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At The Movies

'Storytelling'

Filmmaker Todd Solondz's bleak comedy confronts
taboos about racism and the Holocaust.

NAOMI PFEFFERMAN

Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles

T

have been born?" (He is promptly
banished from the dinner table.)
The same Jewish mother solicits
tzedakah for a Jewish charity while
ignoring the suffering of her
Salvadoran maid. When the question
is posed, "What does it mean to be a
Jew?" it's clear she has no idea.

odd Solondz says that
when he was growing up
in a kosher home in
Livingston, N.J., "I did
well at school, I didn't get in trouble,
I was a good boy."
Since winning the top
Sundance prize for his
excruciating 1996 come-
dy, Welcome to the
Dollhouse, about a- geeky
four-eyed pre-teen who
strikingly resembles
Solondz — the filmmak-
er has been anything
but.
Dollhouse, originally
titled Faggots and
Retards, is a kind of anti-
Wonder Years that dispels
myths about childhood
sexuality.
His award-winning
1998 film, Happiness,
which features an
obscene phone caller and
a nice suburban dad who
is a pedophile, was so
scandalous the studio
, •
that financed it refused
Filmmaker Todd Solondz: "One thing that interests
to distribute the movie.
me is the way that some Jews perceive assimilation as
If Solondz had to switch
a way to raise their social standing," says Solondz,
to an unlisted telephone
who imagines the Livingstons, the Jewish family in
number after the release
"Storytelling," as "nee Leventhal."
of Happiness, he may have
to move to Alaska in the
aftermath of his latest film,
Storytelling, which opens today in
Tackling The Holocaust
Detroit.
Independent
filmmakers have agreed
Divided into two unrelated seg-
that
shock
sells,
as evidenced by the
ments, the bleak comedy confronts
success of Larry Clark's sexually
taboos about racism and the
provocative Kids and Michael Cuesta's
Holocaust as it "explores how story-
2001 pedophilia-themed drama,
telling can be a source of redemption
L.I.E..
and also a source of exploitativeness,"
But Solondz, who turned down stu-
Solondz says.
dio
deals to make his 1989 indie
In the first part of the film, an
Fear, Anxiety and Depression,
debut,
African-American creative writing
insists
he
isn't out to shock anyone.
teacher humiliates a white female stu-
He suggests that by taking on sacred
dent (Selma Blair) in the classroom
cows like the Shoah, he is being cruel
and in bed.
In the second, a Holocaust refugee's to be kind.
" I think sometimes there is a kind
daughter (Julie Hagerty) mouths plat-
of awe and reverence that one has to
itudes about the Shoah, prompting
question when talking about the
her son to retort, "So you're saying if
Holocaust," says the cerebral, 42-year-
it wasn't for Hitler, none of us would