Todd Haynes Quotes

Quotes about:

• I'm drawn to female characters, not all of them are strong characters. 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

  Strong, Character, Men

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• People define gay cinema solely by content: if there are gay characters in it, it’s a gay film... Heterosexuality to me is a structure as much as it is a content. It is an imposed structure that goes along with the patriarchal, dominant structure that constrains and defines society. If homosexuality is the opposite or the counter-sexual activity to that, then what kind of a structure would it be?

  Todd Haynes

  Character, Gay, Thinking

  "What’s Happening to ‘Queer’ Cinema in the LGBT Film Boom?" by E. Alex Jung, www.vulture.com. May 16, 2018.

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• Music and film are parallel experiences: they are linear, they are narrative.

  Todd Haynes

  Narrative, Film, Linear

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• When Cate Blanchett starts directing, it's over for all of us.

  Todd Haynes

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• I was about 6 or 7, I would have said I wanted to be an actor and an artist. And that just kind of kept honing itself around film and getting closer to film.

  Todd Haynes

  Artist, Actors, Kind

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• In fact, to me it's liberating to not think of identity as some organic property that we have to find and stick to, but actually something that is constructed, or that's imposed, that we can then counter by taking a different route and re-dressing it, and then re-dressing it again, and then re-dressing it again.

  Todd Haynes

  Thinking, Identity, Different

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• I envy musicians their ability to live their art and share it with an audience, in the moment. From a filmmaker's standpoint, that's so rare and pure in a way that I'm sure is way more complicated than it appears.

  Todd Haynes

  Art, Envy, Musician

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• In the end, whether I write the script or, in this case, somebody else did, there's a point where you let it go when you're making a movie. You just have to. The thing that you shoot is not what you imagined in your head - it never is exactly that. And it shouldn't be.

  Todd Haynes

  Writing, Let It Go, Scripts

  Source: www.buzzfeed.com

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• Nostalgia could be considered a disease because you're living now.

  Todd Haynes

  Disease, Nostalgia

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• There is no single approach that actors take to their craft. And the best thing you learn is that you have to really listen and respect each actor's own process and own method, and that takes a kind of delicate, non-imposing patience and openness, I think, to get the very best out of the people you work with.

  Todd Haynes

  Thinking, People, Actors

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I'm not ready to give up gayness in and of itself as something unique and different. A litmus test for me for all of it was the bisexual imagination and the androgynous imagination of the Glam era. Because that meant everybody was implicated in this uncertain sense of sexual self, and it meant that everything was unstable. I guess I'm just not that interested in stable notions of identity, whatever they are.

  Todd Haynes

  Giving Up, Bisexual, Unique

  Source: www.buzzfeed.com

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• A refusal of nature as a model is a tradition that goes right back to Oscar Wilde.

  Todd Haynes

  Oscars, Tradition, Wilde

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• Pop music can get inside us and enter our memory bubbles. It provides those true Proustian moments, unlocking sensations, unlocking our imaginations. Music inspired me as a filmmaker.

  Todd Haynes

  Memories, Imagination, Unlocking

  Interview with Noel Murray, www.avclub.com. November 20, 2007.

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• Feminist theory has left an indelible mark on my own critical—and creative—thinking . . . For me, everything I questioned about what it meant to be a man – and how much my sexuality would perpetually challenge those meanings—could be found in arguments posed by feminists. What can I say? I identified.

  Todd Haynes

  Men, Thinking, Feminist

  Todd Haynes (2007). “Far From Heaven, Safe, and Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story: Three Screenplays”, p.8, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• When I write my scripts, there's a point at which if I'm not starting to see them visually, I feel like I'm kind of cheating. So my scripts are laden with a lot of visual description, which makes them not so much fun to read - I kind of weigh them down.

  Todd Haynes

  Cheating, Fun, Writing

  Source: www.buzzfeed.com

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• 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

  Play, Expectations, Secret

  Source: collider.com

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• In male-driven [films], the protagonist is not the person who's necessarily in harms way. There's a sense that they're going to figure out how to persevere and take on the obstacles and foes and you don't necessarily know if that's going to happen with the subjects of love stories.

  Todd Haynes

  Males, Stories, Way

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I think that's what I love about glam-rock. It invited you to participate. It asked you to change yourself in all these different ways, or offered up all these options.

  Todd Haynes

  Thinking, Rocks, Glam Rock

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• 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

  Gay, Interesting, Eras

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• The Johnny Depp generation has this kind of brooding, weighty, introspective quality, very James Deanish. Which is nice, great for a lot of characters.

  Todd Haynes

  Nice, Character, Quality

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• In a way, I think Roxy Music is high camp, in a brilliant way.

  Todd Haynes

  Thinking, Way, Brilliant

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• In my research, all roads led back to Oscar. It's definitely in a way trying to understand the truly English element to glam-rock. It really does not come from American culture.

  Todd Haynes

  Rocks, Glam Rock, Trying

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• The ways in which Oscar Wilde was attacking the Romantics that preceded him, and the Romantic ideas that preceded him, were very similar to what the glam-rockers, particularly Bowie and Bryan Ferry, were attacking in the earnestness of '60s culture. Trying to shock, but with wit, cleverness, and homosexuality.

  Todd Haynes

  Ideas, Trying, Culture

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• I think by around the time I was about 8 or 9, the idea of filmmaking probably took hold. I made little Super 8 extravaganzas when I was a kid, the first being my own version of Romeo and Juliet, and where I played all the parts except for Juliet.

  Todd Haynes

  Kids, Thinking, Ideas

  Interview with Kate Winslet, www.interviewmagazine.com. February 22, 2011.

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• 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.

  Todd Haynes

  Art, Rocks, Envy

  Interview with Noel Murray, www.avclub.com. November 20, 2007.

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