Film producer says it was Joaquin Phoenix's project

[mila_s_garden]

UPDATE: Producer Christine Vachon is speaking out after we broke the news yesterday that Joaquin Phoenix pulled out of Todd Haynes' gay NC-17 project five days before production.

Catch the full report: https://t.co/lUORewDzHX pic.twitter.com/QYPfh7oWWO
- IndieWire (@IndieWire) August 11, 2024
It was previously reported that Joaquin Phoenix dropped

Comments

[ahkna]

Get him, Christine!

I'm glad she said something.

[syvlie0o0]

Hope he gets his ass sued by everyone and they get some of that Mara money.

[neuers]

I'm still so mad >:/

[scriptedending]

Glad she spoke out, as some people speculated she might. I am sure Todd Haynes is fucking furious, but it's better for a producer to be the one calling him out rather than the director.

I think at this point, if there was a reasonable spin for him leaving the film - he's ill, a family member is ill, he's going through something and needs space/privacy, whatever - it would have likely come out already in some way. I'm guessing he's just counting on people not caring because Todd Haynes is not a huge (relatively speaking, of course) director.

[puramierda]

I think at this point, if there was a reasonable spin for him leaving the film - he's ill, a family member is ill, he's going through something and needs space/privacy, whatever - it would have likely come out already in some way

i disagree, we've seen that if a celeb wants to keep something locked down they definitely can. esp if it's health related.

[scriptedending]

I'm saying that in this case, there has been enough bad press that if there was a legit reason for him to leave the film, his publicist/team/agent would be saying *something* - not specifics, but something - but it's been crickets.

With promo for the Joker sequel starting so soon, we'll have a better idea either way.

[lone_concertina]

Todd Haynes isn't a huge director to most, but to the people who are into film he's a legend. He's the Scorsese of queer movie nerds (spoken as one)

[puramierda]

i feel like i'm missing something bc to me it sounds like she's defending him? or not defending, but if it was widely reported that the reason he backed out was the gay content, and she's saying that's not the reason at all bc it was his idea... idk it doesn't sound like a call out to me. if anything she's calling out the finger waggers.

[miwa201]

i don't think she's defending him at all, she sounds really mad. she's just emphasizing that the gay content was his idea

[puramierda]

she does sound really mad, but to me she sounds more mad at the ppl jumping to conclusions. she's saying don't finger wag bc you don't know what you're talking about, and if you are finger wagging, you're making it worse.

[purecharm]

I agree with you, I read it that way too. I can't make sense of this, and generally I am 'trust no public figure, especially a rich white man', but while Joaquin Phoenix is many things (many of them bad), homophobic and scared of a challenge were not two of them in my mind. The fact that he co-wrote and brought the project to Killer is making me think it's more complicated than that. Idk, I hope we find out one day and more than anything I hope the people who've been screwed over by this get their justice.