Cheap Storytelling (DVD) (Todd Solondz) Price

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Cruel & funny exploration of the art of narrative
In "Storytelling", Todd Solondz wields his darkly hysterical wit against the art of narrative. In two stories - a shorter one ("Fiction")starring Selma Blair as a ruthlessly abused college-writing student, and a longer one ("Non-Fiction") featuring an extra-shlubby Paul Giamatti as a would-be documentarian. Giamatti and Blair play writers lacking any control over their stories or even any basic idea of how to tell their stories. <
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>In "Fiction", Blair is Vi, a middling aspiring writer in a college writing workshop populated partly by other middling aspiring writers, and partly by mercilessly efficient critics who pull apart the stories of others, and their authors as well. Told that she's got little talent, Vi commits herself to turn her life into a story, then write about it. It's an interesting story, but a short one - Vi is too insubstantial a character to withstand the Solondz-treatment, and once the point is made, there's little left of her to survive. (Even if her story was true, her professor intones, once it's on paper, it's fiction; that's the cope de grace against her - following a raft of utterly destructive reviews by fellow students that must be heard to be believed.) <
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>In "Non-fiction" Giamatti tries to document...well he's not sure. A serial failure (acting, law school, writing), Giamatti decides to try documentary-movie making - but he's only got a vague idea of what he can and wants to do, and he's too weak-willed to keep his subjects from commandeering his movie. Giamatti's focus is "Scooby" Livingston, a very familiar Solondz-type (middle child of a comfortably middle-class modern-Jewish family). Scoob is utterly alienated - he's undirected, unambitious (he wants to be Conan O'brien's sidekick) sexually conflicted, and stuck between two brothers ever more in control than he is. As in "Fiction", Giamatti is paired up with a narrative conscious - a producer better able to chart the direction of Giamatti's film than Giamatti can. There are no stand-out performances, because Solondz integrates his characters like the complex components of a WMD - Giamatti & his producer, Vi & her professor(Robert Wisdom), Scooby's homophobic and domestic autocrat father (John Goodman) and his sons. <
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>Both stories excel at dissecting the narrative process and revealing the flaws of the failed creators, and they're both quite funny - nobody can do bittersweet & funny at the same time like Solondz. This may be the single cruelest film that you'll ever laugh your head off watching.

hilarious
This is probably my favorite example of dark comedy to date. The dedication to the jokes is incredible, and the punch lines hit you a lot like a punch. If your sense of humor is dark or highly adaptable, this film is worth checking out--otherwise, don't bother, because you'll just come away thinking it's disturbing and pointless.