Selma Blair Gets Slashed

Posted Tuesday, February 5, 2002 at 2:14 PM Central

by Heather Koehler

Storytelling, the latest work of director Todd Solondz, didn’t impress the MPAA, but then again, what’s new. The Happiness director was forced to leave vital scenes of Storytelling on the editing room floor, including entire performances by several actors.

Selma Blair retorted, “I think Todd just hangs the moon, but we had no idea. I had a much bigger part, people had amazing performances cut completely: James Van Der Beek, Emmanuelle Chiriqui, Adam Hann-Byrd, not to mention Welcome To The Dollhouse star Heather Matarazzo.” James performed a “graphic gay-sex scene” and it was edited out completely, along with the rest of his character’s parts. Unlike Selma, James refused to comment but her acting wasn’t completely cut out, even though Todd did digitally insert red boxes to cover her and Robert Wisdom during the near rape scene.

“You write the script and you think it’s about X, you shoot it and you think it’s about Y, and then you go into the editing room and it turns into Z. It happens to me with every movie,” Todd explained.