Todd Solondz celebrated the 20th anniversary of his Venice premiere “Palindromes” at Metrograph in New York City on Sunday, April 6 with a 4K restoration screening, accompanied by a Q&A with actors Tyler Maynard and Shayna Levine, costume designer Vicki Farrell, and moderated by producer Mike S. Ryan. His disturbing comedy follows 13-year-old Aviva who is desperate to become a mother. Upon becoming pregnant, her mother, played by Ellen Barkin, forces her to get an abortion, which ultimately ends up sterilizing the teen girl. The aftermath follows Aviva being portrayed by eight different actresses.
“Anyone who tries to make a movie, it never turns out the way you anticipate, but you’re lucky [that] it turns out better,” Solondz told the audience. “It was really hard, 18-hour days; the climax was our last day, which was a 27-hour day that we did. Now, I don’t recommend this to anyone. I dodged so many bullets in my career, especially on this movie. But now that it’s over, and I’m not in jail, it’s fine.”
Ryan asked Solondz if this film was inspired by 9/11, adding that he “often thought about this as really the first kind of 9/11 film in this response.” This is in reference to a sequence when one of the Aviva portrayals, by Sharon Wilkins, says that her parents died during one of the September 11 plane crashes. “I wasn’t conscious of that,” Solondz replied.
“I don’t know what was going to my head,” Solondz continued. “I have to be moved by my characters in order to put myself through the hell of making a movie, and they have to have an emotional pull on me. It was funny back then. It was during the George W. Bush administration, and we thought nothing could get worse. There was such polarization, and people were just nuts, but those were interesting times. There are a lot of subjects that are out there in the news and for debate and so forth, but for me, it always comes down on a personal emotional level to the way in which I feel for these characters and what I put them through. That’s what makes it matter to me.”
Ryan went on to share how, at one point, Ellen Barkin made some of the crew cry on set. “I said, ‘Ellen, you’re yelling at some of the crew, they’re interns, and making them cry, and some of them are leaving. They thought they could be on the riviera with their family, during the summer, and they’re here working with us, and you’re yelling at them, and they’re crying and leaving. You need to stop yelling at the students.’ And she said, ‘OK, you give me a list of who I can yell at. Your name is top.’”
As for Solondz, he quipped that Barkin “was lovely to work with. I had a great experience working with her. She really kind of paid to be in the movie, ultimately, because at the time, she was married to the billionaire Ron Perelman, and so in order to be in the movie, she made the arrangement that she was flying [in] on her helicopter with her hair and makeup. We had promised that she could get home in time for Shabbos on Friday evening. Her helicopter was more than the cost of the movie. I’ve always been grateful.”
Solondz recently spoke with IndieWire about directing children in sex scenes. “I like working with children. I like working with grown-ups. Some are more pleasant and easier to work with than others, but somehow, it works out this way,” he said. “It’s true that my young actors are never old enough to really understand or be given permission to watch the movies they act in. I remember at the ‘Palindromes’ cast and crew screening, every one of the kids, I think they all showed up, with their families. Who knows what they understood or didn’t understand.”
“I did see some of the little ones whispering into their parents’ ears at different points of the movie, but kids can do that even when they’re watching a Disney movie. It’s hard to know what they did or didn’t understand, but certainly, none of these kids would be in the movies if these parents didn’t not only approve but support the whole process.”
