[April 9, 2008] This past weekend, acclaimed independent filmmaker Todd Haynes visited Ithaca for a screening of his 2007 film, I’m Not There, a wildly inventive and audacious film constructed around the many lives and identities of the musician Bob Dylan. The film screened at Cornell Cinema’s Willard Straight Theatre, followed by an onstage discussion between Haynes himself and the Village Voice’s chief film critic, J. Hoberman.
Haynes’ best works include Far From Heaven, a ’50s-era melodrama inspired by the works of filmmaker Douglas Sirk; Safe, a terrifying meditation on alienation and claustrophobia in modern society; Velvet Goldmine, a film Hoberman called “the brainiest movie about rock music ever made”; and Superstar, a short film based on the tragically short life of singer Karen Carpenter, as enacted by Barbie dolls.
Throughout past three decades, Haynes has remained one of the most unpredictable and thrilling directors in modern American cinema, and we recently had the pleasure to meet with Haynes at the Statler Hotel, shortly before the screening at Cornell Cinema. We spoke with him about Bob Dylan’s tumultuous life, about Haynes’ own craft, and about Haynes’ academic training in semiotics at Brown. In conversation, Haynes was articulate, effervescent, and fiercely intelligent.
Ithaca Times: First of all, congratulations on I’m Not There.
Todd Haynes: (Laughs) Thank you.
IT: It’s such a wonderful film. You’ve had a good year, no?
Haynes: Yes. It’s been a busy, jam-packed year, but really exciting. It’s been full of really great responses to the movie. And when you make a film like that — well, no one should ever have expectations for how their film is going to be received, or you could have expectations, but you have to measure them. And this is particularly a film where you just don’t know how people will respond to a film like that today. But I also felt like there was a real shift in the market in general. And the kinds of films that came out last year made I’m Not There seem less shocking, I think, in their company because it was a lot of, in my opinion, movies for grownups. It’s very interesting, and I felt like it was ultimately — whether you loved the films or not — a director’s year. Very director-driven.
IT: And you felt that hadn’t been the case for several years?
Haynes: No. For several years, I felt like there wasn’t a lot of exciting work out there, from a director’s standpoint. There was a lot of typical Hollywood fare, there was best-picture fare — they were the kind of films that in another year, Atonement would have fit right into, but this year, Atonement almost stuck out. Because this year, there was much grittier, more complex and interesting and a less classic style of filmmaking.
IT: Do you get a sense those moments happen in shifts or waves? You’ve been a successful filmmaker for so long — do you see trends?
Haynes: I think that there are all kinds of forces at play, and it’s hard to ever completely identify it, especially in the moment. It’s definitely easier after the fact, but it is hard to not feel like something — I feel like we went through something extraordinary over the last seven years with the Bush administration that we have never seen anything quite like it before. And I think that we are reeling from that, and it is typical that a creative and popular industry would at some point have to… react. And in all kinds of ways, and not even in literal ways. There were many films about the war and about Iraq, and those weren’t even necessarily the kind of films that got the most attention, but I think all were, in some way or another, a creative reaction to a repressive period.
IT: To speak about I’m Not There specifically, it has obviously been recognized for its formal audacity, and the complex way that the film moves from beginning to end. Within each of the six characters, and within those strands, did you feel like there was a conversation happening, technically or otherwise, in terms of how the scenes are arranged or how events unfold? Or does each character exist on its own terms, in a vacuum, so to speak?
Haynes: I think that I always felt that each character was always forced into being by the limitations of the preceding story. And so each character — in their own quest for a certain kind of creative freedom or expression or a certain kind of freedom to exist, even if it was more in a private zone, whether with a family or a relationship — reached barriers and obstacles that forced the next character into its life.
And I think that’s really what happened in Dylan’s life. He played out these psychic periods in his life, creatively and personally, and played them out so thoroughly, that there was no place further to go in them, and he had to basically start over. And in each case, it necessitated a kind of violent rejection of the last one. Because he was so hounded — and worshipped, and analyzed, and anticipated, and followed, and cornered and named — that nothing he could do would be free to begin with. So there was a level of trying to throw off the pack, to throw the scent off, so they wouldn’t follow him into the next trench. (Laughs)
But yes, I think that one can step back from it all, and talk about freedom in big terms, capital ‘f’ Freedom, but in the movement it’s a simple creative freedom, an ability to keep making music and art on his own terms, or just at all. If you’re fundamentally a creative being who wouldn’t really survive another day if you couldn’t keep making songs and singing them somewhere, but you also happen to be Bob Dylan in the 60s — well, how do you reconcile those two things? Basically, he had to create a chase or an escape with the ‘Bob Dylan’ part of that with that configuration.
IT: When you were actually going through the process of making I’m Not There, did you get a sense that the actors in each Bob Dylan role had an awareness of what was going on with the other characters? Was that in any way informing what they were doing?
Haynes: There was a great deal of self-awareness and it is specific to each one. I did feel that at the most general level and at the level of just trying to construct this very complex tapestry to make the film upon, that in a way, each story needed to be filling in the other [story].
That’s sort of why, for example, the Robbie story, with the marriage and its failure — and in particular in the second half, the characters start to unravel — is interweaving with Billy, the Richard Gere character, who is in exile from everything. And you see, and I sort of hoped to try, to put these stories in a dialogue with each other, to suggest that this was this guy’s past, and there were a lot of disappointments and losses and accumulated failures that forced him out of world #1 to world #2.
And that sense of reflection and silence that Richard Gere exhibits more than any other of the Dylans really, just reflecting and observing and taking in his environment — there is a reason for it. And it is the intent of vocalism and acting out of other characters.
Similarly, there is the example of Jude defending himself against all of the expectations that he isn’t Jack anymore! Like, “I’m not a protest singer — and would you shut up about it!” And Woody is all about the future and every possibility, yet he draws all of his inspiration from the past and from the Dustbowl era.
So all of the stories have a strange and unique relationship to one another, and the barriers that the other characters and their experiences set up for the others. And the most funny, maybe, is that Robbie Clark literally comes into being as a counter-culture actor by playing Jack Rollins! And that’s the most literal example.
[“Fernando” starts playing]
But can we just talk about Abba? Enough about my movie. (Laughs)
IT: (Laughs) We can do that.
But with regards to this idea of continuity within Bob Dylan’s life, and in thinking about the various stages and permutations of Dylan’s sense of self, at any point did it cause you to think about issues of continuity within your own corpus? Did you feel as though it was some continuation of your own corpus; an extension or part of a greater arc or trajectory?
Haynes: Oh, absolutely it was. And I think that happens even when you’re not aware of it. So it was definitely happening in ways that I was not aware of, and ways that I was. And in the ways that I was aware of it, were recurrent themes that are all about the ideas of identity. And this is a unique example of a singular, well-known artist in American popular culture, who, on the one hand, creates such unbelievable desire to identify with, particularly for a certain man of a certain generation, and there are certainly women who have a deep connection with Dylan as well.
But this is somebody who also elicits such a desire to basically capture some sense of authentic self, and is, at the same time, some guy who just spent his whole life frustrating that process. And not necessarily because that was something he wanted to do, but perhaps because he needed to get through his own life and keep himself vitally excited and fresh, and in danger zones all the time. He went into places he didn’t know he needed to be in until he went into them.
So that whole dance away from identity as something comfortable, secure, regular, unified, and whole and all of those things that a lot of our cultural messages seem to defend and support, Dylan rejected.
And a lot of characters in my films are characters who struggle with identity — sometimes heroically and sometimes on purpose — and sometimes unconsciously, like their bodies are protesting against their minds and conscience. I found that [Bob Dylan] was almost a positivist example of all of that happening on purpose — and in control of the process. I found that so interesting and unique.
But at the same time, the whole weird return to Dylan in my life coincided with the end of my time living on the East Coast and in NYC. I didn’t quite realize that it would also create a radical change in my life in a kind of new weird little renaissance in my own life. It all happened at the same time, where I was leaving New York to drive Portland, and write Far From Heaven, and get away from the city. I was definitely losing my fresh feeling about NYC, and Dylan was just all that I wanted to listen to.
I ended up conceiving of this project, getting the permission from Dylan [to use his songs], and leaving New York all in that first year. So it really did happen all at once, and it was an incredible creative rejuvenation to be in Portland, and suddenly be around younger people. It just mixed it all up and changed everything.
As we get older, it gets harder to create an entire world of new friendships all at once. It just doesn’t happen. It’s almost like, you have to go to school for that, you know.?You just end up settling down with your friends and peers, and your career usually takes on some kind of solidification process. And then you settle down. And this was a great stirring up for my process.
IT: And so was it your own kind of danger zone?
Haynes: It didn’t feel like a danger zone; it felt like a refuge. It felt like a complete rescue, a self-rescue. My danger zone was a burning-out in New York, maybe, but that forced me into new places. It was a little bit like my own town of Riddle. (Laughs)
I’m also very interested in this big state-small state mentality right now, if there is such a thing. Because everyone tries to characterize who’s voting for Obama and who’s voting for Hillary, and of course there are all kinds of demographics to determine who falls in one or the other. But the one recurrent theme is that all of the big states are going for Hillary and all of the small states are voting for Obama, and I wondered about that. Because I really did have a change of attitude by moving to a smaller state, moving outside of a big city like New York.
IT: Safe was fantastic, it does seem to touch upon to this ongoing idea of crisis of identity, as does Far From Heaven. Within your corpus, did you sense that Far From Heaven was part of the same continuum of Safe?
Haynes: Oh absolutely. I do women’s movies, and then boy rock movies. (Laughs) The sort of big, gay-ish or rock-ish movies are much more organically or experimentally structured. The girl movies have much more traditional references to linear or genre filmmaking, and that’s true for Superstar, Safe, and Far From Heaven.
IT: That’s funny you mention that — and not that I would group any of the films you’ve ever made (laughs) — but when I think of Superstar, I would tend to group it with Velvet Goldmine or I’m Not There, perhaps.
Haynes: Oh sure, because of the popular culture aspect. Maybe [Superstar] is my ultimate, consummate film, where all of my themes occur in one place. (Laughs) It is a real film about a woman and her particular struggle with her body, and those societal pressures, as well as a very clear reference to the star story genre. And it is sort of a playful examination of that genre, but it is a film that’s got it all — everything except Julianne Moore! (Laughs)
IT: Superstar is so great because as an early work of yours, it still shows a fascination with décor and interior spaces.
Haynes: Yes, exactly.
IT: But it’s on a small scale! Safe and Far From Heaven show a similar aesthetic, but on a real-life scale.
Haynes: Exactly. It’s the only movie where I made every piece of set and prop myself. (Laughs)
IT: Well, it’s incredible to see that stamp there, even at the beginning. The Julianne Moore similarities aside, do you see Carol White [of Safe] and Cathy Whitaker [of Far From Heaven] as undergoing a similar crisis of identity?
Haynes: Well, I think they are very different characters, but I think that the thing in common with them is the intense presence of the domestic sphere on both characters. And both stories are really about a kind of claustrophobia within a social order. And those are things imbued with a great deal of glamour and the American dream — like that is meant to be what we are ‘supposed to want’ — palaces of wealth and comfort. And that is defined by very specific mores and values that coincide with the literal space of the walls, furniture, couches and lamps, but there is something missing, obviously. And it starts to be felt. And [with Safe] it is in the case of bodily experience, a feeling of incompatibility with everything that you’re supposed to want and desire.
IT: Many people make light of the male characters’ inability to comprehend what is happening to Carol. But for me, it is almost the female relationships that are more threatening and disconcerting, because the women are so unfamiliar with each other. It felt claustrophobic within female relationships and a sense of alienation.
Haynes: Yeah. What still leaks into this so-call “retreat” in the second half of the film, even the woman who is depicted as the “earth mother” who is supposed to tell her the truth, I think that people will have a hard time with trusting that that character who goes to comfort Carol and tells her to love herself. It’s a whole other language that is sort of the antithesis of the way that women in Los Angeles look, speak, dress, behave — there is still some residue of discomfort there that exists.
And is anyone ever totally comfortable with anybody? (Laughs) There is a little tiny margin of really uncomfortable and afraid and uncertain of your body in space, and uncertain of your body with other bodies, and even with the person you spend your whole life with, there are still pockets of uncertainty and strangeness that still exist.
IT: Well, the film was very unsentimental in that way.
Haynes: Yeah. (Laughs)
IT: Can you speak about the ways to which you addressed or alluded to illness — specifically AIDS — in Safe?
Haynes: It was really about the ways that AIDS is misapplied, and how much we tend to look for culpability in sufferers in all illnesses. And AIDS is one that has generated a great deal of extra interpretation because it’s connected to homosexuality, drugs, poverty and black people, and everything that we’re supposed to be afraid of.
But in this one example, Peter, the leader of Wrenwood, is identified as a HIV sufferer in the film, when the woman who first introduced Carol to the campus, says, “Oh, Peter suffers from HIV.” And I actually wanted people to think (whispers), “Oh, then he’s a good character,” because he is an HIV sufferer, and he can’t be bad. And it is immediately sympathetic. Especially, like, “because, it’s Todd Haynes!” (Laughs)
But he’s not actually someone that we should trust entirely, and he is someone who feels that there’s a sense of almost a free market approach to recovery, where you assume responsibility for your illness as the way out of it — and that was not going to help any of those people.
And even Carol bringing AIDS into her final speech was her desperate attempt to be accepted, and to use the words and the references and all of the things that we think of as ‘privileged knowledge’ — this new way of talking about self and wholeness and AIDS and these new things that are part of a privileged education. And she tries so hard to be someone that everyone would like and accept. And I even use her reference to AIDS as an attempt for that — which shows how twisted everything gets, in a way. (Laughs)
IT: In film there is a great tradition of critics and filmmaking — for example, Godard started out as a film critic before becoming a filmmaker. And you’re someone obviously well-trained in semiotics and theory and so forth. There’s a very high academic discourse surrounding your works, and I wonder to what degree do you try to follow that, if there is a feedback loop for theory and other works and discussion and what you do.
Haynes: I’m not really engaged in that world anymore, but of course it’s still such a trip to see a books of collected essays with academic writers and theorists writing about my work, and bringing it back into the classroom. That, to some degree, does garner some inspiration and motivation.
I think that the semiotics program at Brown [University] made sense to me… and, well, it only connects to people who are questioning the natural traditions of humanist education and the beginnings of questions of constructed ideas around identity and meaning in our technological world. And, for me, also particularly how that relates to the history of film, which is a product of technology and ideology.
I think that if it didn’t already connect to instincts that I had or the way I already saw the world, it wouldn’t have meant anything. I saw other students around me who fell into it in a fashionable way, and then when they moved on from college, it didn’t really apply, it didn’t necessarily have a longer lasting influence on them or their lives. And it did with me, because it already connected to me, and it became this parallel language that was an academic language, that came out of theory, criticism, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and feminism. Feminism was a very big part of it. That really inspired me. So I think I had some stuff already going on in my head, in that direction.
I remember a kind of pivotal eye-opening moment. I was a freshman, and I had taken a year off. I wanted to take upper-level division courses in film theory, and they sounded so much more interesting than the prerequisite courses that sounded so scary, like, “Narrativity in Cinematic Coding.” (Laughs) Like, that was one of the requisite courses at Brown and I was like, “What are they talking about?” and there was one class that was called, like, “Theory and Sound Design” and how sound interprets art. And I wanted to take that course, and they let me take it. They were going to watch me to see if I could handle it, because I wasn’t exposed to a lot of the founding theory and ideas.
And I remember Philip Rosen who was teaching the course, and in one of the first classes he was talking about the “classic Hollywood text.” And he said, “and then of course we come to the obligatory heterosexual closure.” He made something unnatural, out of something that we assume to be natural, that we’re not even supposed to mention because of course the guy and the girl kiss at the end. And we are all raised on that, to believe that that was the way the world works. But to have somebody name it as a choice, as a systemic part of a tradition — was so amazing. In a really small way, but in the way that it identified why that meant something to me, and why it was so exciting, and liberating to hear that said.
IT: But how did you do in the class, is the question! (Laughs)
Haynes: (Laughs) I did okay. I stuck it out! I was later a TA for prerequisite courses for all of the teachers that I had gotten to know at that point. I think I was a junior or a senior. And man, you had to work! All of a sudden, you were leading sections that were teaching Lacan, and Luce Irigaray, Althusser and Kristeva. And you really had to know it, because you never knew what you would be asked by people! But I realized what amazing courses those really were.
IT: Where do you think we are today with AIDS awareness in the last 10-15 years, with regards to the Bush Administration?
Haynes: I think it’s probably the only good thing George Bush did, was actually make it a serious part of his foreign policy and humanitarian proposals, and he delivered a lot of money, more than any other president ever has, to Africa and AIDS-related areas. Of course, there were a lot of conditions attached to that, with how the money could be spent, and it sort of had an infusion of Christian morality, wiht policy and so forth.
But for the most part, Africa was the first to acknowledge the effects of the contributions. But AIDS still exists in the United States in all of the places it first did, and yes — it’s complex, the way in which it’s been disavowed as a serious danger by the younger generations because of the medical breakthroughs. And that has obviously diminished the savagery of it from the initial decades, but it’s still a killer — and you have to remember that.
IT: I have one final question: With the issues of digitization in the 21st century with respect to underground cinema and music — where do you see those two issues heading, as they interact with each other? For example, the Internet has intensified awareness of the underground, but it intensifies and critiques and puts away that moments, whereas 20 years ago it would have had time to grow and change. On the other hand, perhaps we are on the cusp of something completely unimaginable of a breakthrough. From your point of view, do you have any thoughts on where we are today regarding those issues, and film and music? (Laughs)
Haynes: And that’s your last question! (Laughs) Just some bonus question, just throw that one in there. But God, I wish I knew! Everything that you ask, I ask as well. But I don’t really know. I want to feel the democratic potential of our digital and Internet culture. And the word ‘connectivity’ is so interesting because I don’t know if I feel more connected to the world as a result of digital technology! I think I feel more disconnected.
I mean we tend to kind of improve our little pod of preferences and everything that we possibly want, and we hyper-tailor to our specific tastes but it means that that communal experience is something that we less and less share. The amount of sales on a record or CD to be #1, is the smallest it’s ever been. Less and less people are sharing the same experience, so it’s very easy for a record to go to #1, because fewer people are taking that in. So what does that even mean anymore? So as a filmmaker watching this year, it put the heat on some of us. For a while, nobody was going to the movies anymore, unless it was some huge blockbuster sensational experience, like with great sound or explosions or something. But the communal experience of seeing a dramatic film and experiencing that impact and feeling it seems to be… going away.
And box office seemed to be fairly good this year, but there were also more films than ever out this year as well. Again, it’s hard to know what that exactly means as connectivity, or how we connect to each other through an experience. It’s… curious.
The most amazing thing at this point that is so obvious is the excitement around the democratic candidates Hilary and Obama, and the end of cynicism, which I just never even knew how to conceive of, after so many decades of it. Each new subsequent generation seemed more hard-edged and more protected. And there is the vulnerability of hope and optimism — and disappointment, right?
Of course, we’ve been totally butchered as a culture and as a country from our own leaders, and that of course creates something really radical and new, and a real freshness. And that’s something that I can see and how much of that is happening on the Internet, and how much power that is giving to the people to determine not only the budgets and fundraising statistics of candidates, but also how many people are watching certain speeches on YouTube? It’s just so cool.
IT: In particular, his race speech not just emotionally moved me, but amazed me — because how did our society let this guy filter through and make his way all the to the top? It’s incredible!
Haynes: I know! I know.
IT: And once he gets all the way to the top, he has an immediate appeal and physical gut level appeal.
Haynes: And after so many years studying ‘60s films and ‘60s filmmakers, I was feeling like we don’t have leaders like that anymore, like, “Oh well, it’s impossible, it will never be like that again.” But, my God, look what we have. It’s pretty amazing. So that’s evidence of connectivity and something really great.
IT: I think that when most people our age hear him speak and think, it’s in a vernacular that you believe and trust.
Haynes: But as you say, look where it is. He’s ahead in every single measurable place. And it’s sad to have to denigrate Hilary at all — except for the obvious reasons (laughs), like her war vote — because she’s incredible. But I do want her to look at the whole picture, and to keep in mind that her own ambitions and her own skill. And it was really dangerous when she started to give McCain some higher marks on being commander in chief than Obama. That is dangerous stuff. Or when she disingenously said, “As far as I know, he’s not Muslim.”
IT: There was a poll that showed that 23% of people who would vote for Hilary, also thought that Obama was Muslim. But if you get that meme out there circulating on the Internet…
Haynes: It’s amazing how untruth functions. And I do think that is an unfortunate side effect of our viral culture. Because there is no standard of truth or checks against hearsay, and the public sense of sphere and gossip are so dominant. It’s such a power of persuasion. I heard Randy Rhodes talking about this one segment from 60 Minutes on Air America, where they interviewe a man who said he would vote for Obama, except for the fact that he was Muslim and doesn’t recite the Pledge of Allegiance. But the amazing thing was that the guy was going to vote for him anyway! You go, “What?” That is extraordinary.
IT: Absolutely. Okay, so one final question. The casting of Kim Gordon in I’m Not There. Was that your idea? It’s brilliant.
Haynes: (Laughs) Oh yeah. I wanted her there in the film. She’s so good. And all of the footage we got of her in [the Sonic Youth music video, Disappearer”] I just couldn’t take my eyes off of her! She really has this power on screen. I also thought that she did a great job in Last Days, so I had to use her but have her not be “herself” at all. And with having Lee Renaldo involved in the soundtrack, and Thurston was involved with Velvet Goldmine. So it’s been an ongoing thing.
IT: Did Lee come to Portland to work on the music?
Haynes: No, we were pretty much in Montreal for the duration of I’m Not There. Actually, Lee never even made it to Montreal. All of the music kind of happened to be done long distance, and he stayed in New York. But we were all on the east coast, and we shot it all pretty much in Montreal.
IT: Actually, it seems to me that Thurston and Kim’s move from NYC to Northampton is a lot like your own move from NYC to Portland. They’re both still so involved in the underground, and supporting new, young artists. It’s so inspiring, that it makes a real difference. Because perhaps with someone of their stature, the more they participate, they’re not diminished in any way.
Todd: Oh no way, hardly! People forget that. And it’s because you remember that’s why you’re doing what you’re doing, and you get closer to when you feel the most connected to your own music, to your own work. Thurston is not just generous, because what he does is really what it’s all about. And the further away other artists stay from that, you really are just chasing your own tail and you forget why you do what you do. But it does take energy — just at that level, it takes get energy to get yourself out of the house.