Todd Haynes |
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Todd Haynes (born January 2, 1961) is an award-winning American film director best known for the films Poison, Academy Award-nominated Far From Heaven, and I'm Not There.
In 1987, Haynes made a short, Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, which chronicles the life of American singer Karen Carpenter using Barbie dolls as actors. However, he failed to obtain proper licensing to use numerous Carpenters songs in the film. As a result, Karen's brother Richard won a copyright infringement suit against him, and the film was removed from distribution.
His 1991 feature film debut, Poison, based on the writings of Jean Genet, was partly funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. This prompted Reverend Donald Wildmon, head of the American Family Association, to attack the NEA as inappropriately funding "explicit porno scenes of homosexuals involved in anal sex" even though he had not viewed the film.