0:03

And so my interests

0:06

and my curiosities were always met

0:08

with a really receptive audience

0:11

in my parents and in my grandparents.

0:14

I know how much that meant to

0:17

my confidence and

0:19

my sense of the possible from the youngest age.

0:23

You're listening to Skip Intro with

0:25

me, Krista Smith.

0:27

Few children can tell you what they want to do with

0:29

their lives, but Todd Haynes happened

0:32

to be one of them. During an appearance

0:34

on the Art Linkletter show in 1968, a popular TV variety

0:39

show at the time, a then seven-year-old

0:42

Todd shared that he wanted to be quote

0:44

an actor and an artist. By

0:47

the time he got his master's from Bard College,

0:50

Todd had done exactly that, stirring

0:52

up attention with his groundbreaking explosive

0:55

short film Superstar. While

0:58

using only Barbie dolls, Todd

1:00

examined the life of singer Karen Carpenter

1:02

in a way that was at once shocking

1:04

and incredibly moving. Just a few

1:07

years later in 1991, his debut feature

1:10

Poison won the grand jury prize

1:12

at the Sundance Film Festival. Over

1:14

the years, Todd has established many

1:17

enduring creative relationships, the

1:19

first being with the legendary independent

1:21

film producer Christine Vachon, who

1:23

he met while attending Brown. Both

1:26

of them were semiotics majors, and

1:28

I'm embarrassed to say that this host had to look

1:30

up what that meant. She has gone on

1:32

to produce every single one of his

1:35

feature films.

1:36

The other is with Julianne Moore, who cut her

1:38

teeth alongside Todd and Christine

1:41

in his 1995 film Safe, and has since

1:44

starred in Far From Heaven,

1:46

which Julianne and Todd received Oscar

1:49

nominations for.

1:50

I'm Not There, the reimagined Bob

1:52

Dylan film,

1:53

and Wonderstruck.

1:55

Today we're here to talk about their fifth

1:58

collaboration, May

1:59

December. in addition

2:01

to continue in todd's work with juliana christine

2:04

may december also marks his first

2:06

collaboration with natalie portman who

2:09

also produced and stars and

2:11

the film opposite juliane

2:13

it's yet another remarkable film in

2:16

todd's canon and i am excited

2:18

to talk about it with the director himself

2:20

plus dig into the path

2:22

that led him to this moment i

2:25

have to admit this today's

2:27

really nice to meet you crysis that here says if

2:29

i'm a little bit starstruck i has done

2:31

about one hundred and seventy of these podcasts

2:34

with it and mention a bowl

2:36

and vegetable talent but i am so excited

2:38

to talk to you and you have to help me out here

2:40

but when i saw the superstar

2:43

i it was right out of guy was right at

2:45

a college colorado lake

2:47

just a green horn and

2:50

a was in some school house

2:53

down the lower east side i feel like may how

2:55

stand as school house and it was part

2:57

of a bunch of other films

3:00

and it would have had to have been in either eighty

3:02

nine or ninety and

3:05

i saw that movie and yeah

3:08

it just changed

3:10

the way i viewed said

3:12

am i always love movies and and growing

3:14

up i had to watch every world war two movie with

3:16

my father and movies were of form

3:19

of you know your dreams of become

3:21

reality or whatever it was just like a escapism

3:24

i love that world i was just starting at

3:26

vanity fair magazine i was in

3:28

turning that the worcester group i was all

3:30

about that space and time and i remember

3:32

that film and then john kassa

3:34

that he's

3:34

a woman under influence

3:35

or the two things that just blew

3:38

my mind so i have been as

3:40

stand with use and something

3:41

that time cel mai

3:43

for me it was our own

3:45

drug when you first disagree i've always films

3:48

films chara this

3:50

new which is really the first place to preserve or so

3:52

but then when you say we eighty nine

3:55

ninety a wooden i don't think

3:57

it was there but everyone is it does

3:59

he had a

5:09

and

6:00

a lot of, and

6:02

Wonderstruck, dark waters,

6:05

I mean, really great, great experiences

6:07

for me as a director and

6:09

May, December. And so, so

6:12

yes. And

6:15

Natalie had sent me, Natalie had even sent me something

6:18

a few years prior to May,

6:20

December that didn't work out and wasn't

6:22

something either of us pursued, but

6:25

the interest in working together had

6:27

been established.

6:28

And what was it about the script that means you want

6:31

to

6:31

direct this?

6:32

The film owes everything to that

6:35

incredibly original way of

6:39

framing a

6:41

domestic tabloid story 23 years later and

6:48

bringing together these two

6:50

female characters, one, the woman

6:52

at the center of that scandal

6:56

who's now raised a whole family and

6:59

an actress coming to town

7:01

to play her in a film. So

7:04

I guess by concept alone, the

7:08

very structure of how Sammy Burch

7:11

structured it meant

7:13

that we were going to be peeling back

7:15

layers and asking questions

7:18

and that we would, and that you sort

7:21

of initially think that the Natalie Portman

7:23

character, Elizabeth Berry is going to be our

7:25

reliable person

7:27

from the world outside who

7:30

penetrates this little town. And it

7:32

was originally set in Camden,

7:34

Maine, but all

7:38

everything that you might presume

7:40

is stable positions that

7:42

you might take as your feelings

7:45

about these characters, who you trust, who

7:48

you might project some moral judgment

7:50

onto, all of those things

7:54

are constantly destabilized as

7:56

you read it. And I just loved that

7:58

about her. her mission as a writer

8:01

and how subtly and confidently it

8:03

took incredible confidence by a young

8:05

writer to keep

8:08

to that.

8:10

And so it was it made

8:12

you incredibly uncomfortable and it made

8:15

you constantly think about what

8:17

you thought about everything that was

8:19

happening and who these people were. So

8:22

it was kind of a no brainer.

8:24

I mean, it was she sent it to me in the height of

8:26

COVID in 2020 when

8:29

a lot of stuff was circulating, people were sending each

8:31

other a lot of stuff and most of the industry was shut

8:34

down. Natalie was in Australia and she was

8:36

working. So I

8:38

was like, when things come back

8:40

up, and I had another project that I was planning

8:42

to do next, I said, this is really

8:45

exciting to me. And particularly exciting

8:48

was starting to talk to her about it, and

8:51

really get in deep with Natalie. We'd

8:54

spoken before and I know how

8:56

how how incredibly awful

8:58

and brilliant she is. And I've seen her

9:01

performances and the choices that she's

9:03

made. But getting

9:05

into the sort of vicissitudes, the nuances

9:08

of this character and the

9:10

sort of devilish curiosity

9:13

of sort of playing with people's expectations projections,

9:16

or presumptions about

9:18

who Natalie Portman is as an actress,

9:22

projected on to Elizabeth

9:26

Barry and

9:29

and just how disturbing

9:32

and unsettling it is, when

9:34

you think all the disturbing unsettling parts

9:37

are gonna, you know, just

9:39

pertain to the Gracie Jo story.

9:42

And in fact, no, Natalie

9:46

Natalie's character is a piece of work. And

9:48

the way that we were able to talk about it, and

9:51

how easily I think I think we shared suggestions

9:54

and notes about changes, slight

9:57

adjustments in the script.

11:57

how

12:00

much we can make it forks and so we

12:02

we learn very quickly to this is going

12:04

to have to be a pretty low budget dancer

12:07

and because was basically

12:09

contemporary i mean we've set it back

12:12

a little bit in time and it was

12:14

originally written not that it really mattered but

12:16

it was contemporary film but when

12:18

things that were in the way or another

12:21

project of mine natalie

12:23

was completing a series julian

12:25

had a potential conflict it was hovering

12:27

in the eventually it went away when

12:30

we sit when we found that and in

12:32

a moment that we get all to jump

12:36

and we did and

12:38

and it was due to a

12:40

whole other slate of amazingly allen

12:44

credible almost all women

12:47

who who made the

12:49

film get financed who got

12:51

the film financed i'm

12:54

democracy that on or off color but

12:56

also so many parking lot of on producers

12:58

on in part of our team

13:01

that included natalie team we

13:04

took what we could yeah and we

13:06

decided to do it down and dirty

13:08

and fast with the was a very very short

13:10

you know rehearsal time to

13:12

speak of and we mounted

13:14

it very quickly this all ralph

13:16

arose around the summer

13:19

and we were already scouting

13:21

savannah and august

13:23

of two thousand twenty two right

13:26

yeah i don't know after covered what is time

13:28

todd huston be as a side

13:30

a slovenia signs what a three

13:32

days is what i did film is so

13:34

at to hear you describe it as exactly

13:36

how you absorb

13:38

at it's like it's it's silly easy to lodge

13:41

but yet it so uncomfortable

13:43

but yet you can't not watch

13:46

it you're just sucking you in

13:48

and the and the women are incredible on into hear

13:50

that he had no rehearsal because so much of that what

13:52

natalie doing is informed by what juliane

13:54

is delaying and the fact that that those

13:57

two just dropped right and were able to deliver

13:59

those performances is pretty

14:01

incredible because 23 Days

14:04

is really not a lot of time

14:06

at all in this magical movie making

14:09

business. So Charles,

14:12

the other third leg of the stool,

14:15

which is interesting because you do, you go through,

14:17

I love the way we

14:19

follow each person and my,

14:22

at least I can only speak for myself, my POV

14:24

changed every time. Like

14:26

my sympathies aligned wherever I

14:28

was with that character, my sympathies went

14:30

with them, which was I thought was a fascinating thing

14:34

to kind of experience because it created so much,

14:36

like I just kept thinking more and more about

14:39

it and kind of examining how I was thinking

14:41

about it while I was watching. But

14:44

the discovery of Charles Melton,

14:46

and I know he's not really a discovery because there's a

14:48

giant fan base from him from his like

14:52

other TV show, but he's so

14:54

great in this and the fact that he's able to

14:56

hold his own with these two other

15:00

lionesses is amazing. But

15:02

what a discovery and what a performance you got out

15:04

of him and he really rounds

15:07

this out.

15:09

Did you see that immediately when casting

15:11

him? I

15:13

have to say, I

15:15

was astonished by

15:17

his reading. Joe needed to be an

15:19

attractive man

15:22

in his 30, later

15:24

30s. No

15:28

question and someone that you liked and

15:30

you could sort of imagine a backstory,

15:32

although I took me a little time

15:35

to sort of be able to fill

15:37

that in for myself. But

15:40

I didn't picture somebody quite as sort of hunky

15:43

and model model, model-y,

15:46

beautiful as Charles. And

15:48

so when we first saw his picture, we were like, oh, okay,

15:50

well, this probably won't work,

15:53

but let's hear what he did with it. And

15:57

I was working with Laura Rosenthal, my casting director

15:59

from 1998 velvet gold mine.

16:05

And we really do go through a process

16:08

together which tries to kind of almost trick

16:10

each other into maintaining

16:12

a sort of neutrality and

16:15

an objectivity. And that often means trying,

16:17

you know, sometimes you need to try to find name

16:20

actors for financing purposes

16:22

and so forth. And

16:25

sometimes you don't and you still

16:27

find somebody who we know and love and

16:29

whose work we really admire

16:31

and who might bring some value

16:34

to the film to be the ideal choice

16:36

for a role. And in this case,

16:38

there was none of that. But

16:40

I think we help each other to kind of see

16:43

things with

16:45

the least amount of baggage as possible. And

16:49

what Charles did in his reading, completely

16:53

undirected by me

16:55

at this stage, just what he,

16:58

his first instincts, was

17:01

unlike any other actor that

17:03

we read. And there was something very

17:06

locked up and very

17:08

simple and restrained about

17:11

his reading. And

17:15

all of a sudden, it was like, I just kept watching

17:17

it and watching it again and again. And

17:21

it informed me, this is always

17:24

what happens when you make a movie and you

17:26

want it, you always want it to happen to

17:28

the utmost degree within the parameters

17:30

of decisions that you feel you've

17:33

made. But I felt

17:35

like I was learning about

17:37

the story through

17:40

what he brought to it. It filled

17:42

in the back story for me. All of a sudden,

17:45

the entirety and the viability

17:48

of this, of this just

17:50

challenging and relationship

17:55

became visible. And so he

17:57

accomplished so much before we even ever met.

18:00

you know, in that regard. And then

18:02

we met. And then he and Julianne

18:04

read together and that was really

18:07

lovely. And that sparked a

18:09

real camaraderie between the two of them.

18:12

They're both army brats, they shared a lot of interesting

18:15

similar histories together. She

18:17

loved him, you know, and this is a guy

18:19

who just is coming up against, you

18:23

know, these actors who have been doing this

18:25

work for their entire career for so many

18:27

years now. And he's really this is a

18:29

real new kind of film

18:31

for him, new kind of project for him. But

18:34

he, he's so, he's so grounded,

18:38

he's so honest, he's so

18:41

available and open as a man, as

18:44

a man. At the same time, I think he

18:46

was really truly thinking about issues

18:49

with his own upbringing and family

18:51

life and drawing

18:54

very, very specific knowledge

18:57

from his own life for this character.

18:59

Yeah, it's a fantastic performance. All

19:02

right, so this brings me to Julianne Moore. This is your

19:04

fifth collaboration. You first met

19:07

in 1993 when she auditioned

19:09

for Safe. Listeners, if you

19:11

have not seen this film, please

19:13

go see this film. It's on the Criterion

19:16

Collection, I believe. You can watch it right

19:18

now. I really want Netflix to get this

19:20

movie. It's Shameless Plug. It is just such

19:22

a fantastic film that I just

19:25

rewatched it and it holds up. It was kind

19:27

of great to see LA at that time. But what

19:29

was it about Julianne that when you first

19:32

met her, that first interaction,

19:34

like how did you, what did you see

19:37

then and kind of could you talk about like what

19:39

has led then to this incredibly

19:41

fruitful collaboration over decades?

19:44

The experience of,

19:46

again, it was, it was in the room

19:48

where she agreed. She was just

19:51

beginning to become a name that people

19:53

were starting to mention it around town,

19:55

you know, and we were having a very hard

19:57

time raising just the one million

20:00

million we needed to finance safe.

20:02

And it had taken two years after my first

20:05

feature of Film Poison. We thought it might be

20:07

in our interest to maybe at least

20:09

start to talk to actors

20:13

in her with some little buzz around

20:16

them. You know, I

20:18

had a very strong sort of conceptual idea

20:20

of what this film was about and who this woman

20:22

was. And in many ways, it

20:24

was almost through

20:27

the negation of

20:29

her as a protagonist

20:32

that we would ever have seen in a movie that

20:35

we would ever kind of imagine

20:37

would hold your interest, a kind of woman

20:40

who you might meet at a party or a person you might

20:42

meet at a party and not remember anything about the next

20:44

day. Somebody utterly

20:46

unremarkable, who felt like

20:50

their sense of life was

20:52

a sort of rehearsal or a kind of performance

20:54

that they were sort of failing in and

20:57

doubting their ability

20:59

to ever succeed in. This

21:02

was what the starting point for this character,

21:05

this woman. And for

21:07

this woman, you start to

21:10

see her entire world falling

21:12

apart when she develops these physical

21:14

symptoms that start to put her at

21:16

odds with her environment through

21:19

the chemical exposure around her or so

21:21

we are told. And

21:24

in many ways, she

21:26

gains more sense of herself

21:29

through the crises of her physical

21:31

body in the world and

21:34

the journey that it forces her on

21:36

towards some kind of understanding of illness

21:40

and self. But

21:42

it ends up putting her back in another kind

21:45

of environment that raises a lot

21:47

of questions by the end of the film. And

21:49

so a lot of the film, the film is really about sort

21:51

of interpreting illness and the kind

21:53

of way we submit to culpability

21:56

for the illnesses that

21:58

manifest in this. But,

22:01

you know, it was all well and good as

22:03

a concept, and I really saw it visually,

22:05

and I had my, I had the sort of visual language

22:07

in my head, and I knew what it was going to look like,

22:09

but how difficult it was to actually

22:12

find flesh and blood to manifest

22:14

this character. That was the miracle

22:17

of what happened in the room when Julianne came in.

22:19

And she read the script, and she loved

22:21

the script and felt like she

22:24

understood in her mind who this character

22:26

was. And she said to herself,

22:29

something to something like, I'm just going

22:31

to do what I am hearing in my head,

22:33

and if it doesn't work for him, that's fine.

22:36

But this is really what I see.

22:40

And she did, and it was an astonishing

22:43

moment of just a

22:46

completion of a sort of creative idea

22:50

that became real in the room

22:52

with this person, you know? And

22:55

so, again, it took such incredible

23:00

courage and confidence

23:02

and a sense of understanding

23:05

the craft, I think, to know. And I think

23:07

we've seen this in performance after

23:09

performance, that what she doesn't

23:11

do on screen and how she

23:14

knows, how minutely

23:16

she understands that the camera is going to pick

23:18

up detail and,

23:22

you know, minute

23:27

expression. Her

23:29

trust in the sort of scale of the medium

23:33

is so, and her understanding of that from the very beginning

23:35

was so phenomenal, you know? I

23:38

still learn, I'm always

23:40

learning from Julianne. And there's things

23:42

that happen on the

23:45

set that I can't even see,

23:47

I can't even detect

23:50

exactly what it is until I see the footage,

23:52

what she's done. And this is true from

23:55

roll to roll to roll, and

23:58

I've enjoyed performances. that

24:00

she's made in other films all

24:02

along that are so remarkable. And

24:05

they're courageous and they're diverse.

24:08

And yeah,

24:11

so the relationship has just been

24:13

formative, of course, for me, and the

24:15

many, I think, for her as well. Yeah,

24:18

okay.

24:19

That, I love to hear you just probably like you don't even

24:21

see what she's done until you're looking, you know,

24:23

at the dailies or whatever, and then you're noticing it.

24:26

Because there's one, I would love for you

24:28

to talk me through that scene.

24:29

Where

24:31

Gracie is teaching Natalie's

24:33

character, Elizabeth, how she does

24:35

her makeup. And it is so

24:37

many things happening at once. It's like

24:39

the most tense, erotic, crazy

24:42

four minutes. It feels like it's all one shot.

24:45

And the two of them morphing and just watching

24:47

what Julianne is doing and Natalie kind of

24:49

mirroring it, like it's incredible. And

24:51

I know that Julianne always works on her,

24:54

you know, it's about the voice and like with the

24:56

stuff that she did for safe to actually

24:59

sound invisible as well, right? Of

25:01

this light voice and what she does with

25:03

her accent and her voice and her intonation

25:06

as Gracie in this is she completely

25:08

disappears into this character.

25:11

But can you talk me through shooting that

25:13

scene with the two of them? Because it's so

25:15

unique.

25:15

Time and again, making May-December,

25:19

because we had such limited time. And

25:21

because I did plan from

25:23

the beginning and it almost made it

25:25

the only way for us to achieve this

25:28

film in the number of days that we had, it

25:30

was both. It was it was definitely an aesthetic choice.

25:34

But it ultimately became a practical choice

25:37

was to play so many of these scenes in single shot

25:39

set up so that that was one of them. It

25:41

was just a static single frame

25:44

medium shot that held the two women. Similarly,

25:48

there

25:50

was this motif that emerged

25:53

in May-December. And it came

25:56

initially from a decision

25:58

I made when I first read the film. the

26:00

final monologue that Natalie

26:04

gives, the letter that she recites

26:06

as Gracie at

26:09

the end of the film, toward the end of the film. I

26:12

just saw it immediately when I read it

26:15

as a direct address performance

26:17

to the lens of the camera in

26:20

a sort of in a neutral background in a medium

26:22

shot. And I was reminded of a

26:25

similar scene in Winterlight,

26:28

Bergman's Winterlight, where a letter is

26:30

read by Ingrid Stoulin. And

26:33

I was like, okay, I have

26:35

to do this movie. If there's one reason I

26:37

have to do this movie, it's to do that scene that

26:39

way. So how do

26:41

we make sense of that motif?

26:44

I kind of worked back, I kind of reverse engineered

26:48

the discourse. And look, there's a way

26:50

to not read this script and think about

26:52

Persona and

26:54

other films that

26:59

engage with doubling,

27:01

merging central female

27:03

characters. Sometimes very often

27:07

one of them is an actress or

27:11

an artist like in Autumn Sonata,

27:14

that's a mother-daughter merging

27:18

film. There's three women,

27:21

Altman's amazing film in which Shelley Duvall

27:24

and Sissy Spacek are kind

27:27

of mirroring and trading

27:29

on each other. And

27:33

then there's films like The

27:35

Graduate and films

27:38

about older women, younger men, like Santa

27:42

Boulevard, like

27:46

Sunday Body Sunday. But

27:49

the beauty of the, the

27:52

particular beauty of The Graduate is

27:54

again, the minimalism of its

27:57

frame and how restrained.

28:00

the camera is in that film. And I don't insist

28:02

that the humor of the graduate

28:05

is as much due to how it's shot and

28:08

how shots are sustained

28:11

as it is by the brilliant performances. And

28:14

that

28:18

it's the sum total of all of those

28:20

creative choices that make that film perform

28:23

the way it does for audiences. And

28:25

so I wanted to employ some of these

28:27

ideas in May-December.

28:30

And the makeup scene was

28:32

a scene in which, so we set

28:34

up this idea that the camera would

28:36

be the mirror in scenes where

28:38

a mirror played. And you would

28:40

be able to watch the

28:43

two women looking at themselves

28:46

into the lens, but then looking off lens

28:49

at the other. So we were

28:51

watching them see themselves and

28:53

modeling themselves on the other in real

28:55

time back and forth. But with

28:57

the absolute elegance of never seeing

29:00

the mirror itself and just being

29:02

the mirror. And I thought

29:05

people would say to me, oh, wow,

29:08

wow, that was really at the best. I

29:12

thought they would be like, that was so cool how you

29:14

just held that shot, dude, for four

29:17

minutes. And

29:20

let them just, I was really distanced by it.

29:24

I was really pulled out. But it was really

29:26

cool. It was very,

29:29

very birdman-y. And

29:33

no one's ever said that to me. They

29:35

see this movie and they don't even notice.

29:38

And I mean,

29:40

look, persona doesn't work

29:42

without Vivi Anderson, who lived woman. But

29:45

these shots don't work without

29:47

these actresses in them, these actors

29:50

in them. Because ultimately, Charles

29:53

also assumes a privileged moment in

29:55

the mirror toward the end of the film, that same mirror

29:57

in the bathroom. But they seem to be

30:00

The ones marked through, go through the film as

30:02

a sort of progression. And this

30:05

one is a particular turning point where

30:07

the wills of these two women and the ways in

30:09

which they ultimately

30:12

find ways that they reflect each other as people

30:17

and as very strong

30:19

willed women in the world, despite

30:24

how incredibly different their lives are and

30:26

their backgrounds are and their occupations are and

30:28

so forth. And you're

30:31

watching the sort of nuances of

30:33

that interplay and the things

30:35

about the other that they see in

30:37

themselves and the things about the other that they

30:39

don't refuse to see in themselves. All

30:42

this stuff gets played out in

30:44

this sort of relay in which

30:46

we occupy this very intimate place

30:49

as the viewer through the

30:51

mirror itself.

30:52

It's a fantastic scene and both

30:54

of them are so good in

30:56

it. And just Julianne,

30:58

I can see when you're reading this, there's

31:01

no one else you would have thought of for that role.

31:07

I mean, aside from knowing your relationship,

31:09

obviously she's

31:11

just perfect in it. All

31:14

right, so this kind of leads me to

31:16

the women

31:17

in your life and Christine Vichon.

31:19

I would have to mention her because

31:22

she's a legend in her own right every

31:25

year at Sundance. I went for 20 years,

31:27

she was always there, killer films,

31:30

just so forth. And you

31:34

met at Brown, right? You guys met that, you

31:36

have known each other that long. So, but

31:39

this isn't the only person that you've

31:41

had creative relationships. So I love the

31:43

fact that you identified early with

31:46

some soulmates, let's say, and

31:48

Julianne being one of them, Christine be another

31:50

one, Fonzo, your editor you've

31:53

worked with on numerous times. What

31:55

is it that can turn like a singular creative

31:57

partnership into a life?

31:59

long

32:01

collaboration. It's fairly

32:03

banal in a way, in the

32:06

sense that it's just like you

32:09

work with somebody and you

32:11

have a great outcome. And

32:14

with Christine and I, it was different because it

32:16

was so formative. We were really discovering

32:23

what our ambitions were and how we could put them into

32:25

words and where we fit in the kind of

32:27

zeitgeist of the culture at that moment, how

32:30

we were sort of applying a sensibility

32:32

that was being informed by what we

32:35

had learned in the kind of films

32:37

we were exposed to in college and the kind

32:40

of films that were also being made at the time

32:42

in the 80s. And

32:47

she will say that she saw a superstar

32:51

because she made films at Brown

32:54

and I made films at Brown. So we were both

32:56

like these filmmakers and

32:58

mostly we shared a bunch of friends and

33:00

we kept missing each other because she took her year

33:03

in France and I took a year off and

33:05

I was in Germany. So

33:08

we didn't really start

33:11

really practicing filmmaking

33:14

together until we were both settled in

33:16

New York City and started this nonprofit

33:19

organization with another friend from

33:21

college called Apparatus Productions.

33:24

This was with a friend Barry Ellsworth and

33:26

Barry would work on my

33:29

film. He was a really close

33:31

creative partner of mine for Superstar

33:33

for my film about Rambo. It was my thesis

33:35

project from Brown and also he shot the black

33:37

and white section of Poison. And

33:41

Barry sort of invited us into

33:43

a nonprofit organization venture that

33:46

he did and built with some seed

33:48

money from his family that enabled

33:50

us to start getting close to the independent

33:52

film community. But

33:55

in a very unique way where we were really serving

33:57

the what we called experimental narrative.

34:00

filmmaking community

34:04

in New York and

34:06

helping them to address the

34:08

needs that were newly arising

34:11

around a return to genre

34:14

and stylistic references that

34:17

experimental filmmaking had sort of eschewed for

34:19

many years prior to this time. And

34:22

all of a sudden like some production support was needed

34:24

for independent filmmaking, you

34:26

know, for like short filmmaking. And

34:30

around this time I was making Superstar and she came and

34:32

watched and she finally saw me saw a cut of it

34:34

in my apartment in Brooklyn and

34:36

she said this for her it was sort

34:38

of an epiphany where she was like this is

34:41

the kind of movie that I want to be associated

34:43

with and I want to be a producer

34:46

and I want to produce her next movie. And so the

34:49

kind of roles that we would

34:52

end up playing ever since starting

34:54

with my first feature Poison and her first feature

34:57

Poison came

34:59

out of her seeing Superstar. And

35:02

so it just

35:04

and you know events take

35:07

on a life of their own and so Superstar

35:09

had it sort of little moment

35:12

of legal controversy and then became a film

35:14

that was banned and had a kind of

35:18

sense of the

35:20

forbidden around it which created also

35:23

a certain amount of desire to see

35:25

it and and Poison

35:29

entered in it sort of a political scandal

35:32

around the far right when it was released

35:34

and so it got a different kind of attention

35:36

that we didn't expect at the time

35:38

and then won the grand prize at Sundance and all these things.

35:41

And so you feel like you're kind of in a moment

35:44

you're together being cast

35:47

in a moment historically and

35:49

culturally that none of and

35:51

you know all of it was informed

35:53

by HIV and AIDS and activism

35:55

that Christine and I were both very passionately

35:59

connected. to.

36:03

And so you felt that there

36:06

was a sense of necessity and urgency

36:08

about the work we were doing. But we

36:11

were also getting rewarded

36:13

for it from a creative standpoint,

36:16

and having early success in

36:19

it getting out there to

36:21

audiences and critics who are

36:23

receptive because it happened to be that particular

36:26

time in film history,

36:29

where that was the case. And I and I, so

36:31

I'm as I'm, you know, there's so many levels

36:34

of the fortuitous that line

36:37

up around these relationships and their longevity.

36:40

And a lot of it is also the timing,

36:43

culturally, historically, when we were doing

36:45

what we were doing, where we were

36:47

able to squeeze in the door and have

36:50

something like superstar be written

36:52

about in the village voice, and everybody

36:54

was talking about it for a time, you know,

36:57

those kinds of things just wouldn't continue

36:59

in the same fashion in years following.

37:02

But they were possible for us at

37:04

the time, and we and we seize those moments.

37:07

And so, you know,

37:09

but yeah, I, and

37:12

so yes, and so in variations of that,

37:14

I found creative partners throughout my

37:17

career, with whom the

37:20

films would, would experience

37:23

of working with them would be a positive

37:25

experience. And then the

37:27

outcome would receive a certain amount of

37:30

attention that that's fortified

37:33

all that work and

37:35

made you feel Yeah, okay, we're on to

37:37

something here. Let's let's try it again. Let's keep

37:40

let's keep this going.

37:41

Yeah, it is. I

37:43

just love hearing about that. Because it is the stuff that

37:46

bonds you when you're younger, and that you guys

37:48

have been able because this business is really hard.

37:50

And it's really hard, especially with director,

37:53

producer, director, actor, it's

37:55

hard. And the fact that

37:57

you've maintained these relationships over 30

37:59

years. years is remarkable. And

38:02

just to look at that with Christine and even with

38:04

Julianne, I remember seeing at the time

38:06

of Andy Ferrer and when I did the story

38:09

on the 25th anniversary of the cover of the Hollywood

38:14

cover and Julianne was the person

38:16

that I helped put on that cover because I had

38:18

seen, you know, I was one of

38:20

those, it's like, oh, this actress and she's safe

38:23

in the hand that rocks a cradle and she just got cast

38:25

and this thing. I think from that moment,

38:27

she was the last girl on the last panel

38:29

of the first Hollywood

38:29

cover to deal with that reality

38:32

now and the career she's had.

38:35

And that with you and the same with

38:37

Christine, you all three have like,

38:39

have these incredible careers

38:42

separately and together. It's a beautiful thing

38:45

to see. I really admire it. Fills

38:47

me with the warm fuzzies to see it. All

38:51

right. So I have a couple more questions for

38:53

you. I know you do these lookbooks,

38:56

we call them lookbooks in

38:59

my business, but these inspo boards

39:01

about like you're thinking when you're doing these movies,

39:04

you put any project, you put together

39:07

a lookbook of things. And like you talked

39:09

about some of this, like whether it's an image of

39:11

persona or the image of the, you

39:14

know, reading the monologue, you

39:16

collect these things that you hope inspire

39:19

either the performance or you or everyone

39:21

working on this film, right? Now that this

39:24

movie's out and done, I don't know what

39:26

you're working on now, but

39:28

in terms of your own inspiration,

39:30

what have you been drawn to lately? Like

39:33

what kind of is continuing to fascinate

39:35

you at this particular moment about the human

39:37

experience?

39:38

Lately it is driven by the

39:41

project we're trying to develop. And

39:43

it's this really exciting venture

39:45

that again unfolded in a unique

39:48

way in that Joaquin Phoenix came to me with some

39:51

ideas and thoughts and

39:55

sort of desires, I guess, instincts.

40:00

Now it's I think almost, you know, if time

40:02

goes by so fast, like three years ago, we

40:04

started to talk. And, and

40:07

I've known Joaquin for years, I've never worked

40:09

with him before. And I worked with Rooney much

40:12

more recently on on Carol. And

40:15

he came to me with some

40:17

thoughts about a about a story

40:19

that he just

40:22

thought was staying

40:24

in his head. And was

40:26

not formed. It was ideas that were random,

40:29

that he wanted to bank off a

40:32

director writer writer, and

40:34

so we leaned into

40:36

it and started to talk and swap ideas.

40:39

And I brought in john Raymond, who

40:41

is a writer friend who's probably

40:44

best known in film for all his, all

40:46

those scripts that he worked with in collaboration

40:49

with Kelly Riker. But

40:52

he john and I had adapted Mildred Pierce together.

40:54

And he's he and I worked on other projects together,

40:57

some of which didn't come to fruition.

41:00

He lives in Portland. And between

41:03

the three of us, we put together

41:05

this, this story

41:07

about these two men. And it's

41:10

a it's a love, it's ultimately a love story

41:14

with a sort of detective framework. And,

41:19

but it's something I've never really seen anything

41:21

quite like before. And

41:24

walking really was a driving force

41:27

in in how extreme

41:30

some of the interaction between the two men gets.

41:33

And so we did announce it while we were

41:35

at Cannes as a

41:37

which I think is fair

41:40

to say an NC 17 gay

41:42

love story. Setting the 30s starring

41:45

walking Phoenix. This will

41:47

also sort of by definition need

41:49

to be a low budget film.

41:52

I'm eager to reassemble as many

41:54

of the creative partners that I

41:56

enjoyed working with so much on May December.

41:59

I think it'll be a Mexican-based production

42:02

because the two men have to ultimately

42:04

flee Los Angeles to Mexico

42:06

in the story. And if there was a way

42:08

to create LA of the 30s in

42:11

Mexico, it would probably be the most cost

42:13

efficient way to do it. I'm not sure if

42:15

that will be entirely possible but that's our

42:18

current

42:19

aim. But it's

42:21

what right now, I'm so proud that it, we're

42:23

gonna share at least story by credit between

42:25

the three of us. And

42:28

because we left behind, before the strike

42:30

hit, we had a draft of the script

42:32

that came out of these

42:35

past months talking. That's

42:38

great.

42:38

Okay, I only have a couple

42:40

minutes left. So I have to

42:42

take you back to the beginning because I read

42:44

your amazing New Yorker profile.

42:48

And how did you happen to appear

42:50

on the Art Link Letter Show at seven?

42:54

And then have the confidence

42:57

to just say, I'm gonna be an actor and an artist

43:00

at seven years old. Like living

43:02

in, and you grew up in the bedroom of LA, right,

43:05

the valley, deep in the valley. Like how,

43:07

can you just take me to how

43:09

seven year old Todd ends up on the Art

43:12

Link Letter Show?

43:14

Well, the Art Link Letter Show would solicit kids

43:16

from, would go to different elementary

43:18

schools and bring

43:21

kids from, everybody on that show, I

43:23

believe, was from my,

43:25

what,

43:26

that first grade class, second

43:29

grade class. And so

43:32

that was how they were doing kids say

43:34

the darndest things, or

43:36

it would eventually be called, I think it was just called the Art Link Letter

43:39

Show back then and then they

43:41

sort of syndicated it as kids say the darndest. But

43:44

look,

43:45

I was the

43:47

lucky recipient of parents

43:50

and grandparents who

43:52

believed, who loved the arts, who

43:56

wanted to expose, I was the oldest

43:58

of three kids, but all three of us. to fine

44:01

art and theater and film

44:04

and ballet and

44:06

classical music. And

44:10

my grandparents were second

44:12

generation immigrant Jews

44:19

who had made their lives in Los

44:21

Angeles, had both moved to LA when they were kids

44:23

from other states in the US, but

44:25

whose parents

44:28

were original immigrants. And

44:30

they were remarkable

44:32

people and

44:35

very progressive in their

44:37

political outlook, but very much

44:40

self-made people and very much committed to

44:42

the arts and to psychoanalysis

44:44

into a lot of new thinking

44:50

that was evident in the mid century of the

44:53

last century. And

44:55

so I was just, and

44:59

so the things I made as a kid were

45:01

valued and

45:06

put on the refrigerator door and hung up

45:08

on the wall and they would come to my plays. And

45:10

so my interests and my curiosities

45:13

were always met with a really

45:16

receptive audience in

45:19

my parents and in my grandparents. And

45:22

so I'm just very

45:25

fortunate that way. There are a lot of people who have

45:27

made amazing careers in the arts

45:29

who didn't have that and

45:32

who didn't feel the love and attention of their

45:34

parents. But I have

45:36

had that and I know how

45:38

much that meant to

45:43

my confidence and

45:45

my sense of the possible from

45:47

the youngest age.

45:49

All right, my last question, which

45:51

is something I'm asking everybody this season

45:53

is, what's a

45:55

hobby

45:56

or a passion that you have that

45:59

is outside?

45:59

of your work? For

46:02

me, it still is making

46:04

art. And I

46:06

love it, and I love to do it in

46:09

relationship to my work, but I also love

46:11

to do it outside my work and

46:13

make gifts of paintings

46:17

for friends and portraits of family

46:20

members or friends for special

46:22

occasions. And

46:26

it's something I don't, I

46:28

practice to varying degrees of time

46:31

and so forth. But

46:34

I would say that's probably the most regular

46:37

part of my extracurricular

46:40

activities.

46:40

Well, Todd, it's been a pleasure talking to you. Thank

46:43

you so much for the time. I could continue

46:45

to talk to you and ask questions for a long time.

46:48

Absolutely. But we do have a framework

46:50

here at Skip Pintrow. But thank

46:53

you for everything. The film, May, December, is just incredible.

46:56

It is another great

46:58

work of art from you, and I'm just thrilled

47:00

that Netflix has it, and the cast is great. Yeah.

47:04

None of them disappoint, and it's just awesome.

47:07

You're an inspiration. So thank you very much. Thank

47:09

you so much. It's such a pleasure. Have a great day.

47:15

May, December is in select theaters,

47:18

and we'll be streaming on Netflix

47:20

December 1st. Thanks so much

47:22

for joining me. I'm Krista Smith, your

47:25

host and creator of the show. Skip

47:27

Pintrow is produced and edited by Isabelle

47:29

Ricquieu and engineered by Dave Corwin.

47:32

Special thanks to our coordinator, Elisa

47:34

Hillman. Please subscribe, rate, and

47:36

review the Skip Pintrow wherever you've been listening.

47:39

You can find me on Twitter and

47:40

Instagram at Krista Smith. If

47:42

you enjoy the podcast, please go to NetflixQ.com

47:46

for more. That's NetflixQUEUE.