American director Todd Haynes was one of the first filmmakers to experiment with Barbie dolls on screen with the release of his 1987 Art School Project. Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story 36 years before Greta Gerwig’s blockbuster phenomenon.
A 43-minute short film made at Bard College in New York State, supper star Scenes from the 1970s pop star’s life are depicted using children’s toys rather than real-life actors.
Charting the rise and fall of Carpenter, who died of the eating disorder anorexia nervosa in 1983, Haynes’ controversial film uses stick-figure dolls to emphasize Carpenter’s frailty and the Carpenter estate’s copyright claim. Later it was banned. It includes vague tracks from Carpenter and also claims about the sexuality of Karen’s brother Richard.
supper star Haynes has since become a cult curiosity, although he has not barbieAwning NME In an exclusive interview she said she was sure Gerwig was familiar with it.
“I love Greta Gerwig. I am a big fan. And there’s no doubt in my mind that she knows my movie supper star Absolutely fine,” he said. “It is a very famous film. Even though it’s banned, it’s a film that a lot of people, especially people her age,[have]seen… If you’ve gone through feminist film studies… most likely someone Must have shown it to you at some point. So I would be surprised if he hadn’t seen it, but I haven’t had that conversation (with him).”
Haynes is currently promoting his latest project, the award-winning psychological comedy drama may december, Starring Natalie Portman as an actress investigating her next role as the subject of a tabloid sex scandal, played by Julianne Moore, Haynes called the film “a strange film … oscillating between black comedy and zoned-out melodrama. ” has been described as. Haynes explained that Portman was interested in how people would react to her character Elizabeth, who is intentionally confrontational and provocative when she meets the family of the woman she has been booked to portray.
“(Natalie) didn’t really do the research,” he said. “She had a kind of mischievous interest in…what people might project onto the character…she wanted to seduce people and confuse and confuse them in that way. So everything about how the script does that to you, how the film does that to you, initially excited him when he read it.
For the film’s music, Haynes turned to the 1971 romance go in the middle And Michel Legrand’s haunting score. “I watched it when I was a kid… but it had fallen out of vogue,” he said, “and last year I was watching it on (broadcast channel) Turner Classic Movies in the United States… I It felt as if someone had slapped me. across the face. I thought, ‘Wow, this is that kind of music’ may december “Can be used.”
Haynes immediately called his composer Marcelo Zarvos and told him about it. go in the middleAnd he played music on the set to create an atmosphere that would help the actors get into character. “I’d never done that before in my life,” Haynes said. It worked so well that they began using the score as a recurring motif in the final cut of the film. “It breaks every rule of what a score should be,” he said.
‘May December’ is in cinemas now and on Sky Cinema from 8th December