I lost interest in Todd Solondz sometime around Storytelling. Welcome to the Dollhouse was such a wonderful but painfully examination honest look at adolescence and Happiness was so disturbing, yet compelling. His later work seemed to lack heart, and serve only to shock. When Solondz’ newest film Life During Wartime was announced almost two years ago, I didn’t pay much attention. Originally the film was said to be a “kind of sequel to — or riff on — ‘Happiness’, and to some extent ‘Welcome to the Dollhouse’.”
“Many of the characters from these movies unexpectedly beckoned to me, and so I have explored new ways of developing and enlarging their stories, with the intent to recast them from a fresh perspective,” Solondz said in a 2006 statement.
MTV recently talked to Paul Reubens (the actor formerly known as Pee-Wee Herman) about the film, and Reubens revealed an interesting new detail - that the script features “characters from ‘Welcome to the Dollhouse’ and ‘Happiness’ whose paths converge.”
“It’s all different people playing the same roles. I’m playing a role someone else played in one of those movies.”
Woah, now I’m suddenly interested. But the question is, what Solondz character would Reubens play? I’m guessing that Reubens will portray Bill Maplewood, the father, psychiatrist and pedophile played by Dylan Baker in the original 1998 film. But who knows if this movie will even get made. It’s been sitting around on the shelf for two years.
“If it gets made, I’m doing it - but I’m not sure. It’s gotten pushed three times,” Reubens told MTV News. “He’s had problems with the financing on it.”
But if you think about it, how do you find financing for a quasi sequel to two films which combined didn’t even gross $10 million at the box office. As much as I’d like to see Wartime, Solondz is probably better off trying to get a more original project off the ground.
January 3rd, 2008 at 2:21 pm
Solodnz gets credit though, for doing the ever-morphing main character as seen and praised in I’m Not There with his Palindromes (a movie that is seriously effed up). He also did teen pregnancy before Juno, and is one of the last dark, truly uncompromising indie directors around.
When I heard about this flick it sounded like Solodnz was hard up for cash and needed the recognition that Welcome to the Dollhouse awarded him to be resurrected in the press. But now he’s crossing storylines and changing actors, and clearly this film will make five dollars. He has a bit of a career-destructing ethic I think.
Paul Reubens is forever Pee-Wee Herman. Hopefully Reubens concentrates on getting those follow-up films made instead.
January 3rd, 2008 at 7:58 pm
I’m guessing he might be a grown up Mark Weiner.
TBH….I’m kinda surprised that Ruebens (with all his past legal troubles) would attach himself to a flick by a director who seems to specialize in films about pedophiles.
January 3rd, 2008 at 8:56 pm
@Red&Jonny
Excellent point. Reubens has avidly pitched his two Pee-Wee flicks around Hollywood and to the press for a good year now, with Johnny Depp recently conveying interest. A film with Solodnz would no doubt be picked up by talk radio et al if one of the new Pee-Wee films was released with a PG-rating, as Reubens plans to do. Reubens should avoid this project at all cost imo…or sacrifice his signature character/bread&butter.
January 22nd, 2008 at 11:10 pm
Todd Solondz is by far the most interesting director working in this country. Instead of getting sucked into convention, his movies become more challenging and complex as he gets older. I’m sure I’m going to be waiting for this movie for years as I did with Palindromes. I think Reubens and Solondz are a match made in heaven. I hope, for the benefit of cinema history, that this movie gets made.