Age: 65
male
Todd Haynes (/heɪnz/; born January 2, 1961; Los Angeles) is an American filmmaker. His films span four decades with themes examining the personalities of well-known musicians, dysfunctional and dystopian societies, and blurred gender roles. Haynes first gained public attention with his controversial short film Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1987), which chronicles singer Karen Carpenter's life and death, using Barbie dolls as actors. Superstar became a cult classic. Haynes's feature directorial debut, Poison (1991), a provocative exploration of AIDS-era queer perceptions and subversions, established him as a figure of a new transgressive cinema. Poison won the Sundance Film Festival's Grand Jury Prize and is regarded as a seminal work of New Queer Cinema. Haynes received further acclaim for his second feature film, Safe (1995), a symbolic portrait of a housewife who develops multiple chemical sensitivity. Safe was later voted the best film of the 1990s by The Village Voice Film Poll. His next feature, Velvet Goldmine (1998), is a tribute to the 1970s glam rock era. The film received the Special Jury Prize for Best Artistic Contribution at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival. Haynes gained acclaim and a measure of mainstream success with Far from Heaven (2002) earning his first Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay. He continued to direct critically lauded films such as I'm Not There (2007), Carol (2015), Wonderstruck (2017) and Dark Waters (2019). He directed his first feature-length documentary, The Velvet Underground (2021). Haynes directed and co-wrote the HBO mini-series Mildred Pierce (2011) for which he was nominated for three Primetime Emmy Awards.
Ask, Tell by E.J. Noyes is a contemporary military romance novel centering on Captain Sabine Fleischer, a skilled U.S. Army surgeon deployed to a combat hospital in Afghanistan. Driven and focused, Sabine faces the grueling physical and emotional toll of war, including severe sleep deprivation, constant exposure to mortality, and deep isolation. Compounding her stress is the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, which forces her to hide her sexuality and serve in silence while her long-term civilian relationship back home falls apart.Amid the chaos of the medical unit, Sabine finds herself drawn to the unit's commander, Colonel Rebecca Keane. Rebecca runs the hospital with calm precision and respect, though she wears a wedding ring and remains strictly off-limits. As subtle, unspoken cues and shared glances pass between them, Sabine struggles with the intense professional and personal risks of falling for her superior officer. The novel explores the collision of duty, hidden identity, and unexpected passion under the intense pressure of a combat zone.
