UN-HAPPY DAYS

By Belinda Luscombe

Looking like a thin, penurious Bill Gates, Todd Solondz, 36, pretty much fits the adult profile of a guy who got called names in junior high. He nevertheless claims the funny-grim Welcome to the Dollhouse isn't autobiographical. "The story of the bleakness and misery of my adolescence is a different movie," says the second-time director (he also made 1989's barely seen Fear, Anxiety and Depression).

Still, Solondz felt he knew the terrain well enough to be able to find the teenagers he'd need for the film just by sight. He and casting director Ann Goulder scoured New Jersey malls for girls who showed signs of self-loathing and boys who looked like bullies. That didn't work. The self loathers were too sad, and the bullies too evil. So they chose Heather Matarazzo, a sparky 11-year-old who had been acting professionally for five years, to play the nerdy, beleaguered Dawn Wiener. To nullify Heather's prettiness and self-assurance, Solondz "gave her a few flourishes: the glasses, the hair, the clothes."

His next casting challenge was to get the cast's parents to sign off on the cruel, sexually frank script. "When the kids read it, they were unfazed. They'd say, 'I know a kid who has got it much worse than that,'" says Solondz. "But many of the parents were--and I think understandably--very unsettled by it." They used words like "sick" and "depressing." Heather's mom quashed some of the bad language, but still allowed her daughter to do a scene where she fantasizes about getting to third base.

"I feel kind of weird when I'm watching the film with my parents," says Matarazzo, now 13. "I'm like, 'O.K., Mom, put your hands over your ears.'" The kissing scene was worse: "Mom was on the set, and I asked her really nicely if she could, like, go somewhere while I did it." Proving that Heather's life is much nicer than the fictional Dawn's, Mrs. Matarazzo obliged.

--By Belinda Luscombe