Word: matarazzo
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Dawn Wiener (Heather Matarazzo) is the champion of the geeks at Ben Franklin Junior High school in a New Jersey suburb--even the other nerds call her by her inevitable moniker "wiener dog." Home is no refuge for Dawn. Her mother (Angela Pietropinto), presumably the same woman who inflicts pink and purple one-piece feety-pajamas on a twelve year old girl, bullies poor Dawn, even making her tear down the "Special People Clubhouse." Little sister Missy (Daria Kalinina) steals the spotlight, pirouetting around the font yard in a tutu, and big brother Mark (Matthew Faber) plays clarinet...
Luckily Solondz' cast is up to the challenge of this loaded material. Matarazzo's performance is seamless, and it seems inconceivable that she could be anything other than the squinting, mouthbreathing girl she portrays. Her dead-pan performance means that her Dawn is tough, not easily crushed by the blows she keeps facing. The resiliency of the developing spirit is thus a tacit message of the film. Bredan Sexton Jr brings out the tender helplessness of a character that could otherwise seem downright evil, while not overplaying the "sensitive" card. Both these young actors deserve praise for the delicate, sophisticated...
...many cruel cusps atop which life obliges us to teeter, none is more razor-sharp than the one separating childhood and adolescence. Just ask Dawn Wiener (Heather Matarazzo), better known to her fellow students at Benjamin Franklin Junior High as "Wiener Dog." Built like a badly packed shipping carton, afflicted with thick, round glasses and tightly skinned-back hair, she was born to be shunned and taunted in approximately equal measure...
...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...
...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...