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Director Todd Haynes on standing up to corporate greed and his newest film, ‘Dark Waters’ – Metro US

Director Todd Haynes on standing up to corporate greed and his newest film, ‘Dark Waters’

Director Todd Haynes on standing up to corporate greed and his newest film, ‘Dark Waters’
Credit : Mary Cybulski / Focus Features

Sure. Maybe I started my interview with director Todd Haynes out in a rather bleak way. But how else do you talk about a film that follows the fight to hold corporations accountable after willfully introducing cancer causing products on a large scale? While discussing his newest film “Dark Waters,” Haynes had to reset the mood a little bit. “Dude, this is a downer conversation,” he said with a laugh. 

The film, starring Mark Ruffalo, Anne Hathaway and Tim Robbins, follows real-life Cincinnati corporate lawyer Rob Bilott and his research into the synthetic chain known as PFOA (Perfluorooctanoic acid) that the chemical company DuPont had been using in Teflon products since the 1960s. After Bilott, played by Ruffalo, had visited a farm near his hometown in West Virginia where the cattle had been mysteriously dying, he had traced it back to a local DuPont factory that had been dumping waste related to Teflon in the town’s water supply. 

After he had seen the evidence of their wrongdoing, with the help of Bilott’s firm, Taft Stettinius & Hollister,  he felt that he should take a look at their practices. With the initially reticent blessing of his boss Tom Terp, played by Tim Robbins, Bilott sues DuPont on behalf of the farmer who brought him the case, Wilbur Tennant (Bill Camp). From there, Bilott sifts through thousands of documents throughout DuPont’s history to discover that they had chosen to overlook the poisonous and cancer causing symptoms that were linked to PFOA in order to enjoy the vast profits they received from selling Teflon products to the world. It was a clear act of evil that could only be uncovered by a law firm that had the means to do the work against one of the world’s largest chemical companies.    

“I think part of the poignancy of the story is that nobody was set up to be an obvious critic of this or an investigator and revealer of the story,” says Haynes. “Nobody was set up to be an obvious hero. Rob and Tom were on the other side. They were defending industry. That was their job. Yet, it is precisely because they work for a corporate law firm in Cincinnati that had the overhead and had the practice of getting in deep into cases in the way that the plaintiff’s attorney’s just simply can’t afford to do. A defense firm has the money and the staying power to keep people on the job as you get deep into research. It’s the only way this story could have been dug up by a single individual when he was basically buried alive by the discovery that he was able to pry loose from this corporation.” 

The story was based on a 2016 article in The New York Times that followed Bilott’s crusade for the truth called “The Lawyer Who Became DuPont’s Worst Nightmare.” The story goes that Ruffalo was completely taken by the piece and had been a driving force in getting this film project off of the ground. Haynes could see that conviction in Ruffalo and was amazed at the passion that he brought to his performance as Bilott.  

“As an actor, I saw somebody take tremendous risks and do something that I’ve never really seen in him,” says Haynes. 

Ruffalo’s performance in “Dark Waters” is truly stellar as he gets inside the mindset of a man who has found himself fighting for the side of humanity versus corporate interests. You see it slowly take a toll on Bilott as his life at home with his wife Sarah, played by Anne Hathaway, and his children begins to crumble underneath the stress.  

“Mark utterly transformed physically. He’s almost unrecognizable in scenes of this movie. He barely cracks a smile through the whole film and there’s a tension in that that I think is incredibly poignant. Especially when it breaks and when he keeps changing and learning and seeing things differently. The whole experience with Mark was a remarkable one. I just wish him the very best from this project. I hope people appreciate that kind of work for not only how restrained and subtle, but how deep and complete it was,” says Haynes.  

The research conducted by Bilott and the rest of his team found that 99 percent of the people living in West Virginia had been living with a harmful amount of PFOA in their bloodstream which could eventually result in cancer. On top of that, it was concluded that PFOA is what is now known as a “forever chemical,” meaning that it will be transferred down to those people’s children, and so on and so forth. You can see why I was bummed out. But as Bilott made these revelations in court, DuPont was sentenced to provide large settlements and medical monitoring for those affected. But, this is a fight that is still being played out in the legal system to this day. You just have to take these wins for what they are.      

“That’s the thing about this story, is that there are incredible victories,” says Haynes, giving me some reassurance. “But what I really loved about it is that it’s a true story so it’s muddled. There are two steps forward and one step back. The powers that be are going to push back twice as hard every time even with victories that they have to yield to. But the fight keeps going on and they keep finding new ways to push back and disregard the rulings. So, it’s like real life. This is a grown up movie that has a complicated outcome. That’s sort of what our lives are. We all have to look at all kinds of corruption and all kinds of abuses of powers that will be ongoing. It’s up to us to figure out where to take a stand and organize and what to do with our knowledge.”  

Watch the trailer for ‘Dark Waters’ below…