Tales from the dark side

>> Todd Solondz on his remarkable and bizarre Storytelling

by MATTHEW HAYS

Todd Solondz has a surreal, otherworldly almost eerie voice. Listening to his intonation as he discusses his films, it’s hard to tell if he’s being facetious or if he’s dead serious about what he’s saying. It’s an odd feeling, talking to him. He’s clearly highly intelligent, but feels difficult to pin down.
Which, as it turns out, is much the same sense one gets after sitting through his films. In his breakout feature Welcome to the Dollhouse, Solondz illustrated his uncanny talent for evoking laughter and horror at the same time—the trauma of adolescence had never really been laid quite so uncomfortably bare. With Happiness, the director-writer continued to present ambiguous characters in not-necessarily-sympathetic situations. His central character in that film, the one granted the greatest moral authority, was a predatory pedophile, stricken with boy lust.

Now arriving into cinemas is Storytelling, a film told in two parts. The first segment, “Fiction,” involves Vi (Selma Blair), a desperate young, white, creative writing student who wants nothing more than to please her black university prof. Eventually, the two end up fucking in a shot blocked by the filmmaker with a red screen, in a sequence that has become the most often cited by critics. The prof orders her to yell, “Nigger fuck me hard!” She does so.
In the second segment, “Nonfiction,” a family’s life is changed when a filmmaker gains their consent to make a documentary about them. Exploitation runs amuck as the director uses the clan to create what he considers lively entertainment. Solondz casts Paul Giamatti in the role of filmmaker, endowed with the big glasses that are Solondz’s trademark.
It’s a self-conscious piece of work, and while navel-gazing often does in even the most talented of filmmakers, Solondz’s latest is engaging, disturbing and hilarious. The Mirror caught up with the filmmaker at his New York home, where he spoke about audience response, humour and the trouble with the wrong people interpreting his work the wrong way.

A different world

Mirror: This is much different than what I’m seeing on screens normally. Can you tell me what inspired the stories behind this film?

Todd Solondz: The genesis of all of this is that after Happiness, you always want to come up with something different. Structurally I knew I wanted to do something in two parts. I wanted to do a college movie initially. I thought of Carnal Knowledge and in terms of structure I thought of Full Metal Jacket, two movies that have prologues followed by longer sequels. I wrote the first part and then I realized I had no idea of writing any kind of sequel but rather wanted to comment on some other things, to come at some ideas and themes from a different angle. In the end, it would resemble a two-panelled painting, whose connections might be somewhat oblique or elusive at first, but for me, it’s all of a piece. The title itself, the nature of storytelling, provides some of the glue that binds these two disparate stories. Storytelling, of course, can be a source of redemptiveness, but it can also be a source of exploitation. That plays itself out in the first part, in terms of the question of who’s exploiting whom, but also in the second part, in terms of the filmmaker’s exploitation of his subject.

M: Were you concerned about the exploitation charge yourself? The fucking scene with the word “nigger” used is certainly being talked about.

TS: I was very cautious. But you make a certain leap. I had never dealt with the issue of race before. I wanted to grapple with this from a fresh angle if one can. When I wrote it, it felt very charged and very alive and the question at that point was is this just gratuitous or does it have a certain value or meaning. Within its context, the scene would certainly be supported and I feel I can defend it on its own terms. I haven’t really been attacked or accused of being exploitative. I know some black reviewers who have very much taken to the story and liked it.

Devoid of didacticism

M: This is certainly a very self-referential movie, much more than your previous works. You’re commenting on narrative itself…

TS: Certainly. The film is reflexive. There are scenes in both the first and second part where people are talking about storylines. They also are kind of playful jibing at the responses my work has elicited so far. I think the questions are all legitimate. Is your work immoral? Is your work cynical? I feel I can defend my work on its own terms. I feel there is a moral gravity to what I do. The difficulty some people may have is that I don’t make it all explicit, so I don’t tell people what to think or how to feel. There are no sign posts, so people don’t know what to make of it. But that, for me, is what makes it compelling. I have no interest in being didactic about any of this. On the other hand, there are some people who find the work to be nothing but a joke. And that is perhaps even more troubling. Certainly, the movies are comedies, emphatically painful and sorrowful comedies, but they are comedies. They aren’t jokes. I do take the work seriously. That’s why I’ve said that my movies aren’t for everyone, including some of those who like them.

M: In “Non-fiction,” the second segment, you’re commenting a bit on reality-based or documentary filmmaking and TV. The Canadian filmmaker Anne Wheeler once said that she found fiction filmmaking a relief after years of documentary filmmaking, because all doc filmmaking, on some level, was innately exploitative. Would you agree?

TS: Yeah. The great challenge of documentary filmmaking is to surmount the exploitative nature of what you’re doing, if not transcend it. It’s open for argument as to whether or not that can be done. And yet there are great documentary films. Janet Malcolm wrote an essay called, “The Journalist and the Murderer,” in which she talked about the relationship between the subject and the journalist, which is not unlike that of the documentarian and their subject. And the key thing to recognize as a documentarian is that it is an unequal relationship and that there are certain responsibilities that are incumbent upon the documentarian. Just as the subject has to understand that his agenda is not the same as the documentarian’s and that he has to make a kind of leap of faith, and hope that there will be some dignity accorded to him. Even if the subject’s pleased with the work, it doesn’t discount the possibility of a certain level of exploitativeness.

The envelope, please…

M: Storytelling is a collusion of characters not seen in mainstream cinema. You push the limits in terms of race, disability and class—and class is something that’s not readily discussed much anymore, certainly not in the mainstream. When you sit down to write, is pushing the envelope as much on your mind as telling a good story?

TS: The process of writing itself is not really such an intellectual one for me. You start with character and story and things evolve and emerge from that. In a sense, I think every writer who takes his work seriously is trying to provoke something, to push certain limits or envelopes. It doesn’t mean shocking for shock’s sake, but it does mean that you’re trying to get at something in a way that hasn’t been done before. You have to push yourself because of course if it’s already been done then it’s not going to be very interesting.

M: A number of critics argue that you’re sneering at your characters.

TS: It’s not a novel complaint, it’s been applied to all of my work. Sometimes people ask me, “Why do you make movies about such ugly characters?” I don’t feel that my characters are ugly, I think that’s more telling about the viewers themselves. I try to straddle a kind of line, where there’s a certain empathy, but also a critical distance. Certainly this film is more cerebral than about character. It’s a different kind of film than Happiness. I have a certain sense of humour that doesn’t sit well with everyone. Some people get it and others don’t. Some get it in ways I don’t like them to get it. I feel I know these characters, that I always have a certain affection even when I’m being terribly critical of them. My sympathies are always shifting. In the first part, I may be very sympathetic to Vi, her needs, her earnestness, and yet I’m also terribly critical of her. I’m with the teacher and with Vi at the same time. The second part is broader, so perhaps that opens us up to more sneering. My sympathies are always shifting, so I don’t hold the same allegiance that other filmmakers might to a certain character throughout the film. I don’t know about the fairness of the sneering charge, but if that’s what you’re getting from the films then you’re not really getting what it is I’m trying to do. :

Storytelling opens Friday,
Feb. 15 at Cinéma du Parc