An Interview with WIENER-DOG writer-director Todd Solondz!!!

Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here, with a quickie interview from out sometime correspondent Matt Hoffman with writer-director Todd Solondz about his latest work WIENER-DOG, the follow-up to his breakthrough 1995 film WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE—this time with Greta Gerwig taking over as Dawn Wiener. I’ll let Matt take it from here…


Director Todd Solondz has gained a reputation for his bleak worldview and fearless expression of moral perversion. In his early films, such WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE and HAPPINESS, Solondz explored the lives of characters that were stuck in a seemingly alien existence. With his latest film, WIENER-DOG, Solondz is at his most unfair, examining a world where the innocent are once again victimized and all fairness seems to be without consideration. WIENER-DOG is perhaps Solondz’s most humorous film to date, but it is also surely his darkest.

During our interview, I attempted to get some understanding of the soft-spoken auteur’s motives. Here are the results…





Matt Hoffman: Where did your idea for the film come from?

Todd Solondz: Well it seemed like a neat idea to do a dog movie. My references were on the one hand AU HASARD BALTHAZAR, which was not a dog, and BENJI on the other. I saw them many years ago. I had dogs growing up, so I had experience as a kid. So it seemed like it made sense to pursue that.

Matt Hoffman: One of the great, most surprising moments in the film comes during the intermission. Where did you get the idea to have a song written about the Wiener-Dog and to use it in a break during the film?

TS: I worked with the composer Marc Shaiman before and I asked him to use the song “Ghost Riders in the Sky” by Johnny Cash as a reference to inspire him to write a song. I didn't want a funny song; I wanted a song that was very un-ironic about a dog's quest for home. I wanted to use a country, Johnny Cash like singer. That was the idea.

Matt Hoffman: You have Danny DeVito playing a New York City-based film school professor, which is interesting because you teach film at NYU. Was this character somewhat based on yourself? Was he supposed to reflect your experiences?



TS: Certainly, it's informed by it. I don't think the students or the faculty would say that it was a mirror of myself. For me, I'm moved by the plight of a guy who's something of a dinosaur to the students. He hasn't quite lived up to the dreams that he set for himself as a filmmaker and an artist. So I shaped things accordingly. But no, no one is based on any one person.

Matt Hoffman: In this film, you've brought over a character from one of your previous films. You also did this is LIFE DURING WARTIME. As a writer, why do you find yourself recasting the same characters?

TS: I guess it's a way to open up and play with ideas that I'd be constrained by if I had the same actor. There are characters that engage me, so I like to see where they'll go. In PALINDROMES, I killed Dawn Wiener, but that doesn't mean she can't have another possible life trajectory. We all have. at any one moment, a lot of different paths we can pursue. As the writer, I get to explore and play with that.

Matt Hoffman: When you're having an actor like Greta Gerwig or Shirley Henderson playing a character that has existed in another film, do you instruct them not to look at the previous performance?



TS: Well they'd already seen the other movies. What I say to them is not to study them. They have to make it their own. The emotional quality has to be there, but they are a different instrument. So it's going to sound and feel different. That's why I want to have someone else play the character; I want to see what they can bring to it. So there's no mimicry.

Matt Hoffman: Are there any characters from your other films that you would like to return to in the future?

TS: In the next one I want to do, there are no characters from other films. The one I want to do next is in Texas and has nothing connected.

Matt Hoffman: When you wrote the film about the Wiener-Dog, did you have any idea how difficult the breed is to use in a film?

TS: I should have done that research. It didn't occur to me that the dog wouldn't respond to "Stay" or “Sit." I thought that would work because we used a trained show dog, but I was wrong. It was excruciating, but it's all history. I got what I needed.

Matt Hoffman: Did making the film change your opinion about dogs? Did it make you more or less of a dog person?

TS: I've always loved dogs. When I was growing up we went through a lot of them. But it's too much responsibility. I'm not a dog owner now. My children would love it, but actually they're not ready. One of them doesn't want it. Personally, I like big dogs, but I'm not getting a dog. It's too much responsibility.

Matt Hoffman: People are saying that this is your angriest film yet. What do you think about that, and what do you want audiences to take away from the film?

TS: Everyone experiences these things in different ways. I don't see it that way. My hope is that for the 90 minutes you are engaged, and that the movie shifts your understanding of the way in which we experience our lives and the way we relate to each other and the world. Afterwards, you can go and have a nice dinner. It's a movie.



-- Matt Hoffman
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