Haynes Todd

American multi-award winning independent film director, screenwriter, and producer, considered a pioneer of the New Queer Cinema movement of filmmaking that emerged in the early 1990s. Haynes is openly gay, and lives in Portland, Oregon. An edited book of personal interviews was published in 2014, titled Todd Haynes: Interviews. Haynes first gained public attention with his controversial short film Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1987), which chronicles singer Karen Carpenters tragic life and death, using Barbie dolls as actors. Haynes had not obtained proper licensing to use the Carpenters music, prompting a lawsuit from Richard Carpenter, whom the film portrayed in an unflattering light, banning the films distribution. Superstar became a cult classic. Haynes feature directorial debut, Poison (1991), a provocative, three-part exploration of AIDS-era queer perceptions and subversions, established him as a figure of a new transgressive cinema. Poison won the Sundance Film Festivals Grand Jury Prize and is regarded as a seminal work of New Queer Cinema. Haynes received further acclaim for his second feature film Safe (1995), a symbolic portrait of a housewife who develops the health condition multiple chemical sensitivity. Haynes next feature, Velvet Goldmine (1998), is a tribute to the 1970s glam rock era, drawing heavily on the rock histories and mythologies of David Bowie, Iggy Pop, and Lou Reed. The film received the Special Jury Prize for Best Artistic Contribution at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival and an Academy Award nomination for Best Costume Design. Haynes gained critical acclaim and a measure of mainstream success with his 2002 feature, Far from Heaven. Inspired by the films of Douglas Sirk, Far from Heaven is a 1950s-set melodrama about a housewife who discovers that her husband is gay and falls in love with her African-American gardener. The film received four Academy Award nominations, including Best Original Screenplay for Haynes. His fifth feature, Im Not There (2007), a nonlinear biopic, depicts various facets of Bob Dylan through seven fictionalized characters played by five actors and an actress. Im Not There received critical acclaim and an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for Cate Blanchett. In 2011, Haynes directed and co-wrote the HBO mini-series Mildred Pierce, which garnered 21 Emmy Award nominations, winning five, as well as four Golden Globe Award nominations and a win for lead actress Kate Winslet. In 2015, Haynes returned to the big screen with his sixth feature film, Carol. Based on Patricia Highsmiths seminal romance novel The Price of Salt, Carol is the story of a forbidden love affair between two women from different classes and backgrounds in early 1950s New York City. The film received critical acclaim and many accolades including a nomination for the Palme dOr, six Academy Award nominations, five Golden Globe Award nominations, and nine BAFTA Award nominations. Hayness film Wonderstruck premiered at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival on 18 May 2017. The film is an adaptation of Brian Selznicks childrens book of the same name. Wonderstruck stars Julianne Moore. Hayness Dark Waters (2019) is based on Nathaniel Richs The New York Times Magazine article “The Lawyer Who Became DuPont’s Worst Nightmare,” which is about corporate defense attorney Robert Bilott and his environmental lawsuit against the American conglomerate DuPont. Link to Wikipedia biography Read less