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Dawn Wiener is Dead (Long Live Dawn Wiener) Fearless Todd Solondz on killing off the past and tackling taboos in "Palindromes" Written by [ Richard Sharp ] "I want you to know, I asked her several times to be in my film, but she didn't want anything to do with it, so I had to write this funeral scene." Indie icon Todd Solondz is talking about Heather Madrazzo, the actress who played the cringe-inducingly awkward teenager Dawn Wiener in his groundbreaking 1999 film "Welcome to the Dollhouse." Solondz' latest work "Palindromes" opens up with a eulogy for Dawn led by her fictional brother Mark. In it, he describes the immutable nature of our personalities, of the flaws and insecurities we try to cover and discard, but which keep coming back to haunt us. It's a running theme in Solondz' work. In over a decade worth of challenging, insightful films like "Happiness," "Storytelling," and more, the writer/director has dealt primarily with the dark closets of suburban America. His films have covered rape, murder, pedophilia, abortion, school massacres, the holocaust, and a host of sexual perversions. In a Todd Solondz film, no holds are barred and no character is spared the unflattering glow of ill-advised fluorescents. "Palindromes" finds the director more fearless than ever. He frames the bizarre and unseemly story of a thirteen year old girl who sets out on a journey to get herself pregnant with a narrative structure that utilizes 11 different women (including Jennifer Jason Leigh) to play the lead character Aviva. As usual, it's a wild, fascinating and sometimes repugnant ride through the slimy underbelly of American culture. We sat down with Solondz to discuss his latest work and a remarkable track record of brilliant, transgressive filmmaking. You've managed to cover an amazing breadth and depth of taboo subject matter in your films. I've always pictured you with this long list of all forbidden subjects, then checking them off one by one… I don't have a list, I really don't. I mean, all of these things are out there, they're in the papers, we see them every day. It's hard not to respond to the signals that you get out there. The subject that plays out in "Palindromes," it's so volatile. I mean, no other country in the world has abortion doctors being assassinated and clinics being bombed. To be a doctor at one of those clinics is almost like being a firefighter or something. They're doing something heroic. Regardless of what side of the argument your belief is, you have to respect that they are willing to put their life on the line. They could certainly be making a decent living doing other things, performing other sorts of procedures. I would imagine that in making a film like this, like all of the films you've made, at some point in time there had to be a willful assumption that it wasn't likely to have any kind of commercial appeal… Well I'd like to imagine that the films will be watched and the films do sell well around the world. My budgets are also quite low, so I can afford to make these types of films. It has never been my intention to engage in making populist cinema, to garner big box office. It wouldn't make me a happier person. If my movie makes 1 million, that's great. If it makes me 10 million, that's great as well. It's not going to make me a happier person. These movies have a life on video and television and so forth, and they get scene around the world, so it's not like they're showing at the Museum of Modern Art. I guess I wouldn't want to present it as homework. There is a certain entertainment value. One of the most entertaining moments in your films is the infamous big red box you placed over a scene in "Storytelling" to placate the ratings board. Talk to me a little about your relationship with censorship and ratings. Well in "Storytelling" I had it in my contract that I could use boxes and bleeps to achieve an R rating if needed. Since that point they've released some NC-17 films like "The Dreamers" and "Young Adam." But when I had done "Storytelling," no one was going to release an NC-17 film. I wanted to the audience to know what it was not allowed to see, and if I had cut the scene, they would never have known what they weren't supposed to be seeing. So I took great pride in making the only studio movie with a big red box in the middle of it. This is the only country in the world where you can see the big red box version. When you get the DVD, you can get the family version or the Todd version, the uncut version. There's not much sense to be made of the rules for why a film gets one rating or another, but I refuse to alter my coverage simply because of the rules of the ratings board. I'm going to do it the way I want. We lost a lot of money on "Happiness" because I didn't want to cut it down at all for video. Blockbuster does have a stranglehold on that particular business because they wouldn't carry an unrated film. I offered to put beeps and boxes, but the distributor didn't take me up on my offer, and to this day the video can only be obtained in an independent video store. Look, we live in a very polarized world. We're in this land of extremities. Look at the Terry Schiavo case. All I can say is that it's great for me as a filmmaker. I always felt that if George Bush was re-elected it would be great for me. This red/blue divide really plays itself out in the larger world. Secular and fundamentalist, it's the conflict of our time. One of the boldest steps you've taken in the film is the choice to use eleven different women to play the lead character. What was the impetus for that decision? Well there are a number of thoughts that were in my head. It was always a sense that when I was casting a film that if I could combine three different actors that I liked for a role that I liked. And here, it could be 8, it could be 80. Aviva has this sort of universalizing effect where she could be any one of us. Initially, I think, an audience could be kind of confused. Is she black, is she Latino, is she a redhead? But gradually they'll begin to understand that the actress is changing, that different women are playing the character. They may not understand the why of it all, but I think an audience will accept those changes. Then I push it further. I have this big black woman, who is sort of a Gulliver for me, surrounded by Lilliputians. There are references to Alice in Wonderland and Wizard of Oz and so forth, so in the end you have Jennifer Jason Leigh, whose eyes are laced with this kind of age, of sorrow. You see that emotional pain registered in her eyes so that Aviva looks as if she's lived a whole life, but she's only 13 years old. Your films are usually something that critics either really like or really despise. What has been your favorite negative review over the years? I've had so many over the years, but I don't delight in them. When I read that I'm cruel, cynical, misanthropic and loathsome, it gives me no pleasure. It's a very unfortunate thing to have to read, but it is fortunately counterbalanced by people who happen to love what I do. I think rather than a review, I've had test screenings over the years and there was one young woman who offered some criticism after seeing the uncut version of "Happiness." She of course thought it was a dreadful film and she said that she pitied the filmmaker and that they obviously didn't realize how funny it was. She said the film was "unintentionally funny." I always liked that. To a certain degree you clearly intend your films to be funny… That's why I liked it. That was a startling statement because the films are so opaque in their intentions. You can't give too much credence to anybody, though, because if you believe them when they tell you that you're a genius, then you have to believe them when they tell you you're other things. You basically have to not Google yourself. Speaking of Googling, I read an interview with you in The Believer and in it you stated that you believed that "Palindromes" was perhaps one of your saddest films. "Storytelling" and "Happiness" in particular have a real melancholy tone to them. What is it about the film that you find more sorrowful than your other works? Well, the subject matter, for one thing. It's a very tender story, I think. It's about a young girl, maybe 13, who wants to be a mom. And what that means, I think, is that she thinks that having a baby will provide a kind of unconditional love that she's not getting elsewhere. This movie is a kind of simple quest for love for this young girl and the dramatic spark, the motor, is this moral dilemma that happens when your 13 year old daughter comes home and she's pregnant, and not only is she pregnant but she wants to keep the baby. What do you do? It's really an impossible dilemma, a lose/lose situation. You mentioned unconditional love. If there is a sense of moralism in your films, it seems to be that idea that everyone is more or less deserving of love regardless of the despicable acts they commit. Is anyone not deserving of love? Are there things that you see done that are deserving of scorn? Of course, there are things we see every day, atrocities that we read about in the papers, we hear about in the news, these horrible things. And yet, of course, we go on about our business. There are certain profound human needs that in our own blustery kind of way we try to fulfill. If there have been any monologues in any of your films that seem to encapsulate what you're trying to say in your writing, it's the opening scene where Dawn Wiener's brother Mark eulogizes her and talks about free will. Well certainly, it does encapsulate a whole lot of what I believe and what I'm trying to say. He's a whole lot bleaker than I am about our ability to change. In my mind, at any given moment biologically we are changing, it's something we cannot control. But it's that palindromic part of ourselves that keeps being repeated, that resists change, that is in some way defining about our identities, about who we are. Here we are with this young girl, who at the beginning of the movie her mother says "you'll always be you." At the end of the movie there she is, still this needy Mom. And of course, Mom is in itself a palindrome. When you look back at yourself when you were, say, 10 years old, there is still something inherently you, something that's instantly recognizable. Can we can still see ourselves at that age and how have we changed? As Mark says in the monologue, if we're 13 or 50, if we gain 50 lbs. or lose 50 lbs., if we have a sex change or if we get a haircut, there's this part of us that is still there, that resists the change. He may see a little more sense of doom than I do. I happen to believe that to recognize and accept one's limitations can be freeing, can be liberating. If you're of a religious frame of mind you have to accept that free will exists in order to have this leap of faith. If you're of the other turn of mind, if you're an atheist, you can see yourself as a mix of our genetics and your surroundings that allows you to make a choice between, say, Bush or Kerry. That it's a choice, when really our whole life dictates that we cannot choose but the one. I read somewhere that you had at one time considered being a rabbi. Yeah, I read that also. I learned a long time ago that I have to be careful about joking. The journalist took me seriously. I did attend yashiva as a boy, but I think the only time I ever wanted to be a rabbi was maybe when I was seven and I wanted to have a beard. I haven't been back to synagogue since I was about that age. The foibles of IMDB… Yeah, I avoid as best I can. Written by [ Richard Sharp ] [ Home ] |
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