The resurrection of Todd Haynes’ De Noche has enabled better artistic opportunities for the project, according to producer Christine Vachon. The
The resurrection of Todd Haynes’ De Noche has enabled better artistic opportunities for the project, according to producer Christine Vachon.
The film is a romantic drama starring Pedro Pascal and Danny Ramirez, as two men in the 1930s who fall in love and leave the US for Mexico. It shot earlier this year around Mexico City and is in post-production; the film had previously fallen apart in summer 2024, when Joaquin Phoenix exited the project days before the start of filming.
“If you take the Pollyanna, glass-half-full version of everything happens for a reason, maybe the reason was that this was a role Pedro was born to play,” said Vachon, speaking to Screen contributing editor Wendy Mitchell at an Industry Talk at Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF). “So was Danny. Both of them are a revelation.”
“I can’t say it was an easy situation; it was devastating that Todd didn’t get to make a movie that year,” said Vachon of Phoenix’s departure. However, the “do-over” benefited the project, which Vachon produced alongside Pamela Koffler for their Killer Films. “We chose to base the film out of Mexico City, which ended up being better creatively for our film, instead of Guadalajara, which was what we were doing originally.”
“Todd was working on some other things, and he met Pedro on the awards circuit when he was doing May December,” said Vachon. “People always say to me, ‘Is Pedro as nice as he seems?’ And he is. People are so invested in him.
“We’ve worked together on [Celine Song’s 2025 romantic comedy-drama] Materialists. It started to be one of those things that was like ‘I wonder if [Pascal would do De Noche], and it worked out.”
Vachon said the escalate in US films shooting abroad is partly due to a “terrible situation” for American crews right now.
“Americans don’t shoot in America anymore because it’s too expensive,” said the producer. “Whether we want to be international or not, we have become very international. It’s terrible for American crews, it’s a terrible situation, and I hope there’s some way to resolve it.”
A US federal tax credit would be a benefit to the local industry, Vachon believes. “Trump was threatening to do one when he first got into office the second time, but seems to have forgotten about that,” said the producer. “It’s not like when we shoot in the UK we pay people so much less; but we don’t have to pay healthcare. We have to in the US, and that’s often 40% of a union salary.”
Assurance
Killer Films’ latest feature Pretty Babies, a directorial debut for Tyler-Marie Evans, has its world premiere at EIFF this evening (Friday, August 14). The film follows two adolescent girls who flee their hometown drawn by the seductive promise of Hollywood, only for the American dream to fracture on their road trip when they find the gloomy underbelly of the sex industry.
“The way Tyler articulated her vision gave me that sense of assurance that she knew how to tell her story,” said Vachon. “If she could articulate it to me, that meant she could articulate it to a crew.”
“Sometimes Killer can be the adults in the room, so that a financier is like ‘OK, somebody knows [what to do]’. But we’re very selective. We don’t do that for any movie; we do it when we feel the director really has a vision and knows how to tell their story.
“First-time directors don’t scare me, in the sense of them not knowing anything, because most things can be taught,” continued Vachon. “You can teach somebody what a grip stand is, or how to break down a scene, or what’s the best order to shoot in, or how to schedule a film. I don’t know that you can teach someone how to tell their story.”
Vachon and Koffler will receive the honorary Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in November this year. Leading lights of the independent and queer filmmaking scene for over three decades, Vachon identified a duality in the current landscape for LGBTQ screen work.
“It’s a conundrum right now when you have something like [HBO Max series] Heated Rivalry, which couldn’t be a bigger hit, and at the same time we still have politicians campaigning on who gets to use what bathroom, and who gets to validate who they are,” said Vachon.
“The only sure thing, or surer thing [in filmmaking], is genre, genre-adjacent, or elevated-genre,” said Vachon. Asked if, for example, she would be up for making a zombie film with Song, Vachon said, “in a heartbeat”.
EIFF continues with its Trainspotting live event this evening.
