Days of heaven

When Todd Haynes began his career in 1990 as the director of the Sundance Festival prize winner Poison, he was quickly acknowledged as the doyen of New Queer Cinema. Since then, though his work frequently returns to themes concerning sexual politics and societal prejudices, he has come to be seen as something more than a gay filmmaker.

Indeed, these days his formally experimental films – which typically display an encyclopedic knowledge of movies – have led to Haynes being widely recognised as the John the Baptist figure for the New New Wave of Hollywood, as typified by such up-and-comers as Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation), Paul Thomas Anderson (Magnolia, Punch Drunk Love), Wes Anderson (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums) and Alexander Payne (Election, About Schmidt).

Haynes’ current release is the magnificently lush Far From Heaven. Though the film is his most conventional to date, this riff on the classic 1950s Douglas Sirk melodrama All That Heaven Allows (replete with an authentic ’50s technicolour look), unquestionably represents a career zenith for the director. Focusing on a 1950s housewife (Julianne Moore in her second virtuoso performance for Haynes following her turn in 1995’s Safe) who scandalises her community when she forms a friendship with her black gardener (Dennis Haysbert) as her manly, boorish husband (Dennis Quaid) begins to face up to his homosexuality, Far From Heaven handles issues of sexuality and race in a deft and sensitive fashion.

Understandably, Todd is rather pleased with the finished product, especially with Julianne’s Oscar nominated turn, as he revealed when I caught up with him recently.

TB: The film’s aesthetic replicates the saturated technicolour of 1950s Hollywood. Was that difficult to approximate?

TH: Most certainly. That was actually a big challenge because film stock has changed so much. Film is now a whole different process in terms of shooting and developing than the old technicolour way. Modern film stock is so much more natural, and the lenses have become much more fine grained. So we had to do a lot of tests, and we did end up using some antique equipment, but we had a great crew to achieve that effect and they were really tested on Far From Heaven, because we only had a short space of time for pre-production as the 9-11 crisis occured and that took a big bite out of our schedule.

TB: That surely must have cast a shadow on the production in other ways, too?

TH: Oh yes. You can’t imagine just afterwards and you have to back into your little project. But after a couple of weeks the tasks to be done were just mounting up, and it really helped having something to do, to keep your mind off it. At a certain point people just wanted to get back to their lives, and getting on with things is a great way to do that, and I also think it helped that this movie isn’t a work of blind patriotism, which was a typical response at the time. It’s a movie which is critical of America and its fears. That helped with establishing a sense of normality.

TB: Far From Heaven is the most formally conservative film that you’ve made. Was that constraining at all?

TH: Well, I like to think that each of my films set up their own internal rules. Safe was a very conservative film as well. If anything Safe adhered to the classic three act structure more than Far From Heaven does. That said Far is certainly a very linear film, but each film excites me, and doing the film in this very classic ’50s and artificial manner, means that perversely this was a very radical form

TB: Do you think that Douglas Sirk himself would love to have tackled subjects like those in Far From Heaven were he not prohibited by the Hays code?

TH: Well. it’s interesting that you mention that, because in the book Sirk On Sirk he mentions that there was a story that he would’ve like to have made one about a man struggling with his homosexuality. I’d love to know more about it myself – it was certainly intriguing to read.

TB: The film suggests that it is easier for a gay relationship to prosper – albeit covertly – than for an inter-racial relationship to prosper. Do you feel that’s the case?

TH: Well, I think that when you say covertly, that’s an important part of the equation. I think that it is easier for a gay relationship to exist in the kind of circumstances you see in the film, as opposed to an inter-racial one, but only due to the accident of visibility. One has the luxurious possibility of being clandestine when societal prejudices deem that necessary, whereas the other is utterly exposed to the community, and it’s easier to manipulate how things appear when something can be kept discreet.

TB: That’s actually a theme you seem to revisit frequently in your films – the gap between how things appear and how they actually are...

TH: Yes, it is. What particularly interests me is what lurks just beneath the surface – all these radical possibilities just swirling around. The most effective straightjackets that people can wear are internalised. So what is most interesting to me, is how we repress ourselves, not just how we keep things on the surface for external purposes, but the way we respond to normalcy by nurturing those standards instead of challenging them.

TB: You were once strongly identified with New Queer Cinema. Did you ever find that reductive, given that your films are about more than sexual politics?

TH: Well, people used to talk about me as a practitioner of New Queer Cinema, but not so
much anymore. In my view, there’s nothing radical about queer culture anymore, sadly, so the term is now used in the way that people talk about some historical relic. There was a very exciting time though, when a lot of good things were happening creatively, partly in response to the AIDS crisis, and I think a lot was achieved, so I never found it too reductive.

TB: You made the film with Section Eight – George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh’s production company. How did you find working with them?

TH: They were great. They were always there. Between them, they were making about five movies at the time, and yet they always provided support at the most critical times, because it was at times a fraught production, and as ever, there were financial issues, but they were always true to their word and very supportive.

TB: Did you write the script with Julianne Moore in mind?

TH: Yeah. I wrote the script for Julianne. She’s something else, and she does a great Jane Wyman (who frequently played the role of put-upon heroine in Sirk movies) That said, she makes every role that she does her own, and yet none of her roles resemble each other. Everything she does gets a unique interpretation.

TB: Are you hopeful that she’ll get the Oscar?

TH: Oh gosh, I don’t know. It has been an amazing year for Julianne, but there’s no question that her crowning achievement is the role in Far From Heaven where she completely carries the movie. Certainly, we’ve been doing our best to remind people how great she is, so that Nicole doesn’t monopolise the entire awards season! Yet, Julianne doesn’t need external plaudits, because her performance will live on, and in a year’s time people will have probably forgotten who won the Oscar.

TB: And of course she gets fantastic support in the film from Dennis Quaid and Dennis Haysbert...

TH: Yes, doesn’t she? I’ve always loved Dennis Quaid, and I really needed someone like that – someone who could bring that sort of American masculinity to the role, in order to illuminate where this particular guy was coming from, and how difficult it would be for him to deal with his own sexuality. I also think he’s a very fine actor, and if you look at his films back to back, I think it makes for a truly impressive body of work. Dennis Haysbert, meanwhile really impressed me initially because he is the absolute perfect physical embodiment of his character. I was just knocked out by his performance when he read for me. It was so solid and self-assured. He brought such confidence, and yet tranquility to that role. Like Julianne’s performance, it was heartbreaking.

TB: Actually the children, I felt, were in a way the most tragic characters in the film. The town is scandalised by their father being gay, and their mother forming an inter-racial relationship, but they’re not permitted any voice...

TH: Yes, exactly. It’s a bit like the little boy in an earlier short of mine Dottie Gets Spanked. Basically with that film, and with Far From Heaven, I wanted to capture and recall the way that in the newly formal America of the 1950s, the ‘proper’ American household included a very specific place for children. They had to be proper, and well-mannered, and most of all – seen, but not heard. One of the films I watched before making this movie is called The Reckless Moment, where the mother is totally repressed and running around hysterically wrapping her children up in clothes all the time, and it’s really curious how you identify with that character, because you recognize her insanity, but you understand that she’s constrained by a 1950s sense of propriety and morality..

TB: Far From Heaven and indeed a lot of your films frequently hint at how creepy the 1950s and the 1980s were. Do you feel they represent the most repressive decades in American history?

TH: Well, I used to think so but then along came the Bush administration part two. That leaves even the creepy ’50s in the dust. I mean, this war is going to be such fun, especially for Iraqis, and I think our president is so hot!

TB: Does he turn you on?

TH: Oh, absolutely.

TB: Isn’t he wonderful, though?

TH: Oh God, he’s scary and so cut off from reality. Did you see him after the recent demonstrations? He was just so cocksure and patronising saying – ‘Wow, it’s really nice to live in a free society where you can demonstrate.’ America has always aligned itself with any number of oppressive regimes, so that is such bullshit. Not only that, but the number of partial truths and total untruths that are circulating in the United States today are an insult to the very notion of a free society. I was at the Berlin Film Festival recently, and every American there was extremely outspoken about it, and yet the saddest thing of all is that the American media doesn’t reflect that, and instead is milking the tensions with Europe, especially France. It’s so easy and wrong and reductive.

TB: I know that you had a very unpleasant experience in Dublin a few years ago, when you were the victim of a gay-bashing. Have you been back here since?

TH: Oh yes. I was back a year later, and I had a great time. I saw one of the best Pulp concerts ever in Dublin, and I love it there. I would come back anytime!