But overriding everything, as Curtis finally turns on her nemesis The Shape, there’s a sense of trying to bring this parade to a close This is the Last Sequel. That’s obviously a good friend, who liked the film a lot.” Those averse to adventure need not buy a ticket.`Velvet Goldmine’ opens on 23 October. It began in the Bates Motel. When its neon sign lured Janet Leigh into the care of its timid owner Norman Bates, the “stalk’n’slash” genre was born. First, there was Halloween (1978), John Carpenter’s classic attempt to make “a feature-length version of the shower scene”, with Norman replaced by the inhuman Shape, and Leigh by her daughter, Jamie Lee Curtis.

As kitsch as it sounds, the film was surprisingly sensitive, and used the image of the woman-as-doll to comment on Carpenter’s anorexia and the larger issue of female beauty.I think that’s what excites me most about Haynes’s work – the most simple concept opens up a wealth of opportunities and possibilities for him. That was the sensation you took away from his 1991 feature debut Poison, which inter-cut three unrelated stories about social outcasts to beguiling effect. And it’s there in Velvet Goldmine too: a feeling that film can be epic in scope without necessarily being epic in budget. “What I was trying to do with the film,” says Haynes, “was to make the kind of experience that I had when I saw 2001 or Performance, films that would take you somewhere unknown.

That’s much less of an option these days, given that a film can’t even be made unless it resembles whatever the last hit with Will Smith was.”A friend of mine said `Todd, this is a film which teaches you how to like it’. Way before that, when I was three, I saw Mary Poppins and it just blew my mind. I was obsessed, I drew Julie Andrews pictures everywhere.” All of which is likely to chime with anyone who has seen Haynes’s melancholy short film, Dottie Gets Spanked, in which a child becomes obsessed with a TV comedy star and draws her constantly, much to his parents’ concern.”My father’s reaction was a little like that of the dad in Dottie Gets Spanked I was drawing women exclusively. I drew Cinderellas, Snow Whites, while the Prince Charmings were always on the edge of the picture looking somewhat womanly themselves.