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" By the time I finished 'Poison,' the New Queer Cinema was branded, and I was associated with this. In many ways, it formed me as a filmmaker, like as a feature filmmaker I never set out to be. "

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" I think camp is a really fascinating thing, and it's hard to define and hard to apply consciously. It's almost something you take from material that's already existed in the world, a reading of the world. But I think it speaks of a long tradition of gay reading of the world, before gays were allowed to be visible. "

Todd Haynes

You

Think

Gay

" A key part of the process for me is having screenings: not official test screenings, just gatherings of people, some I know and some I don't. We ask what is working and what isn't. So it's not as if I'm shutting out input. "

" Films like 'The Godfather,' 'Chinatown' and 'The Exorcist' brought a realism and currency and understatement to their genres that we wanted for 'Mildred Pierce.' "

Todd Haynes

Wanted

Genres

" The bond company comes in if you exceed your costs; they're the insurers of the film. In the worst-case scenario, they take over the production. "

" Serious films for grown-ups - 'Michael Clayton,' 'In the Valley of Elah,' 'A Mighty Heart' - these are big Hollywood films, but they have substance and craft and really beautiful performances. "

" I think many of the ideas that opened up in the '60s got implemented in the '70s and that certain minority voices that were not being heard in the '60s, like women and gay people, were being heard in the '70s. Black Civil Rights had also found its foothold, and those ideas were also very pertinent. "

" I felt 'Brokeback Mountain' re-imbued the love story with an authentic and unquestionable series of obstacles that these men faced. I think that's certainly true for 'Carol' as well. "

" I'm always interested in what classic crime writers got into when they stepped away from the genre stuff they were known for. That's why 'Mildred Pierce' is like noir without any real crime. "

Todd Haynes

Crime

Classic

" I think I'm drawn to female characters partly because they don't have as easy or as obvious a relationship to power in society, and so they suffer under social constraints or have to maneuver within them in ways men sometimes don't or are unconscious about, or have certain liberties that are invisible to them. "

" I've always been interested in visual art and used to be much more into theater when I was younger, or more knowledgeable about what's going on. And literature has played a big part in my life. "

" There's no better place to do a longform project than HBO. I loved the creative teams I got a chance to work with. "

" I love serial drama. "

" It's funny: I don't feel like I have any particular privileged feeling for the Fifties. "

Todd Haynes

Feeling

Any

" The best love stories on film are rooted in the point of view of the more woundable, vulnerable party, the more amorous party. "

" At the time I made 'Safe,' I was really intrigued by the whole culture around AIDS, which was turning to people like Louise Hay and these other West Coast New Age thinkers. "

" I figured I would be teaching my whole life and making experimental films on the side. "

" With 'Poison,' I'm sure some people just hated the movie, but it also got caught up into a debate about arts funding because it was a film that received a National Endowment for the Arts Public Grant, and it won the prize at the Sundance Film Festival. "

" I started 'Carol' as I almost always do, by looking at films from the time, and they were less - they actually felt less relevant to me in terms of their bigness, although we do have some big '50s-type moments in 'Carol.' "

Todd Haynes

Always

Moments

" There's this homogenization, this big sucking motion in dominant society, to absorb all the disparate elements that define the margin or define the culture or define those who are thrust outside the status quo. "

" The highest-caliber dramatic work produced for TV - not just in cable but something like 'The Good Wife' at network - is consistently great. "

" I don't know if I ever entertained an academic career, nor did I ever think I'd become a feature film-maker in the market. "

" You always feel like rock critics are frustrated musicians. I envy musicians their ability to live their art and share it with an audience, in the moment. "

" It's very funny because every time I make a movie, and I've heard this re-echoed by other filmmakers and actors I have worked with, you kind of feel like you're naked again. You have to figure it all out from scratch, as if you had never done it before. "

" I'm used to always having struggles getting finances together and keeping precarious budgets alive in the independent film world. "

" Looking at photographs of New York in 1952, you find a powerfully pre-Eisenhower era - sagging, tired, distressed - and the palette is slightly dissonant. "

" There were interesting ways that queerness could hide out and get played out pre-Stonewall. It is part of a vast history that is getting forgotten quickly as we trumpet forward into gay marriage and gays in the military and a much different cultural attitude toward gay lives. "

" When you think of the later '50s and 'Far From Heaven' and Eisenhower and Sirk, you think of that Hollywood panache and gloss to American middle-class life. "

" We yearn for the desire to triumph, and it almost never does in the greatest love stories because we're left yearning for it more in the end, and we wish the world were different as a result. I do love that. "

" With 'Carol,' I was just really looking at and thinking about the love story as a genre, not the domestic melodrama. "

" I worked with Jim James on my film 'I'm Not There' - he sang 'Goin' to Acapulco' with Calexico backing him up. We just hit it off, and it's such a beautiful moment in that film. "

Todd Haynes

Moment

Off