Killer Films co-founders Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler are making history Sunday at the Governors Awards. The two women, who have spent their careers bringing bold, independent cinema into the world — from “Boys Don’t Cry” to “Safe” — are being honored with the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award.
That honorary Oscar has been given to some of the biggest names in Hollywood, from Walt Disney to Steven Spielberg. But Vachon and Koffler are the first female producing team and the first independent producers to receive it.
“It really feels so bound up in our longevity in New York City and in the independent film community in New York,” Koffler said in an interview with The Associated Press. “We do all know each other and, over the years, those of us who are still doing it really feel like an extended community that has supported each other, because opportunities are a little bit fewer, the movies are a little bit tougher, and it really feels like an acknowledgment of this space that we’re the ones who are being honored.”
Vachon chimed in: “A producer said to me … ‘I know it’s not my award, but it feels like it does belong to all of us.’”
Vachon and Koffler met in the 1990s in New York
It was a vibrant moment in independent cinema in New York when Vachon met Koffler in the early 1990s.
Vachon had already made a name for herself with her own films, and as the producer of Todd Haynes’ first feature “Poison” — someone who, despite all odds, was getting quality queer-themed films made. Koffler was bouncing around on indie film sets doing dozens of different jobs when Vachon asked if she wanted to supervise postproduction on “Postcards From America.” Koffler didn’t know what that entailed, but it hardly mattered: It was a great time to just dive in and figure things out.
“We met at the right time where it was like we could take these risks,” Vachon said. “We had some luck, because a lot of it is luck. But we also had really good taste.”
It was also the beginning of a beautiful partnership: In the past 30 years, Koffler and Vachon have produced over 100 films, and some television too, with their company Killer Films: “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” “One Hour Photo,” “Velvet Goldmine,” “Far from Heaven,” “I’m Not There,” “Carol” and “Past Lives,” for which they received their first best picture nomination. It is a body of work that speaks for itself, with provocative and imaginative art house films, landmarks of New Queer Cinema and many, many cult classics finding second lives and fandoms.
‘Our company, our rules’
“We were so inventing a wheel in a way that we didn’t even really know how crazy and ambitious it was to do it,” Koffler said.
They didn’t set out to make an “all-female company,” Vachon said, but they were grateful to be their own bosses. Indie film in New York in the 1990s was very male, not to mention the time of Miramax and Harvey Weinstein. And it was the kind of environment where Vachon, instead of telling New Line that she couldn’t come to a Todd Solondz set one day because her 1-year-old was very sick, said that she had to tend to another movie that was falling apart.
With Koffler, however, Vachon didn’t have to lie about family responsibilities. When Koffler was in the same boat with a newborn and stressing about missing an early screening of “One Hour Photo,” Vachon said, gently, “Just bring the baby.”
“It was a hundred percent our company,” Vachon said. “Our company, our rules.”
Audiences are rediscovering their films
Koffler and Vachon have loved seeing some of their films get rediscovered over the years, especially the ones that weren’t greeted with much fanfare when they came out. Recently they have noticed people talking about Mary Harron’s Valerie Solanas film “I Shot Andy Warhol” and Tim Blake Nelson’s war drama “The Grey Zone.”
“It’s fun, but it’s also not why we do it,” Vachon said. “Because if it was why we did it, we’d be really dumb because it doesn’t happen that often.”
Even “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” Vachon said, is “so iconic now, but people forget it didn’t make any money.”
“Hedwig,” she pointed out, is part of Mike De Luca’s filmmaking legacy. De Luca, who has recently been in the headlines for his work and recent departure from Warner Bros. under their new ownership, “really pushed to make it happen and make it happen on our terms,” Vachon said. “We really got to make the movie that John Cameron Mitchell wanted to make.”
Staying optimistic amid industry changes
They have been in the industry long enough to have seen sky-is-falling crises come and go every few years, but they are “eternal optimists,” Koffler said.
“We still get great material. We are managing to get things made,” Koffler, 60, said. “Would we like the budgets to be bigger? Yeah.”
Vachon, 63, chimed in: “Would you like our fees to be bigger? Yeah, I mean, we’d like to retire eventually.”
Sometimes they amuse one another by quoting lines from their projects, like “He’s got me all tied up with that greasy contract” (from “I Shot Andy Warhol”). But in this case, “You gotta live on what you earn, Mildred” (from “Mildred Pierce”) seems most apt.
And they are still hard at work, excited by new scripts and filmmakers and challenges. They have a new Haynes movie coming up, the romantic drama “De Noche” starring Pedro Pascal and Danny Ramirez that they rescued from ruin after Joaquin Phoenix abruptly dropped out days before filming was set to start. And there are always other projects in the works.
In fact, when the film academy’s president Lynette Howell Taylor, also a producer, was trying to get Vachon and Koffler on the phone to tell them about the Thalberg Award, they assumed that she was calling with her producer’s cap on to tell them that one of their movies was falling apart. (It later did.)
“The thing is it’s so hard to get these movies made and we’re lucky we’ve done it over a hundred times,” Vachon said. “I always do make this joke that every time I show up, I’m like, ‘Oh right, I forgot, I hate this.’ But, that said, there is something, there is this sort of magic of it all coming together that never really gets old. I mean, I think if it did, we would have stopped a long time ago.”
