What Solondz did next
Geoffrey Macnab
Wednesday September 8, 2004
The Guardian
Abortion is becoming something of a theme at the Venice film festival. The screening of Mike Leigh's Vera Drake, the story of an abortionist in 1950s London, was enthusiastically received here this week. Now Todd Solondz's Palindromes has provoked controversy and bafflement. Featuring references to foetuses in dustbins, images of placard-waving campaigners and even a gruesome sequence in which an abortionist and his child are assassinated, the film wades into what is one of the most contentious debates in the US election campaign.
Hollywood, Solondz said yesterday, didn't want to go near such incendiary material, so the director ended up bankrolling Palindromes himself. "This movie was made for very little money ... nobody would touch it," he said.
As ever, Solondz, director of Happiness and Storytelling, takes a quizzical approach to his subject matter. The heroine is a 12-year-old girl who longs to be a mom. When Aviva sleeps with an obese neighbour, her own mother (Ellen Barkin) insists on the pregnancy being terminated. Aviva then runs away from home. She ends up staying with Mama Sunshine, a loving Christian matriarch who has adopted dozens of disabled children. ("It's as if each of those children are children who were aborted in some sense," Solondz says.) Mama Sunshine will do anything to protect an unborn child - even kill. Disconcertingly, Aviva is played by a small army of actors of different ages, races and sizes: two women, four teenage girls, one 12-year old boy and one six-year-old girl.
Solondz argues that the debate around abortion in the US has long since ossified, with both parties in such entrenched positions that little dialogue is possible. In Palindromes, he shows "a pro-choice family which gives no choice to the child and a pro-life family which kills. Somewhere between the two, Aviva is suspended."
Is he pro-choice himself? It certainly seems that way. "They (the pro-life movement) have been winning the war for a long time," he said, referring to the bombing of abortion clinics in the US and the harassment of doctors who perform abortions. "That's the sad irony. You have the Islamic front and the fundamentalists. Then, in our country, we have the same thing - this movement which is just growing exponentially and creating its own base to set policy. And what sets policy in the US of course has ramifications throughout the world."
OMG I GET THE TITLE NOW! ALL IS CLEAR!!!
(Actually, it is a very good title, now that I know more about the film, and seriously, thanks for starting the thread. Been waiting for this film for a while, thought about starting it last week, but no news that I knew of then, other than it was in post.) This film seems a bit different from the original descriptions. Guess that's because not much was known yet.
here's a good Solondz site: http://members.aol.com/FearAndAnxiety
Solondz/rules.
Palindromes is going to slaughter me. I can't wait to be slaughtered.
I love you, Todd.
I really can't wait for this, sounds awseome.
In "Palindromes," Middle-class Jersey Life Again in Solondz' Sights
by Peter Brunette/indieWIRE
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*READ AT OWN RISK*
After the brouhaha occasioned by his last feature, "Storytelling" (2001), American indie director Todd Solondz is back with "Palindromes," another assault on middle-class American pieties. It's still too early to muster a definitive or even definite opinion of the film -- it's achingly simple and extraordinarily complex at the same time -- and it's sure to split audiences. What can be assayed here therefore is little more than a first description, an interim report.
As with all his previous films, including the masterful "Welcome to the Dollhouse," which first announced him as a major new talent in 1995, and the equally accomplished "Happiness" (1998), "Palindromes" is set within a middle-class Jewish family living in suburban New Jersey. Once again the social landscape is peopled by a host of misfits, grotesques, pushy parents, and deeply unhappy teenagers.
Twelve-year-old Aviva wants nothing more than to become a mother, and does what she needs to do to make that happen, but her Mom (played with gusto by Ellen Barkin), steers her toward an abortionist to put an end to that unlikely dream. She runs off and encounters a deeply Christian family named the Sunshines, a stand-up-for-Jesus group that is populated by an assortment of crippled, retarded, and otherwise damaged kids. Aviva ends up back in New Jersey with Earl, a friend of the Sunshines (and a truckdriver who had earlier raped her, but whom she loves), as he seeks to murder her abortionist.
This plot may sound a bit outlandish, and certainly ripe for the irony that Solondz heaps on by the barrelful, but easy enough to follow. What greatly increases the complexity, however, is that in each part of story, Aviva is played by a different actress, stretching all the way from an innocent young girl with pigtails and braces to an older, supremely overweight black woman to, at the end of the film, Jennifer Jason Leigh. It's impossible to tell exactly what motivated this choice, but even though the character stays exactly the same as written, from scene to scene, it's amazing how different our reactions are depending on whom we see before us.
The humor is deeply black here, as always in a Solondz film, and the Christian right comes in for some powerful skewering. This occurs not through cheap point-scoring via the articulation of sanctified liberal sentiments -- if any liberals had the temerity to show up in a Solondz film, it's clear that they too would be creamed -- but mostly by simply setting the Sunshine family in front of us and exposing us to their aggressive, relentless cheer and good will. At the dinner table, the pathetic kids vie with each other to tell the most grotesque personal history. Over and over, you want to laugh at them but feel guilty about it -- the classic Solondz topos -- especially, for example, when the lame and the halt are made to dance wildly before us in praise of Jesus. It's like watching a series of Diane Arbus photographs that have come magically, and painfully, to life.
Solondz's forte, as always, is the delicious gap that he is able to create between the tone of a scene and the sentiments characters express within it. Thus, when the Barkin character is trying to comfort her daughter by recounting an earlier abortion of her own, amidst all the overwrought expressions of a mother's love and the gooey, sentimental music, she talks of "getting rid of that little Henry guy." At another moment she tries to convince Aviva that her fetus is not really a baby at all, but "just a tumor."
If there is a moral to the story, it comes at the suburban get-together near the end of the film when the nerd Mark, an accused pedophile and clear stand-in for the director (he even looks like him), makes a little speech to the effect that we can never, ever change, and that we are condemned to live the lives that have been ordained for us by randomness and our genes. This sentiment stands in direct contrast to that of Earl, rapist and anti-abortionist, who has earlier plaintively wailed, "How many times can I be born again?"
"Palindromes," it must finally be said, is not quite as strong as Solondz's previous films. There are too many flat moments, moments where the bitter irony is merely repeated rather than developed. And it gets tiresome, finally, laughing at people. But even on a less than perfect day, Solondz is way better than almost any other American director of his generation.
Could be decent.. I watched HAPPINESS tonight and was thoroughly dissapointed.
Por quoi? (http://www.xixax.com/viewtopic.php?t=891&highlight=todd+solondz)
I found with Happiness, it's really hard sometimes to concentrate on the message, because it gets lost in the noise of sensationalism. That said, it's not a bad film. A good one, really, but just a little too much at times, if you get what I'm saying. I've always championed Storytelling as a great film, Solondz's best, so going with the trend of his films just getting better and better, Palindromes could be great. Or, it could be a disaster if it remains in that "mean spirited" territory and doesn't inject enough humanity in its characters. That may be a possibility because it is Solondz territory, and the material is quite incendiary.
Somebody on IMDB saw this movie and called it "sickly great"
That's dumb.
IMDB reviews are dumb. Don't read 'em.
Quote from: ono.Por quoi? (http://www.xixax.com/viewtopic.php?t=891&highlight=todd+solondz)
I found with Happiness, it's really hard sometimes to concentrate on the message, because it gets lost in the noise of sensationalism. That said, it's not a bad film. A good one, really, but just a little too much at times, if you get what I'm saying. I've always championed Storytelling as a great film, Solondz's best, so going with the trend of his films just getting better and better, Palindromes could be great. Or, it could be a disaster if it remains in that "mean spirited" territory and doesn't inject enough humanity in its characters. That may be a possibility because it is Solondz territory, and the material is quite incendiary.
It's a problem with the way Solondz constructs the material. With "Happiness," his use of music subverted any serious attempt at drama because the irony was laid on very thick. So, when you approach scenes between the father and the boy, and that culminating last dialogue on the couch together, it's bereft of any genuine feeling despite how "honest" it is. Many people like the movie for that; I find it unrealistic and not sincere, which, for this material, is easy to treat as such. Didn't Solondz say he'd failed the audience if people didn't look at his characters as more than freakshows? I didnt see them as freakshows, but I didnt see them as real people either.
'Palindromes' sold to Wellspring
Source: Hollywood Reporter
Wellspring, a division of American Vantage Media Corp., has acquired all North American rights to Todd Solondz's "Palindromes," starring Ellen Barkin, Stephen Adly-Guirgis, Richard Masur and Debra Monk. The film, produced by Derrick Tseng and Mike S. Ryan, is screening as part of the New York Film Festival. Wellspring head of acquisitions Marie Therese Guirgis negotiated the deal with ICM, which repped Solondz. An April release is planned.
An April release?! That's crazy, Mr. Chubbs!
Poster:
http://www.impawards.com/2004/palindromes.html
woah. that's awesome.
....
yeah, it's still awesome.
It's really good. Worth the wait.
The movie, the poster, or both?
uh, the movie.
Quote from: mutinycouh, the movie.
details, details!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Try DAY 11 at: http://crossoverfollowing.com/nyff42main.html
Here's some of Ebert's thoughts...
"The Solondz film has sharply divided audiences: Some hate it; some think it is the best work yet from the director of "Welcome to the Dollhouse" and "Happiness." No one seems indifferent. I thought it was brilliant and bold, especially in the way Solondz uses many different actresses to play his heroine, a young girl who in various versions of the story seeks sexual experience, wants to get pregnant, seeks or avoids abortion, runs away, and is involved in the murder of an abortion doctor.
Solondz uses actresses of different sizes, ages and races to play versions of the same character, in a device that makes the film not simply the story of one young woman's experiences, but a meditation on various possible scenarios and how the same personality might respond to them. His use of many actresses makes the material universal. There are no rapes in the film, although the men are singularly unskilled or uncaring; his heroine in all of her manifestations is naive and unprepared for the emotional anguish that sex causes for her. "
yea, i don't think i'll ever be comfortable with that multiple actresses thing till i actually see it for myself. it seems polarizing or something, on paper. thanks tho, it's always good to see what ebert has to say.
Trailer here. (http://download.ifilm.com/qt/portal/2665155_200.mov)
i love todd solondz
that trailer does a great job of saying very little about the movie.
Quote from: Pedro the Alpacai love todd solondz
that trailer does a great job of saying very little about the movie.
that dude at the end sorta looks like him.
that song is cool too, if it hasn't already been mentioned i think it's sung by the chick from the cardigans.
Definitely seeing this as soon as possible.
...but not before it's actually released.
Throughout all this film, i felt as if someone was fucking my throat.
Now you know how she felt.
Good trailer. Needless to say, I can't wait to see this. Should be the first great film of 2004.
http://palindromes-movie.com/
lol
Quote from: ono mo cuishleShould be the first great film of 2004.
Quote from: ono mo cuishleBut sadly, the year has nine months.
what calendar are u operating on??
Quote from: picolashttp://palindromes-movie.com/
lol
I didn't have Shockwave installed so I couldn't see anything.
Solondz's 'Palindromes' Shown at Festival
Todd Solondz, the maker of such dark, daring films as "Happiness" and "Storytelling," had very traditional influences growing up.
While talking about his new movie, "Palindromes," which touches on teen pregnancy and abortion, he shared fond memories of going to see "Mary Poppins" and "The Sound of Music" at New York's Radio City Music Hall as a child.
"They were my favorite movies," Solondz said during a discussion of his career at the South by Southwest film festival, where "Palindromes" was shown. "I guess it took me until my 30s to start rebelling."
As for the responses he receives to his own films, the writer-director said he's "shocked by the shock." ("Happiness" features a child molester and an obscene phone caller and "Storytelling" is about sex and race.)
"There are different kinds of shock," he said. "I think people will be disappointed if they're looking for something of a prurient nature. I'm afraid I won't satisfy you."
"Palindromes" features eight performers playing the same role of an awkward 13-year-old girl. Its cast includes Ellen Barkin and Jennifer Jason Leigh.
http://www.apple.com/trailers/independent/palindromes.html
Yep. (http://www.xixax.com/viewtopic.php?p=175309#175309)
Oh, a smaller trailer
I hope to be seeing this in a month at the Philadelphia Film Fest. Can't wait! :-D
i shall be at the Philly Film fest as well...seeing many films with my passes.
I saw this the other day at SXSW. It's wonderful - maybe not as outstanding as Happiness overall, but far more emotionally grounded and mature.
I don't know why I forgot to mention this in the SXSW thread, but this was also really good. I think I feel about the same as GB here as far as where it ranks.
Interesting note about Solondz... I was at his panel before the screening and he said that there is no third part of StoryTelling, but that it was just a two-minute epliogue that was cut. The "missing third part" is a myth.
ouch for vanderbeek. i bet he was getting jobs based on that myth..
Quote from: Satcho9i shall be at the Philly Film fest as well...seeing many films with my passes.
where in philly are you from?
Quote from: RegularKarateI don't know why I forgot to mention this in the SXSW thread, but this was also really good. I think I feel about the same as GB here as far as where it ranks.
Interesting note about Solondz... I was at his panel before the screening and he said that there is no third part of StoryTelling, but that it was just a two-minute epliogue that was cut. The "missing third part" is a myth.
yeah, it's a two minute epilogue, but there was also a HUGE part with van der beek in fiction that was cut out. so while it wasn't its own "third part," that was a lot of movie that got cut out.
Call him 'pro-debate'
"Palindromes" is the latest Todd Solondz film to provoke thought. Source: Los Angeles Times
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There is simply something strange about seeing Todd Solondz in the sun-drenched environs of a Southern California beachside resort. The New York-based filmmaker, writer and director of the films "Welcome to the Dollhouse," "Happiness" and "Storytelling" — all set on the East Coast — was in Los Angeles for a few days of screenings and Q&As for his latest film, "Palindromes."
Solondz is a chronicler of dark loners and losers, a bard of outsiders, specializing in finding a way to squeeze audience sympathy from the most outwardly unappealing of characters. "Palindromes," which Solondz acknowledges as his most "politically charged" film to date, follows the adventures of a 13-year-old girl, Aviva, who, though desperate to have a baby, is forced to have an abortion by her mother, played by Ellen Barkin. Aviva then runs away from home and falls in with a group of antiabortion advocates. Just to keep the audience on their toes, the film's defining conceit is that Aviva's role is portrayed by a series of performers, including a young boy, a plus-size woman and actress Jennifer Jason Leigh.
In conversation, Solondz is surprisingly engaged, witty and articulate. There is almost none of the evasion or mumbling ambivalence one might expect from him (and which one indeed does get from a startling number of film directors), and he is keenly aware of the ways in which he is often perceived.
With his pinched features, nasal voice and oversized eyeglasses, words such as "geek" and "nerdy" have long been used to describe him. He has taken to removing his glasses during public appearances and most photographs in an effort to thwart people's preconceived notions.
"I do think people make certain judgments about the work based on my physical appearance," he said. "I feel comfortable with the way I dress and look, but a lot of people make certain assumptions.... I guess because I don't talk much about me personally and it's the work I'm happy to talk about, it's just a sort of poking and stabbing at 'Who is this guy?' People want to use this as a map to try and decode me. That's really so unimportant ultimately."
True to form, the only time Solondz, 45, shuts down at all is when confronted with personal questions. He will allow that he grew up in New Jersey and attended Yale University, but beyond that he simply shrugs.
Despite the hot-button topics his films touch on, in particular the use of the abortion debate in "Palindromes," Solondz declines to tip his hand one way or the other regarding his own beliefs.
"The only person who can decode what is going on in my movies is really just me," he says. "But it's really not relevant to anyone in the audience watching the movie. The only thing that's relevant is the story you have there on the screen. My personal psychological history is really beside the point."
Instead, it is the narrow space in between the two sides where Solondz likes to stake out his turf, pushing and pulling his viewers between the threshold of their own beliefs.
"I remember in the writing that I had a place I wanted to get to," he says, "a point where this very sympathetic character, this young girl that you feel for, who has been through terrible sorrows and troubles, your heart is with her and yet there she is saying, 'Do, it, do it, do it,' urging someone else to do terrible things.
"It's that kind of friction, of feeling for someone on the one hand and on the other hand this kind of moral horror at what is taking place. That excites me as a filmmaker, finding those convergences that I think throw into relief some of the complexity of what we experience."
Admitting that the audience for his films tends to be of a "more liberal persuasion," Solondz nevertheless bristles at the idea he is giving people what they want.
"I can't say I'm preaching to the choir when, to follow through with the metaphor, it's a sermon they might not want to hear. I'm not there to soothe or feed into a sense of smugness or complacency that people have about their positions. Some see this as a satirical attack on both the right and left, others see it as if I am a poster boy for the pro-life movement, and others see it as a pro-choice movie.
"When I was writing I didn't say, 'Ah, this is going to be my blue state, red state statement.' ... I approached this on really the most simple level, a young girl on a quest for love."
The movie's not doing very well on the ROTTEN TOMATOES meter so far.
Quote from: Small Town LonerThe movie's not doing very well on the ROTTEN TOMATOES meter so far.
it's called a tomatometer (http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/palindromes/).
or whatever the hell it is
Quote from: Small Town Loneror whatever the hell it is
it's called a tomatometer (http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/palindromes/).
The movie could get the worst reviews any movie has ever gotten and I'd still go see it based purely on the fact that even if this movie is not his best, we need more Solondz and people like Solondz. But then again I have a Happiness pic as my avatar.
Still, if it was an action movie people wouldn't be as upset about the negative reviews. They'd go check it out because they would be interested to see what was done regardless. This is how I feel about Solondz. Good or bad, can't wait to see the thing.
Interview: Todd Solondz
Auteur filmmaker talks Palindromes.
For better than ten years, Todd Solondz has been destroying audience expectations as a filmmaker on the fringe of mainstream cinema. After his first film Welcome to the Dollhouse became a critical sensation, Solondz went on to capture some of the most disturbing and indelible portraits of humanity in moviemaking history: Happiness, in which viewers find themselves sympathizing with a pedophile; and in Storytelling, a seemingly 'normal' family slowly disintegrates under the watchful eye of a documentarian.
For his latest effort, Palindromes, Solondz takes a footnote from the pages of avant-garde filmmakers like Luis Bunuel and casts multiple actresses in the central role, Aviva, a teenage girl who possesses an irrepressible desire to become a mother. The director recently sat down with IGN FilmForce to discuss the development of Palindromes' reflective construction, and explains that the structure and content of the project fulfill fantasies he's long held as a filmmaker. "It's probably always been a fantasy of mine to be able to cast multiple actors in a single part," Solondz explains.
"You might be casting a movie and there might be three actors each with a particular quality that you might like, but you wish it could all be one person. In a sense, I get to do that here," he says, describing the purposeful indulgence of his latest cinematic conceit. "It's eight people, but it could have been 80, in the sense that any one of us who were watching the movie could play her in an episode of her life. There is a kind of universality here, that on some emotional level that we can connect to this poor girl's plight."
Solondz says that the essence of his character isn't contained in her palindromic name, but conceived from it. "Certainly for all of the shapes and sizes that we see, the metamorphoses that take place, the character is a constant. She is an innocent, she is unchanging in some sense, but she starts out and she wants to be a mom and her mother says, 'you will always be you,' and then of course there she is at the end of the movie saying, 'now I'm going to be a mom.' That need is still in her, and is somewhat defining of her identity. [In the film] Mark Weiner says, 'it doesn't matter if you gain 50 or lose 50 pounds or have a sex change;' in a sense there is a part of ourselves that is palindromic by nature, that part of ourselves doesn't change."
While he's clarifying his point to a crowded room of confounded journalists, even Solondz momentarily gets lost. "Now I've lost both of my threads," he says, before redirecting. "While Marc Weiner might speak with a certain sense of doom, he's in a grim position himself, but I would say that there's something freeing or liberating about the idea of the inability to change or to live and accept and embrace one's limitations. That can be a good thing."
He adds that the casting of different women – black and white, young and old – as Aviva provides for a different development of her character throughout the film, as well as a certain kind of transcendence. "You have a sort of paradox at work, so it's an unchanging and yet ever changing aspect of this body being all of these different shapes and sizes, each of which was doing things in certain different kinds of nuance or color. There's almost a sort of storybook myth, fairy tale-like quality to this that's enhanced by the casting thing, and each one has a different reason." While Solondz didn't devise exactly what his protagonist would look like throughout her travails, he indicates he knew where he wanted to start: "I knew I needed to begin with a black child to set off that something's off – maybe she's adopted, because Ellen Barkin is the mom – and at first you're disoriented. But then it kicks in, the connection: okay, it's the same character but different actors are playing this one character."
"I do think an audience will accept all sorts of rules and conventions as long as you stick to them," he continues. "Then you get to the big black woman, [which] for me, that was my Gulliver, so to speak, and the Lilliputians surround her, and then Jennifer Jason Leigh, you look at her face and you see that she's a woman of a certain age, and you can see a certain kind of sorrow etched in that face, and you feel as if that character has lived a whole life and yet of course, she's still thirteen years old."
When the question is raised whether Solondz is attempting to comment on hot-button issues like abortion and teen pregnancy, he contends that he's only trying to generate questions, not provide their answers. "We live in a country where it is such a volatile issue, abortion, that abortionists are murdered or assassinated, clinics are bombed, and nowhere else in the world does this happen," he observes. "It's hard not to be responsive to the fact that it's an 'abortionist' like it's a policeman or a fireman is to take on a heroic profession, that you put your life on the line, you risk your life in ways that if you performed other procedures you could make a good living. You cannot but respect them, regardless of the political convictions that you may have."
"That said, there was someone captured in Georgia [who killed an abortion doctor] that when he was captured what was interesting was how the community was very sympathetic and stood by him," he continues. "And I wondered what is it that makes someone perfect for such an atrocity as this, because I think it's a profoundly human thing to feel that one at heart is a good person, and I think everyone thinks they're fighting the good fight, even though people may not agree which is the good fight. A man who is murdering abortionists certainly thinks he is saving a million unborn babies, so there is a logic here at work that everybody thinks they're basically a good person."
Solondz says that he finds inspiration from exploring the emotional underpinnings of these conflicts, and wants to encourage his audience to question not only his choices, but their own reactions to them. "I wanted to get into a situation where this young girl who we all feel for, certainly we feel for her plight, her pain, her sorrows and what she's been through, and yet you have this moral horror at her saying 'do it, do it, do it,' that she would pull the trigger, so to speak. That moment on the one hand of feeling for this character, and yet at the same time going oh my God, what are you doing? How can you do this?"
"It's that convergence, that friction of those two impulses that rub against each other that I think is intrinsic of all that I do."
Unsurprisingly, critics have attacked the director for targeting some of our sacred cows as subjects to be scrutinized and even ridiculed. But he insists that his efforts are never intended to serve an exclusively provocative sensibility. "I'm not out to shock, not in any sensationalistic sense. I mean, what subject do you see in any of my movies that isn't on TV any day of the week? I mean, you've got Terry Schiavo stories 24/7 – what could be more obscene or more grotesque than what's going on in real life? My movies are tame compared to real life, so it's not that it's shocking, it's just that I'm not playing into what an audience is maybe wanting, to be sort of pat on the back and be told that 'you're right, your way of seeing things is the right way.' I'm out to prod and try to force people to question and re-examine the moral consequences, the moral conventions of what some of this means."
That said, Solondz reasserts his basic philosophy as a director, which is to create an aesthetic if not necessarily commercial continuity for his films. "I don't have any grand scheme," he says. "I don't have a plan for my next five movies. I'll be lucky if I can make another one. They kill you, each one, and so I just do one at a time and then I discover myself what I have wrought. Really, the process of filmmaking is very much a process of discovery; it's a mystery. What is it that makes one put pen to paper? I've been writing for some meaning, and it is a mystery to me."
"It's certainly not fun," he continues, "so [I question] what is it that pulls me to pursue this story, and sometimes I find myself not choosing the story, but the story choosing me. I may have ideas that may be much more marketable, let's say, but I get compelled – the hand has a life of its own – to pursue certain kinds of stories, and I just have to be true to that impulse."
I'm going to this (http://calendar.walkerart.org/event.wac?id=1780) tomorrow... apparently Todd Solondz is going to be there.
He was at the Egyptian theater and I missed it, I was so bummed.
You should take pictures Jeremy.
I really enjoyed listening to him speak at SXSW last month. He knows how to use his awkward/shy personality to really good effect. And he seemed pretty aproachable, too.
he was just here at the dcfilmfest but i decided not to go.
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"See my new movie. Or I'll kill someone."
Good interview. I like this guy.
ha ha Solondz is the kind of guy who would go out and kill somebody
Quote from: Small Town Lonerha ha Solondz is the kind of guy who would go out and kill somebody
golly, small town loner, do u think there's any chance that could hav been the joke? :ponder:
Pubrick you're the kind of guy who was abused as a child
Haha, it's like his parents or somebody might've hurt him as a child
Quote from: Small Town LonerPubrick you're the kind of guy who was abused as a child
ur the kinda guy who would project.
Quote from: Jeremy BlackmanI'm going to this (http://calendar.walkerart.org/event.wac?id=1780) tomorrow... apparently Todd Solondz is going to be there.
MINOR SPOILERS
and MAJOR SPOILERS in the audio clipsGreat movie, everything I expected, pure Solondz. Remember how the first chapter of Storytelling was a little, well, challenging? This whole movie is like that. It's like he takes certain beliefs (including his) and puts them up against the most extreme challenges. It really accomplishes in larger ways what his other films have pretty much already accomplished. Also, this is an issue movie. It's about abortion and motherhood (not teen sex or teen pregnancy).
It was a sold out show. He seemed very flattered. He gave a little introduction and stayed for a very long Q&A. Here's an
excerpt (http://xixax.com/files/jb/solondz.mp3) (his introduction and the beginning of the Q&A).
The rest of the Q&A is pretty similar to the interview he gave on local radio this morning (http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/play/audio.php?media=/midmorning/2005/04/27_midmorn2).
Sorry about the fuzzyness of the pictures... I really had to zoom in. And it was dark.
(https://xixax.com/files/jb/solondz1.jpg)
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Palindromes theme:
http://www.nathanlarson.com/music/palindromes.mp3
Quote from: Jeremy BlackmanPalindromes theme:
http://www.nathanlarson.com/music/palindromes.mp3
GORGEOUSITY.
Thanks for the audio interview. If you find any more media on Solondz, feel free to share it as well.
Quote from: meatball
Thanks for the audio interview. If you find any more media on Solondz, feel free to share it as well.
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http://2005.sxsw.com/coverage/?PHPSESSID=bcc6cb346d41546cb9cf0283d919e9e9#top
Seventh from the bottom.
Shot by yours truly.
Bless you and your camera.
Saw this last night and was very impressed. I absolutely loved it. It was a bit tough to watch in parts. But, yeah, :yabbse-thumbup:
I just wrote my review of the film. I tried, perhaps unsuccessfully, to explain and support my own personal feelings on the film on a more thematic level, rather than simply explain the plot. In any case, I'll just reprint it here, in case anyone feels like reading the whole thing:
Todd Solondz has and will continue to be labeled as a provocateur, and certainly, undeniably, the content his films have made a case for it. His latest film, Palindromes, has been and will continue to be viewed as a scabrous and divisive piece of cinema - and, in many cases, an objective one. I don't completely share this opinion. Yes, it is shocking and upsetting to great degrees, and yes, one must assume Solondz exercised maturity and control on the set during certain troubling scenes involving children, and yes, one can almost assuredly expect that he is pushing certain buttons on purpose, for the sake of topicality; but while Palindromes is unquestionably disturbing, I would suggest that it is also somewhat subjective; that Solondz has put more of himself into this work than in the past, and thereby made a more sensitive film; and above all, that there is a some degree of comfort to be found in it.
This last point may be the most difficult to justify, and so I'll tackle it first. What I mean when I say comfort is not that Solondz wraps up everything in a neat and tidy bow, with an ending that is merely happy, or merely ironic, or merely shocking; it's a deeper and more troubling matter than that. He acknowledges that the issues he's dealing with run deeper than ideological differences or culture wars; that while either side of an issue has its rights and wrongs, that the issue - entirely by itself, without its supporters or detractors lobbying for or against it - is a quandary that cannot be wholly whitewashed nor condemned by. And that's where he lets it rest. To be content with the inconclusive is a novel and surprisingly satisfying approach, especially when the topic is one as incendiary as abortion, which is what Solondz chooses to deal with, at least in part, in this film.
It may seem as if I've just described a completely objective approach after suggesting that the film is anything but. In a sense, it is objective, in that it bluntly and satirically condemns both sides of the abortion issue. Because this is a Solondz film - because its subject is a 13 year old girl who is desperate to have a baby - we must consider the fact that we're dealing with satire, and any extremity thus implied (and indeed, the film is as frequently hilarious as it is shocking). It is in his refusal to ultimately subscribe to any overall status quo - and perhaps suggesting that we do the same - that he is making a statement. We've seen films with couples overjoyed to discover they're going to have a baby, and films in which that same discovery is cause for great unrest; this is a film that makes no call for or against either of those reactions, but simply acknowledges that they are both in response to exactly the same thing.
How is this different, then, then what Solondz did in Happiness, in which a pedophile's sexual urges were contrasted plainly and objectively against those of the rest of the ensemble of unhappy characters? The difference is the heart of the matter. Solondz did not judge his characters in that film, but he also did not embrace them. Here, after all the pro-lifers and pro-choicers and their arguments have been discarded, we have, simply, this 13 year old girl, whose name, Aviva, suggests the phonetic phenomenon of the title and is thus representative of the film's point of view: any way you look at it, this girl is a human being, whose feelings, however misguided, are her own. Solondz shows us Aviva at her best and at her worst; he beatifies and comes close to vilifying her; in the end, however, he embraces her as an individual - something not afforded to the characters in his previous works. There's a sweetness here that he's never displayed before; that aforementioned sensitivity
Of those previous works, the only one I feel was a failure is Storytelling, which was an awkward miscarriage of a good and potentially very personal ideas. In many ways, it appeared to be a response to the critics who accused Solondz of being exploiting shocking subject matter for its own sake - an attempt at self-defense that self-destructed. Solondz acknowledges this in Palindromes, when he has one of his characters, a would-be filmmaker, say "I don't want to spend two years of my life making something that's gonna suck." He also makes up for the missed opportunity when near the end he introduces what could very well be considered a personal avatar in the form of a character from Welcome To The Dollhouse, Mark Weiner. Mark has been accused of being a pedophile, and at a family reunion, Aviva, likewise an outcast, is the only one to sympathize with him. He says something very important: that in spite of whatever chemical or physiological or emotional transmutations may occur, people will essentially remain the same, on an individual level.
This is an explanation of multitude of things; chiefly, the by now well-known fact that Solondz has cast eight different actors of different age, ethnicity and even gender to portray Aviva. I've neglected mentioning this thus far simply because it is, with one minor exception, a flawless conceit; the character of Aviva is as rich and multifaceted as she is clearly defined; despite her shifting physical traits, which might inspire judgments when viewed outside of context, she remains the 13 year old girl. It is a bold creative choice, executed by Solondz and the cast with exquisite grace and skill - to the point, in fact, that the explanation provided by Mark Weiner isn't completely necessary. But I do think it illustrates Solondz's own perspective on himself and his films; rather than defend them, as he may have been trying to do in Storytelling, I think he is suggesting that he's content simply to make them as he sees fit, and to let the public judge them - and him - as they like. That I think the film is brilliant - Solondz's best, perhaps - and that I find in it the qualities I've outlined, ultimately does not and cannot change the film itself.
Solondz kept each of the girl characters very shallow behaviorally. I think this is why the multiple girls worked; each had their own unique facet and reinstated our interest in their (her) journey.
I (briefly) interviewed Solondz this afternoon. Results? here. (http://www.road-dog-productions.com/reviews/archives/2005/05/a_conversation_2.html#more)
What was the pretext for that interview?
Interest on my part + helpful publicity folks?
Great interview and interesting insight. Am I the only one who thinks that Todd says 'I don't know' way too much in interviews and questionairre's?
I actually cut out some of the 'I don't knows' in the transcript...they're far more prevalent. But it all works, coming from him...he his his particular dialect mastered, and it's wonderful listening to him speak.
Quote from: GhostboyI actually cut out some of the 'I don't knows' in the transcript...they're far more prevalent. But it all works, coming from him...he his his particular dialect mastered, and it's wonderful listening to him speak.
That's true. Listening to his radio interview. He certainly has an interesting, unique way of speaking.
Not only is he the master of his own dialect... It's kind of amazing to see how confident a speaker he is in person. I imagined him with that small voice to be a bit more introverted.
I love the way he says "movie."
I saw Palindromes a few weeks ago. No one else, huh? It's the best movie of the year (so far). It's audacious from the get-go, and if it hadn't fizzled out near the end, it would've been one of those movies, the kind that are landmarks for what they say, how they say it, and how they use the cinematic medium.
The "gimmick" (if you can even call it that) of using different actresses (and an actor or two) to play Aviva, really doesn't distract at all. Looking back on the film, it really is ingenious, because the film wouldn't have had the power it did had only one actress been used. The Aviva playing the current scene manifests the emotions the girl is going through, all in her body language and simply how she looks.
But this film is all about the dialogue, anyway. I should've written about this sooner, because as it stands, I don't remember any of the key dialogue that had me rolling or thinking, marveling at how well-done everything was. The film's come and gone from the theatre, at least here, now, so I'll have to wait for the DVD.
Sidenote, I saw Storytelling again a month or so ago, and wasn't as impressed as I was the first time. It reinforces beliefs that you can't really judge a movie on the first viewing, and (obviously) the best movies hold up to repeated viewings. Here's hoping Palindromes holds up, and the weaker elements won't be as weak as I once thought.
I saw it at a pre-screen here in Omaha a month or so ago, and I'm seeing it again tomorrow with a friend.
Loved it.
I really loved the characters, they felt really complex and all really so fragile...
[spoilers I guess]
especially the trucker and Mother Sunshine, they led these really secure lives but behind closed doors they were as weak as Aviva or Mark
Mark's speech had really nice dialogue btw, ono
Saw it a few weeks ago as well.
Some really great moments and all in all, a provocative and important statement.
I do however, think the multiple actress angle was distracting. Every time I began to loose myself in one of the girls, she would change and I would go, "oh yeah, I'm watching a movie". I would have to reinvest with the new actress every 15 min. or so.
Also got sick of the "la la" music after a while.
SPOILERS
The entire sequence with the trucker was fucking flawless. My hand jumped to my mouth when he shot the little kid.
END SPOILERS
And man, The guy playing Mark looks even weirder now. He was creeping me out.
Just saw it again.
see, I thought changing actors really added emotion to the film... the physical actor reflected how Aviva felt and what was going on around her (and thus us).
I LOVE the doctor's name being Fleischer. the first time I saw it I was like "holy shit, does he know what that means in German?" and then later realized how much of a genius he really is.
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sep13
so i get the feeling, from the reviews i've read, that this film is closer in many ways to "Storytelling" than Solondz's other films -- is that accurate?
No.
"Closer" might be right, but it really bears little resemblance to Storytelling. It's episodic.
Why the fuck didn't any stores get this DVD today.
Quote from: Hedwigso i get the feeling, from the reviews i've read, that this film is closer in many ways to "Storytelling" than Solondz's other films -- is that accurate?
I actually thought it was closest to the feeling of Happiness or Welcome to the Dollhouse rather than Storytelling.
Quote from: Losing the Horse:Why the fuck didn't any stores get this DVD today.
because regular people don't give a fuck about todd solondz, duh.
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Todd Solondz’s Palindromes was definitely one of the stranger American films to be released this year. In fact it is one of the strangest films from any country to be released in any year. The baffling tale of 13 year old Aviva who will do anything to become pregnant. Eventually she runs away from home only to have a series of awkward and disturbing encounters along the way. Now everyone can enjoy the film on DVD.
Todd Solondz has long been hailed as a powerful voice in cinema and Palindromes certainly keeps that up. His difficult films have always polarized even his hardest core fans.
Daniel Robert Epstein: I didn’t totally understand Palindromes.
Todd Solondz: That's totally cool.
DRE: Was it your intent to disorient the audience by having the main character played by different actors?
TS: I think many people are disoriented and others find it affecting. I'll put it this way, when I made Welcome to the Dollhouse all sorts of people came up to me afterwards. They could be beautiful models or a construction worker, it didn't matter. They would all say, “That was me. I was that person.”' I said, “Okay. Well, I can't make you Dawn Wiener, but you can all be her cousin.” In some sense they could've been 18 or eight and anyone of us in the audience could've been in an episode of this young character's life.
DRE: I hope this isn’t a rude question but do you totally understand Palindromes yourself?
TS: No, you’re not rude at all. The process of filmmaking is one very much made up of discovery and self-discovery as well. One has a sense of what one is pursuing at the get go and you think that you know what you're doing and what you're going about, but of course this understanding is always evolving and shifting over the course of production and completion of the film. Then when people ask me when it's all said and done, “Did the movie turn out the way that you imagined it would?” I always have to say that it never does, but if I'm lucky it turns out better.
DRE: Did you ever lose track of what was going on during the writing stage?
TS: You always have to keep your eye on the ball so to speak. You have to have a sense of the direction, that's why they call them directors. You have to know where you are going and what you are pursuing. There is a certain kind of clarity. There are different kinds of clarity, different things that come into further focus as you proceed with the process.
DRE: What do you think of the reaction that Palindromes got while in the theatres?
TS: I'm happy first off that it got released. I was anxious about that and I think that [Wellspring Media] did a great job with it. Certainly the movie had a very polarized response. Before I had shown the film I thought that it was my gentlest work and then I was somewhat surprised at the strong reaction from both pro and con. In the end with extreme responses, they sort of cancel each other out. So I'm happy with what I did, or as happy with it as anything that I've done
DRE: What makes you feel it is your gentlest film?
TS: That's just how I felt about it. As politically charged and morally complicated as it might have been, at heart it was the saddest of all my comedies.
DRE: I thought it was your most disturbing film, do you find your work disturbing?
TS: I don't know that I personally feel disturbed. For me they are very charged and alive and I'm excited during the process of making them. I don't lose any sleep over it. So I'm not sure if that would qualify as being disturbed.
DRE: Was it made completely independently?
TS: Yes, Celluloid Dreams helped finish the movie and Wellspring bought it.
DRE: How did you come up with the story?
TS: I don't know how I really come up with anything. I've been writing since I was reading. So I just had a character and some themes and ideas that just coalesced. I suppose that on one hand I could say that we live in a very peculiar country in certain ways. It's the only one in the world where to be an abortionist is to take on a heroic profession like a policeman or fireman because you put your life at risk. It's the only country where clinics are bombed and abortionists are assassinated. So I think that it was in some sense responsive to that reality.
DRE: Have you had any personal experience with abortion?
TS: I haven't been involved personally in any assassination or bombing nor am I connected with anyone who was a victim of any of that if that's what you mean.
DRE: The film looks different than your previous works.
TS: It was shot on Super-16 instead of 35mm.
DRE: Was that a financial or artistic choice?
TS: Well, it was both. I could've shot it on video and that would've been even less money, but I prefer film to video and if I had more money it would have been shot on 35mm.
DRE: How did you go about casting this film?
TS: I just auditioned people. I described what I was looking for and then different actor's agents sent their actors in and I just chose the ones that I think are the most appropriate.
DRE: Has directing gotten easier for you?
TS: Nothing gets easier. It's always reinventing the wheel and figuring things out. So you just have to accept that these are part and parcel in the process of filmmaking.
DRE: Have you thought about writing a novel?
TS: I haven't written a novel and if I do then I will. But I haven't so what can I say.
DRE: Welcome to the Dollhouse and Happiness seemed to almost contain slices directly from your life. I don’t see that with Palindromes, is it as personal to you as your previous films?
TS: Yeah, I have all sorts of different characters that I have different feelings about. I don't think that it's the same kind of ordeal as with the others.
DRE: What’s a Todd Solondz movie set like? Are people having fun?
TS: I'm always very serious, but a lot of the people on the crew might be having fun. But it's very stressful and the hours are very long so it's very wearing on everyone. I go home at the end of the day but I know that many people have the energy to go out to a bar. I could never imagine having the energy to do that.
DRE: Is it the usual stress of making a film or do you add extra stress?
TS: No, I don't think that I need to add anything extra, there's enough with the movie itself.
DRE: Did foreign audiences react differently to Palindromes than American audiences?
TS: I've been to a number of different countries already and I think that overall you're less likely to find people quite so angry about the film abroad as you might find here in the States.
DRE: Does that surprise you?
TS: I guess that's depends on the film. Welcome to the Dollhouse made more money domestically than internationally, but Happiness did much better internationally than domestically. I think the main difference is when I make a movie here it's a movie, that's it. But when a movie gets shown abroad it becomes a movie about America and it's all filtered through that prism.
DRE: Have you ever wanted to make bigger budgeted films?
TS: It’s that's never been my ambition to make a big budgeted movie. The ambition is just to make movies that have meaning and that are valuable for me. If it requires more money so be it. But the idea of looking the budget first has no interest for me.
DRE: What are you working on now?
TS: I have one thing that I'm looking for money now and one script that I'm in the middle of. The thing is that I don't want to jinx myself. I have to see if I can get the money and then we can talk about it.
DRE: What is your writing routine?
TS: I don't know if there is much of a routine. You just have to sit down and do it. I'm not as disciplined as maybe others are but I do manage to get them done somehow. Look if you wrote three pages a day you would have three screenplays a year. But it doesn't quite work out that way. Though I somehow have gotten something together. The well hasn't run dry quite yet.
DRE: Is that something you worry about?
TS: No, I don't worry about it. I'm just making that observation that I continue to write my own material.
DRE: Do you have any desire to adapt books?
TS: I do. But the problem is that my own material takes the priority over everything else.
DRE: What do you like about living in Manhattan?
TS: I always wanted to live in New York, ever since I was a child. So in that sense I'm living out my dream.
DRE: What’s a day in the life of Todd Solondz like?
TS: I always have to accomplish something everyday and there is a lot of work to do. So there might be a routine but the routine is always in flux.
DRE: What did you accomplish today?
TS: Aside from this interview I was working this morning.
DRE: Do you have a wife or kids?
TS: I'm not married.
DRE: Are you against marriage?
TS: No, if you want to get married that's fine with me. I'm not personally interested in marriage but if it makes others happy it's fine with me.
DRE: Since Welcome to the Dollhouse you’ve gained an intense fanbase, have you met many of those fans?
TS: I don't know. I don't know who any of these fans are. I really don't. I make it a point not to Google myself so I really don't know what's out there. It's probably best if I don't know too much. I don't see any upside to it.
I liked this movie a lot. It really worked for me from top to bottom, with really fantastic and beautiful sequences.
I'm also kind of glad that it didn't have a bigger budget--the particular look of the film adds to its power and, already, a sense of timelessness. That was very important for this film's power; it was successful in feeling like it could be anytime, any girl. I don't think the use of multiple girls had JUST the simple point that it could be any girl--especially since it's not different girls, it's Aviva all the way through--but I think that was a minor element to it, certainly. I guess, after all, a lot of this movie's power comes from what it is able to evoke.
EDIT: I was just informed that the "Huckleberry" Aviva was played by a boy, which I suppose alters a couple of the things that I said above.