Hey folks, Harry here with Sam Checker and his report from the Wexner Center for the Arts in Ohio! Now, Todd is one of those filmmakers that makes movies for a segment of us filmgoers that appreciate strange skewed perspectives of the world... and his next film being a melodrama set in the fifties sounds promising... Here's Sam....
Harry--
From the wilds of Columbus, OH, Sam Checker here, once again fresh from a Wexner Center for the Arts retrospective. Last time Richard Linklater was the subject, and this time was Todd Haynes (Allison Anders will be here in February, which I just can't muster much excitement about).
First off, let me say that Haynes, like Linklater, revealed himself to be quite intelligent, very willing to talk about any and all aspects of his work, and really funny. He said right off the bat that he thought he had an awfully small body of work (three feature films so far) to warrant a retrospective but that he was having fun seeing all the movies again.
Some of the highlights of the conversation, which was hosted by the Wexner's media arts curator Bill Horrigan, included a discussion of the hoo-ha surrounding his first feature POISON, which had the distinction of being the first NEA-funded film to be roasted by Jesse Helms and his minions during the first skirmishes of the culture wars. Lucky him.
Even better was the talk about VELVET GOLDMINE. He said that David Bowie was quite polite when asked for rights to use his music, but that the whole time he was preparing a lawsuit against Haynes on the subject matter. Asswipe. Iggy Pop, as you might imagine, was completely cool with how his character was handled--actually, Haynes said the Curt Wild character was an amalgam of Lou Reed and Iggy (which I guess explains the shock treatment part of the movie). He was unhappy with how the marketing was handled--Haynes said Miramax made the movie seems like yer standard retro-music celebration, when actually it was intended to be much more of a cult-film sort of experience like BEING JOHN MALKOVICH.
Speaking of music rights, that's apparently the big sticking point that keeps SUPERSTAR: THE KAREN CARPENTER STORY from ever seeing the legal light of day. Luckily, we were treated to a viewing of a pristine print of the thing right after the conversation part was over, and I have to say it lives up to the hype and then some. What surprised me most is that the short (45 minutes, actually) is quite sympathetic to Karen C. and actually gives tons of medical info on anorexia. I also found out that I don't hate *every* Carpenters song--just most of them.
Todd said he'd been so blown out by the massive amount of work involved with GOLDMINE that he took a couple of years off. He's now working on a script that he describes as "a melodrama set in the Fifties", and the plans are to start filming in fall 2001.
That's it for now. If I change my mind on Anders, I'll let you know...
--Sam Checker
