LIFE AFFIRMED: An interview with Far From Heaven director Todd Haynes By Ryan Kugler 11/04/02 Part 2 of 2

What was it like casting Dennis Quaid? Was he you first choice?

Fred McMurray was too old and Robert Stack is too old. No, I didn't have anybody in mind while writing the film except Julianne, but I knew I wanted an actor who came with a kind of masculinity and an unquestioned association -- where you wouldn't see this coming. He had a sort of fortification against these kinds of feelings built into him, and what's amazing about Dennis is that from the minute he's on screen, there's something broken about him and it never really resumes itself. So I was thinking about Quaid and I was thinking about other people, but there was definitely pressure to cast a bigger name star. I've always really liked Quaid actually and there were films I've seen that I was like, "Wow, that guy is so good." He's sort of underrated. People don't realize what a fine job he's doing all the time because he's so handsome and so likable. I watched a lot of films, but it was seeing Everybody's All-American. It's so great and he's so amazing and he ages. You see him as this football hero in the 50s and then you see him totally like age 30 or 40 years. It's a beautifully modulated performance and it was really helpful to see him do a different period as well.

His character is broken, certainly, but I thought he was alive when his head falls on that guy's chest in that one scene. I thought, this is clearly who he really is.

That's cool. It's true; I think he's a very amazing guy because he's not what you think. He said that he saw Velvet Goldmine twice in the theaters when I met him. He's interested in films that you don't normally associate him with. He has a pretty wide range of interests.

But he accepted the man?

The very first thing he said when he read the script was, "You know what's so interesting about this, is that it's the presentational aspect of it -- that emotion. Not even the style is the big hurdle, I have to get over to get to the emotion." Actually, the emotion could only happen in this way and I thought that was so beautiful and so sharp and he really understood what I was trying to do in ways I probably couldn't have stated.

So why did you have to make this movie? When you sit down to create something and you have nothing and then it becomes this, why that? Why are you so passionate about these particular themes?

I definitely felt compelled to make a film about a woman character again -- someone in a social setting that was restricted, that would have to encounter a discrepancy with her own feelings and needs, but that ultimately, there would be no real escape for her there. She would just have to learn about those contradictions. I wanted to make something really sad and yet something that was of a language that has been discarded -- the melodrama. To re-endow it with something that feels authentic in your own experience I think is a really interesting process to go through, and that seems to be working for certain people. It's very exciting.

What do you think Sirk would think of this film?

Oh, I don't know. Somebody said such a nice thing in a review. They were like, somewhere up in heaven, Sirk and Fassbinder are dancing a jig right now, very happy -- or something like that. That was a sweet sentiment. Sirk does mention in his Sirk on Sirk book that there was a film that had a gay theme that he wanted to do. Maybe it was a story or maybe a book, but homosexuality was the theme, but of course it was not possible to do at the time. He stated in these interviews, which I think came out in the late 60s or early 70s, that it was something he would have loved to do.

So what happened?

I don't think he was going to go there. It was a theme that he couldn't touch at the time and it interested him.

(Read the interview with Far From Heaven star Julianne Moore)

(Read Warren Curry's review of Far From Heaven)

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