The Talented Mr. Haynes

His name is Todd Haynes.

He's different. But not because, for the last two years, he's rejected those klieg-lit towns in favor of living in Portland, in a Craftsman bungalow amid three lots' worth of verdant vegetation in Northeast Portland's Concordia neighborhood.

And it's not because the 41-year-old is a genuine critics' favorite, a poster boy for independent film.

What sets Haynes apart from other moviemakers is a devotion to the cinematic theme of homosexuality that goes beyond merely having fey characters. He's made only a handful of films--all critical, if not all commercial, successes. And each of them, in its own way, looks at life through a lavender lens.

That single-tinted focus has made him a recognizable name in hip households; it has also gotten him pegged (by a U.S. senator's wife, no less) as the "Fellini of Fellatio." But it's not the only thing that's earned Haynes a degree of attention that has made him, if only for a New York moment, the hottest thing in film right now (well, next to Eminem).

The buzz surrounding Far From Heaven, a reflection on homosexuality, racism and suburban women via a '50s-style melodrama, is deafening. No less mainstream a source than Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman calls the film, which opens in Portland Nov. 15, a "utterly unironic masterpiece." Rolling Stone's Peter Travers deems it "movie heaven," and in last Friday's New York Times, A.O. Scott called it simply "divine."

And its genius is our hometown homo.

It's no coincidence that Haynes moved to the same town as queer filmmaker Gus Van Sant. For several years, film critics and the public alike considered Van Sant the most important gay director in America, aside from freak-show filmmaker John Waters. Then 1993's universally panned thumbs-up to lesbianism, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, tossed him out of the queer corral and into the safety of making much more mainstream projects, such as the Academy Award-winning Good Will Hunting and the like-minded Finding Forrester.

While you'd be hard-pressed to get anyone to say it on the record, some believe Van Sant has sold out. Now people are wondering whether Haynes will follow suit or, just maybe, will become the first (hell, the only) major gay director in the history of American cinema to make queer films that make money.

Sitting down at the Heathman Hotel recently, Haynes pulled out some rolling papers, made a cigarette and lit up in what surely had to be a nonsmoking meeting room. Tucked into a sofa, dressed to the nines in thrift-store finds, sporting bed-head and a hangover, and smelling of clove cigarettes, Haynes sat in sharp contrast to the pent-up, wood-paneled elegance offered by the hotel's austere surroundings.

Todd Haynes never received permission to use the Carpenters' music in Superstar, which has prevented any authorized exhibition of the short film.

As a member of the 1980s queer AIDS activist group ACT-UP, Haynes was a founder of its arty offshoot, Grand Fury.

"My place was a mess," says Haynes of his home in Brooklyn. "I never invited anyone but who I was having sex with over to it. I had boxes everywhere...by the end, there were rats."

After a few visits to the Northwest Portland home of his alt-rocker/therapist sister Wendy Lynne, Haynes decided to make a move out west. Like many who end up calling Portland home, his original plan was an extended visit, staying in P-town only three months. He wanted to finish a screenplay that would follow up Velvet Goldmine, his 1998 fictive rockumentary of glam life and gay boys that tied the decadence of 19th-century dandy Oscar Wilde to late-20th-century alien David Bowie. And he also just wanted to get away. Among other things, he had just broken up with a boyfriend.

"What's amazing is that you can live here easily with less work, so there's more time left over for the rest of your head," says Haynes, who adds that the city affected every aspect of the making of Far From Heaven. "I think Portland was an inspiration to me as a person and as a critical artist--how to be one and enjoy it."

And he enjoys Portland. He really does.

"I went out last night and got really trashed," he says. "Everyone I know here's 10 years younger. They make me feel normal--it's great."

Relishing his anonymity, Todd has even taken the time to dip his quill into a few local pleasures. When asked where he fits into the Portland scene, he joked: "Hanging from a sling at XES [that's a sex hammock and a seedy gay sex club off Southwest Stark Street, for those who don't know]. I've thoroughly explored this town. [XES] is just what the mood requires. Not sad, just skanky."

Even though all his films have dealt with homo themes (even Safe, in which Julianne Moore plays a Los Angeles housewife who becomes allergic to the 20th century, carried an AIDS metaphor) and he relishes his years as a pioneer in the early-'90s film style known as the New Queer Cinema, Haynes resists being labeled strictly as a gay filmmaker. Haynes has pointed out in other interviews that to characterize him as a gay director who makes exclusively gay films would be taking only the content instead of the form of his films into consideration. The American Family Association's Rev. Donald Wildmon doesn't care much about form, though. After Haynes' first feature film, 1991's Poison, was released, it was boycotted by Wildmon. Based on works of French writer Jean Genet, the film had graphic depictions of male-male sex. It had received the blessing of the National Endowment for the Arts to the tune of $25,000 and appeared at more than 20 film festivals, winning awards both in Park City, Utah, and Berlin.

While Far From Heaven is hardly as graphic as Poison, homosexuality is one of the film's central themes, with Dennis Quaid's character, a suburban advertising executive and father of two, cruising the streets at night for men. Yet Haynes is reluctant to be cubby-holed into the gay-and-lesbian shelves of the video store.

"Far From Heaven isn't radical. It's an experimental film that has had a bizarre effect on people," says Haynes. "I'm usually so cynical, but the fact is that the most anticipated movies this year are mine and...[those of fellow outsiders] Alexander Payne, Paul Thomas Anderson and Spike Jonze. We were all different, untraditional filmmakers. We all have high-profile movies coming out. These seem to be the movies everybody wants to see, even more so than Gangs of New York," Martin Scorsese's long-awaited opus.

Is Haynes' body of work really so unconventional? It's true that gays can be found throughout the entertainment industry, that their influence is widespread, in evidence from Friends dialogue to the variety of films that have dealt with homosexuality, like In & Out. But most of mainstream culture that deals with homosexuality does so in a comedic fashion, whether it be Will & Grace or even the once-controversial Ellen.

Gay is acceptable to Procter & Gamble and to movie audiences when it is funny, but an examination of the gay-and-lesbian lifestyle that deviates from the heterosexual comfort zone is perhaps Hollywood's last taboo.

In Far From Heaven, Haynes may not completely break that taboo, but he certainly bends it more than those who've gone before him.

After all, Gus did his thing and he moved on. Ellen has done her thing, and now she's in gay limbo, the center square on Hollywood Squares.

Should Todd Haynes be expected to make only queer films? Or can he, too, be allowed to do his own thing, and make provocative films that aren't imbued with lavender hues?

Haynes' next project indicates that he has every intention of moving on. He is beginning to work on what he dubs "The Bob Dylan Project," which he has described as "a very refracted look" at the rock icon. For the first time in his career he will be paid a million dollars, but it also looks like for the first time he will work beyond the boundaries of queerdom.

For many of his fans, that's nothing to be ashamed of.

Additional reporting for this article was done by WW intern Catherine Kernodle.