Biografie

He spent his entire life savings on making Palindrome (2004) because no studio would back it.

He accepted a job as a teacher of English as a second language to newly arrived Russian immigrants, an experience he has described as deeply rewarding.

He initially gave up on his film career after negative experiences making Fear, Anxiety & Depression (1989) but a friend convinced him to give it another try.

Solondz went to Yale University, graduating in 1981.

His favorite writers include Philip Roth, Michel Houellebecq, and David Sedaris.

In American films, this period of life is not treated seriously. You have either the cute and cuddly Disney kid or the evil devil monster. For me it's fertile territory - middle class kids growing up in the suburbs.

(On his movie "Happiness"): "It's not for everyone and it's not designed for everyone and I don't think I'll ever write anything that's designed to appeal to everyone. If you want sympathetic characters it's easy enough to do, you just give someone cancer and of course we'll all feel horribly sad and sorry. You make anyone a victim and people feel that way. But that's not of interest to me as a filmmaker or as a writer. I may be accused of a certain kind of misanthropy but I think I could argue the opposite. I think that it's only by acknowledging the flaws, the foibles, the failings and so forth of who we are that we can in fact fully embrace the all of who we are. People say I'm cruel or that the film's cruel, but I think rather it exposes the cruelty and I think that certainly the capacity for cruelty is the most difficult, the most painful thing for any of us to acknowledge. That we are at all capable. And yet I think that it exists as much as the capacity for kindness and it's only the best of us that are able to suppress, sublimate, re-channel and so forth these baser instincts, but I see them to some degree at play as a regular part of life in very subtle ways and not so subtle ways. I don't think that after the seventh grade that these impulses evaporate. So from my perspective I'm trying to be honest with what I see and what I've experienced and what I believe is true to our nature."

There's good laughter and bad laughter. As long as they're not laughing at the expense of any of these characters, it's OK. My films are comedies, but they're sad comedies and this is the saddest of all.

I don't have children but if I did and my child wanted to act, I'd be fine with him acting in my movie where I feel a certain dignity is accorded. But I would never let my child act in a commercial for the Gap or Banana Republic or for some other consumer goods corporation. That would be the obscenity.

To be an abortionist today in the States is, to my mind, very heroic. Who wants to put their lives on the line? You get assassinated, there are bombs in the clinics. There are so many other easier ways to make a living. You put yourself in a very vulnerable place if you do choose that calling.