Todd Haynes: Heavenly bodies

Todd Haynes makes films about repressed women (the Oscar-nominated Far From Heaven), and flamboyant men (Velvet Goldmine). He tells Ryan Gilbey how Bob Dylan fits into the picture

Todd Haynes has a problem. Everyone loves his new movie, Far From Heaven. Poor diddums. He offers a shrug that says: Where did I go right? I meet Haynes in the office of his UK publicist. He is wearing jeans and a chunky blue roll-neck sweater; he has a head of feathery gingerbread-coloured hair, and is tinkering with a teeny-weeny roll-up. Far From Heaven has just gone down a storm as the "Surprise Movie" in the London Film Festival. How could it not? Its plainly sincere depiction of 1950s manners will disarm anyone who is tempted to take it for a mere homage; the cluttered sets and oppressive lighting design, not to mention a crazy colour scheme that runs from richly ripe to gone-to-seed, might all be true to the spirit of Douglas Sirk, from whose 1955 heartbreaker All That Heaven Allows the new film purloins its tale of forbidden love among the flowerbeds. But Haynes's movie more than equals the emotional weight of those earlier movies, quietly dispelling any initial giggles provoked by disparities in language or etiquette.

"People have said to me: 'At what point do you switch tones, and stop making it funny?' And the fact is, I don't. It's all on the same level. It's more about the audience gradually shedding the preconceptions they've brought to the film."

I like to think of Far From Heaven as the first great work of the post-confessional era, an attempt to put social disharmony carefully under the microscope, after years in which the loudhailer has been the preferred method of expression. Not that the Connecticut housewife Cathy Whitaker (Julianne Moore) doesn't have enough woes for a whole season of Jerry Springer. Her husband (Dennis Quaid) has been working late before creeping off to a dimly-lit bar where there is no need for a Ladies Room. Cathy herself has become rather taken with the noble African-American gardener, Raymond (Dennis Haysbert). Her friends, who seem for ever to be shuttling serving plates back and forth between one another's houses, will happily tolerate this "modern" friendship until she's caught riding in Raymond's pick-up. Enough is enough.

Hartford, Connecticut, turns on Cathy and pecks her to pieces. Reviled by her husband and dislocated from the children to whom she communicates exclusively through deferments ("Just a minute, dear, mother's making a call"), it becomes evident that the long-suffering suburban housewife is the biggest loser in the film's hierarchy of competing minorities.

"She's on the bottom rung of these needs and interests," explains Haynes, "because she is saddled with domestic responsibilities in a way that her husband isn't. By being enlisted to conceal his indiscretions from public view, she ultimately gives him room to explore his desires to a degree that she never gets. She awards him the freedom that is withheld from her."

After a few minutes of discussing Todd Haynes movies with Todd Haynes, an unusual transformation occurs. He is so energised by film as a medium that he is able magically to remove himself from his own involvement, and see instead his movies through an audience's eyes. Occasionally it becomes less an interview and more like two Todd Haynes fans gabbing about their favourite bits. "That scene in the psychiatrist's office!" he raves. "It's so cruel, but so real. People are like that, aren't they?" It would not be out of place to hear him ask: This Haynes guy – what else has he done?

He is, I think, a fan before he is a film-maker. It does not take much prodding to return him to that pre-artistic state, when the pleasure was in the gorging. "I remember wishing as a kid that I could go to a room that had all the movies I wanted to see, and say 'Today I want to watch this movie...' '' He almost trills at the memory. "But now I guess we have it," he sighs sadly, the desire diminished now that satisfaction is within reach.

Chief among his abiding obsessions is Julianne Moore, who dominated his 1995 masterpiece Safe as a housewife falling apart hair by hair in an antiseptic, sinisterly sci-fi Los Angeles, and in Far From Heaven offers a different slant on a woman whose clothes and possessions and domestic rituals are all that separate her from hysteria. "We'd kept in touch. There wasn't that awkward phone-call, you know: 'Yes, it's H-A-Y-N-E-S. We did a little film together a while back...'" We weigh up Moore's best non-Todd Haynes performance, and settle on The Big Lebowski, largely for the way she chews on the word "vagina".

I had assumed that the casting of Moore would make Far From Heaven an easy sell, and something of a relief after the cash-strapped production of Velvet Goldmine. Haynes quickly relieves me of that misconception. "There's only one female star today who will relax financiers: Julia Roberts. Just to do a film about a woman that doesn't star her is considered an enormous financial risk. The money people, the pen-pushers, exerted a scrutiny over our every move that was unfair and inappropriate. And they never even said, 'The dailies look beautiful.' At least say that."

Part of him might relish the struggle against disbelievers – backers, critics, whoever. Or he could be comfortable with the pain of making movies; it may be an ingrowing toenail, but it's his ingrowing toenail, that kind of thing. Among all but his family and the staff of The Village Voice, he has experienced opposition and philistinism from the start. His 1989 featurette, Superstar, The Karen Carpenter Story, performed by a cast of Barbie dolls, had its distribution blocked by the Carpenter estate. In 1991, Poison attracted right-wing opprobrium with its scenes of homoeroticism, including the most bitching mass-expectorating scene in movie history.

Safe, in turn, was misunderstood by those audiences who didn't ignore it outright; only now is it cropping up near the top of many "Films of the 1990s" polls. Christine Vachon, Haynes's regular producer, and queen bee of US independent cinema, recalls the first screening of Safe. "The critics came out and looked at me blankly as if to say 'What am I supposed to do with this?' Those people two years later were telling me they were the film's first fans." His next film, Velvet Goldmine, imposed the structure of Citizen Kane on to a trawl through the seedy-sexy glam-rock scene of 1970s London; it won a prize at Cannes for Artistic Contribution, but few friends. "The jury was split," says Vachon. "In the end it got a small prize – we were thrilled, don't get me wrong – but it was a consolation prize. Some jurors didn't want to give it anything but Martin Scorsese [that year's president] was very enthusiastic. He told Todd that the movie had made him realise how much fun cinema could be."

The reaction after Cannes was mostly indifferent or hostile, and soon rumours were circulating that Haynes had retired from film-making. "It did affect me," he says now, "but not as much as people think. The media interest in the film's fashion and soundtrack broadened my expectations prior to it being released. But when I look at what the film is, and what the market is – come on! What was I thinking?"

And now Far From Heaven has messed up the Todd Haynes vibe. Suddenly everyone understands the misunderstood genius. First the US critics treated the film like a prom queen, a game-show winner and a blushing bride all rolled into one, and showered it with untold praise and prizes. Then the American public actually paid to see the damn picture. And now the Academy voters have put it forward for three Oscars – Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Score and, most deservedly, Best Actress. Haynes might brush it all off – "Let me just check my grosses and see what else we've been nominated for," he jokes, reaching for the phone. But whichever way you slice it, it's a hit.

"It almost puts me out of a job in a funny way," he says. "I feel like I have more to do when there's some dispute, something to defend." He sounds suspicious, as though he fears waking up and finding that, in reality, Far From Heaven has gone straight to video. The acclaim must be startling coming at a time in his life when he has moved state simply to avoid stepping out of his house each morning as "Todd Haynes: Independent Film-maker." "It really had got to that stage in New York," he winces. "Attending parties, clubs, openings, becomes this weird necessity. Then you have to work so hard to pay the rent to buy the cool clothes to wear when you go to work to pay the rent. It's a cycle of perpetual misery. The diversity of the city is dwindling too. Everyone's in Prada, they all look the same."

At the start of 2000, he drove to Portland, Oregon, and wrote Far From Heaven in 10 days in a friend's house. "I started to meet all these awesome people there – musicians, painters, weirdos, just these great minds. So I stayed. Sometimes I've thrown parties for 300 people, half of whom I don't even know." He chuckles at the naughtiness of it.

On that drive to Portland, Haynes played Bob Dylan tapes for the first time since college. Now he's preparing to make him the subject of his next picture. There are two kinds of Todd Haynes film. The female ones – Superstar, Safe, Far From Heaven – have rigidly controlled, almost fetishistic visual surfaces, and heroines with harshly chiming names. These alternate with wild, flamboyant, male-oriented works: Poison draws from three contrasting genres, while the various tones and textures of Velvet Goldmine could not be counted on all your fingers and toes. Haynes tries to offer an explanation for this pattern of neat film/messy film – "In those that deal with women, the references are more singular than multiple ... the male films have more erotic pleasure I think" – but it doesn't get us terribly far.

Still, the cycle continues. The Dylan film will be sprawling and multi-layered. "Seven characters will share the film, and they'll represent aspects of Dylan during different periods. But they'll look nothing like him. One will be an 11-year-old black kid. The one who most resembles Dylan will be a woman. It's going to be a multiple refracted biopic." Far out. The amazing thing is that, unlike David Bowie, who threw a hissy fit when Haynes asked to use his songs in Velvet Goldmine, Dylan himself has given the project his blessing – and, more importantly, his music. "I can use whatever I like," beams Haynes, returning to fan mode. "It's in ink!"

'Far From Heaven' is released on 7 March