Trailblazing producer Christine Vachon bestrides the world of US independent film-making like a colossus. She has championed idiosyncratic American cinema for more than 35 years, scoring hits such as the romcom Materialists, which starred three superhero actors (Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal, Chris Evans) and grossed $108m, alongside curiosities such as Zola, a strippers\u2019 road-trip comedy based on a string of viral tweets.<\/p>\n
Vachon got her start in the early 1990s. Her often scandalous movies \u2013 from Poison (gay prison sex) and Swoon (gay child killers) to Happiness (paedophile dad) and Kids (delinquent teens) \u2013 dominated the cultural conversation decades before boutique studio A24 had sold its first tote bag. Her production outfit Killer Films, which she founded in 1995 with Pamela Koffler, has as its logo a cartoon bunny with a target for a body, mischievously evoking the company\u2019s blend of irreverence and danger. \u201cI don\u2019t think we\u2019ve ever made a movie that somebody hasn\u2019t been offended by,\u201d Vachon said in 2000.<\/p>\n
Times change. Back then, Killer was on the brink of respectability thanks to Boys Don\u2019t Cry, for which Hilary Swank won an Oscar for playing the murdered transgender man Brandon Teena. In 2024, Materialists director Celine Song\u2019s gorgeous but conspicuously uncontroversial debut Past Lives became the first Killer film to receive a best picture Oscar nomination.<\/p>\n
Delinquent \u2026 Rosario Dawson and Chlo\u00eb Sevigny in Kids. Photograph: Collection Christophel\/Alamy<\/p>\n
It has been a while, then, since Killer was the industry\u2019s scrappy outsider. \u201cI sometimes say we\u2019re the adults in the room,\u201d Vachon tells me. Now 63, the tousle-haired, New York-based producer is speaking from a terrace overlooking the sea in Trouville-sur-Mer. She is visiting family here before heading to the Edinburgh film festival<\/a> for the world premiere of Killer\u2019s latest production, Pretty Babies. Written and directed by newcomer Tyler-Marie Evans, it follows two aspiring teenage actors who run off to Los Angeles, seduced by the glamour of old Hollywood, only to slide into sex work. It is rather as if Thelma and Louise\u2019s road trip had taken them to David Lynch\u2019s Mulholland Drive.<\/p>\n double quotation markI\u2019m not sure Joaquin would want to work with me again<\/p>\n What makes Pretty Babies a Killer film? \u201cWe love to encourage stories that feel personal and provocative and have something to say,\u201d says Vachon. \u201cIt was not as if Tyler\u2019s script was utterly original in terms of the issues she was dealing with. But she approached them in an original way. She has a real point of view and she can speak about her work very well.\u201d She can indeed: at a recent screening, Evans explained that she intends the movie \u201cto show that sexually objectified young women ask themselves the same questions as Dostoevsky\u201d.<\/p>\n It is a confident, eye-catching debut but the likelihood of a controversy equal to Kids, which had viewers clutching their pearls at the sight of skateboarders having unprotected sex, appears slim. Would a new Kids have that effect now? \u201cIf you made the 2026 version, it probably would be shocking,\u201d Vachon says. \u201cOr you might say: All you\u2019ve got to do is go on TikTok.\u201d<\/p>\n Christine Vachon at the Tribeca film festival in 2025 Photograph: Jason Mendez\/Getty Images for Tribeca Festival<\/p>\n Pretty Babies fits the template by heralding an emerging talent. \u201cOne of the things we can do with a first-time film-maker is put our weight behind a project to give assurances to the financiers,\u201d says Vachon, who produced the feature debuts of, among others, John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch), American Psycho director Mary Harron (I Shot Andy Warhol) and Todd Haynes<\/a> (Poison), whom Vachon met at Brown University in the late 1980s.<\/p>\n Haynes\u2019s debut, which interweaves three tales of transgression including a prison love story complete with graphic expectorating scene, won the grand jury prize at Sundance in 1991. That put Poison on the radar of rightwing US politicians with an axe to grind.<\/p>\n \u201cThe film had received a National Endowment for the Arts grant,\u201d says Vachon. \u201cThat triggered an eruption in Congress: \u2018Your tax dollars are being used to fund a movie about homosexuals spitting in each other\u2019s mouths and touching each other\u2019s dicks!\u2019 Suddenly there were lines around the block to see the film. Yes, the controversy helped. But what really helped was an under-represented audience getting to see itself on screen. It taught me that if you make a movie for the right amount of money for a specific audience, and only they show up to see it, you can still make your money back.\u201d<\/p>\n She has produced all Haynes\u2019s work since then including the melodrama Far from Heaven and the forthcoming De Noche, which recently finished shooting. This drama about a volatile cop (Pascal) and a schoolteacher (Danny Ramirez) who flee 1930s LA together for Mexico has a stormy history. The project was the brainchild of its original star, Joaquin Phoenix, who brought to Haynes the idea of a gay, sexually-explicit period love story; the director then co-wrote the screenplay with Jon Raymond. Sets were built in Guadalajara, the crew assembled. Five days before shooting was due to begin in August 2024, Phoenix pulled out. Variety magazine estimated at the time that losses \u201ccould exceed seven figures\u201d.<\/p>\n Cate Blanchett in Todd Haynes\u2019s lesbian romance Carol. Photograph: TCD\/Prod.DB\/Alamy<\/p>\n Did Vachon have any inkling of trouble ahead? \u201cYou know, I really didn\u2019t,\u201d she sighs. The reasons for Phoenix\u2019s departure have not been made public, though an unnamed source told Variety that the actor got \u201ccold feet\u201d. Vachon took to social media to quell tittle-tattle: \u201cIf you are tempted to finger wag or admonish us that \u2018that\u2019s what you get for casting a straight actor\u2019 \u2013 DON\u2019T. This was HIS project that he brought to US.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n She is reluctant to discuss the details today, and won\u2019t speak on the record about whether Phoenix will receive a credit on the movie he co-created and then sabotaged. \u201cLook, I don\u2019t know what happened. He decided he didn\u2019t want to do it. And, you know, I went to Guadalajara with a mop.\u201d For a while, the film was dead in the water. \u201cIt was the passion of Todd and Pedro that allowed us to move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n