‘It would not get made today’: Todd Solondz on his shocking paedophile film Happiness

Todd Solondz, writer and director

I’d had an unexpected success with my movie Welcome to the Dollhouse and, knowing how fleeting that can be, I wanted to take advantage. Everyone wanted to work with me. So I wrote a script – and all those doors closed again. Except one. Bingham Ray, the head of October Films, was the one person who really wanted to make this movie.

I didn’t go into writing it with the intention of making a movie about a paedophile, or about any other taboos. But I did feel unfettered. Scripts are always character-based for me. I find the story through the characters I conceive and discover over the course of writing. I wrote Happiness in 30-page instalments, which I’d show to a couple of non-film-maker friends. Each time, I just asked: “Do you want to know what happens next?”

At a test screening in New York, someone swore they would never let it be released

October wanted me to get a star, so I had to offer the part of Bill Maplewood to a few well-known actors. Fortunately, they all turned it down, because when Dylan Baker came in, I knew immediately this was who I wanted. Everyone, however, wanted to play Allen, despite his habit of making obscene phone calls. Philip Seymour Hoffman’s first audition for Allen didn’t go that great, but we did a callback. I think I knew better that time how to communicate what I needed, and he delivered. We sealed it with a handshake and his hand was just so clammy. I said: “This is the guy.”

I suppose the cinema I create is trying to look like TV. I play with the comforts of the television I grew up with: the conventions, the musical segues and so forth. When you’re dealing with such troubling subject matter, it provides a security blanket. I had a very strong idea of what I wanted to achieve with the score. Robbie Kondor understood and provided a counterpoint to what’s on screen, a friction between what you see and what you feel, which gives it the charge.

The production itself was a nightmare, but they always are – each movie is just a different nightmare. We did a few test screenings in New York. At one, someone got very upset and swore they were never going to let this movie get released. Another woman said she felt bad for the director, because he didn’t understand that the film was unintentionally funny.

Happiness went out unrated, because an NC-17 would have limited the number of theatres it could have been shown in. There were no cuts we could make to avoid that – it was just the whole thing. You can only get a movie like this made on the heels of one that has been profitable and it would not get made today. I’m lucky I had the alchemy of the stars working for me back then.

Dylan Baker, played Bill Maplewood

As soon as I read the script, I knew it was a major piece of writing and a role that would provide me with a fascinating challenge. Todd later told me: “Everybody we offered it to didn’t want anything to do with it.” That’s how they got to me.

I said to Todd: “Do you think it would be helpful for me to talk to a paedophile?” He said: “Absolutely not.” His reasoning was that I’d only be able to speak to a convicted felon. Bill Maplewood has this horrible private obsession but he doesn’t feel guilty, or accept that what he’s doing is hurting anyone. He feels he’s a good father, a good family man, and that this other life is his alone. The sad thing is that I think it’s not that rare. People often have those parts of their psyche that they think they can hide from the world and that make them special and different. I was really interested in exploring that as an actor.

When it came to Rufus Read, who played Bill’s 11-year-old son, Billy, Todd said: “I want you to read the script. And if you have any questions, you ask your parents.” But whenever his parents asked if there was anything he didn’t understand, Rufus would say: “No, I got it. I figured it out.” During the scene where the two of them talk about what Billy has heard at school and whether Bill actually desires his son, I remember thinking someone was going to come on to the set and say: “No, you can’t do that. Stop!” That scene wasn’t quite working when we were just on closeups, but when we did the full thing with the two of us sitting on the sofa, Rufus became very emotional and the whole thing came to life . He was amazing.

We had a packed screening at the New York film festival. The moment in the movie where the cops come to talk to Bill about Johnny [his son’s classmate], and he slips up and mentions the other boy, the entire audience seemed to draw in a collective breath – like: “Oh no, he’s gonna get caught!” That’s what Todd was going after, that sense of horrible empathy that people felt for this guy that stunned and challenged them. They’d think: “What’s wrong with me? I want him to get caught. He is a monster!” There were almost fights breaking out, with some people laughing and others going: “This isn’t funny. Why are you laughing?” It was fascinating.

I didn’t actually learn the title of the film until I saw the poster at the Toronto film festival. Until then, it had just been described as “Untitled Todd Solondz film”. I remember thinking, “Oh, I wonder what that film is” and then seeing a cartoon character that looked like me. I couldn’t believe it was called Happiness; that just seemed like the craziest title that could ever have been picked. Now, of course, it seems like it couldn’t be called anything else.

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