Rich: You’ve worked with her before. Did you write Safe for her as well?
Todd: No I didn’t know who she was at the time. But I’m sure lucky to have her. My God! She’s not just one of the best and most subtle and most intelligent and most risk taking actresses we have and maybe we have ever had. But she’s drawn to things that you don’t think of as being popular or crossing over into more mainstream interests. And she has really succeeded in having her cake and eating it too, in being an incredibly popular, very well-liked American actress, but never giving in to the crap. And always playing these difficult, inarticulate, really weird women. And it’s just raised the bar on what’s possible for actresses and for roles on screen about female characters. Yeah, it’s just all good.
Rich: It must be quite tricky to work with someone like that and then to have to think of working with somebody else in another film. You must always come back to her, because she can play almost anything.
Todd: She definitely can. And yet, you know, I’ve been really lucky. I loved working with those young actors in Velvet Goldmine. They were wonderful.
Rich: Toni Collette is one of my favourites.
Todd: She’s fantastic! And Christian Bale was so great to work with. All of them were great. I’ve been very lucky with all the people I’ve worked with. I’ll continue to work with Julianne Moore. But there’s a lot of wonderful people.
Rich: Can you say anything about what you’re working on now?
Todd: I’m doing this movie about Bob Dylan, looking at him as a cluster of different people. I’m interested in that whole idea of how he’s continued to reject all the phases he’s gone through and the intense fixations it’s generated in the public.
Rich: Everyone keeps putting him into a box.
Todd: Yeah, and then he just sort of cruelly kicks it down the road and moves on!
Rich: How did you get started on that?
Todd: I was into Bob Dylan in high school and hadn’t really listened to him since. Then I left New York finally, and drove across country to write Far From Heaven in Portland, Oregon, where my sister lives. And I don’t know why but Dylan became my soundtrack for probably the biggest change in my whole life since leaving Los Angeles as a teenager—maybe that’s why I went back to Bob Dylan. But I wasn’t happy in New York my last couple years there, didn’t know to what degree I needed something radically different in my life, fell in love with Oregon, wrote Far From Heaven in the first 10 days I was in Portland, kept listening to Bob Dylan, came up with this idea, thought there was never in a million years would he agree to it. We submitted the idea to him and he said yes. I found a house in Portland I fell in love with and I moved there. My whole life changed. And it’s been fantastic; it’s been such a good positive change for me. I love being there. I don’t miss New York. I miss my old friends.
Rich: But it was your dream to move there!
Todd: Yeah, I was there for 15 years. Yeah.
Rich: And now you’ve left it behind.
Todd: It’s been the best ever. It’s been great.