Todd Haynes Quotes

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Todd Haynes

Profession : Director

Birth : January 2, 1961

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.

Todd Haynes

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

Todd Haynes

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

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.

Todd Haynes

Without sounding sexist, you have to cast a real man opposite Cate Blanchett. You need a guy who's grown up.

Todd Haynes

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.

Todd Haynes

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.

Todd Haynes

You'll see in 'Carol' a lot of shots shot through windows, glass and awnings, with interruptions between where we are and where our object is. To me, I hope that that conjures the whole act of looking as a predicament, as something that is never easy and never completely attainable.

Todd Haynes

I always learn a lot when I do so. You know, when you step out of your comfort zone and even your cynical zone, and open yourself up to what other people might experience and why they do so.

Todd Haynes

I felt I would have the most creative freedom making experimental films and teaching, as I had many good examples of people around me who did just that.

Todd Haynes

The way I sort of approach my work is that the historical and socioeconomic and cultural worlds that the music is exploring dictate the visual experience and the way that we approach it specifically on film.

Todd Haynes

I do think that, yes, one should always be receptive to the fact that there are many different types of audiences, and they are not necessarily in a clean, reductive demographic like they once were.

Todd Haynes

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.

Todd Haynes

They always find new ways of talking about my movies.

Todd Haynes

What was so interesting about the glam era was that it was about bisexuality and breaking down the boundaries between gays and straights, breaking down the boundaries between masculinity and femininity with this androgyny thing.

Todd Haynes

I have a hard time making movies that affirm life and say life is a good and happy place. That's not true about the world.

Todd Haynes

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

Todd Haynes

I have always had an interest in performers who play against the most obvious of expectations and are able to find something secret, something withheld, and some level of restraint.

Todd Haynes

Melodrama is sometimes broadly applied and sometimes derogatorily applied.

Todd Haynes

I love stories of love cropping up unexpectedly in life almost as a problem, as something you don't ask for. Something that messes everything up and makes you rethink everything.

Todd Haynes