Christine Vachon Issue #25

MoMA unveils a retrospective of the influential producer’s oeuvre

By Michael Hastings
Published: September 1st, 2005 | 4:51pm

Those who think that the renegade spirit of ’70s cinema died when Ronald Reagan was elected president need look no further than Christine Vachon. The producer responsible for bringing some of the most challenging, influential narrative films of the last 15 years to the big screen, Vachon and her New York-based shingle, Killer Films, have shepherded countless projects from their nascent, coffeehouse stages to their art-house premieres. Included among them are the Oscar-winning Boys Don’t Cry, Todd Solondz’s seminal Happiness, the much-worshipped screen adaptation of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and all of critics’ darling Todd Haynes’ films (Safe,Velvet Goldmine,Far From Heaven). In those films and others, people struggle to find their place in an uncaring world. They often do very bad things — to each other and themselves — and behave not as movie characters act but as real people often do.

In fact, the nearly three-dozen productions released by Killer constitute such a clarity of vision, they could compromise their own retrospective, which is exactly what New York’s Museum of Modern Art has chosen to do over the course of two and a half weeks this fall. “It’s always amazing to look back and see what you’ve done,” Vachon says of the MoMA tribute. “The movies we’ve done have really defined a certain kind of independent cinema in America.”

Hitting her first low-budget home runs in the early 1990s with Haynes’ controversial Poison and Rose Troche’s jubilant Go Fish, Vachon answered a call for gay and lesbian films that strayed from the stereotypes common to Hollywood productions and offered their audiences not just outré subject matter but also a level of aesthetic daring. Killer quickly gained a reputation for edgy, non-mainstream fare, a handle that Vachon says was motivated not by marketing but by good taste in projects. “It’s hard to cultivate these things consciously. It’s easier to think about them in retrospectives,” she explains. “We’ve never changed our formula. We’ve always made the movies that provoked us and excited us, and we just keep on doing it.”

That mission statement hasn’t changed in the past five years, as more and more of the Hollywood elite have come knocking on Killer’s door to see projects through to completion. Securing bigger budgets and actors whose paychecks could fund a hundred Go Fishes, Vachon has successfully corralled such multi-million dollar productions as the Robin Williams thriller One Hour Photo, writer Michael Cunningham’s Hours follow-up, A Home at the End of the World, and the long-awaited biopic, The Notorious Bettie Page (previewing at the MoMA before its 2006 theatrical release).

When popular stars decide to break out of their multiplex molds, it usually results in unmanageable battles with studios or pre-production stall-outs. But Killer’s reputation has allowed them to head off any potential jitters. “People know what they’re getting into when they sign onto a Killer film, because we work with directors who have extremely specific visions of what they want to do, and we finance the films accordingly,” Vachon says. As for the conflicts of interest that usually accompany eight-digit production values and A-list stars, she is sanguine: “The best way to navigate that is to get into business with people who are making the same movie you’re making.”

Vachon has resisted being a figurehead for queer cinema and would rather not speculate on her influence on the new wave of women in the industry — many of whom she was the first to employ. But certainly, her films have sent ripples through the old boys’ club that is Hollywood: If she hadn’t fought so passionately for films like Kimberly Peirce’s Boys Don’t Cry or Larry Clark's Kids, it’s hard to imagine studios cottoning to such projects as Patty Jenkins’ Monster or Catharine Hardwicke’s Thirteen. In her uncompromising choice of subject matter and her nurturing of auteurs, Vachon’s body of work recalls nothing so much as that of the late Julia Phillips, the woman who worked within the studio system to champion projects from Barbra Streisand, Martin Scorsese, and Steven Spielberg.

Considering the cultural backpedaling that has occurred since Phillips funded those unique talents, Vachon’s track record is even more astounding. Which might be why the MoMA is choosing to focus on the work of a producer like herself instead of, say, blockbuster mogul Jerry Bruckheimer. “Oh, I’m sure he’ll get his,” says Vachon, an egalitarian even when it comes to Hollywood fat cats.

KILLER'S HIT LIST

The films produced by Christine Vachon and Killer Films in the past 15 years have chronicled amoral protagonists, documented true-life crimes, celebrated “alternative” sexualities, and indulged in riotous good humor. Here’s a list of the ones chosen by the MoMA for this fall’s retrospective.

GO FISH (1994)
Its politics may seem dated and its technique rough, but this celebration of Sapphic life in Chicago is still as revelatory a debut as Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It, which was released in 1986. Mixing warm, winning characters with a formal playfulness and an ingenious low-budget style, director Rose Troche opened the door for countless imitators. Indeed, The L Word probably wouldn’t have happened without Go Fish.

SAFE (1995)
Todd Haynes’ second feature wasn’t quite what fans of the New Queer Cinema were expecting: A hypnotic study of vacant Southern Californian lifestyles, manifested in the story of a mysterious, undiagnosable illness that befalls a suburban housewife (Julianne Moore). Safe can be read as an allegory for any one of a number of subjects — the AIDS epidemic, religious cultism, or consumerism — but more than anything, it asserted Haynes’ formidable control of narrative filmmaking of any stripe and gave Moore her first great leading role.

OFFICE KILLER (1997)
Critics complained that it was a routine black comedy distinguished only by its stunt casting (Carol Kane, Molly Ringwald, and Jeanne Tripplehorn in the same film?!), but artist Cindy Sherman’s first feature reveals some unexpected layers on a second viewing. Office Killer still doesn’t quite gel, but it features a terrifically stylized performance by Kane and one of the most eye-grabbing credit sequences in recent memory, indie or otherwise.

BOYS DON’T CRY (1999)
Hilary Swank thanked Killer Films by name but famously neglected to mention her husband when she won her first Best Actress Oscar for this gritty, matter-of-fact true story. Kimberly Peirce’s debut called to mind such classics as In Cold Blood and The Onion Fields as it made a passionate plea for love independent of gender identity.

HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH (2001)
John Cameron Mitchell’s triumphant big-screen adaptation of his own stage act only gets better with every passing year. This should’ve-been-a-breakthrough-hit is daunting in concept only: The tale of a German botched transsexual trying to find a soulmate in the Bible Belt is by turns poetic, profound and outrageous, not to mention consistently hilarious.