"Far From Heaven" has become Todd Haynes most successful film to date, thanks to numerous critical awards and four Oscar nominations. Now, even as March becomes a fading memory, the honors haven't stopped coming in. GLAAD has tapped Haynes to receive its Stephen F. Kolzak Award award this Saturday. The director of "Velvet Goldmine" and "Safe" took time out to talk to The Hollywood Reporter's Chris Gardner about his whirlwind awards ride and what it means for the future.

The Hollywood Reporter: So you survived awards season?
Todd Haynes: Yeah, I definitely did, but it was a strange journey and something I've never experienced before. But yeah, I somehow managed to keep my head.

THR: Tell me about the past six months or so and what that journey was like for you?
Haynes: It was mostly fueled by incredibly positive reaction to "Far From Heaven," more than I've ever experienced from any of my other films. In some ways, the anxiety leading up to the nominations announcement was worse than the final stretch and the actual awards ceremony. But then you find you are in this weird campaigning mode and on one hand you think it's all silly and meaningless. But on the other hand, given the encouragement that I received critically and from many of the people who had seen it or who's moms had seen it, I felt wow, the film deserves a shot and it's all worth it. It was a little alienating for us all at times, but it was OK. It was almost hardest on Elmer Bernstein, I felt the worst for him and he's the one who's had the most experience at this.

THR: I remember being at the LA premiere of "Far From Heaven" and you said it was a strange feeling for you to have a film that had been, even at that point, the most widely praised critically. And now, with the Oscar nominations and other awards, it has definitely become your most successful film. How has that changed your career or what you do next?
Haynes: It won't change what I do, but hopefully it will help just enough in that struggle for getting the amount of money you really need to make a film, which has been basically the continual struggle (for me). The production of "Far From Heaven" was, in many ways, my most positive experience in production and it was still really fought with amazing financial tensions. And in each case, the amount of money that would make the difference is so relatively small in the scheme of filmmaking budgets that I feel its a reasonable goal to try to fill in that gap. But in terms of the kinds of films I am interested in doing, (the success) hasn't changed anything and I hope it doesn't.

THR: Let's talk a little bit about the GLAAD honor and what it means to you?
Haynes: It's really, really nice. It's funny because I don't have a really close relationship with a lot of the gay organizations. I really felt the closest to the organizations that had to do with AIDS in the early '90s. That was probably the time I was really the most engaged with that community for obvious reasons, so I've been a little bit removed from all that so it was really nice to have them single me out because I feel like I've been distant. But the occasion of "Far From Heaven" has really precipitated a wave of interest and retrospectives over my entire career, which is amazing and strange. I feel like I'm still beginning. I've made four features but I think everyone feels a kind of pride for me in regard to "Far From Heaven" and they feel I've earned this and that I've been doing it on my own terms all along. So that is really touching and must have motivated the GLAAD award decision.

THR: Since you brought it up, looking back at your body of work, there are gay stories or gay subject matter in mostly all of your films. Has it been a challenge for you to tackle these types of stories, considering that most financiers aren't always into taking that risk?
Haynes: It's funny because I haven't seen that being singled out -- atleast to my face -- so much. Most of my films have really fallen comfortably into a lower-risk budget range that doesn't really send up those kinds of red flags. So I've been lucky and I can't not acknowledge Christine Vachon as a central force in that luck and in that ability to get my films made. At times when I would've given up, she kept fighting and very few directors can really claim that kind of relationship with a producer who is so determined and committed to their vision.

THR: Why do you think your relationship works so well?
Haynes: A lot of time together, but basically a mutual respect from the get-go. We come from similar sensibilities: Both of us being gay is one of them, but also our background -- we both went to Brown University and we were both interested in the ways in which narrative films can still challenge dominant traditions and take you somewhere new while still being narrative films that draw you in. That was the bug that wanted us to make films in the beginning and we shared that. And we are also just really good friends which is really nice because it means you can just hang out and enjoy the other person's company outside the job.

THR: This award is given to someone who helps combat homophobia through their work. How do you think you have been able to do that so successfully?
Haynes: A lot of my instincts in depictions of gay characters in films run directly opposite from the provided solutions to proving the climate around gay representation, which is more about guaranteeing positive representations of gay people. In many ways, that doesn't interest me at all and my films don't really reflect that. In a nice way, they kind of demonstrate that showing complex and at times ambivalent depictions of gay characters on screen can in fact draw people in more deeply and bring a different kind of identification to the story and that is really true of "Far From Heaven." The Dennis Quaid character is not defined by a liberationist impulse. Everything about him and the movie is pre-'60s, '70s gay liberation. It's so pre-Stonewall and so he actually represents a threat to the central character, Cathy -- Julianne Moore's character. But what I've been blown away at and why I think that it has helped combat homophobia is from all the stories I've heard from families and mothers and friends of mine who have seen it. I will tell you one story that so moved me. This girl I knew from Portland had a brother who was HIV positive. In her family's world, it was such a threat and was never discussed. He ended up killing himself and they never spoke his name around the family after he died until the mother saw "Far From Heaven." The mother then called my friend and she started to talk about the brother for the first time. The film opens up a series of questions but is very respectful of its characters but it also doesn't put them up on pedestals either. It doesn't feel didactic or instructive, like a lot of films that come out of gay culture that we all love, it doesn't feel challenging in that particular way, so it opens itself up to a wider audience's ability to discuss these themes and feel involved or included in them.

THR: If you look out there in the landscape of what other movies are being made, there aren't that many that contain these types of stories, and if they do, its in a comical way. What do you think of the gay representations out there in cinema today?
Haynes: One funny thing about "Velvet Goldmine" is it's a film I thought was extremely gay. I was interested in sexuality from that particular period which wasn't into labeling. So it was going to explore the flippage of all kinds of sexual desire as long as it wasn't dominate singular heterosexuality. In that way, it was kind of ignored by the gay press and in many ways it came at a time that was after that hope for a gay cinema in the early '90s.

THR: What is your perception of the current landscape of gay cinema?
Haynes: Back around the time that "Velvet Goldmine" was released, the Nation had asked a bunch of people "what do you think gay representation will be like in the next 10 years?" And a lot of people were predicting doom and gloom. I actually felt the opposite in a way. Maybe I was the most cynical, but I said that it's going to be like the privileged topic of liberal Hollywood, very much like American cinema embraced black themes in the personification of Sidney Poitier in the '60s. He was this impeccable example of black America. He was flawless and fit into your white living room like nothing else and yet he reflected none of the conflicts that were actually going on in such enormous degrees on the streets. And I really think in a large degree that's true of (gay representation) today. In movies there have been a lot of those Rupert Everett-type characters that have been the cliche -- too good looking and too perfect to be straight. That's what you hear in Hollywood's mainstream depiction of gay characters, and yet these are unsexual characters. You never see Rupert Everett getting down with somebody or having conflicts in a relationship or being three dimensional. He's just the perfect dance partner and you want to show up at functions with him. Television has had a lot of gay characters, especially in comedies, but they are relatively harmless. But at the same time, you can turn on the TV or the news and see Matthew Shepard being murdered or someone in West Hollywood being attacked. It shows that whatever is happening in the media is not reflected necessarily in a whole new tolerance and acceptance in the world. I don't mean to say that it's wrong and that having "Will & Grace" or "Queer As Folk" doesn't help that kid who is just starting to come out. It probably does help a little bit, and yet it really isn't getting into the complexity of the gay experience.

THR: Because of that, do you feel more of a duty to bring gay stories to the screen?
Haynes: I don't know if I do. It's not my only mission. Homosexuality and being gay has completely affected and altered and informed the way I see the world and it informs my critique of the world. I'm still interested in what is threatening about homosexuality. I don't know if I ever want to see that go away and I don't think it can because homosexuality unwrites all the other rules of our society. It's the shadow lurking underneath masculinity and how our genders are supposed to work. It's always there kind of as the culprit that is going to fuck everything up and make you feel things you don't want to feel. I think we need things that make the status quo shiver a little bit and homosexuality is one of them.

THR: Do you think it's hard being gay in the industry?
Haynes: No, I don't now. You saw at the Oscars a kind of humorous inclusion of homosexuality in the banter about Jack Nicholson sleeping with whoever. It just is kind of part of the family now in a way. That might make some people bristle and it might make other people feel really good. So I don't think it's hard. It's harder to be a woman than it is to be a gay man.

THR: What are you working on right now?
Haynes: The big gay story of Bob Dylan. (Laughs) I think that will be my next project. I'm really fighting to protect a little break that I want to have and enjoy the summer. I really need to write and finish the script. It's in rough form and I need to get back into it. (This project) takes something very specific. It's a big commitment and a lot of work and I feel like its saying something that hasn't been said.