Todd Solondz on his struggle to create his next film: “I’d trade all the compliments for a budget”
Todd Solondz is perhaps one of the most unflinchingly honest and unsettling modern filmmakers, with his stories honing in on deeply uncomfortable and divisive subjects that reflect some of the darkest aspects of the human condition. Whether it be his 2004 film Palindromes, the heartbreaking cruelty of Welcome to the Dollhouse or Happiness, the director found his niche as a purveyor of truth and documentarian of pain, capturing loneliness in a unique way as he shines a light on characters who have been ostracised and mistreated by the world around them.
However, this cynical undertone is balanced with a jarring sense of humour, often discussing extremely traumatic and taboo experiences in a blaise way, with the characters themselves brushing off this darkness of approaching it in a reductively matter-of-fact way. Solondz is undoubtedly one of the unspoken auteurs of his generation, with a distinctly individualistic style that has inspired the likes of Robert Altman and Greta Gerwig, but the director has revealed his struggles to get his next project off the ground and to carry on making movies.
Within the current landscape of cinema, there are many great directors who are struggling to create and find funding for their next projects. Before his death, David Lynch had been trying to finance his next film, with no luck in doing so, while Netflix are spending $320million on more atrocious projects from the Russo Brothers that had absolutely nothing to the artistic landscape. For the last seven years since the release of You Were Never Really Here, multiple projects have fallen through for esteemed auteur Lynne Ramsay, with the director finally releasing her next film this summer and sparking high levels of anticipation around the fabled project. Even David Fincher has struggled to survive within the streaming landscape, with his last film making a tiny dent after no theatrical release and minimal marketing on its arrival in the Netflix graveyard.
Similarly for Solondz, the director has not made a film since Wiener Dog in 2016, sharing his frustration with the state of independent cinema and lack of investment into genuinely creative and challenging filmmaking. The director was due to direct a film called Love Child starring Charles Melton and Elisabeth Olsen, which would be his first film in nearly a decade. However, he has been struggling to nail down funding, and while the project was set to begin principal photography last year, the entire production was cancelled due to a lack of money while Solondz was on the plane over to begin shooting.
When discussing the current filmmaking landscape, the director said, “Well, certainly, theatrical film has been on the decline for decades. I don’t know how it even survives at this point. Most of the films young people see are not seen in movie theatres. And film itself is no longer the cultural touchstone it once was”.
Solondz was then asked about his struggles to fund his film, something that is baffling given the cultural importance of his work. The filmmaker said, “I’d trade all of the compliments for a budget to make another movie. I wish there were some correlation there, but my movies have not been profitable, and if they’re not profitable, living in a market economy as our cinema does, it makes it so much more challenging to get movies off the ground.”
Concluding, “People are still working on trying to get one of my projects off the ground, and I always have to be engaged in some projects, otherwise I would succumb to all sorts of depression. So I’m always involved, even if it’s not a film project.”
It is unforgivable that such an esteemed director cannot find any support to continue making genuinely daring and groundbreaking art that will actually mean something and challenge the infantile rhetoric in the film industry, and here’s hoping that Solondz will be able to make his next masterpiece very soon.
