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FINE CHINESE DINING
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"A wonderful adventure in fine dining" — Danny Raskin
old Manhattan filmmak-
family.
er, who has been known
Solondz went on
to wear Keds and over-
to attend Yale and
sized glasses.
New York
"If one looks at it as
University's film
something otherworldly,
school; after Fear,
then one is failing to
Anxiety and
grasp the fact that it was
Depression
very sadly not other-
bombed, he fled
worldly, but very real.
Hollywood and
"There is a danger of
applied to the
unwittingly exploiting
Peace Corps as "a
the tragedy in ways that
kind of tzedakah."
tend to trivialize it, if
He surmises he
one doesn't see it in a
was rejected, in
proper context. And cer-
part, because the
tainly, the family in
interviewer did
[Storytelling] doesn't have
not appreciate his
strong moral bearings on
sense of humor.
hoW to understand or
Undaunted, he
explain the significance
taught English to
and meaning of this
Russian immi-
In "Storytelling," Southfield
black cloud that does in
grants before writ-
native and former Hillel Day
fact hover over post-
ing Dollhouse to
School student Selma Blair
World War II Jewish his- plays a student humiliated by
redeem himself as
tory."
a filmmaker.
her creative writing teacher.
The black cloud hov-
He says that in
ered over Solondz's New
his own mind, the
Jersey split-level, where his mother was Wieners of Dollhouse and the Jordans of
haunted by memories of fleeing Nazi-
Happiness were Jewish, "which gave me a
oCcupied Antwerp as a child.
level of familiarity as a jumping off point
"The Holocaust was very much
from which to explore their psyches."
brought home to me, to the extent
He adds that Storytelling is the first
that we had relatives who survived or
time he's created an overtlyJewish
didn't survive," recalls the director,
family; he named them Livingston,
suggesting a source of his unsettling
after his hometown, in part because
worldview.
they represent a kind of suburban Jew
"I was taught early on that whether
he found there.
or not I regarded myself as Jewish,
"One thing that interests me is the
Hitler certainly would have deter-
way that some Jews perceive assimila
mined that I was a Jew."
tion as a way to raise their -social
standing," says Solondz, who imagines
the Livingstons as "nee Leventhal."
Jewish Families
He notes how the fictional parents
Solondz, who says he is now an athe-
nag their slacker son to get into a good
ist, attended an Orthodox yeshiva for
college, adding, "That's emblematic of
a time during elementary school, then
how the Jewish value placed on educa-
a Conservative religious school to pre-
tion can be confused with the acquisi-
pare for his bar mitzvah. In the sev-
tion of status and material success."
enth grade, his parents enrolled him in
Solondz isn't above some self-criticism
an elite, all-boys prep school, which
in Storytelling, his alter ego is a nebbishy
eventually inspired Dollhouse.
failed filmmaker (Paul Giamatti) who
"At 11, I was writing stories and
redeems himself by exploiting his docu-
playlets. At 12, I was no longer read-
mentary subjects, the Livingstons.
ing or writing, just counting off days,
He says he's surprised that more
interested [only] in survival," he wrote
people haven't complained about
in the introduction to his screenplay.
Storytelling. "Of course, it's early, so
Yet Solondz suggests he was an out-
there's still hope," he adds with a
cast for a different reason than the
laugh. "I can only tell you that at a
film's anti-heroine, Dawn Wiener
screening someone once asked, 'Do
(a.k.a. "Wienerdog").
you hate blacks, Latinos and Jews?'
"There were only two Jews in my
"All I can say is, if I do, I'm some-
class, and [unlike me] they fit in with
what egalitarian."
the country club set — they were sort
of like The Garden of the Finzi-Contini
Storytelling, rated R, opens today
Jews," he says, citing Vittorio De Sica's
in Detroit.
Nazi-era film about a privileged Italian
,
❑
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