Kelly, Richard (Donnie Darko)
Dread Central Staff
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You may not know the name yet, but you sure as hell have heard of the film. It’s called Donnie Darko, and if you haven’t taken the time out of your busy schedule to see it yet, you’re only cheating yourself, friend. No, it’s not strictly a horror movie; some would say it’s not horror at all, but it sure isn’t a romantic comedy, drama, or science fiction. In fact it’s an ingenious blend of all those genres and more.
In an unprecedented move Richard Kelly got the chance to re-release his debut film with his own cut re-established, adding many new scenes and giving the film, from what’s been said about it so far, a whole new feel. The Director’s Cut of Donnie Darko opened in L.A. on July 23rd and is expected to slowly traverse the country from there. Make sure you make it a point to see it.
Our West Coast reporter Sean Clark got a chance to speak with Rick Kelly about the film, the new cut, and what lies ahead. Dig it.
In an unprecedented move Richard Kelly got the chance to re-release his debut film with his own cut re-established, adding many new scenes and giving the film, from what’s been said about it so far, a whole new feel. The Director’s Cut of Donnie Darko opened in L.A. on July 23rd and is expected to slowly traverse the country from there. Make sure you make it a point to see it.
Our West Coast reporter Sean Clark got a chance to speak with Rick Kelly about the film, the new cut, and what lies ahead. Dig it.
Q: What is the tangent universe?
RK: Well, I think there are different answers to that question. I think that, for me, the most logical conclusion is that it was man that opened the tangent universe, but man or an intelligence developed by man in the far distant future. Perhaps a new theory– this isn’t the only theory but is to me a theory you can take out of the director’s cut – is that the whole film is the result of someone in the distant future figuring out how to break the space-time continuum. And then the tangent universe is almost like . . . in Apollo 13 when they had to get the oxygen duct to connect and they’re running around trying to figure out how to get them home. Perhaps contacting Donnie, and even the manipulation of Frank, is almost like in Apollo 13 when they’re trying to get the life raft home before everyone dies.
Q: If he chooses to live, does the universe really end; or is it just hypothetical?
RK: I think you can look at that two ways. Either he’s convinced it was all a dream and that none of it was real, really he has experienced something. He’s made contact with something so far beyond anything we’re capable of understanding that the knowledge of that makes it so he realizes that he can’t live anymore. Either he doesn’t want to or he doesn’t need to or that his death is necessary for it all or that there is a reward for him for what he has just accomplished.
It’s meant to be upsetting and disturbing why he dies, but to me it was always necessary for the story that he not live or not survive it. It was always an absolute decision for me, and part of it is meant to be troubling and upsetting for the audience. In a way I felt that if I’m gonna tell this big story with all these big ideas that I’d try to tie it into the archetype of self-sacrifice or martyrdom of some sort.
Q: Like when he walked out of the theater with the marquee.
RK: Yeah. Luckily Jake stopped and smirked. That’s the take I used because it is a sight gag, but at the same time I’m telling a story that ties into big religious ideas and ties to science. So I felt like I had to throw a nod to both of those films in a strange way.
Q: Why do you think that interpretation is available in the director’s cut but not the theatrical?
RK: I don’t know. Maybe it is available to some people in the theatrical cut, but I had written all of the time travel book elements and had always planned to try and complete the idea of Ex Machina and tying the Watership Down material together. It was important to me to be able to see a version of the film where I was able to include all of that into the text of the film because I always intended to. It was not something I was able to get in under two hours.
Q: What did you decide to cut and/or not put back in the film and why?
RK: You know it tough because any director’s cut by definition is going to be self-indulgent; that’s why it is called a director’s cut. But I wanted to complete all of the character arcs. I wanted to complete Holmes Osborne and the parents to find out more of who they were. I wanted to really complete Drew Barrymore’s character arc because I think hers got sacrificed the most in the theatrical cut of who she was and the Watership Down subplot. Roberta Sparrow and the time travel book . . . I felt like I have all of these characters obsessing over this book, and yet the audience is never given access to what is inside of it. It was always an organic part of the story. I had written the book while I was editing the film as a way to kind of complete the story in my mind. So I felt like I needed to put in what was necessary to complete all of those elements for me. And the new sound design was also an ability to tie everything together the way I had always sort of hoped.
Q: It seemed that the time travel concept was something you used perhaps to be able to hang a bunch of eighties pop culture iconography on and try to play around with that era to try and evoke something very personal. What was it for you?
RK: I was always trying to make a science fiction film. Cleary it is also this comic book satire. It’s hopefully a fable, arguably about suburban life at the end of the Reagan era. The science fiction stuff was always there for thematic purposes, but I was always designing the story also to work as a sort of big elaborate science fiction story with an inherent logic to it. Logic only takes you so far in something like this because ultimately in time travel movies there’s always that point where you just hit a wall. That’s why people obsess over these kinds of stories. If you look at 12 Monkeys, Back to the Future, and The Terminator films, there’s always that one paradox that drives everyone nuts. It’s like reaching and trying to find religion or something and trying to find meaning. I think there are events in the film in the theatrical cut that appear to be esoteric maybe or just like throwing things up against a wall, but there was always more of a design there. But like I said, it is valid also for the theatrical cut to be more . . . I guess “esoteric” is the only way I can describe that experience. You have blinders on more. You’re limited; there’s a limited amount of information so you fill in more of the blanks yourself. I felt like there was always this other, more complete version out there, but I think ultimately it still has just as many questions surrounding it.
My interpretation of what I said to you … that could easily be wrong too. All the new F/X sequences in the film are ultimately part of Donnie’s imagination. You can look at any image in this film as being either literal or figurative I guess, and it’s still designed that way. Maybe even this time travel book isn’t even real; maybe it’s just something that came out of his head.
Q: Like the eyeball sequences?
RK: Yeah. I think you can look at those as being literal like maybe that is real technology from somewhere and that is a machine that is working and existing, or perhaps that is just Donnie imagining. He is imagining and projecting the Ex Machina. I read Watership Down in seventh grade, and I always obsessed over that book. It was about a warren of rabbits, and this rabbit has a premonition of blood on the field. 
Basically a big bulldozer and construction company are going to come and bulldoze their warren, and they’ve got to get the hell out. They’ve got to escape, and there is all of this chaos. As I was writing this story, the pretentious part of me thought, “I need to make a literary allusion here, and it might as well be Watership Down.” But it worked for me because it’s like that is what this story is too. There is a big bulldozer coming to take Middlesex out, but it’s like a bulldozer in the sky. You know it’s just gonna take it out, and they’ve got to figure a way out. This kid somehow is doing all this fucked up shit, and all the teachers and parents and kids around him realize he’s figured something out, and they are all being manipulated to kind of get this engine realigned somehow.
Q: Is that why Frank is a rabbit?
RK: Yeah. I had to pick a Halloween costume because I knew it tied together in a car accident and the messenger was the kid driving the car and it was like this reverse ghost premonition leading up to it. I was remembering Watership Down from my childhood, and I’m like, “Wow! That’s kind of a metaphor for the story I’m trying to tell. I’ll make it a rabbit costume.” And I never once thought of Harvey. Never once. I had never even seen Harvey. And I didn’t know that 1988 was the year of the rabbit and all these other coincidences that started popping up and just became ridiculous. There’s something about rabbits. Rabbits are like the most innocent fragile creatures. They don’t hurt anyone. They’re nymphomaniacs. They represent everything that is pure, loving, cute, and peaceful. I’m sounding like Donnie in that scene, but it’s kind of like that was something I thought of when I read that book growing up. The thing corrupted the rabbit and gave it this sort of . . . the rabbit baring its fangs. It’s gotta take care of business.
Q: Why the name Donnie Darko? What’s the inspiration there?
RK: I wanted like an archetype. It felt like I was trying to write this great sci-fi comic book page turner with a mystery, and I sort of imagined that all of the visual effects could be comic book panels so I wanted the character to have a real defining name that had alliteration and just stuck with you. That was kind of funny, kind of ridiculous.
Q: That’s why Gretchen points it out.
RK: I made sure to have that dialogue there. I had to acknowledge that. If you name a character that in a story, you have to have someone call attention to the fact that the name sounds a little bit ridiculous. Yet there are a lot of people with that last name. Darko is a real last name, so it’s just finding the fine line in-between. That was the first thing — the engine falling on the house and that name popped in my head first.
Q: What going on with Cat’s Cradle?
RK: I have written an adaptation. The script is there. I’m working on it with Leonardo DiCaprio and his company. It’s a real delicate situation because it’s a classic piece of literature and it has something like one hundred and sixty chapters, maybe a hundred and eighty chapters. In the hundreds anyway, and each chapter is maybe two pages long. It’s an unadaptable novel. So what I have tried to do is take the novel and do a really faithful interpretation of the essence of all of Vonnegut’s ideas. Now we are just kind of letting it sit and deciding on how and when to approach taking the screenplay and turning it into a film. If the film is made, I’d like to call it Ice Nine because it’s not Cat’s Cradle. It’s more of an interpretation of Cat’s Cradle. It’s like O Brother, Where Art Thou? was based on The Odyssey. Were fans of The Odyssey offended by that film? I hope not, but had they called it The Odyssey, they might be, so if the film is made, I’d like it to be called Ice Nine. I think I’ve got to convince DiCaprio and the other producers that it’s hopefully the right thing to do. So stay tuned on that.
Q: Will you be directing as well?
RK: I’d like to. I’d like to direct it, but I don’t control the option on the book and the ball is kind of in the producers’ court. They’re deciding what to do, but I would very much like to direct the film.
Q: Do you know what might be immediately next for you?
RK: I start production on Southland Tales in September. We’re scheduled to start in late September.
Q: Did you write it?
RK: Yeah, I wrote that. We’ve actually already started shooting some footage over the summer. It’s a big epic film. It’s a comedy. I just wanted to do something as far different from Donnie Darko as possible because I feel like I have been talking about this film for so long. I’m happy to do it, but at the same time I really, really want to make something else that is just on the complete other end of the spectrum of conversation.
Q: So is that time capsule one going to be put on the back burner now?
RK: You know that is another one I spent a year, over a year, working on, and it was literally ready to go. It was green lit.
Q: What that called again?
RK: Knowing. It was based on someone else’s script, and I don’t own that script either so it got complicated. It became a really complicated situation for a lot of business and financial reasons, and the film kind of collapsed. I hope the film is made. 
I would love to eventually direct that film. I don’t know if it will end up being me who directs it, or if they don’t want to wait for me, they might go find someone else. But I think it is an amazing story with a tricky ending. It’s tough getting the ending right, but it is such a page turner and to work on it would be amazing. But ultimately it probably wasn’t meant to be the second film I do because maybe it was a bit too thematically close to Donnie Darko and maybe I would have been accused of just trying to repeat myself too much. That’s one thing I don’t want do in my career. I want to try to do something completely different with each film. I also just want to make a lot of comedy films because I think that is the most fun. It’s the most satisfying if you can make people laugh and prove your point with a great joke. Not just a great joke but really funny characters. If you got to make a film like Best in Show or The Big Lebowski but also have action sequences or musical numbers or make it really suspenseful like a thriller — that to me is where it’s at.
Q: Maybe you should join forces with Eli Roth on his Olsen twins epic.
RK: Well, you know, Eli needs to make his Olsen twins epic on his own terms. When Mary-Kate is better and everything is better in Olsen Land, then Eli can really get the script right. I’ll be there to help him. I wouldn’t put my name on the film. (laughs)
But God bless him, and I wish him well.
Q: That’s not The Box, right?
RK: (laughs) No, the Olsen twins are not involved with The Box.
Q: But that’s with Eli, right?
RK: Yes, that’s with Eli. We’re still finishing the script. It’s based on a “Twilight Zone” episode that I optioned.
Q: Which one?
RK: It’s called “Button, Button” by Richard Matheson. It was originally a short story that Matheson wrote in the sixties or seventies. And then he rewrote it into an episode of the Twilight Zone when they reformed the Twilight Zone in the early eighties on CBS. His story starred Mare Winningham and another actor I can’t remember. It was a story that always stuck with me. I’ve always wanted to develop it into a feature, and I just optioned it from Matheson personally.
Q: What’s it about?
RK: The film is going to be titled The Box, and it is about a married couple that receives a wooden box that has a button on it and instructions that say that if they push the button, they will receive a large quantity of money but someone that they don’t know will die. And they are just left with this box and this offer on the table, and it then follows what happens if and when they decide to push the button.
Q: How can you expand on a half-hour “Twilight Zone” episode?
RK: Good question. (laughs) We’re close. It’s been a real challenge, but that’s the thing about Matheson and the brilliance of some of those episodes. They really put together these great moral dilemmas or ethical dilemmas and they tied them into a big science fiction idea or construct. And it’s going to be something far different from the episode. It’s not just going to be a rehashing of the episode or trying to stretch it out over two hours. That’s why I’m not calling the movie Button, Button. It’s “inspired by.” If I’m going to do something based on source material, I hope to do what Terry Gilliam and David Webb Peoples did with La Jette, 12 Monkeys. I want to really honor the essence of the source material but not tread upon it. Take it and build it into something that it never was like a great short piece of material. It’s just always wonderful to see an artist take inspiration. I think it’s not the same as remaking a movie; it’s more like…
Q: Embellishing?
RK: Yeah. If I ever did a remake, it would have to be something way different like an inspiration kind of piece.
Q: Any studios involved yet?
RK: Not yet. It’s independently financed. We haven’t shown it to any studios yet.
And that’s where they had to part ways, hopefully to meet another day. Expect to hear a lot more about this guy in the coming months and hopefully years to come. He’s the kind of talent that is under-nurtured in Hollywood, so the more support we can give him, the better.
Categorized:Interviews News
