
CountryUnited States of America
Music and film are parallel experiences: they are linear, they are narrative.
A refusal of nature as a model is a tradition that goes right back to Oscar Wilde.
The Johnny Depp generation has this kind of brooding, weighty, introspective quality, very James Deanish. Which is nice, great for a lot of characters.
I always bring it up to my lawyer every now and then. And another reason we have to revisit it is because there is a restoration going on right now for the film through UCLA and Sundance.
When I write my scripts, there's a point at which if I'm not starting to see them visually, I feel like I'm kind of cheating. So my scripts are laden with a lot of visual description, which makes them not so much fun to read - I kind of weigh them down.
I think all my films can be enjoyed. In fact, they've often surprised me with how they're received.
Like the music and the period, I wanted 'I'm Not There' to be fun and full of emotions, desires and experiments that were thrilling and dangerous.
It's very funny because every time I make a movie, and I've heard this re-echoed by other filmmakers and actors I have worked with, you kind of feel like you're naked again. You have to figure it all out from scratch, as if you had never done it before.