by Mariana Enriquez

MARIANA ENRIQUEZ: Let's talk about VG casting. TODD HAYNES: Ewan was pre-choice. He just seemed so right for that part. I couldn't think of anybody else. He read the script, and liked it very much, and liked the project, so he wanted to be involved. The rest was with the help of Susie Figgis. And Jonathan was the next I found. He is so... once I met him, it was hard to imagine anyone else, obviously. Amazingly beautiful and he was so young, but had this vision and wisdom that went beyond his age... The hardest role to cast was Mandy. And Toni was incredible. I met her late in the process, almost when I was desperate, cause I met actresses everywhere and no-one seemed right. I was pleased when she arrived. She's not the obvious choice, and for her it was a real challenge, because I don't think she knew how beautiful she is. And how sexy she is. Because of Muriel's Wedding and all that. But I knew first. And I knew she would find out. But she was scared, really. And by the end I think it changed her life. Have you seen her in interviews after the movie was made? ME: --Yeah, and she's so changed... TH: Yeah, free and sexy. And Christian is one of the finest actors I'd ever worked with, he's very serious but a very sweet guy. I was impressed by him. He's a real professional, but not full of method bullshit. He does all this preparation, but keeps it for himself, he doesn't put it on display. But let me tell you something else I was thinking, about Jonathan. He was just 19. And I was really scared, cause it was a major role, the film rests on him. And to create a believable rock star in a fiction film is very hard thing to do. So to see him carrying away with it was amazing. And the fact that he could sing was an extra bonus. I wasn't looking for that. I thought: he has enough to do, expect him to sing is to much, just lip singing was fine. And then he comes to me and says "Todd, you know, I can sing, and I really want to do it". So, I was like, "Johnny, you're asking quite a lot here", but he produced a demo tape for me, with his brothers, and so I was like, "Wow, this guy is so infinitely talented". He's very good.
	ME:Where does your fascination with Roxy Music come from? TH:They are my favourite band in the world. I'm obsessed like a fan with their first records, particularly the first one. Pure melodrama, fantastic. There were so full of ideas, and wit, and irony and poses and all this interesting elements that create a very distant experience. But the music is so emotional, and the rock songs are powerful and the ballads are strangely moving. So it's this bizarre combination of excess and emotion, that's so rare in rock and roll. Rock is usually so much about direct, raw, show you the sweat... and they took an entirely different approach. But the music is even more surprising for it emotionality. So I just find it brilliant and experimental even so today, which is hard thing to say for a band. ME: A thing I enjoyed about the movie was that it takes the point of view of the fan, in a warm and non-judgemental way... TH: Sure, fans are often portrayed as psychos. Christian's performance has much to do with it. I don't think people realize how much the movie is held together. All the other actors look sexy and beautiful... I guess I always knew this film was going to be about a fan, from this point of view. Therefore, the vision of glam rock that we will see could never be an objective, definitive point of view, it would be the view of the fan, with all their desires, all their yearning, and so it would be a dream of glam rock. And that's what I always wanted, the film to be like a dream, like a drug trip. But a dream dreamed by a fan, ultimately.
ME: Was it difficult in any way for you as an American director to shoot the movie in England? TH: No, I loved the crew... but there was something about it. In many ways, glam rock could not occur anywhere else. There's something very strange in the way English culture regards the sexuality, the history of the dandy and all that. Americans are very much more black or white. And England and the British culture is much more subtle and layered. At times very ironic. So I wanted to understand it, but I don't know if I do even now. But I came closer and I definitely made a film that to me is true to things that fascinate me about English culture, and this particular era. That was I decided to start the film with Oscar Wilde. To acknowledge that glam rock is part of a very interesting and unique tradition in English culture, very peculiar of that country. ME: To me the movie was like very seventies, not at all like MTV... TH: Thank You. We really tried. What's sort of funny is that lots of traditions of spectacle cinema like the Hollywood Music or even experimental film where the image is really the main thing and narrative is secondary, this tradition are pretty much gone away and sucked up into MTV culture. Young people today don't know that there's anything that preceded MTV... so they see VG and go "Oh, like a long MTV Video" and it's like "Guys, really it isn't". I looked a lot of films of that period and I loved how the camera works, very different from today. Very often the camera does not enter the space the way the constant tracking in contemporary filmmaking that we see so often. It stays back and zooms in, r it would swish-pan or rack focus from one element to another. It's a pretty different camera and we tried hard to include that in the film. ME: When you look at all your work, from the very first movie to VG, do you see a line, a continuity?TH: Obviously one of the first thing people might say about my work is that each thing is very different in style, in theme, some of them are gay themed, some not, some of them have a lot to do with popular culture and music and some of then don't. But I think the consistency between them has pretty much to do with questions about identity. And the ways in which people, sometimes consciously, sometimes un-consciously, protest the social prescription of who we are supposed to be and what it means to be a normal and appropiate individual in society. "Poison" and "Velvet" offer a counter position, whereas "Safe" and "Superstar" and "Dottie" show more the ways identity is very restrictive and people rebel, sometimes unconsciously, sometimes the body rebels before the mind. ME: I want to ask you something about your involvement with ACT UP. TH: It was very important. I'm not in ACT UP now, but when it was starting was exciting, in New York in particular. Because I think since the gay rights movement in the late sixties it was the first time gay men became political. AIDS politicized the community, and it had to, it was a life or death situation. It became an emotional outlet of frustrations. From ACT UP I made many friendships and relationships. In Grand Fury we did lots of visual material for AIDS. It was very stimulating. And I think New Queer Cinema, that came out in that period, was deeply if not solely instigated by AIDS. ME: And what do you think of the way Hollywood portrays gay men? I mean, how can you as an independent film maker resist, even politically, the issues of gayness and stuff confronting with Hollywood? TH: Hollywood films always resolve conflicts. I never do that. I just let people think whatever they want, I don't want to make things easy for them, and resolve the conflicts. That's the Hollywood tradition, the "Everything's OK" tradition. "Safe", for example, encourages people to try to think about a solution themselves. And about gay men... I go running to see movies like "My Best Friend's Wedding", obviously previously knowing that I'm gonna find the polite gay man, friend of the beautiful star, that never speaks about his sexuality and looks clean. It reminds me of Sidney Poitier's films in the sixties. You know, the handsome black man that looks good in the all white families' living rooms. And that was a time were the black civil rights movement was very serious. Today is the same, "We love gay men", they seem to say. And you have to resist that "Everything's OK situation". There's still repression, there's still conflict. It's not so nice.