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Optimism is not inherently a superior way of viewing the world. Certainly doctors will say it might be better for one's physical health to be an optimist. But, morally speaking it may not be appropriate in certain circumstances.

Todd Solondz

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Todd Solondz
Age: 65
Born: 1959
Born: October 15
Actor
Film Actor
Film Director
Film Producer
Filmmaker
Screenwriter
Newark
New Jersey
Health
Superiors
Certain
Optimism
May
Appropriate
Better
Speaking
Viewing
Might
Doctors
Inherently
Way
Physical
Morally
World
Certainly
Optimist
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Superior

More quotes by Todd Solondz

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That is definitely a misunderstanding between me and a part of my audience. To be honest, I am often unsettled by the responses some people have had to my movies, and that includes many people who like them.
Todd Solondz
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I don't make movies with the idea that people are going to walk out of them feeling comfortable or better about themselves or more secure in their own biases or opinions.
Todd Solondz
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I mean, I don't want to sound - of course it's very nice, people come up and say appreciative things about my work. But the loss, in terms of privacy and anonymity, is no small thing to me.
Todd Solondz
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A movie takes on its own life, and you have to respect that and be open to it.
Todd Solondz
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When part of what you're trying to get at is the truth hidden under a taboo, or when you want to nail a hypocrisy, laughter is a very useful tool. I want to show the painful side of existence, but there is no question I also want to make people laugh.
Todd Solondz
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It's one of the great gifts of having so little money that you are able to make these kinds of radical conceits that you could never afford to do had you had a reasonable budget,.
Todd Solondz
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That said, be mindful, to someone who's never seen any of my work, it's just a movie with actors. So it's only those who of course know the earlier work that will see something is afoot, so to speak. But I don't want to intellectualize.
Todd Solondz
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If I grew up in a different background, I could see myself getting a gun and shooting an abortionist. That's my job, to imagine what could happen, what can make people go in different directions.
Todd Solondz
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Art has a smaller audience than, say, movies or other forms of mass consumption. But that doesn't mean the work doesn't have an impact in a way that transcends just a few cultural arbiters.
Todd Solondz
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It is true that the movie is perhaps my most politically-charged. The story is thrust into motion by the idea of what do you do when your 13 year old daughter comes home pregnant. And not only is she pregnant, but she wants to keep the baby.
Todd Solondz
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I think success is a lot more healthy than failure.
Todd Solondz
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You always have to be ahead of the audience so that they have to always catch up and know the movie's not quite going exactly where you think it's going, or expecting it to be going.
Todd Solondz
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One thing I want to say: I don't like victim stories and I don't write them.
Todd Solondz
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Usually the audience has no idea that the censored version of whatever movie they're watching isn't the original.
Todd Solondz
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The ability to take pleasure in one's life is a skill and is a kind of intelligence.
Todd Solondz
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When I want to show the kind of meanness people are capable of, to make it believable I find I have to tone it down. It's in real life that people are over the top.
Todd Solondz
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We say we embrace humanity, but what does that mean? We are all defined by our limits, so to what extent can we embrace all this? Because we all contain within ourselves equally the capacity for kindness, as much as for cruelty or evil. And the best of us are able to suppress those baser impulses, instincts. That's the war within.
Todd Solondz
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I love working with actors. If you cast the right person in the right part at the right time, they make you look like a better writer and director than you really are.
Todd Solondz
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For me, New Jersey is kind of a mythical place. It's emblematic of a certain aspect of American life. Florida is the same way. It's where people go to recreate, to reinvent themselves. It's what California used to be. I think Florida is still a place to erase the past.
Todd Solondz
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Storytelling is the only studio movie where the censorship is perfectly clear, the only studio movie with a big red box covering up a shot. I take pride in that - and, of course, in having avoided the fate of Eyes Wide Shut.
Todd Solondz