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Storytelling
College and high school serve as the backdrop for two stories about dysfunction and personal turmoil.
2001 · Directed by Todd Solondz · 87 min · Comedy · Drama · Screenplay in the scene database · 13 frames
Tagline
Sex, race, celebrity, exploitation.
Plot
The film consists of two stories that are unrelated and have different actors, titled "Fiction" and "Non-Fiction". College and high school serve as the backdrop for these two stories about dysfunction and personal turmoil.
Vi is a graduate student dating an undergrad, Marcus, who has cerebral palsy, though he observes that she no longer seems passionate about their relationship. They are in a creative writing class taught by a well known black author, Mr. Scott. Marcus has written an amateurish story about the effect of Vi's love on his medical condition, and she encourages him to share it in the class's workshop. While other students give it tepid praise, Mr. Scott and his favorite student, Catherine, harshly dismiss it as mediocre trash. Upset, Marcus angrily blames Vi for not warning him against sharing the story, and breaks up with her, accusing her of being secretly attracted to Mr. Scott. A hurt and heartbroken Vi goes out to a bar and encounters Mr. Scott. She thanks him for being honest about Marcus's story, praises his writing, and asks if he thinks she will make a great writer; he tells her that he does not. After she flirts with him clumsily, they return to his residence, where she discovers photos of Catherine and other students naked and in various poses. Mr. Scott and Vi have rough sex. Afterwards, Vi returns to Marcus in tears and reconciles with him. Later, back in the class workshop, Vi shares a fictionalized version of her encounter with Mr. Scott. The other students are appalled by the story's content, and Catherine calmly eviscerates the piece, claiming that "Vi" is an arrogant, narcissistic fetishist and racist. When Marcus and Vi defend the piece as being a real experience, an unimpressed Mr. Scott informs them that when she starts writing about an experience, it becomes fiction, and that the story is nevertheless an improvement over her other works because there "is now at least a beginning, a middle, and an end."
Toby Oxman is a struggling would-be filmmaker attempting to make his first documentary. Though he originally intends to make a film about the experiences of teenagers post-Columbine on a wide scale, he is eventually forced to limit his scope to one dysfunctional, upper-middle-class suburban New Jersey family and their teenage son Scooby. His father, the strict and unsympathetic Marty, is frustrated with Scooby's lazy attitude and unwillingness to attend college, while his football player brother Brady worries that Scooby is secretly gay and his obnoxious youngest brother Mikey is obliviously self-obsessed. Scooby's only vague ambition is to be famous, and have a talk show on television like his idol Conan O'Brien, who appears to him in a dream sequence as Scooby allows a love-struck friend to perform oral sex on him. Scooby intentionally flunks his exams, but to his surprise, he finds that he has been accepted to Princeton University, which Marty privately reveals was because of a large donation from a family member.
Plot summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA.
Crew
- Screenplay: Todd Solondz
- Cinematography: Frederick Elmes
- Edited by: Alan Oxman
- Music: Nathan Larson
- Production design: James Chinlund
- Produced by: Christine Vachon, Ted Hope
Cast
- Selma Blair as Vi
- Leo Fitzpatrick as Marcus
- Robert Wisdom as Mr. Scott
- Aleksa Palladino as Catherine
- Mark Webber as Scooby Livingston
- Paul Giamatti as Toby Oxman
- John Goodman as Marty Livingston
- Jonathan Osser as Mikey Livingston
- Lupe Ontiveros as Consuelo
- Julie Hagerty as Fern Livingston
Production
- Country: United States of America
- Language: English
- Studios: Killer Films, Good Machine
- Box office: $1,318,945
- Themes: high school, new jersey, exploitation, college, dysfunctional family, celebrity, interracial relationship, teacher student relationship
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