Release Date: January 25--Limited, NY & LA.  February 8--More Theaters
 

Written and Directed by:  Todd Solodnz
Starring:  Selma Blair, Leo Fitzpatrick, Robert Wisdom, Paul Giamotti, John Goodman, Julie Hagerty, Mark Webber, Lupe Ontiveros, Conan O'Brien
 

December 10, 2001

        During a Q&A session at the second screening of Todd Solodnz's new film at the New York Film Festival this year, Solodnz said that he likes to take the clichés and stereotypes of the perfect family he saw while watching TV sitcoms while growing up and twist and distort them into something new.  We got a glimmer of this in his second feature Welcome to the Dollhouse (a lesser known film, Fear, Anxiety and Depression, was his first) with young Dawn Wiener's dysfunctional family.  Happiness brought it full fledge with the Maplewood family, and the father's sick fetish.  Now comes Solodnz's fourth film and what will be his most largely distributed film, Storytelling. 
      Storytelling contains two separate segments titled "Fiction" and "Nonfiction."  They basically sum up the state of entertainment today.  "Fiction" centers around Vi, a creative writing student, Marcus, her cerebral palsy inflicted (ex) boyfriend and Mr. Scott, her black creative writing professor.  Solodnz's dark comedy is ever apparent as he finds humor in Marcus and the way his classmates suck up to him.  In this room full of students squabbling to be politically correct, Professor Scott is the only one who speaks the truth. 
        This truth telling draws Vi to him, and a sick sadistic sex fantasy pursues.  Whose fantasy is it, and did it really happen?  Vi learns a lesson in writing fiction: the more truth to it, the better it is. 
        During the scene in this segment, which is to become the infamous sex scene, a giant red box censors our two characters.  Solodnz noted during the Q&A that the MPAA had a problem with this scene for the R rating, but he had an ingenious loophole in his contract.  If there was ever anything objectionable in the film, he could bleep it, for sound, or blotch it, for visuals.  Apparently the studio who okayed the contract didn't actually think he'd put a large box in the middle of the screen to block out the objectionable item. 
        Solodnz said he took it a step further and made it red, to symbolize communist Russia, almost like an in-your-face to the ridiculous standards of the MPAA.  The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival without the red box, and I believe the European version doesn't contain it either.  Solodnz said, "I always thought there'd be an American version, and a version for everywhere else."  Lucky for him, the red box works for the film, because it comments on what can and can't be said in fiction, as well as makes a valid statement.
        In the second segment, "Nonfiction," Toby Oxman ("Pig Vomit" star Paul Giamotti from Private Parts) is an awful documentary filmmaker who fears he's exploiting his subject, but all the while continues in the perverse exploitation.  "Nonfiction" takes Sam Mendes's American Beauty family one step further, and Solodnz even takes a jab at Mendes.  At one point, Toby talks nonsense while we see some trash fly in the wind, a spoof of a scene in Beauty.
        According to Solodnz, Mendes made a comment about how Happiness was very condescending to its characters.  Solodnz answered him back in this film.
        "Nonfiction" ends very tragically, yet Solodnz's dark humor shines again as death results in laughter.  Someone in the audience questioned such a dark ending and Solodnz responded, "I do see my movies as comedies, but they're very sad ones.  I can't please everyone."
        One of the reasons the last part works so well is that he holds a scene for a good minute and we think something is going to happen, but then we cut away.  Solodonz knows how to manipulate the audience. 
        Even the casting does this.  John Goodman and Julie Hagerty, two people I couldn't see together before this film, play the perfect family on the outside, distraught on the inside, to a tee.  Hagerty's flimsiness and Goodman's sternness compliment each other.
        Anyone who writes should see Storytelling.  Todd Solodnz shows us once again his unconditional uncompromising attitude toward subjects no one else will take on.  He's distanced himself from his Woody Allen Fear, Anxiety and Depression days and continues to make thought provoking original dark comedies. 
 

Alternative Recommendations:  Happiness, Welcome to the Dollhouse (both d: Solodnz), Private Parts (s: Giamotti), The Big Lebowski (s: Goodman), American Beauty, Your Friends and Neighbors 
 

-Viewed Sunday, September 30, 2001 at the New York Film Festival

*Since Storytelling premiered at the New York Film Festival, it qualifies for the 2001 Fidelio Film Awards.
 
 

Best Comedic Feature	Best Original Screenplay Todd Solodnz
Best Actress Selma Blair