Todd Haynes On Natalie Portman’s ‘May December’ Scene Everyone Will Be Talking About [Interview]

CANNES – It was a warm afternoon on la Croisette when Todd Haynes sat down to chat about his celebrated new drama, “May December.” The Killer Films produced project still hadn’t been acquired yet (Netflix picked up North American rights for a reported $11 million), but the “Carol” auteur was in good spirits. Maybe he’d read the reviews. Maybe he hadn’t. But his gut instinct that the Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore two-fer was special was clearly right on.

READ MORE: Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman on their “May December” “You got this” moment

A breakthrough Black List selected script for writer Sammy Burch, “May December” follows Elizabeth Berry (Portman), a well known television actress, as she visits Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Moore) and her husband, Joe Yoo (Charles Melton) in their Savannah, Georgia home. Twenty years prior, Grace and Joe were a tabloid sensation after the pair’s romantic relationship was revealed. The kicker? Grace was in her mid-30s and Joe was just 13-years-old at the time. Today, they have been married for almost 20 years with two twins about to graduate high school. They have tried to put the controversy behind them, but that changes with Elizabeth’s arrival. She’ll be portraying Grace in a new prestige independent film that she hopes will take her career to another level. As the days pass, Elizabeth works her way into their relationship trying to take cues and insights for her version of Gracie.

At one point during the film, Elizabeth receits a monologue based off letter Gracie has written. Shot in completely one take, it’s a scene that will be a staple in Portman lifetime achievement montages for decades to come. And, it might land the Oscar winner her fourth Academy Award nomination overall. When asked about it, Haynes’ face completely lights up.

“If anything, I would say that letter scene was the reason why I wanted to do it,” Haynes says. “If there was a single scene or a single thing I read in the script, it was that. And I knew I wanted it to be a direct address of lens and shot that way. I thought of [Ingmar] Bergman’s “Winter Light” with Ingrid [Bergman] full on reading the letter to the lens against the neutral background. And I was like, ‘Oh my God, we have to do that and I have to figure out how to use that motif and establish that motif throughout the film.’ So then the direct address into mirrors was built upon that as the first instinct.”

As for Portman, she had some leeway to prepare as the scene was toward the end of the 28-day shoot.

“She did eight takes,” Haynes says. “And they were all, someday in the annals of great screen acting. It should be shared. Because as so many things among these two actresses could be, it’s just a truly astonishing example of each one being completely different, distinct and have such total integrity under themselves.”

Haynes says he wasn’t sure which take he was going to use until he hit the ending room, but “watching them all again was just like, ‘Wow.’ But the one that we picked was, it also had this background truck roar that was a piece of ambient score that came in right on the line. And I don’t know where the lines are crossing the line. I don’t even know who draws these lines.”

He continues, “And it could have been some horrible sound. It could have come way at the wrong soft time. It could have been some crazy thing from the street. Instead, it was like it scored the scene. It was just one of those, yeah, little miracles.”

Again, few have seen the film so far. Many won’t until this fall, but believe the hype. It’s a moment that won’t disappoint.

The rest of our conversation, edited for clarity, covered the incredibly quick turnaround to make the film, where the movie was originally supposed to take place (far from Georgia), getting Kelly Reichardt‘s endorsement to use her longtime cinematographer, his longtime collaboration with Moore and much, much, um, more.

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The Playlist: First of all, congratulations on the movie.

Todd Haynes: Thank you.

I was at the press conference today and I gotta know how long were you holding that “Le Macron” line.* You must have thought about that before.

Oh, no. We’ve thought about it. No, it’s come up. I mean, the other answer to that question is, what do they call this relationship in France? “L’Amour.” [Laughs.]

*During the media briefing, Haynes joked that why the term May December may be more American, the French term for it is “Le Macron” as the president of France’s wife is 25 years his senior

You don’t actually direct that many films that you haven’t written yourself.

Well, really, it’s been since “Carol” that I cracked open that door and they came flooding in. It’s been only the greatest way to just continue working in different ways, in different capacities of different collaborations, so it’s been a great process for me.

You get this script. What about it immediately appealed to you? What about it made you want to make it?

Well, it was so disquieting. It put you in a state of having to read against the grain of what was happening in this story and keep reevaluating your own presumptions and prejudices and who you thought was trustworthy as a character and who you don’t. That shifting of perspective and that disquiet and that Elise was just [intriguing]. What was fun about the script though is that it had a tone that allowed you to enjoy that process. And so that became my real goal was to try to find a comparable way to enjoy reading the film as you watch it, but have it be fun to do so.

I know Natalie brought the project to you.

Yeah.

Was it with the idea of, “Hey, do you want to do this? And do you think Julianne would want to too?” Or was that your idea?

Oh, no, I thought of Julianne and I asked Natalie, “What do you think it’s Julianne for this?” And she was like, “Oh my God, do you think she would do it?” And then I was like, “I think just maybe.” [Laughs.]

You’ve all talked about how quickly it came together. How fast was it really?

It was three months because another project which we were planning for last year got aborted, and all of a sudden everything was open. And so we were like, “Do you think we can get this together?” And so it was all systems go which means when [producers] Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler are all systems go there’s no getting in the way. We got a private equity investor who really floated most of the budget, and made a couple little pre-sales very quickly, but could only raise a certain amount for this story. Two women’s story…

Two Oscar winners, no less.

And then of course it was about their schedules, and that’s always an unknown. And that was crazy. We were dancing around another movie that might have gotten in the way with Julie and Natalie was finishing up a series that she was on. And so it just came together really, really quickly. And so Sam Lisenco (“Judas and the Black Messiah”) was the production designer I were going to be working with on this other project. And we just were having the best time. We went to Cincinnati to find locations for that film and had a great time. And then that didn’t happen. So, we just were like, “All right.” And then we switched the location. Originally, the script was set in Camden, Maine.

Interesting.

And we switched it, well, for practical reasons to Georgia. Because we knew we weren’t going to be able to shoot it until like October, November. But it had to take place in May [in the film] because it was graduation time. So, that was another practical component. But then Savannah just kept yielding more substance and weirdness. I’d been there a few times. I just was at the film festival not that long ago with “Velvet Underground,” but there was a little beach community. The islands are 20 minutes away from downtown Savannah, Tybee Island being the most well-known. And we thought, “Oh, that’s where Gracie should live. She shouldn’t live in historic Savannah, downtown Savannah.” And so that was just a hope that that would kind of pan out. Then Sam and myself and Mason Plotts, who’s a producer on this, went there. And it was, again, it was finding all these weird local haunts and real places.

We found the house ourselves despite all the houses the Savannah Film Commission folks were showing us. We just followed our noses found that street and this house, and a couple of other houses on the same block. But this one was our favorite and this is the one that we got. And the house in particular just established this weird milky light, this sort of marshy milky hazy hot light. It informed the whole look of the movie, the way we filtered the lens, and the way we treated it. So it has this weirdly soft mushiness.