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20 Years of Killer Films: Todd Haynes and Christine Vachon on queer cinema and “Carol”

This Saturday, Outfest Los Angeles will celebrate the 20th anniversary of Killer Films, a production company created and run by Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler. Killer has been behind some of the best queer and indie cinema of the last two decades, including Go Fish, Kids, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Boys Don’t Cry and Party Monster. As their reputation grew, they worked on more mainstream projects such as the Academy Award-winning Still Alice and Todd HaynesMildred Pierce mini-series on HBO.

Christine, an out lesbian, and Todd, an out gay filmmaker, have collaborated on several works since 1991, beginning with Todd’s first full-length Poison and following with 1995’s Safe, starring Julianne Moore, who would later go on to star in Todd’s critically acclaimed Far From Heaven. In 1998, Killer and Todd worked together on Velvet Goldmine, a musical film set against the backdrop of ’70s glam rock starring Jonathan Rhys Myers, Christian Bale and Ewan McGregor in bisexual roles as artists turned pop culture icons. (The film was loosely based on David Bowie, Iggy Pop and the sexually fluid rock stars that famously stretched the sexual boundaries of the era.)

Christine Vachon and Todd Haynes will both appear at Outfest’s celebration of Killer Films with a special screening of Velvet Goldmine and Q&A tomorrow night. We spoke with them about queer filmmaking and festivals and Carol their new highly anticipated adaptation of Patricia Highsmith‘s lesbian-themed novel The Price of Salt.

AfterEllen.com: There’s frequently a discussion on if we still need gay and lesbian film festivals. As filmmakers who screen at Outfest as well as places like Sundance or Cannes, what are your thoughts on that?

Todd Haynes: I come from that generation where-I mean, I always had questions about what defined queerness, gayness, in the arts and any particular medium. And yet, I also came from that generation that still had to sort of occupy the margins of dominant culture with a great deal of productive results and critical and creative and artistic results because of that. And so all of the legislative advances that we’ve seen that have been extraordinary and stunning and incontestably good for young gay people coming out and gay couples who want to raise kids and get married and have all the freedoms of heterosexual life, we also lose things in the process. We lose that marginality which also produced that kind of edge, and that kind of innate critical perspective to the world.

I think that discussion could also be broadened and we could talk about who does stand outside of dominant society these days and what does that even mean and where does that even exist politically or culturally, because we have such a consumptive mass media and digital culture that’s all about inclusion and, in many ways, the victory of capitalism over those ideas. So I think it’s connected to a whole set of cultural shifts that comes with good and bad side effects. These are healthy discussions to have.

Christine Vachon: I love film festivals. I think the identity crisis that some gay and lesbian film festivals are having has more to do with the fact that they used to serve their community one way, which was providing the only queer content that there was, and I remember going to some film festivals in the late ’90s with certain movies and the movies were mobbed because they created a sense of community, they brought queer people together, and was probably only one time a year. And now that people have access to all different kinds of content and there’s not that same urgency like if we don’t bring this queer movie to Tulsa, they’re never going to get to see anything and there’s a kid in Tulsa can download the entire works of Fassbender if he or she wants to. So I think in some ways queer film festivals have to redefine what they are to the community.

AE: One of the things Velvet Goldmine did well that not a lot of other queer movies tend to do is focus on bisexuality. Most of the time, a queer film is either seen as a “gay” movie or a “lesbian” movie. Do you see that aspect resonating with people?

TH: I think that’s also a characteristic of today’s sort of preferences in understanding sexual orientation and even sexual identity as well, gender identity, that we’re much more comfortable with absolute notions of absolute born-that-way homosexuality and born-that-way heterosexuality and absolute identification with a single sexual identity or gender identity and the changing over to the other side if that’s what you feel within yourself. I have always found that middle area-that grey area-produces a lot of really interesting issues and that’s really what that particular era was all about in the early ’70s. It was about that sort of bisexual imagination and androgynous kind of sensibility. And I think what I like about it is that it’s destabilizing.

I think whenever notions of identity or identify politics or sexual politics are all about this sort of idea that everybody’s just so secure in their absolute sense of self. I always go “Really? I don’t know.” [laughs] I think it’s when you’re not so absolutely secure that you start to really think more subtly about the world and about who you are and what these identities are.

So I found that to be a radical experiment that went on during those years and to, of course, address that period of time, I had to really fully commit to that and get deep into it. It was exciting. It was provocative. When that film came out, I did feel slight hesitation on the part of queer communities in knowing exactly how to deal with it. I mean it had its criticisms, particularly in the UK , which is absurd when you look at the whole style of the film, about it’s authenticity to real life historical facts and all that stuff. But I did notice that the gay community in general-I thought this was a totally radical film for queerness and yet, maybe people weren’t ready for it when it first appeared.

AE: Did Outfest pick Velvet Goldmine or was that your decision? I’m wondering if there are any of your films at Killer that are more women-focused you would have also liked to screen.

CV: I think we had a discussion what some of my favorite movies are and Velvet Goldmine‘s way up there on the top of the list. I think Velvet Goldmine has an extraordinary performance by Toni Colette in it, one of her earlier ones. I mean, I wouldn’t go so far as to say has no women in it. [My women-focused pick is] I Shot Andy Warhol.

AE: Killer seems to be able to attract stars who aren’t concerned about the queer themes of the film, even at a time when it wasn’t as desirable.

CV: That’s because we have strong material. First and foremost, we want to make a great movie with a great story. And sometimes that’s queer-focused and sometimes it isn’t. But I don’t, every year at the beginning of a new year, say, “Alright, this percentage of movies are gonna have this kind of focus.” I’m as proud of something like Still Alice as I am of Boys Don’t Cry. They’re great movies.

AE: What’s it like to be a queer woman in Hollywood today?

CV: I don’t know what it’s like not to be one. I mean, look, I think it’s become very interesting this year that there’s a lot of transparency around how few female directors there are, how few female movie screenwriters there are, etc. I think the fact that these things are sort of being laid bare is interesting and I think a good thing. Sort of forcing a lot of institution to re-examine themselves. I think it’s an interesting time.

AE: I find, working a site for and about queer women, that we’re often the harshest critics of lesbian or bisexual filmmakers. Have you found that to be the case?

CV: I can’t win with the queer community, to be honest. When I first started making movies, I was accused of only making movies by men. I was like “I’ve made two movies! Give me a minute!” Then I produced Go Fish and I was accused of making a lesbian movie that was agist. Every single movie, there’s been some complaint, and I just keep my head down and keep making them. Imagine I Shot Andy Warhol and the ripple that had. Stonewall, which I thought “How can anybody begrudge this movie?”-it was picketed. I just can’t keep track.

AE: It’s interesting that Velvet Goldmine is only 20 years after Carol is set, but the characters in the former are openly using words like “bisexual” to talk about themselves. I haven’t seen Carol yet but even in The Price of Salt, labels like lesbian or queer or bisexual are just not a part of the vernacular.

TH: They’re very different films in every conceivable way and that definitely begins with the historical setting of the two films and the sort of cultural-and who these people are. In Velvet Goldmine, these are outsiders; these are self-proclaimed artists from the get-go. These are people who embrace their radical or bohemian or artistic sort of marginality. In Carol, these are two women, very much a product of their time, trying very hard, or initially, to sort of follow the social dictates of their time and find appropriate male partners in the world.

And you see this in Carol’s life-she’s older than Therese and there’s more history in that endeavor and, as it were, more disruption to it. It’s a failing marriage and it’s a complicated relationship over custody with their child. And Therese is really just beginning her life, and looking at Carol as the model or an example of a certain kind of femininity and a certain kind of class designation. But she’s, you know-these are not bohemians, and I like that about it. If anything the script that I first read of Phyllis’s-Phyllis Nagy who adapted Price of Salt-even removed some of the-the novel has a little more bohemian ambitions embedded in some of the-like Therese’s boyfriend is an aspiring painter. You sort of feel it’s paper thin in the novel, that he’s going to outgrow it and doesn’t really believe in it. But she’s a stage designer by design, and her ambitions for her own career is as a stage designer so she’s already in the world of theater, or off-Broadway theater. But that’s the case in our film. I kind of like how the women are more ordinary and more-they don’t have any models for the kind of love they’re about to explore and with each other, and I thought that was even more exciting and powerful, ultimately.

AE: Do you face some of the same struggles today in creating films about queer themes and characters that you did when you started in the ’90s?

TH: There’s some aspects of today’s culture that feels more conservative and then other aspects of today’s culture that feels more accepting and unthreatened by sexual content and gay content in films. But that was also true in the ’90s, I felt that. The sheer fact that Velvet Goldmine was going to deal with music culture and rock ‘n roll and known sort of heroes of early ’70s glam rock and American versions that inspired it, gave it sort of marketability and credibility and sort of assuaged fears, I think, about its content. And I just think people thought, “Oh, yeah, young sexy actors and actresses in that movie. People are gonna go see it, I’m not worried.” It’s always about what you can get back on your investment or whatever. It’s funny, there’s always exceptions. And because this moment really was pop cultural. It really was about a kind of massive-especially in the UK-really commercial productivity around these images even though they were pretty camp and pretty extreme.

The thing we were all stunned with-I went to the Bowie exhibition that started in Victoria Albert Museum in London and moved to Chicago and I went and spoke there with Sandy Powell, the costume designer who is a great friend and colleague, and we were all stunned by the fact-which was extremely meticulous of Bowie’s life-that there’s almost no mention of bisexuality in the exhibition anywhere. There were no images of Angela Bowie. There were no images of Bowie going down on Mick Ronson‘s guitar. I was actually shocked. I actually couldn’t believe-because everything else was so thoroughly represented in the exhibition-queerness was removed. And it’s like how the fuck do you talk about Bowie? I don’t even really care what he really is, it’s what he did on publicly on stage-coming out as gay in 1971 on the cover of MelodyMaker magazine. Those sent shockwaves through popular rock culture and affected an entire generation of musicians and fans. So how do you just avoid it? It’s not really about what he really was and what he really did in bed, which is stuff you never really know about anybody, but what you can talk about is what you did on stage and what you did with your art and that’s what he certainly committed to in those years. It’s funny-you find moments of surprising conservative restraint, even in the midst of periods of progressiveness.

AE: Which reminds me of the incident that happened right before you went to Cannes, where Cate Blanchett did that interview with Variety and it was insinuated she was coming out as queer.

TH: Yeah, that was a bizarre kind of phenomenon, I have to say. And Cate’s reaction was also sort of stunned by how much hoopla was being derived from it. And the statement she said was sort of being taken out of context and compounded or whatever, exaggerated. But at a certain level it’s like, really? Would anyone have been surprised if Cate had had or any actor today, male or female, however they’ve ultimately settled down into life and raised a family and have a marriage or whatever. I think it’s partly the refusal to believe there is a grey area and places we move through in finding out who we are that society needs to embrace and encourage and assume was the norm rather than the exception.

AE: What have some of the reactions been from queer women who have seen Carol?

CV: Hardly anyone’s seen [Carol]. The people who have seen the movie were the people who were lucky enough to see the screening at the Cannes Film Festival, and that’s pretty much it. Of course I know some queer women have seen it because they worked on the movie, but the community at large has not come forward yet.

AE: I read that you joked about writing a tell-all. Can we expect a third book soon?

CV: The tell-all is some years away. But I may be writing a third book that’s more of an update of my previous two books which I know people use a lot to figure out how they’re going to make their own first features or what have you. So I might do something like that. I don’t know that I’d ever really do a tell-all.

AE: Do you have any dream projects you would love Killer to take on in the next 20 years?

CV: I don’t really think that far ahead. As far as I’m concerned, we have a fantastic slate, we’re looking at a number of movies we’re pretty excited about it in the next upcoming months and that’s all I focus on.

AE: How would you describe your relationship with Christine?

TH: It’s just sort of an unbreakable bond. It’s one of those examples in life where the professional life and the personal life of friendship is so sort of comfortably bound, and that we can occupy the roles that sometimes separate us over the course of a heated film production, where I’m on set and she’s worried about the budget and the bond company and whatever the financial constraints are or the financiers, which pull us apart from each other not as adversaries, but we have different jobs to fulfill and there not always easy. There’s just some basic trust I guess that binds us that is really unique and that I never cease to realize is special and something to really celebrate. She’s just one of a kind.

Christine Vachon and Todd Haynes will be at the Outfest screening of Velvet Goldmine on Saturday, July 11 at the DGA at 4:30 pm.

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