HAPPINESS, written and directed by Todd Solondz (WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE), was the wildest film of a pretty wild year. The films of 1998 were outrageous enough to inspire an outcry, with a November ‘98 L.A. TIMES editorial by Kenneth Turan lamenting that “we are now overwhelmed by a creative culture that is passionate about going to extremes to the exclusion of everything else.”
HAPPINESS Trailer
Included in the 1998 movie lineup were darkly comedic offerings that, in Turan’s words, “all go brashly where Louis B. Mayer couldn’t even imagine setting foot,” including THE CELEBRATION/FESTEN, YOUR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS, CLAY PIGEONS and VERY BAD THINGS. There was also the ‘98 indie romcom PLAYING BY HEART, whose conception, involving three sisters and the many eccentric characters orbiting them, matches that of Solondz’s film. Another comparison is with the following year’s AMERICAN BEAUTY, a film whose mordant view of American suburbia recalled HAPPINESS—which far outdid it in every respect.
The sisters of HAPPINESS are Joy (Jane Adams), a musician, Trish (Cynthia Stevenson), a housewife, and Helen (Lara Fynn Boyle), a poet. All three are in search of the H word, which constantly eludes them. The unmarried Joy, who has a talent for attracting assholes, seeks fulfillment by quitting her receptionist job to teach immigrants in the midst of a strike, just as Trish tries to immerse herself in family life and Helen whines incessantly.
These women’s collective existence is about to be upended by the break-up of their aging parents (Ben Gazzara and Louise Lasser) and two men: Allen, an obscene phone caller residing in the apartment next to Helen’s, and Bill, a rabid pedophile who happens to be Trish’s husband. Bill’s perversions explode when his eleven-year-old son Billy (Rufus Read) invites his friend Johnny (Evan Silverberg) to spend the night, while Allen becomes a most unlikely object of desire for Helen and Kristina (Camryn Manheim), who lives across from Allen—and is in the process of disposing of the remains of the building’s doorman (José Rabelo) after killing him.
Many people tend to write this film off as a disposable shock-fest, and it is indeed shocking. The scene in which Bill the pedo describes his crimes to his son has to be one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever seen, and clearly I’m not the only one who thinks so. Universal CEO Ron Meyer publicly denounced HAPPINESS and forced Universal’s subsidiary October Films to abandon the film after acquiring it for release (with the indie outfit Good Machine ultimately taking on distribution duties), proclaiming that “as long as I have the job and can throw my body in front of something, I will.”
Yet for all its ugliness HAPPINESS demonstrates enormous wisdom, and a great deal of twisted wit, in its pitiless depictions of loneliness, jealousy and boredom (which I’d say renders it more relevant to the iPhone age than the America of 1998). Solondz is a rare indie auteur whose filmmaking matches his dialogue, and he turned out an impressively visualized (you’ll need to view the 2024 Criterion Collection Blu-ray to appreciate the nuances of cinematographer Maryse Alberti’s lighting, which isn’t evident in the previous home video releases) and superbly acted film.
HAPPINESS’s actors, unlike the characters they play, never flinch. Dylan Baker delivered 1998’s ballsiest performance as the alternately repellant and sympathetic pedophile Bill, while Philip Seymour Hoffman is equally strong as the obscene phone caller and Lara Flynn Boyle is (for once) authentically good as the stuck-up Helen (typecasting?). Jane Adams and Cynthia Stevenson also excel as Helen’s sisters, and, in a very rare case, look somewhat like actual siblings.
HAPPINESS was not a huge success (grossing an estimated $2,982 million against a $2,200 million budget), but it was iconic enough that Solondz was able to mount a sequel in 2009: LIFE DURING WARTIME, in which the characters were played by different actors. Another change from HAPPINESS was that the shock factor of LIFE DURING WARTIME was dialed back considerably, resulting in a strong but underwhelming film that functioned as a damp squib, whereas its predecessor was very much a live wire.
Vital Statistics
HAPPINESS
Good Machine/Killer Films
Director: Todd Solondz
Producers: Ted Hope, Christine Vachon
Screenplay: Todd Solondz
Cinematography: Maryse Alberti
Editing: Alan Goulder
Cast: Jane Adams, Jon Lovitz, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Dylan Baker, Lara Flynn Boyle, Justin Elvin, Cynthia Stevenson, Lila Glantzman-Leib, Gerry Becker, Rufus Read, Ben Gazzara, Louise Lasser, Arthur J. Nascarella, Molly Shannon, Ann Harada, Doug McGrath, Jared Harris, Anne Bobby, Elizabeth Ashley, Marla Maples