A couple’s relationship is imperiled by an upcoming film about their life in Director Todd Haynes’s drama, May December.
Haynes’s film tells the story of Gracie and Joe whose relationship began as a scandalous tabloid romance that landed Gracie in prison. Twenty years later, their untraditional marriage is tested when Elizabeth, a popular television actress meets them to do research for a film about their past.
On November 11, after the DGA membership screening in New York, Haynes discussed the making of May December during a Q&A moderated by Director Derek Cianfrance (The Light Between Oceans). He also spoke about the film during a conversation moderated by Director Gregg Araki (White Bird in a Blizzard) following the DGA membership screening in Los Angeles on November 19.
During the New York conversation, Haynes spoke about creating the tone for the film.
“I knew the film needed a very strong framing element that would help an audience really feel that excitement about interpreting what they watching and almost demand to be like, ‘Wait a minute, what we're seeing on the surface may not be the whole story.’ So, I immediately started to think about how to frame the film and sort of an observant static camera that would allow actors to really live in those shots. I thought of this idea of using the camera as the mirror — in scenes that take place in the mirror so that when an actor is looking at themselves they're looking directly into the lens — and how that would sort of set in motion all these sort of this circuitry of looks of Elizabeth watching Gracie and then watching herself and checking herself in the transformation toward becoming Gracie or internalizing Gracie but also Gracie watching Elizabeth and us watching them and trying to see who's really seeing what. The film is so much about the refusal that we all have to look at ourselves and our lives and how far some people go in that. It's a survival mechanism. We don't question our relationships every day of our life because we’d go crazy.”
Haynes’s other directorial credits include the feature films The Velvet Underground, Dark Waters, Carol, Wonderstruck, Poison, Safe, Velvet Goldmine, Far from Heaven; an episode of the television series Enlightened; and the entirety of the mini-series Mildred Pierce. He has been a member of the DGA since 2007.