Episode 336 - Todd Solondz
Marc:What's wrong with me?
Marc:It's time for WTF with Mark Maron.
Marc:Alright, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fuckstables?
Marc:What the fuckadelets?
Marc:What the fuckineers?
Marc:This is Mark Maron.
Marc:This is WTF.
Marc:Thank you for listening.
Marc:Thank you for choosing me.
Marc:Thank you for choosing life.
Marc:Not that I'm life, but yeah, I am life.
Marc:I'm alive.
Marc:But I don't know.
Marc:I just threw that in.
Marc:What am I, insecure today?
Marc:What is this going to be?
Marc:Am I going to check everything I say out of my head?
Marc:Let me tell you that I will be in Philadelphia at Helium Comedy Club December 6th through 8th.
Marc:Looking forward to that.
Marc:Looking forward to that roast pork sandwich with provolone and broccoli rabe at Denix.
Marc:And I'm looking forward to performing.
Marc:And I'm going to have some posters there that my buddy Box Brown made specifically for that gig.
Marc:Yeah, so that'll be fun.
Marc:I haven't been out in a while.
Marc:You people in Philly are going to get to the experience, the re-entry, the excited re-entry into the hour plus set.
Marc:That's always good.
Marc:Very unpredictable.
Marc:Todd Salons is on the show.
Marc:Very interesting guy.
Marc:I was very nervous about the interview because he's sort of a lofty dude, intellectual sort, and not the most accessible person in the world.
Marc:But I got the opportunity.
Marc:He did show up a bit late, and then he had to go be at a screening of a film of his.
Marc:So it's not epic, but it was a good conversation.
Marc:If you don't know, Todd Solons is the director of many dark, disturbing, sometimes funny, always provocative movies.
Marc:The movies you probably do know are Welcome to the Dollhouse or Happiness or storytelling, palindromes, life during wartime, his new film Dark Horse.
Marc:He's a very...
Marc:He's a challenging dude, challenging art, challenging guy to talk to, but I'm a huge fan.
Marc:Happiness to me is a small masterpiece, and I'm excited to talk to him.
Marc:What does it all mean, people?
Marc:Maybe that's where I'm at.
Marc:Maybe that's where I'm at.
Marc:My girlfriend Jessica is inside concocting a turmeric mask for her face.
Marc:I spoke to you a bit about the...
Marc:The charcoal mask she put on, I had a slight strange blackface issue.
Marc:Now, I guess we're going to go ahead and cover all the racial stereotypes.
Marc:Fortunately, it's not a planned bit of Asian menstrelsy.
Marc:It's just a new mask.
Marc:And I'm going to try not to read into it when I walk into the house and she will have a yellow face.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:This is this is what you deal with.
Marc:I guess this is part of being in a relationship is, you know, and just letting these things happen without making fun of them.
Marc:Much and whatever makes people comfortable.
Marc:Is that is that the way it has to be?
Marc:If it's not going to hurt you and it makes you feel better or it's proactive in some way, knock yourself out.
Marc:Give it give it give it a go.
Marc:This isn't a long journey, friends.
Marc:I feel like I'm being not morbid, but a little melancholy lately.
Marc:I think it has to do with the fact that my show ended and I was so engaged for a few months every day, writing, shooting.
Marc:And now it's back to the garage, back to the conversations, which I love having.
Marc:But also there's a lot of time in between where I should be writing.
Marc:I should be doing a lot of things.
Marc:Some things just don't.
Marc:fucking change man my behavior my habits around certain things the amount of time i can waste and know that i'm wasting it and as i am wasting it saying why am i doing this and then doing something i i shouldn't necessarily do to feel better and then that gets thrown on the pile of shit that i don't stop doing you know what it's like when you're home alone in your bathrobe and there's cereal and porn around it's just uh you know you can make a day out of those things
Marc:Look, don't don't judge.
Marc:It's not too crazy.
Marc:I'm just saying I'm just feeling a little weird.
Marc:I told you about the stereo equipment I got.
Marc:So, of course, I've been cataloging all my records, going through every record, cleaning them, putting them in better, better sleeves that I have ordered.
Marc:and uh deciding which ones i'm keeping which ones i'm not i was gonna get rid of like 50 records some of them too crackly some of them i don't know where the they came from i think i have records that were my college girlfriends uh i think they were hers and is it weird do i return them maybe that would be a good episode hey i've got your david bowie scary monsters i don't know if you need it or if you have a record player or
Marc:Oh, are these your children?
Marc:Oh, maybe that would be something I should do.
Marc:Maybe I should do a show where I return my records, return my college girlfriend's records to her.
Marc:I have weird records, man.
Marc:And I don't even have that many.
Marc:I've got like 300 records maybe, maybe 400, including the comedy records, all the collection of comedy albums, which I haven't cleaned and cataloged yet.
Marc:But I'll tell you, man, cataloging and cleaning albums one by one, I'm already sick of them.
Marc:These were records that obviously I got sick of at some other point in time, and now they're the same records, and I'm sick of them now.
Marc:After listening to everyone for crackles and snaps, a couple of them are great, obviously.
Marc:What I'm saying to you is no matter what you buy or what you engage in, you're still going to end up just sitting there doing that.
Marc:You'll clean that last record and be like, well, what did I just do?
Marc:How long is life?
Marc:Why do I even care about this stuff?
Marc:Why do I have all these books in my garage?
Marc:I need to have a garage sale, folks.
Marc:I brought a box of records over to Permanent Records up here in Highland Park or Eagle Rock.
Marc:And they didn't want some of them.
Marc:Understandably so.
Marc:I don't know where the Leon Redbone album came from.
Marc:I think someone sent it to me because of my facial configuration of hair.
Marc:And I do want to thank you guys for sending me vinyl and stuff.
Marc:That's very cool.
Marc:A lot of people who listen to the show or who are in the record biz or the independent record biz are sending me vinyl and I'm now getting to listen to it.
Marc:I don't know exactly who sent everything.
Marc:It gets a little chaotic over here and I'm not sure where things come from, but I'll
Marc:certainly talk about it if i uh if i find one that kicks my ass but i'm just getting into that so if you've sent me albums or or cds and stuff i i'm just now finding the time to to listen to those and i appreciate it i like looking at records i like having records i like listening to records but sadly i think i like looking at all my records more than i like listening to all of them it's the same with the books and we've covered this before i'm not going to get into it i am going to walk into the house to a girlfriend who's got yellow face
Marc:Not black face, yellow face.
Marc:But speaking of black, the deaf black cat is out there.
Marc:Why the hell does Boomer disappear?
Marc:He doesn't come home.
Marc:Yet this deaf black cat who cannot hear and you can walk right up to him when it sees you, it freaks out.
Marc:But that cat's been out there for, you know, he's been coming around here for a year.
Marc:Deaf.
Marc:And he's out in the wild and he manages.
Marc:Boomer, gone.
Marc:It's fucking horrible.
Marc:My girlfriend can't even smoke on the back deck anymore because she used to sit there with Boomer.
Marc:Now she can't even go out there.
Marc:There's sadness that's pervasive.
Marc:I don't know when that passes.
Marc:I guess grief is grief.
Marc:I did manage to create a Boomer Lives t-shirt, which is available at WTFpod.com in the name of Boomer, in the name of all that is good, in the name of the Boomer Buddha.
Marc:You can grab a Boomer Lives t-shirt, American Apparel, a few different colors.
Marc:I'm going to put a dollar from each sale towards some animal-oriented charity that I have not chosen yet.
Marc:But that's going to happen.
Marc:So that's special.
Marc:And it's a very specific shirt.
Marc:It's one you'll have to explain.
Marc:It's one that you can wear proudly as a WTF fan.
Marc:oh no why am i freaking out come on let's get down to it let's figure it out oh could it be that i'm going to see my mother this week could it be that i'm going to thanksgiving dinner down there could it be that i'm a few pounds heavier than i'd like to be and i know on some level deep ingrained inside of me my mother will not love me if i'm fat
Marc:The regression has begun.
Marc:I don't know about you guys, but I think something clicks inside of me about a week or two before I have to visit my mother where I think I slowly start regressing.
Marc:So I'm figuring by the time I get there on Tuesday, I should probably be about 14 years old.
Marc:And then by Thanksgiving, I should be 10, which is about the age you become when you go to your family's house.
Marc:10 that's where they get you so looking forward to that being a fucking baby and also i've got this weird fear lately i i gotta share this fear with you because i look i don't spend a lot of time thinking about death because i do things like catalog my records and eat ice cream and uh but i have i haven't been doing as much comedy as i'm used to i'm just getting back into the swing of it
Marc:And now my brain is is spreading.
Marc:Now I feel the nag of emptiness pulling at my heart.
Marc:I feel that part of my brain that there's a grayness, a sort of not a not a not a melancholy, but sort of like this something.
Marc:It's a tone that starts to pervade.
Marc:It's sort of like, is this it tone?
Marc:Is it all this is all of it is starting to take hold down oozing up creeping out of my reptile brain into the thinking part.
Marc:But I've had these weird fears lately, and what I wanted to say is I don't really think about my mortality that much.
Marc:Occasionally when I don't feel well, I think, well, this is it.
Marc:This has got to be something.
Marc:I'm at that age.
Marc:Had heartburn the other night.
Marc:I thought I was having a heart attack.
Marc:Could happen.
Marc:But I don't morbidly obsess on dying, and hence lately I've had these new fears where I think something is just going to crush me.
Marc:Sometimes it's space debris.
Marc:I've had that laying in bed thinking a piece of a satellite is going to come crashing onto my house.
Marc:Trucks.
Marc:I have the fear of a truck just coming.
Marc:Right now, I feel like a renegade truck could just come plowing into the garage.
Marc:A tree will fall on it.
Marc:Somebody will hit me with a hammer.
Marc:Somebody will just walk up to me and crush me.
Marc:That would have to be a large person.
Marc:But I am thinking that this is, because I don't ruminate on death, I'm thinking it's sort of squeaking out in these little scenarios that happen spontaneously in my mind.
Marc:But though it was pointed out to me that might just be anxiety and dread, which would be common for me.
Marc:I'm sorry.
Marc:Thanksgiving's coming up, but this is the pre-Thanksgiving show.
Marc:This is the pre-Thanksgiving tone.
Marc:Man, what is wrong with my brain chemis?
Marc:My brain chemis are not on my side today.
Marc:It happens.
Marc:I will say this.
Marc:I'm wearing UGG slippers that are all fuzzy inside, and that's working a little bit.
Marc:Sitting here in a flannel robe, UGG slippers in my boxers.
Marc:That's how I'm living right now as I talk to you.
Marc:I wasn't wearing that when I talked to Todd Salon, so let's go to that now.
Guest:Okay, do you hear me?
Marc:I do hear you, yeah.
Marc:Is that how you're going to talk?
Guest:Maybe it'll change over time.
Guest:It'll only get weaker, I'm afraid.
Marc:Well, Todd Solons, that's how I say it, right?
Guest:Solons.
Marc:Solons.
Marc:You speak with a slight accent.
Marc:What is that?
Guest:Well, when people say you have a strange accent, what I always assume is they just mean I have a Jewish accent is what they really are saying.
Guest:But not that I see myself as having a particularly Jewish.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I really don't know.
Guest:This is the way I talk.
Marc:My family is, I'm Jewish.
Marc:I'm from Jersey.
Marc:My family, yeah, they come from, my grandfather was from Elizabeth.
Marc:You're from around there, right?
Guest:Actually, my father and grandfather, they had a lumberyard in Elizabeth Linden area or something.
Marc:Yeah, both of my grandparents are buried in Linden.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Right behind the Budweiser factory, I think.
Marc:There's a little Jewish cemetery there.
Guest:I didn't grow up in that area, which has changed over the years.
Guest:I grew up in Livingston, which is...
Guest:A suburb near the oranges.
Guest:It's a little bit, I think those Jews who had fled Newark.
Marc:After fleeing Eastern Europe to Newark, once they got a little money, they fled Newark.
Marc:Yes, yes.
Guest:Well, even without money, once the blacks came in, they fled.
Marc:That was it.
Marc:Time to go.
Guest:That's right.
Marc:So you didn't have family in Newark.
Marc:The whole family moved to Livingston.
Guest:Technically, I was born in Newark, but I grew up in Lily White, Livingston.
Marc:And in your childhood, were you brought up religious?
Guest:No, notwithstanding, I was sent to an Orthodox yeshiva as a little boy, Tzitzis, and so forth, in Elizabeth, in fact, is where the yeshiva was.
Guest:But I think because of my grandfather, and then I got too religious for them, because you take it like a sponge at that age, and they put me into public school.
Yeah.
Marc:You actually became two religious.
Guest:From my family, yeah.
Guest:My mom went, you should wear a different color.
Guest:I said, no, black, only black.
Marc:You were like the little rabbi?
Guest:Did you have pay us in the whole business?
Guest:No, I didn't get that far.
Guest:It was orthodox, but not Hasidic.
Guest:My family had to... Step in?
Marc:Intervene?
Guest:Yes, it was an intervention.
Marc:So, given that, I mean, when you look back on that, given your work up to date and as an artist, do you wonder why you were so committed?
Marc:What about, was it just the outfits?
Guest:Well, you know, I think actually while I went to, and when I think back now, when I was in yeshiva...
Guest:I was in certain sense not so accepted or seen as a bit of a rebel because my family wasn't religious and we would sometimes go out to Howard Johnson's and have the fried shrimp special.
Guest:And when I mentioned that to the rabbi, he was not amused or pleased.
Guest:And so I was a little bit stigmatized for taking, for telling everyone how wonderful Howard Johnson's was.
Guest:But as soon as I left the yeshiva and went to public school, I never would eat the shrimp special again.
Guest:So I found myself as a kind of personality that always had to be in a place of contention.
Guest:If everyone was saying, no, you can't eat shrimp, that's when I ate the shrimp.
Guest:But ever since, I would never eat shrimp.
Guest:Even now when there's no pressure to not eat shrimp, you won't do it.
Guest:No.
Guest:Well, today there's no pressure to eat or not eat.
Guest:But it's all these strange rules.
Guest:And there were so many.
Guest:I mean, I learned all about what was kosher, all the finer distinctions and so forth very early on.
Marc:So let's talk about that contention.
Marc:Because I experienced that.
Marc:Because a lot of your movies, most of them I have seen, Happiness had the most profound effect on me.
Marc:And Welcome to the Dollhouse, I loved.
Marc:But compared to Happiness, that was almost a sweet movie.
Guest:Do you see that?
Guest:Well, I don't characterize, I look at my work as now I'm going to do something sweet and now I'm going to do something dark.
Guest:It just happens.
Guest:You have a story you want to tell and you bring your sensibility into play and you see how people respond.
Guest:Even with this movie right now,
Guest:On the poster, there's a blurb from one critic.
Guest:It's so brilliantly cruel, acid.
Guest:And another critic says, so tense or so gentle and warm hearted.
Guest:Well, I mean, who is right?
Guest:I don't quarrel with these people.
Guest:You have your feelings.
Guest:And if you feel a certain way, there's nothing to quarrel about.
Guest:That's just a given.
Guest:But I'm used to the kind of ambivalent response that all my movies get, even if there is no controversial subjects matter or taboo that's in play.
Guest:I think the movies are fraught with a certain ambiguity that I think makes it difficult for people to know exactly how to respond.
Guest:Should I laugh?
Guest:Should I not laugh?
Guest:It is difficult.
Guest:This is sad, but I'm laughing.
Guest:What is the nature of that laughter?
Guest:Because laughter is not this monolithic force.
Guest:I do think that there are all different kinds of laughter.
Marc:Oh, I agree.
Guest:And even you, I'm sure as a comedian, can appreciate just because you get the laugh or a laugh doesn't mean it's the laugh that you want.
Marc:Well, there's a few.
Marc:There's the laugh from surprise and shock, the discomfort laugh.
Marc:And then there's the laugh that I enjoy, which is the laugh that could be crying.
Marc:And then there's just the surface, kind of like that silly laugh.
Guest:Yeah, and I mean, and there's also the laugh of, you know, you go to a movie and people sometimes, maybe they laugh to let you know that they get the joke in French because they understand the French, you know, and it's not translated in the subtitles.
Guest:Right.
Guest:There are all kinds of laughter.
Guest:And I think in the same way that movies can be characterized as honest or deceptive, audiences themselves can be honest or not honest in their responses to the film.
Guest:The context in which one experiences a film has a tremendous power in terms of the way that one experiences and responds to it.
Marc:You mean in sense of like whether they watch it with a large audience or whether they watch it at home?
Guest:A number of factors.
Guest:For example, I always feel that if you go to a movie alone, you're having the most genuine experience with a film.
Guest:It's unmitigated.
Guest:It's uncompromised by how other people might respond.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I'm not talking about the audience at large, but if you go with a date or if you go with a group of friends, there's inherently a kind of pressure to respond in some way, either to find a common denominator or...
Guest:or to rough out, to smooth out the edges so that there's a kind of compatibility.
Guest:Or you could argue that depending on the relationship within the group, whatever they say, maybe you have to be in contrast and contention with.
Guest:So it's more about the dynamic of the group experience rather than the immediate engagement with a film.
Marc:Well, what do you think shaped your point of view?
Marc:I mean, where did you go to college?
Marc:yeah and what'd you study there i was an english major so that that uh yeah i was an english major i'm not comparing myself to you but that wasn't film but like when you look back on what like as an english major you know what what poetry did you gravitate towards what was your focus
Guest:I never really liked poetry.
Guest:I mean, I never really understood poetry.
Guest:I mean, some poetry, yes, I could respond to, but it was all just very intellectual, my response, just when they would give me Wordsworth and Keats and so forth.
Guest:It wasn't the kinds of immediate visceral response.
Guest:Well, what hit you in the gut like that?
Marc:No, no, just any literature.
Marc:I mean, what was the cathartic moment or a series of moments that led you to sort of tell the stories that you tell?
Guest:You know, I don't think that they come from literature or film or any of the arts, to tell you the truth.
Guest:I feel it's from having lived a life.
Guest:All of the movies and books that I've read and so forth shape and instructs me in terms of how to shape and the ways in which audiences can be manipulated or the effects of strategies of telling a story.
Guest:But the actual, what is it that shapes one?
Guest:Look, if you want, what was my most powerful first movie experience was Sound of Music.
Guest:And I loved that film.
Guest:I was five years old and tormented my siblings with the music and so forth.
Guest:How about your first personal experience?
Marc:Because when I watch your movies, I'm a fairly sensitive, dark-minded guy.
Marc:So I see happiness as sort of a celebration of life in some bizarre way.
Marc:But it makes me feel a certain feeling.
Marc:The characters, many of them are isolated.
Marc:They're emotionally pained.
Marc:They're struggling with their own desires.
Marc:They're up against situations that they can't get out of and they can't stop and may or may not be killing them.
Marc:Some of them are sort of transgressing in sexual ways that you actually start to sympathize for, even though they're horrible.
Marc:I mean...
Marc:Maybe I'm projecting, but I have to assume that at some point you started to look at life as something other than just the surface.
Guest:I was always a good boy.
Guest:I never got in trouble.
Guest:I never did anything really transgressive growing up.
Guest:And I guess it took me a long time to start growing up and finding myself as a person, as a filmmaker.
Guest:I made movies.
Guest:I really came to it in my mid-30s.
Guest:And it...
Guest:You know, when I go to the movies, I suppose when I laugh or if I'm moved, the message that I always respond to ultimately in any movie is always you are not alone.
Guest:And I think that that's the hope that I have for my own work, that people can connect to the kinds of struggles and plights that my characters are having.
Guest:afflicted with, because it's not so much the affliction, it's about the struggle.
Guest:You know, how do you, we're all dealt a different hand, so to speak.
Guest:It's how do you play it?
Guest:How do you escape the solipsism or the narcissism or whatever pathology you're afflicted with?
Guest:And how do you
Guest:function and find a life for yourself, a connection with others.
Marc:Did you feel isolated as a kid?
Marc:Do you have siblings?
Marc:Were you sort of an odd kid?
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:Did you get along with your parents?
Guest:I think my childhood is fairly unremarkable, actually.
Guest:I have three siblings, two brothers and a sister.
Guest:And parents were not divorced.
Guest:And...
Guest:My dad worked, my mom was a stay-at-home homemaker and so forth.
Guest:And was I odd?
Guest:You have to ask others.
Guest:It's sort of like when someone goes on a rampage and starts killing in the movie theater.
Guest:Well, I always thought he was a little odd.
Guest:Or I always seemed so regular.
Guest:I seemed like a nice person.
Guest:I had no idea, you know.
Guest:It's hard to be really accurate.
Marc:I would say that... In high school, where did you fall?
Marc:We're about the same age.
Marc:Were you considered a nerd?
Marc:Were you considered a wallflower?
Marc:Were you considered a jock?
Marc:Were you...
Guest:No, I wasn't any of those.
Guest:I was deeply isolated, though, I feel.
Guest:I mean, I had one close friend and one and a half, I'd say, friends.
Guest:And there were some others I was friendly with.
Guest:But I was definitely marginalized in high school.
Guest:At that point, I went to four different schools growing up, and I ended up going to a prep school.
Guest:It was...
Guest:It was Orwellian, you know, in the sense the kind of school that Orwell himself went to.
Guest:Oh, up in New England?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:Orwell went to school in England and had a nightmare experience in his boarding school.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Mine was not a boarding school, but it was based on that template, let's say, of that structure of the English kind of tradition.
Guest:And when I first went, my first three years, it was boys only, and then it went co-ed for high school while I was there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was, I was, there were a couple other Jews in the school.
Guest:It was a, it was, but they were Jews who went to country clubs and I never, they played tennis.
Guest:And there was like in that garden of Finzi Contini sort of kind of Jew.
Guest:The upper middle class country club Jew.
Guest:Yeah, which I hadn't been exposed to.
Guest:And for my family, when I applied and was accepted to this school, it was a very big deal.
Guest:Because my family, on the one hand, was always very Zionist, always very pro-Israel.
Guest:The Holocaust was an omnipresent factor.
Guest:My mom came during the war to this country.
Guest:And so it was very much shaped with the sense of the Holocaust preceding my existence.
Marc:Did you have relatives that died in the Holocaust?
Guest:Yeah, but I mean, I guess I never met any of them.
Marc:But was there firsthand stories from your mother?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:No, I can't say.
Guest:My mom escaped, so everything is hearsay.
Guest:At the same time that they had this attachment to being Jews, they also had a certain kind of assimilationist impulse.
Guest:The idea of not consciously, but on some level, wanting to de-Judify, to be able to associate and climb the social ladder.
Guest:The past.
Guest:Yes, to pass, or if not to pass, to certainly socialize in the upper tiers of society.
Guest:Wasp culture.
Guest:Yeah, and so to be accepted in that kind of a school was a big deal for them.
Guest:But it was inevitable that I would have a rough time, not because I was Jewish, but I was...
Guest:I was definitely an artistically inclined kind of kid.
Guest:I've been writing really since I'm reading.
Guest:I had worked on a kind of novel for three years.
Guest:In high school?
Guest:No, in elementary school.
Guest:And so, I mean, I was very, you know, that kind of kid that would never be accepted socially in a place like Pingree.
Guest:So were you bullied?
Guest:By certain kids, yes.
Guest:I always had, fortunately, was fast.
Guest:So I never actually got beaten up.
Guest:But certainly I was bullied.
Guest:It was not a good school.
Guest:And what was not good and the message I got from it, and I felt very passionately about this, was that because my older siblings went to public school.
Guest:By the time I came along, my parents could afford children.
Guest:to send me to private school, and they thought I was special, let's say.
Guest:And what I came away with was, and what I felt while I was there was that the school was not a good school.
Guest:The distinction between this school and public school was just income.
Guest:that the children came from very wealthy families, whereas in public school they uniformly did not.
Marc:It also facilitates a certain class structure and enables richer kids to get into certain schools, and it probably helped them along those lines.
Guest:Yeah, of course, of course.
Guest:I remember making this fatal mistake early on when I first went to school and when they asked, does anyone play a musical instrument?
Guest:And I raised my hands.
Guest:And I learned that was the worst thing to do, was to confess that you played the piano.
Guest:Because that was, of course, total sissy, fag, and so forth kind of thing.
Guest:But for most of my adolescence, I was very so serious about music.
Guest:I wanted to be a musician.
Guest:I just didn't have the talent.
Guest:That's a hard realization to have.
Guest:For a while, you are fiercely ambitious and think you can, because you're good at school, you can make anything work.
Guest:But at a certain point, you realize people who don't have much going on in their head, but they can just play the piano without studying anything.
Guest:It's like hopeless.
Guest:It's like black and white.
Guest:He has talent.
Guest:You can't manufacture the gift.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And I didn't have it.
Guest:But it's also a good lesson, a life lesson as well, because with film as well, there is no correlation between how hard you work on a project and the ultimate success of the film.
Guest:that it's an unknowable kind of alchemy that makes some film come together and speak to audiences or not.
Guest:That said, I'm very happy that I've had this quasi-career, you know, getting to make these movies, even if each movie makes about half as much as its predecessor, so that my...
Guest:My box office is really down.
Guest:It's about as low as it can get.
Marc:But when you come out to Hollywood, I mean, when you come out here to LA, you're here for a screening of Dark Horse, right?
Marc:And you're going to introduce it?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I wish I could be there.
Marc:But going back to Welcome to the Dollhouse, I mean, this came out
Marc:Sort of at a time where independent film was the thing.
Marc:It was before it sort of blew up and became its own industry.
Marc:And it received sort of the type of accolades that it wrote an edge that it seemed that people could accept.
Marc:And in terms of, I have to assume that when you say your box office is diminished a bit, that that was your most accessible film of your career.
Yeah.
Guest:Apparently, but it's also true that there are fewer people to support these kinds of films.
Guest:The audience has shrunken.
Marc:But how do you feel about it?
Marc:I mean, do you look at it that way?
Marc:Do you look at all of them on the same playing field?
Marc:Do you look at that, you know, because there was some broader, you know, characters, it seemed like the comedy was a little different, that you weren't exploring as deeply as you did, you know, issues of, you know, adolescent discomfort, you know, sexual abuse, you know, and that type of stuff.
Marc:Did you find that after you made that movie that you were surprised?
Marc:And then when you realized the success of it, you're like, well, I have to go deeper?
Marc:Was there...
Guest:Well, I think really what happened was after, you know, I had pursued many endeavors.
Guest:Like what?
Guest:Well, I was a failed musician when I was in college.
Guest:I wrote many, many plays, all remarkably just dreadful and mercifully unproduced.
Guest:And when success finally started,
Guest:I was already mid-30s, and so my life had been shaped by failure.
Guest:And so when success comes, your personality, your character doesn't suddenly change overnight.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:you may have success, but you're still shaped by failure.
Guest:And so you appreciate success that much more.
Guest:I can say that success is preferable to failure, that I learn more from success than I do from failure.
Marc:But let me ask you this, in terms of talking about the sort of the drive shaft that you have that
Guest:that that is contentious do you feel that like that after the success you were you were defying people to like you well yeah i i think it on some level it didn't i didn't feel so comfortable and and and i didn't fully believe um uh in the success or popularity of the film and so i wrote happiness in some sense uh to see uh would any door since every door had been open to me would any door remain open after writing it how
Guest:What about now?
Guest:Well, yeah, it was a kind of like a test.
Guest:Is anyone still standing?
Guest:And because I did want to take advantage of the success of that film and try and do something that I could never do otherwise.
Marc:Was that something you had planned?
Marc:I mean, when you made Welcome to the Dollhouse, did you have rough drafts for these stories?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:When I made Welcome to the Dollhouse, I was just hoping I could maybe have a modest career doing after-school specials.
Guest:I didn't know that it would become what it became.
Guest:I didn't even have that ambition.
Guest:I really didn't.
Marc:So you were surprised?
Guest:I was kind of shocked, actually.
Marc:When you wrote plays, do you find that these themes that you are relatively obsessed with, were they in your plays as well?
Marc:Would you like to produce the plays that you wrote?
Guest:No, they were terrible.
Guest:Like, what were they about?
Guest:an ill-formed mutant kind of juvenilia.
Guest:It was just immature.
Guest:And I could have, at that moment after Dollhouse, I could have, of course, taken advantage of that moment and made something that would have been profitable, a commercial film.
Marc:You knew that then?
Guest:I knew that.
Guest:All those doors were open to me.
Guest:But life is short, and I felt I had had terrible failures.
Guest:I had made a film, which was a horrible film, ill-conceived, ill-begotten.
Guest:And I...
Guest:I didn't want to have the kind of one for me, one for them career that some directors opt for.
Guest:I want everything for me because it's such a nightmare to make a film.
Guest:It's so hard.
Guest:If I'm going to collapse on the set of a film and that be my obituary, I'd like it to be something that mattered to me.
Marc:So in terms of like in thinking about death like that and in thinking about life being short, your point of view, your sense is that, well, I should leave something that I can be proud of and that represented me completely and took the chances I wanted to take.
Marc:This is what I have.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I, it's not that I, it's not, you know, I don't even think in terms of I want this to represent me.
Guest:It's just, it's, there are stories that I want to tell.
Guest:There are things that interest me about these, this world, these worlds that I put together, that, that really compels me and excites me.
Guest:And that's what I want to spend my time with.
Marc:Did you take cues from any filmmakers?
Marc:I mean, once you became a filmmaker and once you started putting together your first short films and films, were there filmmakers that you thought were really pushing the envelope and gave you a sort of creative door?
Guest:See, that's the thing is that my ambition never had been to push the envelope.
Guest:That's the irony.
Guest:It really wasn't.
Guest:I didn't consciously say, oh, this is going to... You know, I knew I wanted... While it's true that after Dollhouse, I wanted to do something that I knew I couldn't easily do without having a success at the box office, it wasn't quite...
Guest:setting out to shock at the same time, it was that I knew that there were subjects or things that I wanted to explore and to play with, to grapple with.
Guest:But they were loaded.
Marc:I mean, you knew that there was a lot of juice there.
Guest:Well, yeah, that's true.
Guest:But, you know, that's what was in my head.
Guest:That's what I wanted.
Guest:That's what I wanted to write.
Guest:That's what and I so I just wrote that.
Guest:I didn't think I never have thought about, you know, what's good for my career, obviously, because if I had, I'd be making different movies.
Marc:It's very interesting.
Marc:The moment in happiness, given everything that happiness had with Philip Seymour Hoffman and then the kid who almost seemed to me to be a younger version of Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Marc:For some reason, I kept connecting those two, that this kid was heading towards something like that.
Marc:But the one scene that I always remember is towards the end of the film, it might even be the very end of the film, is Ben Gazzara aggressively salting his food.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And it's like, it's just, you know, that moment where you realize that, you know, that was, you know, so loaded in that, you know, it might kill him, it might take a while, but certainly given the life he was living in that movie, you know, he let himself this food.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, he was focused there.
Guest:How did you direct that?
Marc:Did you say, you know, this is...
Guest:Ben was very easy to direct.
Guest:I mean, he was like a two-take guy.
Guest:One, two, we're done, let's move on.
Guest:The difficulty was Louise Lasser is not a two-take kind of actress.
Guest:And I love Louise, but it was difficult managing someone like Louise, who has her own sense of space and time, and Ben Gazzar, who's much more kind of, let's say, practical.
Marc:And also he's worked with improvisational directors.
Marc:He's worked with Cassavetes and whatnot.
Marc:Were you a Cassavetes guy?
Guest:Of course, I saw those movies.
Guest:But no, I came more, I think, the first movie, I would say that...
Guest:made me think maybe I can be a filmmaker was actually the short films that I saw of George Kuchar, a filmmaker who died last September.
Marc:He had a brother too, right?
Guest:Yes, the Kuchar brothers.
Guest:And they were very inspiring to me when I saw their films in college.
Guest:And there's a direct line, I think, from George Kuchar to Andy Warhol, Paul Morrissey, John Waters, and so forth.
Guest:The irony here is that...
Guest:I looked at them as people like, I can't make a career like that.
Guest:I have a very conventional bourgeois kind of personality.
Guest:I don't.
Guest:Someone like John Sayles, he was like, that's what I wanted to have a career like him.
Marc:That was the creative motto.
Marc:You couldn't set up a complete factory image.
Guest:I mean, I was never a cool kid.
Guest:I would never have been accepted at the factory.
Guest:Maybe you wouldn't.
Guest:No, I would not have been.
Guest:Only after the factory.
Marc:Not at the beginning.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:I was never cool or hip in any way.
Guest:I was a little bit solitary.
Marc:So you knew on some level that the domain of film you were going to make was an art film.
Guest:I didn't know that.
Guest:Yeah, that's another, it's a bit of a paradox.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I thought, I actually thought that these movies, you know, when I, and even when I couldn't make movies, even this most recent one.
Guest:my hope is lots it'll be a mainstream movie everyone will like that's the dream either look at this and then afterwards I say oh I see why it's not quite so mainstream but I always have the fantasy of my fantasy isn't to try and be you know do an art house Andy Warhol movie no it's to do something that actually will speak to a large audience but it never is a large audience I've never had one
Marc:When you talk about John Waters, because it seems to me that the difference in my mind between the people that you're talking about, and I can see the lineage there, is that not that they were necessarily... I think they were very sympathetic to the characters they were putting in their films, but they were also using people that brought a lot of character to the thing, whereas you're using real actors, and it seems that you empathize and create...
Marc:you know, fairly shocking situations, but they are played out, you know, with a range of human emotions and not just as caricatures or as experiments.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:You know, there's a kind of mixture of attitude, I suppose, that may make my movies a little bit less accessible than I wish they were, perhaps.
Guest:But...
Guest:On the one hand, I'll go and see Andy Warhol's Bad, and I would laugh, and yet I have very conventional taste at the same time of Hollywood films.
Guest:The Sound of Music, as I referenced.
Guest:When I mentioned that, in fact, when I made Palindromes many years later,
Guest:I have a family of singers, the Sunshine Singers, and I don't think they would have come into existence were I not thinking of the Von Trapps.
Marc:But did anyone make that connection other than you?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I definitely recognized it.
Guest:I saw The Sound of Music in there.
Guest:I saw The Wizard of Oz in there.
Guest:I saw The Night of the Hunter.
Marc:But don't you think that most people were trying to figure out why you kept using different actresses to play one part?
Guest:It's funny because it seems so simple to me.
Guest:It didn't seem so complicated, the conceits, you know, that, oh, at first, maybe at the first, the second, and then they get the hang of it, like you learn to ride a bicycle.
Marc:But why did you do that?
Marc:I'm sure you've been asked that question many times before.
Marc:So now you have a story that deals with, I believe, incest and rape and religious fanatics and abortion and the journey of an individual and almost like a Candide-like thing.
Marc:And then you're switching out actresses throughout the film.
Marc:And you're saying, like, I don't understand why they didn't see the sound of music elements.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, I can only tell you where my head is when I'm writing the thing.
Guest:Obviously, I see it afterwards.
Guest:I see why it's challenging for some audiences.
Guest:All right.
Guest:But if you look at the script of the film, it's very linear.
Guest:No, I'm sure it is.
Guest:There are no flash forwards and elliptical stories.
Guest:I write in a sense as if I'm 11 years old again.
Marc:But you made a choice to switch out the actresses.
Guest:I like to play.
Guest:I like to have fun.
Guest:I like to try things.
Guest:And there were a number of reasons that I employed this strategy.
Guest:And it was scary because this is not the way most people like to go to the movies and see...
Guest:To bring different actors and get a character from different angles, in some sense, seemed like a more universalizing kind of, there was a universalizing kind of intent, like that this could be you, this could be me, you could be fat, thin, black, white, what have you.
Marc:Oh, I get it, okay.
Marc:But you knew on some level it would be challenging to most film audiences.
Guest:I thought they'd pick up on it, you know, quick enough.
Guest:Like a lot of movies, you know, that's the funny thing is I go to movies a lot of the time, movies that are pretty mainstream, in fact, and I have to ask my friends or friends afterwards.
Guest:So many details I didn't understand.
Guest:But just because I don't even understand a lot of details doesn't mean I didn't like the film.
Guest:A lot of times I may be very confused about a lot of details and actually love the film.
Guest:Usually it's when you understand it only too well that it's like there wasn't any sense of surprise or challenge.
Guest:I always think that my movies are, I guess, more mainstream than they end up being.
Marc:Well, with happiness, I mean, I can understand where you're coming from.
Marc:And I've talked to other people that are challenging creative minds that believe that.
Marc:And on some level, you have to believe that.
Marc:I mean, you are making the movies that you love and you want them, in your mind, they should be understood.
Guest:Well, I mean, there's no point in making a movie if it's just some solipsistic masturbatory exercise.
Guest:What's the point?
Guest:You make a movie because it's a project in which you try to communicate meaning or value to an audience, whether it be a small one or a large one.
Guest:But you're always in the business of communicating.
Guest:Just as if you paint a painting, what's the point if it's not communicating meaning to its viewer?
Guest:Of course.
Guest:So my intent is certainly I try to make movies that I would like to see that would move or excite me as a viewer.
Guest:I want to be provoked when I go to the movies.
Guest:I'm provoked and you see the world in a way that you hadn't quite expected or you hadn't quite seen.
Guest:I mean, movies can articulate things that sometimes are very difficult to articulate even amongst our intimates.
Guest:It's a very magical, mysterious kind of experience when it really works.
Marc:The thing that I became sort of fascinated with, certainly in Happiness, was the character of the father who was a child molester.
Marc:And this is it seems to be suggested a bit in Dollhouse and sort of recurs in in some of the other films.
Marc:What is in your mind outside of, you know, that is one of the most challenging things to do for anybody would to make a child molester sympathetic, which I think you did on some level in happiness.
Marc:But why is are you hung up on it creatively?
Guest:Well, hey, you didn't see the last movie, okay?
Guest:There's no, I don't have any child molesters.
Guest:I don't have anything.
Guest:I'm not hung up on these things, but I'll tell you.
Marc:It was in three movies, Todd.
Guest:Well, it's hard to avoid.
Guest:If you're doing a sequel, how can you avoid one?
Marc:I'm not pointing a finger.
Marc:I'm just curious.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it comes naturally out of the stories that I'm telling or the stories that I told.
Guest:But I think the genesis of the whole pedophile thing, I remember, I think...
Guest:thinking, who is that person who is most ostracized, most reviled, most loathed and feared?
Guest:And that's the pedophile.
Guest:So it works metaphorically as a conduit of...
Guest:emotionally for me to connect you know uh to to that state of mind and the question and is like to what how far can an audience extend itself emotionally to uh such a person um it is a kind of test or a challenge to the audience it's it's that engagement with the audience that interests me most of all um do you sit in audiences while uh to see your films
Guest:I have.
Guest:Once it's finished, I may sit through it a couple times, but I don't go back to them pretty much.
Guest:You've seen it too many times.
Guest:It's not so interesting.
Guest:But I think that it comes definitely from me on a personal level.
Guest:I think that sense of not being accepted and having some profound sense of isolation, that this was a perfect kind of metaphor.
Guest:But I never really like to use the word sympathetic because I certainly would have no sympathy for someone who would rape my child.
Guest:But I think the way I like to put it, rather, is to recognize that there is still a human being there.
Guest:Someone with a pulse and a heart beating and bleeding, as is the case at that time.
Guest:And I think that an audience can become richer or bigger.
Guest:We can become bigger as human beings to the extent that we can not demonize people.
Guest:um that which we uh fear loath despise because uh once you start demonizing then uh where it becomes it can become a kind of slippery slope at what point do you stop demonizing because once you do demonize you start dehumanizing yourself
Guest:Because it's license, of course, to kill.
Guest:It's license to annihilate.
Guest:And the failure to recognize what is the capacity that exists within all of us, as much as there is for cruelty, there is for kindness.
Guest:It's a kind of place that I don't think any of us feel very comfortable acknowledging.
Guest:We look at the latest Batman killer and we all want to strangle and kill and hang and so forth.
Guest:But it's always, you know, as the story unfolds, you know, we're going to learn something, whether what kind of mental illness or conditions and so forth that shape such a mind to such a sinister evil deed.
Guest:And that's what, it's not about sympathizing.
Marc:I get it.
Marc:Yeah, it's humanizing.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Do you think that growing up with the sort of reality of the Holocaust being pounded into your head sort of informed that slippery slope?
Guest:You know, I don't know.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:I mean, I would hardly, you know, it seems a little bit, a little cheesy even to suggest that.
Guest:Sure, yeah.
Marc:Well, let's talk about the new movie because I know that you have to get over there to show it.
Marc:Can you tell me what it's about and how it's different from the other films?
Marc:I wish I could enter the conversation having seen it, but I didn't.
Guest:Well, for me, it's- Is it like The Sound of Music?
Guest:No, it isn't.
Guest:There's a lot of very up, sort of jaunty music in the soundtrack.
Guest:This one, the music, in fact, is actually inspired by American Idol, this sort of pop adolescent kind of soundtrack.
Guest:You might hear certain theme songs that they play when a contestant is eliminated.
Guest:But it's maybe the saddest of my comedies in some way because it has to do with the passage of youth.
Guest:We have a character who's in his 30s, still living at home, can't leave the bedroom that he grew up in, his junior high school bedroom, and he clings to his youth.
Guest:And of course, this is a kind of death in life.
Guest:And you could look at it as a kind of alternative to the so-called man-child Apatow genre.
Marc:An alternative in what way?
Guest:Well, it's not very sentimental.
Guest:You mean it's sad as hell?
Guest:Well, you know, I'm moved by the story.
Guest:I am.
Guest:There is a point at which the character talks about how horrible humanity is, and it's very cynical and juvenile.
Guest:And yet the movie, I feel, serves to undermine ultimately that philosophy that there is the possibility of a kind of grace.
Guest:It's just if your eyes are open, if it's there in unexpected and surprising ways.
Guest:What does it come from?
Guest:Does it come from self-acceptance or self-revelation, I mean, disgrace?
Guest:Well, you have to see the movie.
Guest:Okay, okay.
Guest:But it is, of course, implicit in the film always.
Guest:There's a certain kind of social critique or satire or what have you about the nature of life as I see it, as I live it, or as I see the experience in this country.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:How do you define satire?
Marc:In your mind, when you say the comedies, it's horrible to have to ask, but which of your films, are they all comedies?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:They're all sad comedies.
Marc:Because you said the comedies as if there was one that maybe wasn't a comedy.
Guest:No, I think they're all comedies.
Guest:They'd be unbearable if they weren't.
Guest:But I would characterize them as sad comedies.
Marc:What do you characterize satire as?
Guest:Well, I think if I had to define it, you know, satire always has a kind of moral underpinning, and there's an imperative to point out a certain flaw in a system or in a character, but to expose its corruption, let's say, and
Guest:But from the vantage point of what is correct, right, morally speaking.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Now, when you come to Hollywood, do you take meetings?
Marc:Do you do what filmmakers do in Hollywood?
Marc:Do you go in and meet financers?
Marc:Or do you pitch television shows?
No.
Guest:Well, I mean, I come here right now just to do a series of Q&As to support, to promote the film.
Guest:And nobody's asked me for a meeting.
Guest:I have a script.
Guest:It's set in Texas, actually, that I'd like to get financing for.
Guest:It's always a long shot.
Guest:I never can presume I will ever make another movie because I've lost too much money for too many people.
Guest:Um, but, um, this one, I, I, you know, I'm figuring out the producer who the producers and then figure, then we'll figure out the actors and all, but, but, uh, I mean, I wrote it and I find after I finished a movie, um, uh, I, I have to write something, uh, otherwise doing all this promotion would be just too depressing.
Guest:Um, uh, you have to have something that you want to do next.
Guest:Um, uh,
Guest:So we'll see.
Guest:If God willing, I say this as a devout atheist, there will be another movie.
Guest:It's, you know, if I were, you know, French, you know, I wouldn't have this.
Guest:I think there's a system in place to support a filmmaker like myself.
Guest:But in this country, it's all a marketplace-driven economy for movies.
Guest:And that's why you can probably count on your fingers.
Guest:I mean, how many filmmakers can really have a career?
Guest:It's one thing to make a movie independently of the studio system, but to actually have a career making films independently.
Guest:is a very, very rare thing.
Guest:I've been lucky, just it's really luck, you know, that I've been able to make all these movies.
Marc:Well, you also have a singular vision that is relevant and important, even if you don't think your movies draw the amount of attention they should.
Guest:Well, I think at this point, I'm surprised they even put my name.
Guest:They write a film by Todd Solons.
Guest:I thought it was not a good idea because I think my name at this point is Poison.
Guest:But...
Guest:I'm glad that there is an audience, that it opens and that it's playing in different places and people get to see it.
Guest:So I don't have anything to complain about.
Guest:I mean, it's playing in Europe and so forth.
Marc:Do the French like you?
Guest:Well, it depends on the Frenchman.
Guest:Ambivalence is something that's not peculiar to the United States wherever I go.
Marc:But where people give a shit about movies, do they like it?
Guest:Some do, some don't.
Guest:It's just like any place.
Guest:I'm never going to be universally liked, but I have a weak character.
Guest:I wish that I didn't care, but I do.
Guest:People say that I don't read reviews, but how do you avoid them?
Guest:They're everywhere.
Guest:It's like if you read a magazine regularly, how can you avoid?
Guest:It's like everywhere.
Marc:Just don't read comment boards.
Marc:You can read reviews.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I'm not quite as plugged into all the internet as the younger generation, let's say.
Guest:But I get a sense of the lay of the lands.
Guest:I understand how people respond to the film.
Guest:And it's a strange, funny thing, the way in which... This movie is very peculiar.
Guest:In fact, I think when it first... Dark Horse.
Guest:Yeah, Dark Horse.
Guest:When Dark Horse opened or premiered at Venice and Toronto last fall, I think there was a very mixed response.
Guest:But then...
Guest:And I was just dreading the opening of the movie, just like lying.
Guest:Just go ahead, stab me, just do it.
Guest:I was just dreading.
Guest:But then it opened in New York.
Guest:I got like the best reviews I've ever gotten.
Guest:Graduation.
Guest:From like, you know, the Times in New York or in New York, like the people who never, you know, liked me.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:You know, it's unpredictable.
Guest:It just, I never know.
Marc:Well, enjoy it.
Marc:I just want you to know I'm a huge fan.
Marc:It was an honor to talk to you.
Marc:I'm glad you made the trek up here.
Marc:oh it was a pleasure I'm glad and forgive me for being having been so slow and not remembering but now I totally uploaded you it just took time it's a buffer sure it was a long time ago it was probably 2004 I think you were probably with talking about palindromes I imagine and it was not a long interview it was very early in the morning but this was a much longer and deeper conversation I appreciate you doing it my pleasure
Marc:All right, that's our show.
Marc:That is all.
Marc:That is what I have for you today.
Marc:Be careful.
Marc:Travel safely.
Marc:Enjoy your family as much as you can.
Marc:I'll talk to you Thursday if you're going to be listening to me Thursday.
Marc:But I do want to put this out there.
Marc:There is a lot to be thankful for, even though I was a cranky fuck in the opening.
Marc:So enjoy it.
Marc:Eat some good food.
Marc:Don't hate yourself until after.
Marc:Don't get mad at your family.
Marc:They're just the way they are.
Marc:That's the way it is.
Marc:There's no changing that.
Marc:Maybe you can implement some conditional changes.
Marc:Like I'm not fucking coming back here next year if this shit doesn't stop.
Marc:But please, please be safe and eat well and enjoy your family.
Marc:It's a short ride.
Marc:What else?
Marc:WTFpod.com for all your WTFpod needs.
Marc:Yeah, get some merch, kick in a few shekels.
Marc:The new Boomer Lives t-shirt is available now.
Marc:$1 of each sale goes to an animal charity of my choice.
Marc:Still shopping for one.
Marc:Boomer does live in my heart and mind.
Marc:Deaf Black Cat is out there eating at a Boomer's Old Bowl.
Marc:Is there some sort of something to be learned there?
Marc:Is there a parable?
Marc:Deaf Black Cat.
Marc:Something.
Marc:Insert haiku here.
Marc:Get yourself the app.
Marc:JustCoffee.coop.
Marc:I have some right here.
Marc:Pow!
Marc:I just... Ugh.
Marc:I didn't even do that right.
Marc:Let's do it again.
Marc:Pow!
Marc:I just shit my soul.
Marc:Going deeper.
Marc:Alright, that's sad.
Marc:Don't like this feeling in my chest.
Marc:Right now.
Guest:Should go to the record store.
Guest:That'll make me feel better, right?