"It was very real and very awkward - naked humility. I WAS those things. I didn't have to pretend them." - Selma Blair in "Box Office" on her acting in Todd Solondz's "Storytelling"

Note: Spoilers.

I think Todd Solondz has been watching too many movies. His latest, a featurette preceded by a short film combined to be called "Storytelling," has elements of Gregg Araki's "Splendor" (in the opening credits, if nothing else), while spoofing both "American Beauty" and "American Movie."

This is a fairly novel amalgamation, by the way. I've seen several different mixtures of shorts to create a film, but never a featurette lead by a short film. The two films, by the way, seemingly have almost nothing in common. There is this idea that the films are about storytelling but really seemingly little else. In the "short," the characters are all part of a writing class. In the featurette, entitled "Non- Fiction," the focus is a documentary film being made about an American suburban family. But further thought leads one to realize that Solondz does indeed have a theme, an idea, here. His film is about how in storytelling (writing, filmmaking), the truth is always obscured by those who tell it as much as it is by those who "hear" and/or "see" it. The audience and the teller always twist the truth.

Solondz has a really solid lead-in with the short film entitled "Non-Fiction." The short is right on target and very much in the canon of Solondz. His characters here include a scrawny white girl, a college student (Selma Blair) who fucks her black professor. She does this while angry at her college-aged boyfriend who has Cerebral Palsy (Leo Fitzpatrick). Using the taboos of racism and the handicapped to propel his story, Solondz steps on all sorts of open sores and exposed nerves. It is troubling and complex and Solondz makes more happen in this 20 minutes of film then he does in the following 60 minute featurette.

Blair is all jangled emotion and innocent uncertainty. Her fragile flowering womanhood has sought shelter in Fitzpatrick's contorted arms. When she realizes he is a man with emotion and feelings and capable of anger, like all others, she runs into the netherworld of her confused lust for her black professor. Calling her on her racist lust, he debases her and makes her call him a "nigger" as he cruelly fucks her. Some have called his abuse of her sexually a "rape" but that word is far too strong for what happens here. Rather, he debases her, abuses her, uses her and forces her to feel the objectification she has put upon him herself. Emotionally and socially, he may have "raped" her, yes, for against her will, she submits to his forced psychological "fucking" of her mind.

Solondz also makes commentary on censorship in American film by covering the erotic action in the sequence with a big red box, obscuring our ocular vision of the sexual event (while the audible dialogue continues). Here, bending the rules of the MPAA's rating system as well as creating a fascinating image, Solondz also makes light of the prudish American value system. His big red box is a brutal yet impassioned reminder of just how far we have to go in our fight against racism, sexism, religious fanaticism and the ridiculous imposed morality of our supposed value systems. Solondz creates a concerning and troubling vision here of an America out of bounds. Much like his film "Happiness," the characters here are adrift in a world not of their making and their inability to understand and confront their own troubling emotions and ideas leaves them blank and without expression. (This is echoed in the red box, evoking the MPAA's censors inability to allow sexual content on screen).

When Blair's Vi is finally able to express her feelings and confusion, in a story she writes about the symbolic rape, her classmates accuse her of being racist and in using stereotypes in her story, to which she impassionedly replies, "But it happened." With this "Fiction," Solondz creates a look at truths and how "truth" is obscured by the "hearers" reaction to it. Others' "truths" can be questioned and twisted by our own prejudices and sociological ideals. This is a deep, dark and troubling idea and Solondz barely scratches the surface here. It is a shame he abandons this story.

Solondz's second part, the featurette "Non-Fiction," is so overblown and ridiculous that we never believe a single thing that happens, which is, perhaps, his point. Here, Solondz hooks up a neurotic loser who wants to be a documentarian (Paul Giamatti) with a suburban family so stupid and out of touch with reality, that they are nothing but obvious fiction.

Solondz at least gives us a beautiful and typical teenage boy to obsess over in Scooby (Mark Webber). Scooby is, himself, adrift. Exploring his options for life after high school, he seems to find nothing but hollow ambitions to dream about. He also begins a sexual relationship with another boy although he seems barely interested in it. Meanwhile, his father (John Goodman) pushes him to enroll in college and his brother (Noah Fleiss) expresses concern over how having a "gay" brother will affect his social status.

Giamatti is, of course, oblivious to most of what is really going on in Scooby's head. He focuses instead on Scooby's obsession with being a talk show host (Conan O'Brien has a cameo as himself in a dream sequence) and eventually turns the footage he shot of Scooby and family into a comedy called "American Scooby." (Mike Schank of "American Movie" plays Giamatti's roommate for no other reason then to accentuate Solondz supposed spoof/theme here).

This second part of the film, its body, is really shoddy and unfocused. Solondz apparently had trouble with censors and others in filming his story. A third story that involved James Van Der Beek as a football player (who supposedly gets ass fucked) is completely missing from the film. And Solondz is the real one adrift here with a typical and drab story to tell. His subplot about Scooby's younger brother hypnotizing the father character in order to make him love him is pointless and ridiculous. Perhaps Solondz is saying "Fiction is as absurd as reality," but that message seems hopelessly lost here.

More importantly, Solondz is discussing how those who seem innocent are, in fact, often capable of the most outlandish and absurd manipulation. Like the professor manipulates his student sexually in the first film, the seemingly intelligent younger brother in this section manipulates his father and even gets the maid fired in the process. Solondz, of course, is manipulating his audience here.

"Storytelling," in its second half, becomes a real bore. It gets ridiculous and lame. Watching Webber look wan and unimpressed is nice, sure, but the segment lacks any real substance. It's too bad Solondz didn't opt to expand his opening story further, rather than exposing this re-treaded documentary filmmaker angle. The "Fiction" short has immense possibilities for further drama and interest. And the subplot of Scooby's sexuality is also engaging but Solondz is not interested in exploring it. Rather, in almost a homophobic way, Solondz uses it to explore Scooby's complete lack of any sort of real desires. It's no accident that when Scooby is being blown by his hero-worshipping buddy he dreams of burning his parents at the stake and getting on TV.

Solondz is perhaps the most important filmmaker in America right now. "Happiness" is a masterpiece. "Welcome to the Dollhouse" is one of the greatest indie films about teen angst ever made. But with his third film, Solondz is seemingly as clueless as his characters. He's adrift in a sea of Hollywood bullshit that has mired his creativity and circumcised his ability to shock. Perhaps the DVD of "Storytelling" will allow Solondz an opportunity to remain true to his artistic vision.

Theatrical releases are so much the villain in the Religious Rights' (and Congress') attack on the American value of Freedom of Expression, that cutting edge filmmakers like Solondz have been left castrated by fear of reprisal. Producers, studios and exhibitors are allowing this to happen, often promoting it to happen, because they themselves are looking for any scapegoat to take the heat off their own failures. Adrift in a sea of creative castration, Solondz says nothing too new in the second half. And what he does say is as confusing as a badly written story.

Ah, but with DVD's... the true freedom of expression still exists. See, kids can get very easily into theaters and see inappropriate things, but they have a hard time getting improper material from Blockbuster and seeing it at home. That hardly ever happens. (Note: This is sarcasm). At home, parents talk to their kids, a dialogue exists about what is proper viewing and informative entertainment and what isn't. Right? Maybe someone should put a big red flag over America's megaplex box offices. After all, with this form of censorship going on, we've already got a big red flag flying over America. All it is missing is a yellow hammer and scythe.

Note:

Also with Julie Hagerty, Lupe Ontiveros, Franka Pontente, Robert Wisdom and Johnathan Osser.

Pontente and Schank are particularly poorly used in the film. They have absolutely nothing to do.

Some music by Belle and Sebastion. Cinematography by Frederick Elmes.

Scenes with Van Der Beek, Adam Hahn-Bird and Heather Matarazzo, which were a part of a third story in the film, were cut.

The film premiered at Cannes, although Solondz did some reworking in the second segment after that.

Report Card Script: B+ Acting: A- Cinematography\Lighting: B+ Special Effects\Make Up: B+ Music: A+ Final Grade: B+

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