Todd Haynes‘ catty showbiz drama “May December” went off like a firecracker opening the New York Film Festival last Friday. Now, the Oscar-nominated filmmaker is set for another tribute at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, NYC.
IndieWire shares exclusively that the Museum of the Moving Image will honor Haynes with the Moving Image Award for Career Achievement on December 4, with a career-spanning film retrospective, gallery exhibit, and publication of a new book about his process in tandem. The museum has also acquired the “Carol” and “Safe” director’s film production archive into its collection, including notes, scripts, and sketches from every feature film made by Haynes, as well as his short films (yes, that means “Superstar,” his hard-to-find stop-motion, Barbie-doll Karen Carpenter biopic) and work for television.
Presented as a temporary addition to the museum’s core exhibition “Behind the Screen,” the exhibit will be on view starting November 18 and will center on Haynes’s elaborate “image books,” albums that gather visual inspirations for each of his productions, with a focus on “May December,” starring Natalie Portman as an actress studying to play a controversial celebrity portrayed by Julianne Moore. Netflix opens the film in theaters November 17 before streaming starts December 1.
The exhibit will also feature video interviews with Haynes and additional production material drawn from the archive recently donated to the museum.
From December 1 – 30, the Museum will screen all of Haynes’ features, starting with his Jean Genet-inspired Sundance breakout “Poison” (1991) through “May December,” as well as early short films and TV work like HBO’s “Mildred Pierce.” (You can bet “Superstar” won’t be included, as that film about Karen Carpenter’s demise remains in music rights limbo with the Carpenter estate.)
The book, “Todd Haynes: Rapturous Process,” published by MoMI, is an adaptation of Centre Pompidou’s book published on the occasion of its own Haynes retrospective in Paris in 2023, but with new material for English-language readers. It includes an in-depth 2023 career interview with Haynes by the Pompidou’s Judith Revault d’Allonnes, a new essay by Michael Koresky, a conversation about “May December” between Haynes and filmmaker Kelly Reichardt, and a foreword by Julianne Moore. The book features more than 200 pages of materials from Haynes’ archives, including drawings, paintings, storyboards, notes, on-set photographs, costume and set designs, and more. You can purchase the book at MoMI and online starting in November.
“We are thrilled to honor Todd Haynes’s extraordinary career with this expansive initiative,” said Barbara Miller, MoMI’s Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs in an official statement. “From his electrifying emergence in the 1980s to the brilliant ‘May December,’ Haynes has remained a singular filmmaker, crafting artistically fearless films that subvert genre expectations and explore transgressive identities. We’re excited to present a retrospective of his works, and to be able to offer, through the exhibit and the publication of ‘Todd Haynes: Rapturous Process,’ a glimpse into his compelling creative process.”
