"I mean, there are many other directors who are probably both more skilled and excited to adapt novels or work within certain genre conventions. I'd like to do that kind of work someday, but for better or worse I'm too drawn by my own material." -- Todd Solondz
Todd Solondz (born October 15, 1959) is an American independent film screenwriter and director known for his style of dark, thought-provoking, socially conscious satire. Solondz has been critically acclaimed for his examination of the "dark underbelly of middle class American suburbia", a reflection of his own background in New Jersey. His work includes the cult hit Welcome to the Dollhouse, the award-winning Happiness, Storytelling, and Palindromes.
"A palindrome is a word or pattern that instead of developing in different directions it folds in on itself so that the beginning and end mirror each other, that they are the same.""All I mean is, I'm not the kind of audience comedy directors want at a test screening because I seldom laugh, and if I do, it's not very loud. That doesn't mean I don't like the movie.""And that's just what I'm saying. I would never want to be like certain people, who change the way they dress, go out in disguise, wear a big floppy hat and dark shades. I would hate that.""As Mark Weiner puts it, whether you gain 50 pounds or lose 50 pounds, whether you have a sex change operation for that matter, that it doesn't matter, that there is some part of ourselves that we cannot escape.""But anonymity is very important to me, and I don't want to be recognized in public more than I already am.""But you're right, I did think about acting more and then decided against it.""Casting is everything. If you get the right people they make you look good.""I admit there's an element of brutality in all my work - it's part of the truth about human existence I always want to explore - but the last thing I'm trying to do is put on some kind of freak show, inviting people to get off on other people's pain and humiliation.""I don't like telling people where I stand on this, although I'm surprised anybody wonders. I suppose if I say I'm pro-choice, if I make that clear, it let's the audience off the hook, then they can sort of relax. Okay, it's alright he's pro-choice then I can enjoy this.""I mean, I don't want to sound - of course it's very nice, people come up and say appreciative things about my work. But the loss, in terms of privacy and anonymity, is no small thing to me.""In particular, people have trouble understanding where I stand in relation to my characters, and very often this gets reduced to me making vicious fun of them.""It is true that the movie is perhaps my most politically-charged. The story is thrust into motion by the idea of what do you do when your 13 year old daughter comes home pregnant. And not only is she pregnant, but she wants to keep the baby.""Like everything, what compels one to put pen to paper is a great question.""Narcissism and self-deception are survival mechanisms without which many of us might just jump off a bridge.""One thing I want to say: I don't like victim stories and I don't write them.""Optimism is not inherently a superior way of viewing the world. Certainly doctors will say it might be better for one's physical health to be an optimist. But, morally speaking it may not be appropriate in certain circumstances.""Part of it has to do with this business of being approached in public. I have a distinctive look - it's partly the glasses I wear - and people seem to remember me once they've seen me.""People can't help how they look.""So far, at least, I haven't found a way to tell my kind of stories without making them both sad and funny.""Some directors hardly talk to the actors at all.""Storytelling is the only studio movie where the censorship is perfectly clear, the only studio movie with a big red box covering up a shot. I take pride in that - and, of course, in having avoided the fate of Eyes Wide Shut.""The ability to take pleasure in one's life is a skill and is a kind of intelligence. So intelligence is a hard thing to evaluate and it manifests itself in so many different ways. I do think the ability to know how to live a life and not be miserable is a sign of that.""The funny thing is, strangers still seem to feel comfortable coming up to me and saying things, but now usually it's because they recognize me, and they say nice things.""Usually the audience has no idea that the censored version of whatever movie they're watching isn't the original.""Well, so far, at least, my own ideas always take priority over those of other writers. As long as the well doesn't run dry, I imagine this will be the case.""When I want to show the kind of meanness people are capable of, to make it believable I find I have to tone it down. It's in real life that people are over the top.""When I'm asked who my audience is, I say someone with an open mind, which is not a vacant one and sometimes a liberal mind is not the same thing as an open one.""When part of what you're trying to get at is the truth hidden under a taboo, or when you want to nail a hypocrisy, laughter is a very useful tool. I want to show the painful side of existence, but there is no question I also want to make people laugh.""With Storytelling, at least, it's explicit: this is what the censors say American citizens, no matter what age, are not permitted to see, even though it can be seen by other people all over the world. I suppose you could call it a political statement."
Solondz was born in Newark, New Jersey. He is Jewish. He originally considered becoming a rabbi, but eventually set his sights on writing screenplays. Solondz wrote several screenplays while working as a delivery boy for the Writers Guild of America. Solondz earned his undergraduate degree in English from Yale and attended New York University's (NYU) Graduate MFA Program in film and television, but did not complete a degree.
During the early 1990s, Solondz worked as a teacher of English as a second language to newly arrived Russian immigrants at NYANA, a refugee resettlement agency in New York City (his co-workers there included Alexander Gelman, Gary Shteyngart and Roman Turovsky), an experience he has described as deeply rewarding. Interestingly, in his film Happiness, the character Joy finds a similar experience to be traumatic. It leads her to be more symphatetic to workers' strikes.
Solondz is an atheist. In The A.V. Club's article "Is There a God?", he answered the question "Well, me, I'm an atheist, so I don't really believe there is. But I suppose I could be proven wrong."
One of Solondz's short films was Schatt's Last Shot, made in 1985. The title character is a high schooler who wants to get into Stanford, but his gym teacher hates him. The teacher fails him because he cannot make a shot in basketball. He has no luck with the girl of his dreams, but he wishes he was more like the coach, whom he challenges to a game of one-on-one. The short has seldom been seen outside film schools.
In 1989 Solondz wrote and directed Fear, Anxiety & Depression, an episodic comedy about fledgling playwright Ira (played by Solondz) and his frustrating interactions with the opposite sex. The film's fractured narrative structure and casual relationship with the "fourth wall" are somewhat reminiscent of Annie Hall, and the neurotic, bespectacled protagonist uncomfortable with attainable love is reminiscent of many of Woody Allen's roles. As Solondz's approach to writing changed considerably after this film, it bears little resemblance in tone or style to his later work, except in its bleak world outlook and the way in which it draws humor from grim situations such as suicide attempts and sexual assault. Characterizations are broader than viewers of Solondz's more deadpan later films might expect. The film contains several musical interludes, including three songs written for the film. Stanley Tucci appears in one of his earliest roles as an old, disliked acquaintance of Ira's, who takes up playwriting on a whim and instantly becomes the toast of Off-Broadway. The studio's second-guessing soured Solondz on the film and directing in general; as a result, the film rarely appears on Solondz's official filmography.
The frustrations of his first feature led Solondz to swear off further involvement with the industry. More than five years later, an attorney friend urged Solondz to give filmmaking another go, and promised to partially finance any project Solondz came up with. The end result was 1995's Welcome to the Dollhouse, which went on to win the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. The dark comedy follows the travails of Dawn Wiener, a bespectacled, toothy, and shy 7th-grade girl who is mercilessly teased at school and treated to alternating contempt and neglect at home. It was distinct from most earlier films about adolescent abuse due to its complex characterization. It gave a sympathetic portrayal of the bully antagonist Brandon, and its depiction of Dawn, the ostensible protagonist and victim of the story, showed her as deeply flawed and sometimes cruel. The film was a major success among critics, and a moderate success at the box office. It was a festival hit, with screenings all over the world, paving the way for a film which would attract more attention.
Happiness
Solondz's next piece was Happiness (1998), a highly controversial film due to the themes explored in it, which range from rape, pedophilia, suicide and murder to a bizarre sexual phone caller. After the original distributor October Films dropped it, the film was scooped up by Good Machine Releasing. The movie received numerous awards, including International Critics' Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and yielded strong critical praise for Solondz.
Storytelling and Palindromes
In 2001, Solondz released Storytelling, which premiered at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival. It is a film separated into two parts, entitled "Fiction" and "Nonfiction." The two stories share two thematic elements, but deal with each in an autonomous manner. This format was utilized because the filmmaker wanted to "find a fresh structure, a fresh form and a different way of tackling what may be identical geographical material." When Solondz initially presented the film to the MPAA, he was told that if he wished to receive a rating other than NC-17, he would have to remove a scene of explicit sex involving a white female and a black male. However, due to a clause in Solondz's contract, the censors were forced to admit the scene with a bright red box covering the actors. "For me it's a great victory to have a big red box, the first red box in any studio feature [...] it's right in your face: You're not allowed to see this in our country." Solondz did, however, remove a portion of the film (which has variously been reported as either a subplot of the second story, or a third story entirely) which contained a scene of sensuality involving two male actors (one of whom was James Van Der Beek).
Solondz's next film, Palindromes (2004), raised the eyebrows of many pundits and reviewers due to its themes of child molestation, statutory rape and abortion. The film was financed largely by the filmmaker. Like all of Solondz's previous films, Palindromes is set in suburban New Jersey. It was released unrated in the US.
Life During Wartime
Life During Wartime (formerly known as "Forgiveness") is Todd Solondz's newest film, produced by John Hart at Evamere Entertainment. Solondz has said the new film is a companion piece to Happiness and Welcome to the Dollhouse. CHUD.com - A film site for the brilliant Information about the characters in the film, and their differences from those of the prequel Happiness, first emerged in August 2009. The film has been described as "A Dark Comedy of Sexual Obsession." It features Ally Sheedy, Renee Taylor, Paul Reubens, Chane't Johnson, Ciarán Hinds, Shirley Henderson, Michael Lerner, Michael Kenneth Williams, Rich Pecci, Charlotte Rampling, Allison Janney and Chris Marquette; with a budget of $4.5 million.
The film debuted at the Telluride Film Festival in September 2009, and was nominated for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in August-September 2009, and won the Osella for Best Screenplay award.
On December 19, 2009, Solondz joined as adjunct professor the New York University's Tisch School of the Arts; he will alternate semesters between New York's main campus of the school, and the grad film sister program at the Tisch Asia campus in Singapore. He teaches Directing and Writing the Feature.
In July 2010 Solondz completed the script of his next film, Dark Horse, which will be filmed in Fall 2010. With Solondz's surprise, the Creative Artists Agency has appreciated the script, the first time for a movie of his. Solondz commented that he realized this is because "there's no rape, there's no child molestation, there's no masturbation, and then I thought, 'omg, why didn't I think of this years ago?'"
