The great Christine Vachon, a maverick of indie cinema, was a producer on the now-canceled Todd Haynes movie, which was supposed to star Joaquin Phoenix. Five days before production began, Phoenix unexpectedly bowed out of the film, shocking the cast and crew.
Vachon has now gone on her own personal Facebook account to post thoughts about the debacle. She’s calling the situation a “nightmare”, and saying that “This was HIS [Joaquin’s] project that he brought to US.”
She’s right. It’s Phoenix who came up with the idea of making a 1930s gay detective movie with Haynes. The film in question was being described as “a love story between two men” set in the 1930s. Haynes wrote the story with writer Jon Raymond and Phoenix.
Haynes had repeatedly mentioned that, while brainstorming the project, Phoenix kept pushing him and going “no, let’s go further with the sex,” to the point where Haynes firmly believed that its MPA rating would have to be NC-17.
Sets had already been built in Mexico, and while the producers tried to find a replacement for Phoenix, they couldn’t line up the right actor for the role, and it was getting too expensive to hold the crew. Vachon is said to have taken the biggest hit as she now owes people money in the six figures.
Some of the cast and crew, speaking anonymously, believe Phoenix might have simply gotten cold feet regarding the graphic sex scenes, but they were his idea and not Haynes’ or Raymond’s. The film has been described as “explicit” and “sexually charged.”
What I’m most curious about is if Vachon sues Phoenix for leaving her in the ditch the way that he did, making her waste millions of dollars with now no movie to try and recoup her costs.
Former New York Times critic Janet Maslin says Phoenix will be hit hard as he is “now-uninsurable” for movie projects. Film critic Glenn Kenny warns “If [Phoenix] thinks the rest of the film industry will take his fucking over Todd Haynes at all lightly, I believe he is mistaken”.
We won't know exactly what happened until someone knee deep in production chaos spills the beans to a trade, but clearly something happened here, and we might not have the full story just yet.