INTERVIEW WITH PALINDROMES' DIRECTOR TODD SOLONDZ

What better way to celebrate the release of Todd Solondz Palindromes than by posting an interview of the man hissef. Todd Solondz isn't a house hold name but his iconoclastic output ranks as some of the most interesting American cinema in recent years. His new film Palindromes is drawing the usual hate love responses from audience and critics alike but in conversation he proves himself to be anything but a hater. Ever get the feeling a movie was watching you? That's exactly where Solondz wants his audience.

If you haven’t seen any of Todd Solondz’ movies you would have been in good company about two months ago. I had heard about Welcome to the Dollhouse, Happiness and Storytelling but never gotten around to viewing them. It took getting sent a screener of his newest film Palindromes to make me realize what I’d been missing. Solondz’ edgy, provocative and often tragically hilarious mode of storytelling hasn’t made him a lot of friends but it has earned him a reputation as one of America’s most fascinating filmmakers.

Palindromes central conceit is the playing of Aviva by several wildly different actresses. An overweight black girl, willowy red headed southerner, curly black haired Jew, Jennifer Jason Leigh, an adorable preteen, all take turns trading the role off. The overall effect is disturbing precisely because of the way it undercuts assumptions about race and social convention. Offering moments of sublime humor, heartfelt tragedy and detached observation Palindromes is yet another challenging film from a filmmaker who has made a career out of challenging audiences to do more than pay for their tickes.

DAVE: The obvious question is what drove you to tell this particular story in this particular way?

TS: First I have to say, and I certainly don’t mean to be coy, but those very things are always such a mystery to me. On the one hand writing isn’t fun, but I do find myself compelled. One thing I’m always aware of is the way things are rubbing up against each other out in the world. I remember reading about this man who’d bombed an abortion clinic and that when he was brought to trial the prosecution, who had him dead to rights, encountered a lot of community support for what he’d done. It just haunted me that people could get to a place where bombing clinics or shooting abortionists is seen as anything other than an atrocity. How do people get to that point?

As a storyteller I was immediately taken with the idea of getting under the skin of someone like that. How could I feel for someone who did something that terrible? It’s embedded deeply in us to think we are right. Stalin on his deathbed thought he was basically a good person. Narcissism and self-deception seem to be our most basic survival tools or at least the ones we fall back on most naturally.

DAVE: Yes, a lot of characters in your films have those instinctual reactions that end up producing very tragic results.

TS: Well I wanted to put my main character in a situation where anyone following her could see the steps that led to the decisions she made, and the ways that changed her and the ways it didn’t, hence the title of the film; Palindromes. I very much characterize her in the film as an innocent. Certainly no one would confuse her with Dawn Weiner from Welcome to the Dollhouse. But though both Dollhouse and Palindromes have a strong sense of comedy I’ve been maintaining that Palindromes is the saddest of all my comedies.

At the beginning of the film her mother tells her “You’ll always be you.” And at the end of the film we see how true that is. She has hung on to herself through many difficult things but see the good and the bad of that. The ways in which she has changed and the ways in which she has remained the same.

It’s much more complex than the audience often knows what to do with. In a way I’m needling them. They don’t know whether to laugh or to cry.

DAVE: Well the audience isn’t free to evaluate only the characters. At that point they have to evaluate how they see the characters.

TS: Yes, Ellen Barkin’s character is a great example. She really polarizes people. There are those who think she’s a terrible mother and those who feel she’s simply a sensible one. I look at her and I feel for her. She has progressive leanings but when she’s thrust into the reality of her 13-year-old daughter coming home pregnant intending to keep the baby she can’t handle it appropriately. Her dignity comes later when she breaks down, and don’t all mothers, and says “I’m a terrible mother. It’s by embracing herself or who she really is rather than who she aspires to be that she’s able to keep going on. It’s not simple enough to say a person like that is all bad or all good.

DAVE: You say in the press notes that no story is worth telling unless it’s a love story. Palindromes seems to have love for all of it’s characters even when they act in despicable ways.

TS: Life is a quest for love. If you are thirteen and you imagine a baby is kind to provide you a kind of unconditional love that you aren’t getting elsewhere then in the simplest terms you would say that girl is on a quest for love. All of the political and moral trickiness that surrounds that is what can make the basic issue difficult to grasp in it’s simplicity.

DAVE: Are you afraid people are going to miss the larger questions raised by the film in lieu of their feelings about religion, abortion, liberal politics etc.?

TS: Well I should probably point out that if I had wanted to make a pro-life or a pro-choice film that I sure could have made an easier one. I was after people and not positions with Palindromes and I think that inevitably leads into murky waters. There are no signposts telling you when to love and when not to love. Asking an audience to feel troubled and happy at the same time is asking a lot. I rarely get exactly the responses I’m looking for. Certainly a film like this, which winds around itself, is going to be provocative. One of my favorite scenes is the Sunshine Family Singers musical number. During the filming I was very moved by it. The kids took such pride and joy into bringing that song to life. Hopefully people can take that away with them without losing the ability to decipher what’s being said in the song, which is rather disturbing.

And the fact that some of the kids in the family are disabled makes it even harder for people trying to decipher what you’re up to as a writer or director. Are you making fun of kids with disabilities? I guess my response would be “Are kids with disabilities not supposed to dance and sing?” What people are most often most unhappy about is their own response to these sorts of things. I’m no different. Who doesn’t feel the tension of finding something funny that is also tragic or sad or vice-versa? People often ask me why I make films about ugly people. I don’t or at least I don’t see those people that way.

DAVE: Yet you do offer a series of factoids about abortion and religion at the end of the film.

TS: The audiences I encounter at film festivals and universities tend to be very liberal in persuasion and it seems to me all of us are living in a very divided, segregated sort of world these days. People are insulated to the point where they are amazed at the fact that George Bush can be elected to a second term. Basically I think it’s important for people to realize the real nature of the country we live in which is deeply religious and much more complicated than me and my neighbors in Greenwich Village are prone to remember.

DAVE: You do satirize both sides in the film.

TS: I hope I was much harsher on the liberals. If I was going to err I wanted to err on the side of the conservative Christians because the goal o the film isn’t to mock the “other side.” It’s alright to laugh but you have to laugh at the right things and not everything is equally worthy of being laughed at. Some things are worthy of being celebrated some should deeply disturb us. This is true of everyone in the film not just the Christians.

I love the character of Momma Sunshine. Is there a higher virtue than motherhood? She embodies it. She takes all these children into her home. But yet that home is also the center of some deeply disturbing and some funny things as well.

I recently saw Vera Drake. A lovely film beautifully shot and acted. And yet it makes me want to scream because the movie clearly wants to sanctify her. Hence all the liberals who go see the movie are encouraged to see her as a martyr and get to indulge in this kind of narcissism. There isn’t any real examination on the ethical questions the film raises. In Maria Full of Grace there’s a scene where a 17-year-old pregnant woman enters a clinic and we realize the only reason the scene is in the film is to tell us that the baby is okay. But when you get beyond the sentimentality of the moment what you are left with is a seventeen-year-old girl who is homeless, pregnant and doesn’t speak English. What’s she going to do now? Become a prostitute? The movie doesn’t come to grips with that.

DAVE: I’m curious how you would react to this. I’m actually underwritten to write and do interviews full time by a lay religious community in Chicago called Jesus People USA Evangelical Covenant Church. I’ve been a fulltime volunteer with them for about 15 years, met my wife there, am raising our two children there. I mention that because really what Palindromes is meant to foster is dialogue and of course that’s what film reviews, coverage of the creative arts but also evangelism and other religious activities are meant to do as well. Dialogue is, in fact, since we don’t all agree on these issues, all we really have. It’s a tension you seem keenly aware of.

TS: Well there is a certain arrogance I’m trying to undercut. In a way Palindromes is a fictionalization of that reality TV show Wife Swap where family members swap families and have to make it work. People are always ready to impose their way of thinking on others but when they have to live out their own convictions they often chicken out. It’s one thing to have an honest dialogue about what is truly best, but usually what you end up with is “America knows what’s best for…” “The church knows what’s best for…” “We liberals know what’s best for…” So rather than morality determining policy, power determines it.

DAVE: Do you think we can set the stage through the arts for a better mass exploration and dialogue about morality and where it comes from?

TS: I absolutely believe that. It’s why I make movies. I get called all sorts of things- mean-spirited, stupid etc. But dialogue is not about one side demonizing the other. I think anytime people can get together and really hear each other, have a glimpse into each other that is a step in the right direction.