Todd Solondz Quotes

I admit there's an element of brutality in all my work - it's part of the truth about human existence I always want to explore - but the last thing I'm trying to do is put on some kind of freak show, inviting people to get off on other people's pain and humiliation.

Part of it has to do with this business of being approached in public. I have a distinctive look - it's partly the glasses I wear - and people seem to remember me once they've seen me.

People can't help how they look.

All I mean is, I'm not the kind of audience comedy directors want at a test screening because I seldom laugh, and if I do, it's not very loud. That doesn't mean I don't like the movie.

I can't please everybody and I don't try to. If I can please myself that's enough. For the rest, I just hope for the best.

I've always said that I myself am not the best audience for my own work, because I'm just not that receptive to comedy.

But anonymity is very important to me, and I don't want to be recognized in public more than I already am.

When part of what you're trying to get at is the truth hidden under a taboo, or when you want to nail a hypocrisy, laughter is a very useful tool. I want to show the painful side of existence, but there is no question I also want to make people laugh.

Every time you try to make another movie, you never know what will come of it. I can't say it ever gets easier, but it is in it's own way gratifying. I think that because no one movie that you make ever quite satisfies you, you're always feeling, "Next time I can get it right."

Narcissism and self-deception are survival mechanisms without which many of us might just jump off a bridge.

I don't make movies with the idea that people are going to walk out of them feeling comfortable or better about themselves or more secure in their own biases or opinions.

Optimism is not inherently a superior way of viewing the world. Certainly doctors will say it might be better for one's physical health to be an optimist. But, morally speaking it may not be appropriate in certain circumstances.

So much of what a pet is about for us is that it becomes a vessel for yearnings, dreams, illusions, hopes and so forth. It's a projection of the ultimate innocence and purity. That's why it's hard to see a dog in its dogness. That's why, when some harm comes to a dog, it's much harder for an audience to deal with that, more so than dealing with harm that comes to a child or anything human.

One thing I want to say: I don't like victim stories and I don't write them.

Some people will of course accuse me of misanthropy and cynicism. I can't celebrate humanity but I'm not out to indict it either. I just want to expose certain truths.

At eleven I was at the peak of my creative powers: I was writing stories and playlets, putting together poetryprojects. I was absorbed by my 'work.' At twelve I was no longer reading or writing, just counting off days and checking them off. I was interested in survival.

Like everything, what compels one to put pen to paper is a great question.

Usually the audience has no idea that the censored version of whatever movie they're watching isn't the original.

It is true that the movie is perhaps my most politically-charged. The story is thrust into motion by the idea of what do you do when your 13 year old daughter comes home pregnant. And not only is she pregnant, but she wants to keep the baby.

Some people see me as dissecting my characters in some kind of heartless, coldblooded, analytical way, when in truth making these movies is a passionate, intensely emotional experience for me. I'm detached from the characters only to the degree that I have to be in order to write honestly about them.

Storytelling is the only studio movie where the censorship is perfectly clear, the only studio movie with a big red box covering up a shot. I take pride in that - and, of course, in having avoided the fate of Eyes Wide Shut.

Well, so far, at least, my own ideas always take priority over those of other writers. As long as the well doesn't run dry, I imagine this will be the case.

The ability to take pleasure in one's life is a skill and is a kind of intelligence. So intelligence is a hard thing to evaluate and it manifests itself in so many different ways. I do think the ability to know how to live a life and not be miserable is a sign of that.

So far, at least, I haven't found a way to tell my kind of stories without making them both sad and funny.

That is definitely a misunderstanding between me and a part of my audience. To be honest, I am often unsettled by the responses some people have had to my movies, and that includes many people who like them.

I love working with actors. I do.

When I go to the movies, I do like to see things that surprise me, a little bit, in ways that seem truthful to the world that we live in.

When I'm asked who my audience is, I say someone with an open mind, which is not a vacant one and sometimes a liberal mind is not the same thing as an open one.

There can be a blurry line between laughing at the expense of a character and laughing at the recognition of something painful and true. But blurry as it may be, it is nevertheless unmistakable, and sometimes the laughter I hear makes me wince.

What makes me angry is the idea that people would be going to a movie because of what I said about it. It makes me feel, I don't know, arrogant, self-important, self-aggrandizing, whatever. Like I'm being used.

But you're right, I did think about acting more and then decided against it.

In particular, people have trouble understanding where I stand in relation to my characters, and very often this gets reduced to me making vicious fun of them.

Art has a smaller audience than, say, movies or other forms of mass consumption. But that doesn't mean the work doesn't have an impact in a way that transcends just a few cultural arbiters.

I think success is a lot more healthy than failure.

If I grew up in a different background, I could see myself getting a gun and shooting an abortionist. That's my job, to imagine what could happen, what can make people go in different directions.

I always have to presume that each movie is my last movie because I never know if I'll get money again.

What's most insidious about MTV is that it commodifies precisely those things that young people believe are subversive. In other words, subversity itself has become a commodity. It's all a way to trick young people into believing that there's something unique about what they do, but this is all completely a corporately designed maneuver.

A palindrome is a word or pattern that instead of developing in different directions it folds in on itself so that the beginning and end mirror each other, that they are the same.