Christine Vachon, one half of the legendary Killer Films producing duo on launching her career with Todd Haynes and reviewing the wine selection at airline lounges
Award-winning independent producer Christine Vachon has come a long way since her first summer job selling fruit and nuts on the streets of her native New York while on a scholarship to Brown University, where she studied semiotics.
Vachon and Pamela Koffler co-founded Killer Films in 1995 and the company has produced more than 100 features including Past Lives, Boys Don’t Cry and Still Alice. They have also made Far From Heaven, May December and Carol, among others, with longtime collaborator Todd Haynes.
In November, Vachon and Koffler will receive the Academy’s Irving Thalberg memorial award at the Governors Awards, while here at TIFF the Killer duo will participate in a career talk on September 14.
What is your office like?
It’s a big white square cube with two little soundproof booths. There are three people who work with Pam and me. It can get a little chaotic, hence the soundproof booths.
What is the first thing you do when you arrive each day?
I’m often running into the office a little late for a meeting. I get there between 11 and 12, and I’m usually caffeinated by then. I have been in touch with everybody already, so I manifest.
What was your first job in the industry?
Maybe as a location scout for MTV. I feel like it was Simple Minds, but I might be wrong. After that I got a job as an editing room assistant on a Jackie Raynal film called Hotel New York and then I worked in the edit room with Bill Sherwood on Parting Glances.
Who did you learn from when you were coming up in the business?
There were almost no women doing what I was doing so I didn’t really have that kind of a role model. Bill Sherwood opened up his process in a very generous way; Jill Godmilow was a documentary filmmaker and I worked in her edit room briefly and she was very open. A lot of the peers I came up with, too: James Schamus, Ted Hope and of course Pam Koffler, who is one of my best friends and my business partner. Who gets that kind of luck?
How did you meet Todd Haynes?
Todd and I went to university together but didn’t really know each other. We had friends in common and started working together when a mutual friend Barry Ellsworth started a company called Apparatus. While Todd and I were working together there, Todd was finishing Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story. I helped him finish it and when I saw the film for the first time, I had this epiphany of, “Okay, that’s what I want to do.”
What is the biggest professional mistake you have made?
The obvious mistakes are early in our career when we got behind a director or two that couldn’t bring it home.
What is your favourite festival?
San Sebastian because it’s so much fun. It’s the perfect blend of new talent, great films and a wonderful place. Sundance is always going to be special because it’s really where my career began [with Poison in 1991].
What excites you about the future of the business?
Just that movies keep getting made; that people keep figuring out how to get their stories told. That is also the challenge. Character-driven drama is so hard to get made these days and figuring it out is not for the faint of heart. There is so much risk aversion.
What was your favourite film growing up?
I grew up on the Upper West Side and we could walk to the Olympia multiplex. I saw The Poseidon Adventure there about seven times. When I was 12, my mother, who was French, took us to see The 400 Blows. It’s the kind of movie that tells you something new at every stage of your life.
What books are you reading?
Children Of Wolves by Lawrence Osborne and Mia by Leslie Bazzett.
How do you unwind?
I drink a glass of wine. My other career is [an airport] lounge reviewer on social media. It always made me angry that you could go into the shittiest bar and they would still have a decent beer selection, but your wine selections were usually red or white. The lounges weren’t much different so I started to review the wine selections at lounges.
Who would play you in the biopic of your life and who would direct?
I hope Todd Haynes would direct. I’ve never been told I look like anybody so it might have to be an unknown.
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