Day 24: Welcome to the Dollhouse
Day 24: Welcome to the Dollhouse
I Need to Watch More Todd Solondz
🎥 Welcome to the Dollhouse dir. Todd Solondz
I stumbled upon this film while stalking [REDACTED]’s Letterboxed diary (probably a future T-Rec tbh) for new films to check out, and I loved it.
Welcome to the Dollhouse is basically if you Gummo-ified B* B*rnham’s Eighth Grade. I imagine it’d be impossible to make an indie like this nowadays. The language is too harsh for A24 Twitter stans despite being the reality for many kids in Junior High, I’m sure.
I’ve been aware of Todd’s film Happiness for years, I guess I just couldn’t tell if it was actually good or just an ironic too on-the-nose depressing movie. However, I see the light now, Todd is a lil weirdo that gets contemporary Americana more than most. I’m definitely going to watch Happiness and Storytelling now.
Edit (10:45am) I didn’t know this at the time but Roxy Cinema is screening a bunch of Todd Solondz this weekend— kismet!
Have a nice day 🫶
- Tyler
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given the recent exchange on Jesus' Son + now this, I feel like you're on your way to becoming a 90s independent film fan. It really was a rad era for small, weird films. Two others that come to mind when I remember the absolute effing joy of seeing Dollhouse in some downtown theater (in the 90s we all still lived in Manhattan) are Bottle Rocket (first Wes Anderson, way more restrained stylistically, and not yet so super Wes Anderson-y) and a documentary called The Cruise which I still watch on my birthday every year, even or especially b/c I'm back home on the West Coast. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cruise_(1998_film)