TSPDT - Todd Solondz

Todd Solondz

See Also

Woody Allen

Hal Hartley

Todd Haynes

Aki Kaurismäki

Neil LaBute

Alexander Payne

Terry Zwigoff

Director / Screenwriter / Producer

1959 -

Born October 15, Newark, New Jersey, USA

Key Production Country: USA

Key Genres: Black Comedy, Comedy Drama, Satire

Key Collaborators: Alan Oxman (Editor), Ted Hope (Producer), Christine Vachon (Producer), Nathan Larson (Composer)

Highly Recommended: Happiness (1998), Storytelling (2001)

Recommended: Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995), Palindromes (2004)

DVD's: [ Amazon ]


	"Todd Solondz's work as a film-maker to date has sparked much controversy and conflicting critical opinion for its alleged 'perversity' and 'cynicism'. Effectively foregrounding the marginalised experiences of isolated social outcasts, his films are relentlessly honest and rarely gratuitous, although the fine line between satire and misanthropy is becoming increasingly blurred." - Hannah Patterson (Contemporary North American Film Directors, 2002)

	"Solondz might be an exemplary figure in a group of "nasty" filmmakers...In people like Solondz, LaBute, and Terry Zwigoff we have a generation (more or less) that simply won't swallow the white lies anymore. It's up to us, and the system, whether we subvert it by calling it black humor.." - David Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 2002)

	"Solondz looks likely to establish himself as a distinctive chronicler of the American Nightmare. His characters are lost, isolated, dissatisfied with their lot, caught in a constant, vain struggle against life's injustices." - Geoff Andrew (The Director's Vision, 1999)

	"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." - Todd Solondz