Butch in Progress

[K] What do Poison, Go, Fish, Boys Don’t Cry and Hedwig and the Angry Inch have in common? They’re defining points of LGBT representation in cinema, milestones in US indepenent film, mandatory viewing items for “Queer Film Studies 101” and they have all been produced by the same woman: Christine Vachon. If we had a Favorite Contemporary, instead of Favorite Vintage Butch-category, Christine Vachon would be in it. But since we don’t have it (yet?), she is her own category for now - which is probably only appropriate anyway.

The New York Times titled their 1996-portrait of Christine Vachon “Godmother to the Politically Committed Film”, and even that might still be an understatement: She could easily be called one of the most influential people in the development of New Queer Cinema and her body of work has only grown more impressive since the movement’s heyday, earning her the description as “one of indie film’s most formidable and well-respected figures” by the San Francisco Film Festival in 2011.

Just this week, Christine Vachon got nominated for by the Producer’s Guild of America for The David L. Wolper Producer Of The Year Award In Long-Form Television as the producer of HBO’s Mildred Pierce (starring Kate Winslet). In 2005, her company Killer Films was honored with a retrospective at MOMA and to list everyting else that has happened in her career might make it necessary to create the FuckYeahChristineVachon-blog - so I’ll limit myself to naming a few of the highlights from her producer’s credits:

• 1991: Poison (Todd Haynes)
• 1992: Swoon (Tom Kalin)
• 1994: Go Fish Rose Troche)
• 1996: I Shot Andy Warhol Mary Harron)
• 1998: Velvet Goldmine (Todd Haynes)
• 1999: Boys Don’t Cry(Kimberly Peirce)
• 2001: Hedwig and the Angry Inch (John Cameron Mitchell)
• 2002: Far from Heaven (Todd Haynes)
• 2006: The Notorious Bettie Page (Mary Harron)
• 2007: I’m Not There(Todd Haynes)

To keep herself from being bored, she has used some of her (non-existent, I guess) spare time to publish two books: 

Shooting To Kill and A Killer Life: How an Independent Film Producer Survives Deals and Disasters in Hollywood and Beyond. If you’re considering a career as a film-producer, you should put these on your wish list

Impressed? Intruiged? Already on your way to rent some of her films to make good use of a lazy Sunday afternoon?