Todd Haynes on his new 'May December,' a 'corrupt, twisted kind of fairy tale'

LOS ANGELES — When asked about home and where that is for him these days, Todd Haynes has three answers.

First, there is Los Angeles, where the 62-year-old director was born and raised in the Encino neighborhood. It's also where two of his most iconic works are set: 1995's underbelly-of-the-Valley nightmare "Safe" and his unerringly faithful 2011 HBO miniseries of James L. Cain's "Mildred Pierce," starring an inspired Kate Winslet.

There is also Manhattan, a "pinnacle place," as Haynes describes it, where his career and personal politics were rooted after he graduated from Brown University in 1985. Soon, he made his controversial 1991 feature debut, part of the first stirrings of what came to be known as the . Later this month, Haynes will open the New York Film Festival with a gala showing of his latest movie, the masterful scandal drama "May December" (in limited release Nov. 17, on Netflix on Dec. 1), an honor that humbles him.