Todd Haynes, bold independent film director, screenwriter and producer, shared how powerful films come from being “ruthless”.

Haynes is best known for directing the BAFTA-nominated period drama Carol, plus Velvet Goldmine and Far from Heaven. He told the packed audience at a special Life in Pictures event that filmmaking is as much about what you cut out as what’s left in.

“Filmmaking is always a process of discarding everything you expected it to be and looking at what it really is,” he said.

“What you see in the script is different to what you see in the dailies, which is different to what you saw in the flesh, and different from what you see in the first cut. You have to be ruthless. Sometimes you have to let your favourite scene go.”

Subverting film styles

Hayne’s first film was a Super 8 version of Romeo and Juliet where he made all the costumes and performed every role. This drive to reinvent different styles for his own aims has been a trademark across his critically acclaimed career.

Hayne’s first won public attention with The Karen Carpenter Story, which retold the singer’s life with plastic dolls. The film was recalled after a lawsuit – but it won him an engaged audience seeking the challenging work he wanted to make.

“Destabilising identity has been a constant interest in my movies,” he said.

Speaking out on LGBTQ+ life

In the early 1990s Haynes pushed forward the New Queer Cinema movement with films like Poison, driven by an urgent need to represent LGBTQ+ life on the big screen.

His next two features, glam rock drama Velvet Goldmine and subversive melodrama Far from Heaven, won him a wider audience. For Haynes, much of the success of these films was due to the work of his frequent collaborators, producer Christine Vachon and costume designer Sandy Powell. Powell received a BAFTA for her work on Velvet Goldmine.

He also praised Julianne Moore and Cate Blanchett, who he has worked with twice each as “incredibly courageous actors.” Carol, his most recent work with Vachon, Powell and Blanchett was a new experience for Haynes. He found working from a script he didn’t write liberating.

A bold film pioneer

Haynes’s bold, thought-provoking films have seen him become one of the most renowned directors in independent film. He finished his Life in Pictures with some advice for creatives wanting to follow in his footsteps.

“​Just do it, make work,” he said.

“I learn so much every time – the process gets you somewhere new each time.”

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