There’s considerable competition of course, but Todd Haynes has a strong claim to be one of America’s greatest living auteurs, with a string of outstanding films to his name including the Patricia Highsmith adaptation Carol, Bob Dylan biopic I’m Not There, and Douglas Sirk homage Far From Heaven.
Haynes first made a name for himself with his Barbie-doll animated short film Superstar, about Karen Carpenter, and then acquired career momentum with his feature debut Poison in 1991, part of the early 90s New Queer Cinema movement. Safe, the creepy mid-90s fable about a woman afflicted by a mysterious allergy-like illness, marked his first collaboration with Julianne Moore; she would go on to appear in further films including the exquisitely art-directed Far From Heaven (as a woman whose picture-perfect marriage is undermined by her husband’s gay affairs), the YA fantasy Wonderstruck (as a silent movie star) and his new one, May December, as a woman who became a tabloid sensation decades earlier by marrying a much younger man.
Haynes’s other great collaborator, of course, is Cate Blanchett: she played one of multiple Bob Dylan personas in the tricksy I’m Not There, and then took the starring role in Carol, as a glamorous married woman who has an affair with Rooney Mara’s store assistant/photographer. And he furthered his interest in the music industry with, back in the day, the glam-rock fable Velvet Goldmine and a documentary about legendary art-rockers the Velvet Underground.
So what do you want to ask him? What does he think about Greta Gerwig’s Barbie? Did he anticipate Carol becoming one of the great Christmas films? Leave your questions in the comments below before Wednesday at 6pm, and we’ll print his replies in Film & Music.
• May December is releasing on 17 November in UK cinemas and on 8 December on Sky Cinema.
