Watching May December on Netflix, you may notice an eerie similarity between Todd Haynes's latest and the real-life story of Mary Kay Letourneau, a teacher who was convicted in 1997 of raping her underage student — and years later, went on to marry him. Yet, that tabloid story was not what attracted Haynes to Samy Burch's sizzling screenplay.
"I’m not really drawn to it myself," Haynes said of the true crime genre. "I was even foggy about the Mary Kay Letourneau story when this came to me." What Haynes loved about the script was its structure. "It’s more about an excavation, trying to discover how these stories get circulated and— really — how families and people survive them."
Mashable spoke to Todd Haynes in a Zoom interview about true crime and how Mary Kay Letourneau became crucial to developing the twisted fairy tale at the heart of May December.
True crime was not the hook for Haynes.
Haynes valued how Burch's screenplay for May December explores the relationship between Gracie (Julianne Moore) and Joe (Charles Melton), the stand-ins for Letourneau and Vili Fualaau (her former student).
"This is an extremely exotic and extreme example," Haynes said, "but we all tell little stories about who we are and how our relationship came into being. And those are normal — until you realize your relationship is not satisfying to you, or there's a gap between the stories you tell and how you're experiencing your life."
According to Haynes, the film's script "questions the structures, systems, and myths that you've built around a relationship that might not be satisfying you anymore." This was a huge draw for Haynes — a film that looked far beyond the surface level of a story easy to sensationalize.
Julianne Moore pushed Haynes to look to Letourneau.
Haynes and Moore have repeatedly made for sensational collaborations. Their first film together, 1995's Safe, garnered bounds of critical acclaim; the Village Voice voted it the best film of the '90s. 2002's Far From Heaven earned Moore an Oscar nomination. But May December's Gracie is perhaps Moore's most challenging role with Haynes yet.
When she first received the script, she was excited to work with the lauded helmer again. (The film marks their fifth collaboration.) But diving into Gracie sparked a curiosity for the actor. "She started to have questions about Gracie," Haynes explained, "and questions about the way that she performs in the household around family and children in a sense of domination.”
From there, Moore's fascination with Letourneau proved pivotal. "Documentaries, interviews [with Letourneau] were helpful to Julianne," Haynes said. "I was a little resistant. I was like, 'No, no, no, we're doing a fiction. It's our own thing. It's different from Mary Kay Letourneau.' And she was like, 'No, check this out. It's crazy.' And so she led me into her life.”
In Gracie, Moore didn't see a hardened criminal. Haynes explained, "She's not a predator in the way we think about an incredibly aggressive figure. She doesn’t have a pedophilic history in the sense that she isn't always going after children. There's something else going on here, and Julianne wanted to really tap into that."
May December's Gracie lives in a twisted fairytale.
Hayne explained, "This whole idea of Gracie as kind of this little princess was derived from Letourneau." What makes Gracie so compelling is the way she concocts her own fiction for her relationship with Joe, adding a chilling sense of naivety to Gracie. "She created this story about herself and her relationship with Joe, and how she found Joe. She was a princess in an unhappy domestic tower," Haynes continued.
"The young knight in shining armor came to rescue her," Haynes said, "and so that automatically disperses responsibility and inverts and obscures the age difference and endows him with all the power and her with all the sort of innocence."
How to watch: May December is now streaming on Netflix.
Topics Streaming True Crime
