Words matter. These are the best Todd Solondz Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Narcissism and self-deception are survival mechanisms without which many of us might just jump off a bridge.
As Mark Weiner puts it, whether you gain 50 pounds or lose 50 pounds, whether you have a sex change operation for that matter, that it doesn’t matter, that there is some part of ourselves that we cannot escape.
I mean, I don’t want to sound – of course it’s very nice, people come up and say appreciative things about my work. But the loss, in terms of privacy and anonymity, is no small thing to me.
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.
When I want to show the kind of meanness people are capable of, to make it believable I find I have to tone it down. It’s in real life that people are over the top.
But anonymity is very important to me, and I don’t want to be recognized in public more than I already am.
Casting is everything. If you get the right people they make you look good.
Usually the audience has no idea that the censored version of whatever movie they’re watching isn’t the original.
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.
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 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.
People can’t help how they look.
One thing I want to say: I don’t like victim stories and I don’t write them.
But you’re right, I did think about acting more and then decided against it.
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.
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.
Like everything, what compels one to put pen to paper is a great question.
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.
The funny thing is, strangers still seem to feel comfortable coming up to me and saying things, but now usually it’s because they recognize me, and they say nice things.
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.
I mean, there are many other directors who are probably both more skilled and excited to adapt novels or work within certain genre conventions. I’d like to do that kind of work someday, but for better or worse I’m too drawn by my own material.
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.
