Christine Vachon, the prolific independent producer whose Killer Films has backed Happiness, Boys Don’t Cry, Carol and more recently Past Lives, May December and Materialists, said at the Edinburgh Film Festival on Friday that Pedro Pascal is “a revelation” in Todd Haynes’ re-worked gay romance movie.
De Noche, currently in post-production with no release date announced yet, was set to star Joaquin Phoenix before he abruptly pulled out before the shoot began. Vachon previously called the situation “a tragedy” and explained in an industry talk at Edinburgh how she and her long-time collaborator Haynes managed to rebuild the project after Phoenix’s exit.
Host Wendy Mitchell joked: “I actually like [Pascal] better than Joaquin Phoenix anyway,” to which Vachon responded: “I kind of do too!” The tightly-packed crowd at Edinburgh’s Central Hall laughed with them.
Vachon continued: “It wasn’t an easy situation. And as I also stated, it was devastating that Todd didn’t get to make a movie again that year. If you take the […] glass half-full version, and ‘everything happens for a reason’ [perspective], maybe the reason was that this was a role that Pedro was born to play. He is certainly extraordinary in the film, and by the way, so is Danny [Ramirez]. I mean, both of them are a revelation.”
Getting a “do-over” allowed them to find a better shoot location, said Vachon, which showed her everything worked out for the best. Pascal was brought on board via her work with him on Celine Song’s Materialists. “People always say to me, ‘Is he as nice as he seems?’ […] He is. People are so invested. They love him.”
As a titan of independent film production, Vachon — in Edinburgh with her latest film Pretty Babies, directed by Tyler-Marie Evans, who spoke to THR in depth about winning over Vachon just this week — was also probed on the box office success of Obsession and Backrooms this year, two movies that have challenged the status quo in Hollywood. “I do,” she said when asked if she likes the energy coming out of YouTube. “But when we were making movies like Poison [and] Go Fish, we also identified an audience… Back in those days, the LGBTQ audience could go to bars. There were parts of town [where you] could take your leaflets and just go specific places where people gathered and say, ‘Look! We made this! It’s for you.’ That’s just moved online.”
Vachon is extremely buoyed by the current theater-going demographic being made up, predominantly, of people aged under 30. She cannot deny, however, that “we’re at a time of great disruption,” and the queer film landscape is a little rocky with so much division in the U.S. at the moment. “It’s a conundrum right now. We have something like Heated Rivalry which couldn’t be a bigger hit, and we still have politicians campaigning on who gets to use what bathroom. And it’s happening [in the U.K.] too. It’s not like we have the monopoly on [marginalizing] LGBTQ people.”
“I remember when I would go see screenings of Poison or Swoon, which were boy queer [films] and [the theater] would be filled with lesbians because they were like, ‘I guess I’ll go see this.’ But now there is more choice,” she continued. “And the power of narrative to actually change people’s perspectives is stronger than it’s ever been.”
On the toss-up of a box office hit or flop, Vachon confessed she can’t predict the commercial outcome of her movies. She’s actually pleased streaming services can get movies to wider audiences nowadays. “When Todd Haynes’ Safe came out, it didn’t do anything at the box office. People weren’t interested in seeing it. The reviews were a little head-scratchy, like, ‘Not quite sure what he was going for here.’ But in the mid-late ’90s, I can’t remember exactly when, a newspaper [called] the Village Voice, which was incredibly influential at the time, did a survey of every single movie critic in America. What was the best movie in the ’90s? Safe was number one.”
“Sometimes the answer is that people just didn’t want to see it. They just didn’t, and you can’t really put your finger on why it didn’t hit the zeitgeist in that way. Who knows why? It was either too late or too soon. And now, the good thing in my mind [is] we have access to things and [movies] can find their way later. People can discover movies [from] another time.”
Mitchell asked Vachon at the end of the session: “Do you use AI?”
Vachon replied: “Yes,” explaining that she often uses it for synopses — to spare a busy intern from doing the job — or getting restaurant recommendations, such as when she was at the “very expensive” Venice Film Festival with last year’s Late Fame and needed a cheap, nearby spot.
The 2026 Edinburgh International Film Festival runs Aug. 13-19.
