Todd Solondz and his cinematic worldview of discomfort and sorrow burst upon the American indie filmmaking scene with the festival success of his second movie, Welcome to the Dollhouse, in 1995, and its theatrical release the next year. Since then, over six subsequent features, Solondz has pursued his singular vision of abjection in suburban New Jersey, often to critical confusion and even abhorrence. A. O. Scott, for instance, writing in The New York Times, told his readers that they “would want to be as far away as possible” from Palindromes, Solondz’s 2004 feature film now getting re-released in theaters and on home video.
Solondz’s reputation with cinephiles has only grown over time, as each of his features added new layers to what at first seemed a peculiar style. His thematic concerns grew to encompass a large sample of American despair—the difference between Welcome to the Dollhouse and the film he made after its success, Happiness (1998), is not just one of scale. The larger cast allowed him to expand his viewpoint into bigger worlds of American dysfunction and drama. It’s now clear that Solondz is a total original, with a perspective on contemporary life that is both unflinching and surprisingly spiritual in the way it moves so lucidly between dispassion and compassion.
Palindromes is perhaps Solondz’s most daring and unexpected movie. It is shocking in more than one sense, because it is now hard to believe it was made at all. It’s the story of a middle-school girl, Aviva (her name, of course, a palindrome), who wants more than anything to have a baby. The film moves from Aviva’s life with her middle-class parents (Ellen Barkin and Richard Masur) into the cult-like home of the Sunshine family, who lovingly preside over a group of talented tweens with disabilities, who write, perform, and record Christian pop songs. The Sunshines (Debra Monk and Walter Bobbie), however, also organize the assassinations of doctors who perform abortions.
In addition, Aviva is played by eight different actors, a decision Solondz made for Palindromes that never seems like a stunt even as Aviva changes into other people. The film’s harsh view of human behavior is cushioned by the various Avivas even as her on-screen transformations between chapters in the film expose the warped decisions made by the people around her.
The writer-director and I spoke twice on the phone. Our conversations have been edited for length and clarity.
A. S. Hamrah: Palindromes, your amazing 2004 film about motherhood and abortion in America, is being re-released in a new restoration. How did this come about?
Todd Solondz: Visit Films, here in New York, restored it. They upgraded the film, otherwise I think Palindromes would have disappeared. So I'm grateful to the company for having put themselves out for it.
ASH: I have the old Wellspring DVD, so it wouldn’t have entirely disappeared.
TS: Wellspring, you may already realize, at the time Palindromes came out, Steve Bannon was the owner and the president of the company.
ASH: Yes, I was aware of that. Wellspring under Bannon also handled The Brown Bunny [2003], by Vincent Gallo. It’s very strange that he had a part in distributing these movies. I wonder if he ever saw Palindromes?
TS: I don't know, but I love the idea that somehow he's connected to it.
ASH: He had a very strange career in the film business before he became a right-wing ideologue and adviser to Trump and a convicted felon.
TS: He knew how to profit from the film business, so he knew better than me.
ASH: The actor John Gemberling, who plays the slightly older version of Judah, one of the characters in Palindromes, later played Steve Bannon on a TV comedy series called The President Show.
TS: That’s a level of meta I don’t even want to know about.
ASH: Palindromes is a very radical film, especially for someone like Bannon to handle, and completely unique in American filmmaking, I think. You start the film with scenes of Dawn Wiener's funeral, shot on videotape. How did you decide you'd open the film that way? And why begin by killing off the main character of the film you’re most known for, and dedicating it to her?
TS: I had initially wanted to frame Palindromes with Heather Matarazzo as Dawn in the movie, reprising the role that she’d played in Welcome to the Dollhouse in 1995. But that wasn't going to work. Heather Matarazzo was not interested in that. So that character became Aviva. I had imagined the trajectory of Dawn’s life in different ways, and I felt it would be a kind of springboard for other films, knowing that when you write a character, there are a lot of possibilities that open up. And so this was one possible scenario that I felt could be a good jumping off point.
ASH: Why do that one scene on videotape?
TS: I wanted it to be like someone, it doesn't matter who, had attended the funeral. I don’t want to say this gave it a cinema vérité quality, but I wanted it to have a you-are-there kind of realism.
ASH: That brings up the interesting question of casting this film, since you say that Heather Matarazzo didn't want to appear in it. How did you cast Palindromes? One of the unique things about it is that eight different actresses play the main character, Aviva. How did it come to you to do it that way?
TS: It’s eight actors, but technically it's seven actresses and one actor. One is a boy, Will Denton in the “Huckleberry” section of the film. I was at a point where I wanted, or I felt I had some opportunity, to try and play with the form of what you can do with cinema, and the ways in which you can operate within conventional narratives. Because I've always worked with conventional narratives, conventional in the sense that they're very, I think, accessible, despite the subject matter. It's not like I’m doing flashbacks or flash forwards in my films, or some strange kind of experimentation with the actual narrative form.
That is what tethers me and gives me the freedom to play with what the idea was for this film. I suppose it sounds trivializing, but I thought that using a number of different kinds of actors would bring a kind of universality, in a way, to the experience. By trying to see how different people, given the same kind of direction and with me trying to elicit the same kind of performance from each of them, I thought there would be a kind of fluidity to it.
I knew it was bold, I suppose, but I didn't see it quite as radical as I think you mean it. It didn't seem so radical in the sense that it's not uncommon in television and theater for different people to take over roles that were played by other actors. It didn't seem entirely alien to what I had known, in that sense. I felt like coming upon different actors as the film progressed would make perhaps a richer kind of experience—to see what each of them, unwittingly even, could bring to this character, Aviva.
ASH: How did you come to cast Sharon Wilkins as one of the Avivas? And then Wilkins, an overweight adult African-American woman playing a teenage white girl, became the poster image for the film.
TS: Casting Sharon Wilkins widened the lens, so to speak, on what was possible here. Something that was astonishing to me after the movie came out was that some people actually thought that this woman, who was in her thirties at the time, I believe, was just a teenager. That threw me. It showed how effective Sharon was in that role.
ASH: Jennifer Jason Leigh was also a surprising choice for one of the Avivas.
TS: Jennifer Jason Leigh had wanted to do Happiness. When I was working with October Films on that, they gave me a lot of freedom with casting. But they said the one actress I could not offer a role to was Jennifer Jason Leigh. At the time she had, I guess, acted in a number of indie movies that did not do well at the box office, so October much preferred Jennifer's good friend, Jane Adams, in that role. There is always a little bit of history when it comes to the way these parts get cast. I was very happy with Jane in that part in Happiness, and Jennifer was lovely to work with on Palindromes.
ASH: As you say, it's common in theater to have actors replace other actors during the run of a show or in subsequent stagings of a play. It’s not uncommon to have a character be played by more than one person on TV series, like on a soap opera when someone will replace someone else over the course of time. But to do it in a movie, I think, was unprecedented. I'd never seen that in a film before, with the exception of Buñuel’s That Obscure Object of Desire [1977], in which two actresses play different sides of the same character. But what you’ve done in Palindromes is quite different. There is a progression of actors who are unlike each other, some of them people you wouldn’t necessarily expect to be playing this young white girl from suburban New Jersey.
TS: The idea stuck in my head because I grew up primarily watching television, much more than seeing movies. There was a time when there was a particular television show on which the actress, after a few episodes, was replaced by another one, because in real life, the original actress had been murdered.
ASH: What show was that?
TS: It was in a TV show called Phyllis, a Mary Tyler Moore Show spin-off with Cloris Leachman. One of the actresses on the show, Barbara Colby, was murdered. Then she was replaced with another actress, Liz Torres. Whenever I saw Liz Torres after that, I thought of Barbara Colby. It struck me very powerfully at that time not just because I knew this backstory, but also because I was aware of how everyone in the episode would not notice there was a different actress playing the part. It was the same part, it was the same character. It just happened to be a different person. And I think that always stuck with me and probably fueled something or gave me courage to make to use of it.
ASH: The uniqueness of the casting extends to people who aren't playing Aviva, too. For instance, the Sunshine Family. I don't really understand who the Sunshine Singers are or were, or how you came to cast this group of young people, mostly with disabilities, in the part of this ad hoc family of performers at the Sunshine house. How did that happen, and who were these actors?
TS: I was taking a page from The Sound of Music [1965], which was a formative film for me. And in my own personal life, growing up, having known people with disabilities. Something that always put me off was the idea that, if you have someone with a disability in your cast, then you have to treat them with a certain kind of special sensitivity, or with kid gloves. That always kind of bothered me. It was obvious that, in fact, the best thing is just to acknowledge them as people, people on their own like anybody else, but they have a disability—I don’t even know if that’s the proper word today, because language is changing in this area quite a lot—and to acknowledge that by casting them, and then move on. Which means, then you can have a comedy. If you can do that with people who do not have disabilities, you should be able to do it with people who do have disabilities. That was obvious to me, that it can be done in a good-natured way. And if it's not, you don't want to do it at all.
ASH: The Sunshine Singers seem like a cohesive group of people who already existed together, before you made Palindromes. Is that the case? Were they a pre-established group of children with disabilities who actually did sing Christian songs on Christian cable television shows?
TS: No, no, they were put together by me the same way the Partridge Family and the Monkees were put together for their TV shows.
ASH: That’s fascinating. During the scenes in which they rehearse they seem like an actual singing group who have known each other for a long time. Did any of those kids pursue careers in show business as the result of being in Palindromes?
TS: On that I have no idea. I lose touch with everyone after a movie finishes. It's all smoke and mirrors, and then it's over. I don't know what happens to anyone. But I'm told we're going to have a cast and crew reunion screening at Metrograph in April, and presumably some of that cast will be there and that's where I'll learn what became of everybody.
ASH: You mention the temporary aspects of filmmaking. In Palindromes, the character of Judah (Robert Agri), when we meet him, is talking about how he's making a feature film himself, even though he seems like a high school student. Hearing him talk to Aviva and seeing his room, we understand that Judah is someone who has completely internalized the values of both Hollywood and pornography. His bedroom is filled with images from porn magazines and posters of half-naked women, and he and Aviva watch a porn video together before they have sex. To what extent were you using Judah as a commentary on the process of making a feature film, as an independent filmmaker presumably opposed to Judah’s values?
TS: I’m not sure if you’re pointing me in a more cynical direction than I meant in the film.
ASH: I'm not trying to be cynical. I just was wondering if you were using this as some kind of meta commentary on filmmaking in 2004.
TS: These are kids even younger than high-school age. It's true that if I'm putting those elements out there, it's not accidental. But I think it's more reflective of a certain kind of class and culture than it is commentary in which I’m trying to say something like: to be a filmmaker, one must be a pornographer in some way, or that other kinds of filmmaking are infected with those values. That was certainly not my intention. These are adolescents and those are things in their lives that in their classrooms and in pop culture rub up against each other, and that is something that I like to play with.
ASH: The subject matter of the film, of course, is also something rare in American cinema, although at the same time Palindromes came out, Vera Drake by Mike Leigh also came out, which was about abortion, too.
TS: I think I was a little bit harder. Vera Drake was very much a kind of hagiography of the main character. Not only does she take risks to perform abortions, but she won't accept money for it. I think that kind of saintliness is something that I don't respond well to. I love Mike Leigh, please don't misconstrue me as saying otherwise. I love Mike Leigh, but in the case of Palindromes, it's the ways in which we are all compromised, the ways that we never, none of us, quite live up to our ideals that interests me. That feels more true.
ASH: Starting the film at a funeral—and then, given what happens in the rest of Palindromes—brings up a question that becomes explicit near the end, in the speech Mark Wiener [Matthew Faber] delivers to Aviva [Jennifer Jason Leigh] at the barbecue. Is the film asking, in a way, is it better not to be born at all?
TS: The death at the beginning is not an accident, because it feeds into the rest of the film. I mean, this is about, obviously, a girl who wants to be a mom, to give birth, more than anything else. So that's built into the narrative, and certainly Mark is frustrated because, to me, I thought it was clear that he was innocent of the charges against him, of being a child molester, that he was not guilty, but nevertheless, fingers are being pointed at him. It doesn't matter whether or not he’s innocent that he has suffered because of this, it is still a condemnation and a kind of death for him in his life.
ASH: Matthew Faber has such a distinct quality as an actor in your movies. I know he was in other films, but did you have a special connection with him? Was he a discovery of yours? Or was he just an actor who you cast when you could?
TS: He came in and he read for Welcome to the Dollhouse, and I immediately fell in love with what he was doing. He approaches, very intuitively, but very—you know, I hate the word authenticity, but I don't know—he doesn't mock. These characters are so mockable; they're so easy to mock. But he brings a kind of dignity that he himself had. That was what spoke to me. You're probably aware he died during Covid, but he had had health issues for many years as well.
ASH: He brings a non-actorly kind of dignity to his role without seeming amateurish.
TS: He was just a blessing for me, and I just loved working with him. I was grateful to him because I never came across another actor who could do what he did so well, nobody else. It's unfortunate that he died during Covid.
ASH: His character’s speech about the randomness and the meaninglessness of life and how we're all genetically coded, and how there's no such thing as free will, creates a sense of despair. That’s something that pervades the film, even as the characters go on and as Aviva has this desire to be a mother, to find someone to love, and to create someone who will love her unconditionally.
TS: The one thing I would say is that it's true, I don't believe in free will. I believe it's an illusion. But I don't see that as something inherently or necessarily at all bleak. The fact that we don't have free will should make us more compassionate, because people cannot help but be who they are.
ASH: The scene in which the Christian pedophile truck driver assassin [Stephen Adly Guirgis] asks, “How many more times can I be born again?” is shocking and brutally funny, especially in the context of what happens to him next. But at the same time, it kind of begs the question about being born at all.
TS: Well, I like what you're pointing out. But I have to confess that as much thought as I put into the design of what this narrative is, and what this movie is, with any movie that I make, and with anything I write, it only has a life because of what I'm not conscious of infusing it with. And there are a lot of things I discover after the fact about that, because the film is telling me about who I am and what I think. And so, I don't feel I can even take full credit—or I can take as much credit or blame as you’d like to assign me—for a lot of the connections that you might be able to draw from it.
ASH: That makes sense.
TS: I can tell you another story, since you bring up that character. Initially, Chris Penn was going to play that part, and Chris was wonderful. I loved working with Chris. He was not afraid of coming up with ideas, he was not intimidated at all by me, and I appreciated that. But he did have a drug problem and he could not make it through the shoot, and so we had to recast the role of Joe, who is also known as Earl and Bob, the killer of the doctor. Chris did remarkable work. That's what made it very painful to lose him. So when he died two years later, it was a shock, of course, but not a surprise. Stephen Adly Guirgis, I think, knows that he came in after we had already been shooting with Chris Penn, and had to reshoot stuff that Chris had done, and I love Stephen and he was remarkable in the part. But with Chris, well, if he had not been good, it would have been easy to let go of him. But he was remarkable in the part, too, and moving. And it was painful because he just couldn't get through the shoots.
ASH: That's unfortunate. I always liked Chris Penn in Short Cuts [1993], and Reservoir Dogs [1992], and in that Paul Auster adaptation, The Music of Chance [1993].
TS: His life story, having two older brothers who were very successful, I think that had a real effect on him. Losing him and his death, it's always something that affected me. I felt terrible about it.
ASH: We were talking about the Judah character as a middle schooler talking about making a feature film. He makes comments to Aviva about how everyone is unreliable and no one has any faith in anyone else. I was wondering, again, you know, why is this character so jaded, or stunted? You talk about his class and where he's from, and the time in which the film takes place. What causes Judah to have this view of humanity as unreliable and unhelpful?
TS: I think, certainly when you're an adolescent, you're particularly vulnerable to these sorts of doubts and questions as you emerge from childhood. Obviously, with my dialogue, it cuts in different directions. It's only got life because of that kind of ambiguity or ambivalence. But even as I can laugh at an adolescent, a young person like that, with his frustrated ambitions, it remains true. There's a truth to that understanding that goes beyond the frustrations of adolescence.
ASH: That's clear in the film. What caused you to want to make a film about abortion and motherhood in the first place?
TS: It's not a random thing. I'll say that. And certainly there have been other movies on these subjects, notably Citizen Ruth [1996] by Alexander Payne had done something on it. I don't want to get personal about these things, so I can only say that I think the interplay between the two sides, between the Red and the Blue, as we call them now, these two poles of thinking, of cultural thinking on the Right and Left, was what excited me. I like to describe Palindromes as a movie about a pro-choice mom who gives her daughter no choice and a pro-life mom who kills. And I think that’s how every narrative should be suspended, along that kind of thread. I didn't want to, and I was not interested in simply making a quote “pro-choice movie.” That would have had no interest for me. It's not that I am not pro-choice, but that's artistically a dead-end for me. So I had to find a way into it that was new.
ASH: Debra Monk’s performance as Mama Sunshine is one of the great performances in your work. It's really remarkable how she portrays this woman as so kind and patient, so eerily faultless.
TS: She is great. She was a joy. You know, I had seen before this, there was a documentary, a really effective documentary called My Flesh and Blood that came out probably a year before I made Palindromes. It was about a mom who adopted a dozen kids with disabilities. That fed into the making of this. It was really a great documentary that definitely had a big impact on the shaping of this movie.
ASH: By the way, I wanted to say that I love your short film 3013.
TS: You saw that? I didn't know anyone saw it.
ASH: I think it's brilliant. But I don't understand how it was made.
TS: The funny thing is that the Venice Film Festival asked I guess a zillion filmmakers who they were associated with, Would you like to make a short film for us for the 2013 festival? And I said, Sure. And I started thinking about ideas, and then I wrote back and asked, What's the budget? And they said zero. So once they said zero, then I had to think differently and that is what I came up with. I had some help because I teach at NYU film graduate school. I had a couple of students who were technically savvy and could help me make that happen.
ASH: So you wrote it and then they designed it to take place solely on a computer screen?
TS: Yes, yes. I'm touched that you even knew it existed. I didn't know anyone even saw it.
ASH: I saw it on YouTube.
TS: I know it's up there. But it's not like there was any advertising for it where I talked about it. I think you're the first person since I made the movie who actually saw it.
ASH: They must have seen it in Venice at the festival?
TS: I didn't see any screening of it in Venice. I don't think they projected it.
ASH: It’s also such a work of despair, a work that says that even if the cinema is remembered in a thousand years, the way it’s remembered won’t make sense.
TS: The great thing about cinema is that every year, there's always something that shakes you up, that surprises you. You just have to look for it. So I'm always hopeful that I'll see something that says this work still has value in the world, because everything does feel so disposable now.
Palindromes screens this evening, March 12, and until next week, at IFC. Todd Solondz, Debra Monk and Stephen Adly Giurgis will be in attendance for a Q&A tonight. Solondz will make another appearance following Sunday’s screening at IFC and at a 20th anniversary reunion screening at Metrograph in April.
