Being unlikeable: the failure and optimism of Todd Solondz
2018; Oxford University Press; Volume: 59; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/screen/hjy032
ISSN1460-2474
Autores Tópico(s)Cinema and Media Studies
ResumoThe title of Todd Solondz’s 2012 film Dark Horse describes not only its protagonist but implicitly the film itself as an artefact, drawing attention to the fact that to invest in a Solondz production is to to take a gamble on a dark horse. The film is not, as the definition of ‘dark horse’ might suggest, about a largely unknown competitor who unexpectedly comes to prominence; it is a devastating portrait of failure. The film’s title directs us to ruminate not on the auteur’s quick rise to fame but rather his longstanding identification with its slower decline. Commercially and critically, Solondz’s career as a US independent filmmaker peaked in the mid-to-late 1990s with the release of Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995) and Happiness (1998), both now considered to be cult classics. Each subsequent film has been less successful, critically and economically, than its predecessor, and Dark Horse is no exception, pulling in a box office of just over $166,000.1 While acknowledging that the value of a film cannot be determined upon its box-office results, or even its critical reception, Solondz also recognizes that these low figures mean his career is teetering on the edge of extinction. In one interview he explains with a tone of matter-of-fact inevitability: ‘I always presume that every movie I make will be my last. My career is very smoothly in decline, each movie making half as much as the prior one.’2 On a separate occasion he claims: ‘I’ve been losing so much money for so many people for so long, it’s hard to know how long it can continue’.3 Solondz never shies away from discussing the failure of his films to draw a crowd sufficient to cover the costs of its creation. Instead he speaks of the downward trajectory of what he refers to as his ‘so-called’ career frequently enough that such assertions begin to sound like promotional slogans.4
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