A scene from "Dark Horse"

Todd Solondz is about to release his sixth feature film, Dark Horse (reviewed this week). But he’s still falling victim to the fallout from his second, infamous film, Happiness. That 1998 drama took as its subject a pedophile trying—and failing—to control his dark urges. The adult-child sex didn’t just get the film an NC-17 rating (surrendered to in favor of the "not rated" kiss of death).

It also made shooting Dark Horse more difficult.

During a scene in which the protagonist attempts to return an item to a toy store, the exterior shots depict a blurred Toys"R"Us logo on the store. "It was partly aesthetic. I could have done other things, but the point is that I was not given permission from Toys"R"Us to use their logo and was not given permission to shoot inside their store," said Mr. Solondz. "I didn’t want to create a phony name because they always sound phony. There’s no rival to Toys"R"Us. It’s sort of like when you see people write a phone number down and it reads 555. A blur people recognize that from reality TV. It actually makes it more like a documentary."

Mr. Solondz is an old hand at work-arounds given the number of bridges his material has burned for him. "I’ve been on the black list of so many corporations, so I’m used to this. You find solutions." While the exteriors could be shot in the U.S., he needed to go to the Dominican Republic to find a toy store with the right look. "Nobody watching the movie is going to have any idea that this isn’t a Toys"R"Us—unless one works at Toys"R"Us, and is a specialist in the subject."

(A spokesperson for Toys"R"Us said Mr. Solondz’s request conflicted with high-volume holiday shopping times.)

The great irony is that Dark Horse is perhaps Mr. Solondz’s least explicit film. Said the director: "I think the scandal is that it’s not so scandalous. I deliberately, I think, avoided anything that could be taken as sensationalistic or hot-button-y, so to speak. For those clamoring for that, this movie isn’t there to provide that." As for the aftereffects of Happiness, Mr. Solondz recalled a screening of the film at Telluride, when an eager moviegoer described how funny the child rape had been. "After that, I said all my films aren’t for everyone—especially the people that like them."

The Observer thought, “It’s good that Tao and Megan got married. It seems like they’re in love.” The Observer considered his knowledge of the relationship in question. He thought that it seemed to coincide with a progressive brightening in Tao Lin’s mood since he had met Tao Lin to profile him for the newspaper in August and traveled to L.A. to spend a weekend with him in October attending parties and convening a panel on hipsters at UCLA. The Observer thought, “I met Megan at my birthday party in October after we got back from the West Coast. Tao seemed happy. He must have missed her on his book tour. Since my birthday party the two have been making documentary movies together that they call ‘extreme mumblecore.’ Although the style is very crude, the main thing you can tell from the movies is that the two of them are in love.”

The Observer clicked on the link to the Thought Catalog article on the marriage. There he found that the couple were wed in Las Vegas and that they currently have about $2,000 in assets, mostly gleaned from parental wedding gifts. He watched the embedded video of their marriage. The Observer thought, “That minister or justice of the peace or whatever seems like a nice man.”

The Observer remembered a Gmail chat with Tao Lin while Tao Lin was in Las Vegas.  

Tao Lin had said, “I have been sitting in Whole Foods in Las Vegas for six hours unfollowing people on Twitter.

The Observer said, “What’s Vegas like? Why are you there?”

Tao Lin said, “Vacation. It seems cold. There’s a low in the 30s at night.”

Tao Lin mentioned the documentary he and Megan were making about a local teenage fashion blogger and model. “We shot around six hours last night. It includes hot tub and shoplifting scenes.”

They discussed more details of the film.

Tao Lin drew the chat to an end. He said, “I’m feeling 'dead', going to buy some thing to eat...then walk around. . .peace...”

The Observer said, “Word.” The chat was over.

Back at his desk on Saturday, The Observer also remembered some Tweets Tao Lin and Megan Boyle had written that were “somewhat blue” in his opinion because they involved sex acts and contraband drugs. He looked at their Twitter feeds and found them. Tao Lin’s Tweet read, “'pulled' my penis in opposite directions near its 'head' to make it 'wider' as @meganboyle 'poured' cocaine on the now-larger surface.” Megan Boyle’s Tweet read, “snorted cocaine off @tao_lin's balls while grinning as it fell 'everywhere' and then licked the balls ~6x, some of the penis ~2x”

The Observer thought, “Not only do they exhibit great affection for each other in social situations, they seem to have a highly charged and pleasurable erotic life. This seems like a formula for lasting love.”

The Observer wrote a Tweet, “'Congrats' to @tao_lin and @meganboyle on their 'elopement.' News gave me a 'smiling' facial expression, 'restored' my 'faith in love.'”

The Observer flipped through a few pages of Richard Yates by Tao Lin so that he could better recall Tao Lin’s prose style in order to imitate it in this report.

Then The Observer wrote an email to Tao Lin, “Congrats on marriage. Really happy for you guys. Seems like a brilliant idea. Xian”

As of this posting, Tao Lin has yet to respond.