Independent film titans Christine Vachon and Pam Koffler of Killer Films reflected on their careers, the challenge to mid-budget films, their longstanding relationship with Todd Haynes, and the one-question director test they use to gauge whether or not to work with a filmmaker during a wide-ranging talk at TIFF: The Market.
Speaking on the Perspectives: Producers with Killer Instincts session in Toronto, the best friends and partners, who met in New York and launched Killer Films in 1995, began by looking back at what they would have told their younger selves when they made early films like Kids and I Shot Andy Warhol.
“My answer is always, ‘Buy New York real estate,’” quipped Vachon. “One of the great things about film producing is that you always learn something new on every movie. So on May, December we learned a lot about the life cycle of butterflies and Monarchs. I’m glad I know that, but I’m not sure it’s going to be of use anytime soon. On Kids we did learn how to bail a kid out of jail, which might become useful at some point.”
Vachon added, “Once you make a really dire mistake on a movie that costs you a lot of money, which is mostly what mistakes do – and I’m not talking about mistakes that hurt someone, because that’s a true catastrophe – you really never make it again.”
Koffler said, “If something doesn’t feel right in the script, it’s probably not going to work out in the movie […] If you have to explain it to me, it’s not working […] Every single time I read a script I think about that. The beginning of the movie process is so daunting. Be patient: as long as you see where you need to get to every day, you don’t have to get it all done [immediately].
Finding the work-life balance
The partners, whose numerous credits include Boys Don’t Cry, Safe, Hedwig And The Angry Inch, Far From Heaven, and Carol, emphasised the importance of striking a work-life balance and finding the right person to work with. “Who you choose as your partner in life is maybe one of the most important career decisions,” Koffler noted. “It has to be that person who gets it and is going to truly be supportive and not the fake kind of supportive.”
“Because we were a woman-driven company, way before it was even remotely fashionable, Pam and I could adjust our lives without any judgement between each other about dealing with a child, for example, and we would cover for each other,” Vachon said. “I remember producing a movie with a male colleague and I could not go to set because my kid was sick. I made up an excuse that I was having a crisis on another movie and because I knew that he would be like, ‘We knew it, we knew when she had that kid…’”
The Killer Films co-heads recalled the challenges of shooting the 1998 dark comedy Happiness, when they went through last-minute budget cuts and a director who was demanding, albeit “always gracious and nice” in the worlds of Koffler. “Like all good filmmakers, Todd Solondz was exacting and specific, and when he said, ‘A dog that humps the couch is what I need’, that’s what he meant. And it wasn’t going to be just any dog; it was going to be the dog that looked the right way and how do you get a dog to do that. So it’s just work, the labour of finding all the idiosyncratic, specific things he needed, which were challenging things for people to just wrap their heads around.”
Vachon noted that while she and Koffler are prepared to work with a demanding director, that is very different from the insecure filmmaker who only thinks of themselves and blames others. “Those aren’t the people we like to work with,” she said, adding: “We did develop our one question director quiz, which is, ‘Do you have a relationship with another living thing?’”
“I don’t think house plants count,” Koffler deadpanned. “We ask, is someone producible, meaning we talk about where you can make compromises so we guide this into an achievable process, which is [that] we have a certain amount of money, and you’ve written this script, so let’s do the work together.”
Collaborating with Todd Haynes
Koffler and Vachon have collaborated with Haynes for many years, producing such films as Far From Heaven, Carol, Velvet Goldmine, May December, and the upcoming De Noche starring Pedro Pascal, who stepped in after Joaquin Phoenix exited the project days before shooting. (They declined to talk about Phoenix and have previously said they do not know why he left the project.)
“One of the things about me, Todd, and Pam, is all three of us are insanely loyal people,” Vachon said. “Todd is an extraordinary filmmaker. On every movie he manages to bring in some level of craft that I feel like, ‘Oh OK I have not seen this before.’ He surprises us every single time. He is also a very decent person and has several relationships with other living things and has a very decent moral code. He’s not unkind.”
Koffler added, “There is a generosity in his creative process, where whatever he responds to you just sign up for it, because if he sees something in it, there’s something in it and the market will see it. You can have the honest conversations about [budget] and he will know if he can do it because he’s so clear pretty early on about the language of a film and his reason for telling it. You’re watching a filmmaker of such consummate ability discuss the process and it’s absolutely thrilling, and it never gets old […] We’ll probably follow Todd off a cliff at some point, or not.”
They have produced Celine Song’s only two films so far. Past Lives garnered Killer’s first best picture Oscar nomination while Materialists grossed more than $10om worldwide. “Past Lives was one of those pandemic script reads that was a little miracle where Christine and I wanted to stay in the swim of things while the industry shut down, and asked an agent to keep sending us the best material and that script was one of them,” Koffler said. “We read it and thought it was one of the best scripts we’ve ever read […] There became an opportunity where A24 was really ready to make it and we were lucky enough to be introduced to Celine as a potential producing team. Right off the bat it was so clear she knew how to tell this story […] She absolutely had a vision for the storytelling, in terms of the tone and the feeling.”
Mid-budget films
Mid-budget productions remain a challenge. “The studios are still not financing those mid-level dramas the way they used to and that’s a real loss,” Vachon said. “People claim they want to see them. And then, of course, we did have a great success with Materialists. And part of what made it work in so many ways, besides the fact that it’s a really good movie, is people wanted to see that kind of movie and I think they still do.”
“That kind of mid-level drama that’s really wrestling with stuff can only be made when everything comes together with massive movie stars, experienced director,” Koffler said. “If you’re a more innovative younger voice, pulling that stuff off is almost impossible to execute.”
After a number of distributors ceased trading in the past decade or so, Vachon said she was encouraged by a spate of new independent buyers. “Now I feel every day I read about some tiny little [new] distributor offering to buy your movie for tens of dollars,” she said. “But that’s good.”
As is the adoption of cinema-going by Gen Z. “My son and Christine’s daughter are particularly cinephile people,” Koffler said. “My son asked if I’d seen Blue Heron [Sophy Romvari’s debut feature that premiered in Locarno in 2025] and we watched it together and were utterly gutted, and cried on our couch. The fact that my 20-year-old son is in a conversation on Letterboxd with his peers and is talking about this movie is really cool. Josephine is another film. Those storytellers are out there and I just hope the environment keeps supporting their ambition.”
Screen is a media partner on Perspectives. The panel took place on September 15 at John Bassett Theatre in Metro Toronto Convention Centre.
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