Celebrity Biographies
Todd haynes
He is very clear about the topics that interest him and that are repeated in his filmography, the housewives who discover that they are being deceived, the great figures of music and homosexuality. Todd Haynes is one of the most prestigious American independent filmmakers.
Born in Los Angeles (California), on January 2, 1961, Todd Haynes graduated in Art and Semiotics from Brown University in Rhode Island. He continued his studies at Bard College, in New York, the city where he began to make his first steps as a short filmmaker, with Assassins: A Film Concerning Rimbaud , about the relationship between the writers Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud .
In his second short, The Karen Carpenter Story , Todd Haynes recounted the journey of the singer from The Carpenters, with Barbie dolls. But the biographie’s brother, Richard, the other half of the duo, was so unhappy with her sight that he sued him and eventually got the work banned from distribution.
He debuted in the feature film with Poison (Venom) , shot in black and white as a kind of parody of the B series science fiction movies of the 50s. It is made up of three interrelated stories, around homosexuality. In the first, a seven-year-old boy kills his violent father and runs away. The second looks like a horror film, about a mad scientist. The last one has as its protagonist a prisoner who feels attracted to a partner. It won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, but received numerous criticisms from associations that defend the traditional family.
In Safe (1995), she got a lot out of the ever-excellent Julianne Moore , as a housewife suffering from a rare illness. Velvet Goldmine recreates the golden age of glam rock, with a cast of handbells headlined by Ewan McGregor , Jonathan Rhys Meyers , Christian Bale and Toni Collette .
Todd Haynes ‘ most successful film has been Far From Heaven , which recasts Julianne Moore as a housewife who discovers that her husband ( Dennis Quaid ) is having a homosexual affair. The film is shot in the manner of Douglas Sirk’s 1950s melodramas. It earned four Oscar nominations for Lead Actress ( Julianne Moore ), Cinematography, Score and Screenwriting, the latter for Haynes himself.
Haynes subsequently shot the risqué I’m Not There , a tribute to singer-songwriter Bob Dylan . It reconstructs seven stories featuring as many characters that seem to be representations of the different facets of the legendary singer-songwriter’s personality, represented as a black boy, a womanizing artist and even a woman, Cate Blanchett , nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Role, and winner of the Golden Globe and the Volpi Cup in Venice in the same category.
Like many other contemporary filmmakers, Todd Hayness also joined the trend of shooting for television with the miniseries for HBO Mildred Pierce , an adaptation of the novel by James M. Cain of the same name . Kate Winslet performs such a convincing job as a housewife that she is left to fend for herself after discovering that her husband is cheating on him.
In 2013, Haynes presided over the San Sebastian Festival Jury.