Southland Tales

[picolas]

I'm getting a Shyamalan vibe from him.

a youtuber summed it up best when they said "this is going to be so original! just like Donnie Darko"

[MacGuffin]

Fantastic Fest Interview: Richard Kelly, Writer-Director of 'Southland Tales'
Source: Cinematical

One of the surprises at this year's Fantastic Fest in Austin was the first public screening of the recut version of Southland Tales, which will be released in theaters starting in November. The film was written and directed by Richard Kelly, and a longer, unfinished version premiered at Cannes in 2006. Kelly is probably best known for his previous film, Donnie Darko, although since then he also wrote the script for Domino. Kelly attended the Fantastic Fest screening of Southland Tales, and Cinematical was able to sit down with him for a few minutes before he left Austin. (And yes, that's the actual Bone Shack sign from Planet Terror/Grindhouse that he's standing under, in the photo above.)

Cinematical: What made you decide to bring Southland Tales to Fantastic Fest?

Richard Kelly: It was Harry [Knowles, of AICN] -- Harry's been a great friend over the years. This is the first time anyone's seen the finished version, and we wanted to show it to the right audience, and at this festival people are very receptive to adventurous material. Harry had a great way of summing it up: he said it was a "science-fiction noir thriller." I love that description, because it crosses different genres. And for me, it's a comedy. We literally just finished it, and we weren't ready for Toronto -- we didn't know if Toronto was the best place, but Fantastic Fest felt right.

Cinematical: The version we saw here in Austin is the one that will be in theaters in November?

RK: Absolutely.

Cinematical: Southland Tales premiered at Cannes in 2006, and now it's September 2007 -- can you give us a quick timeline of what's been happening with the film since Cannes?

RK: Sony bought the movie out of Cannes, when we knew it still wasn't finished. What we brought to Cannes was a work in progress. I worked with Sony on the edit until December, and we were all happy with the edit. And I finished the graphic novels. We then realized we needed more visual effects to make the movie better, particularly for the animated prologue near the beginning -- the doomsday scenario interface, which shows what's happened in America over the three years since the nuclear attack. And we wanted to add more effects that would help transitions and backstory, show what was happening in the world through the news, and improve visual effects overall.

It ended up taking several months to close the deal to get the money from the studio, up until the end of March. We spent all spring and summer finishing the new visual effects and remixing the film -- 600 visual effect shots -- we were working nonstop. We just got the answer print from the lab at the end of last week.

Cinematical: How did you decide what to cut, and can you give us a summary of some of the scenes that were cut after the Cannes screening?

RK: There are a few things I miss, but I'm very happy with it. In the end, I only had to cut 19 minutes. I was scared for awhile that I would have to cut an hour ... but Sony was supportive, they got into understanding the architecture of the film and that it's really delicate. There's a subplot with Janeane Garafalo that I would love to restore in a longer version, with her character and with Kevin Smith. If you read the graphic novels, it's the stuff about the science of the machine and the wave generator, and the ocean tides having an effect on human behavior -- and more about the doomsday game that is being played, and the brother-and-sister type of relationship between Janeane Garafalo and Kevin Smith's characters. There's also a sequence we shot where Boxer [Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's character] is on the beach and he takes the drug -- fluid karma -- and he sees into 1928, meets this fortune-teller woman. It's really trippy, even trippier crazier stuff, that people who really do like this film and get into it will appreciate. Maybe at some point down the road, I'll put together a slightly longer version.

Cinematical: What's the best way for a viewer to go into this movie, to enjoy it the most? Do you need to read the graphic novels first?

RK: You can go into it blind, or you can read the graphic novels. I think it's fun either way. If you read the graphic novels first, you can come into it like serialized fiction. You remember when Stephen King released The Green Mile books? I loved it the way he did that, the first day when the new novels came out -- I loved that experience. If you like the idea of being where you can't wait to get to the next chapter, you can read the books first, then show up to the movie where the story continues. Or you can go into it completely blind, and be overwhelmed, and then go read the books, and then be like, "Okay, okay, I get it" and then see the movie again. I was trying to give the audience an opportunity for an adventurous thrill ride.

Cinematical: Do you think Southland Tales is a movie that should be seen more than once?

RK: I think so. It's very much like Darko in that sense, they've got the same architecture. Everything is there for a reason -- in every shot there's a clue, all the design is very thought out, it's incredibly structurally intricate. We worked for a long time on it. Stuff like that, I think definitely warrants repeat viewings.

Cinematical: The cast is amazing. Every scene brings us another familiar face. Did you plan it that way, were you thinking about that as you developed the project?

RK: Yes. I wanted it to be a very fun movie to watch. It's a wild rollercoaster ride, and you want to be on that rollercoaster with a lot of familiar faces. I think they help ground the movie in pop culture and also in a familiarity. They're all funny, funny people -- Wallace Shawn, Christopher Lambert, John Larroquette, Zelda Rubenstein ...

Cinematical: And I didn't even recognize Kevin Smith, I felt so bad about that.

RK: Our makeup artist did a terrific job of aging him. I wanted the movie to have a pop vitality, and the cast was essential.

Cinematical: I liked the Kiss Me Deadly references in Southland Tales [two clips from the 1955 movie are shown at the beginning and end of Kelly's film].

RK: Oh, that's one of my favorite movies. I'll be happy if one day this movie could play on a double-bill with Kiss Me Deadly. It's a kind of sequel, in a way. And Dwayne (Johnson, aka The Rock) studied Ralph Meeker's performance. He watched the movie and he obviously isn't mimicking him or anything like that, but Mike Hammer, this tough-guy macho cop who's always sleeping with multiple women and throws the woman up against the wall and kisses her ... we tried to play off that throughout the movie. Kiss Me Deadly was a very political film noir for its time, and it was deemed by the Kefauver commission as the most dangerous film to American youth in its day. It was all about the Manhattan Project -- that glowing white box. It was a marvelous piece of satire, and it's been a big influence on me and on this film.

Cinematical: Do you see yourself doing more films with intricate stories like Donnie Darko and Southland Tales?

RK: I think everything I do will be intricate and elaborate, and I'm always going to be seduced by science fiction because I love it. My producing partner teases me, says, "Rich, why is there a time portal in every script you write?" You write what you love, and this is what I love.

But my next movie is a psychological thriller, it's PG-13, has a mainstream concept, and it's something the studio is much more comfortable in committing to right away, telling us they'll put it on 2500 screens.

Cinematical: Are you talking about The Box?

RK: Yes. I'm making my life a little bit easier with this next film.

Cinematical: What's the latest update with that project?

RK: Cameron Diaz is cast, and we're very close to announcing the other actors. But I can't say anything yet.

[matt35mm]

pop vitality

Oxymoron?

[hedwig]

RK: Cameron Diaz is cast, and we're very close to announcing the other actors. But I can't say anything yet.

i predict halle berry, shia lebouf, jessica simpson, and pauly shore. with dane cook cameo.

[MacGuffin]

indieWIRE ANNOUNCEMENT: "Southland Tales" Director Richard Kelly @ Apple Store SoHo

indieWIRE continues its monthly series with Apple Store - SoHo that presents indie film professionals discussing various aspects of the filmmaking process.

WHEN: Friday, October 19th, 6:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m
WHERE: Apple Store - SoHo, 103 Prince Street, NYC
COST: Free, No RSVP required. Seats are first come, first serve. Seating is limited.

"Donnie Darko" Director Richard Kelly will participate in a discussion and show scenes from his latest film, "Southland Tales," which features a large ensemble cast of characters, including Dwayne Johnson, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Roland Taverner. "Southland Tales" is set over the course of three days that culminate in a massive 4th of July celebration as a city stands on the brink of social, economic and environmental disaster. Samuel Goldwyn Films will release the film theatrically on November 9th. The event will be moderated by indieWIRE contributor and film critic Dennis Lim.

[MacGuffin]

Southland Delayed To Nov. 14

Southland Tales director Richard Kelly wrote on his MySpace.com blog [see below] that his much-delayed SF epic movie will be delayed at least one more week, as Samuel Goldwyn Films is bumping its debut to Nov. 14 from the original Nov. 9.

The movie will then expand to more cities on Nov. 16, Kelly said, adding: "I know. ... Yet another delay. ... But they felt this was a strategic move that would help the film."

Meanwhile, Kelly said that he is already preparing to shoot his next movie, The Box, based on a short story by Richard Matheson, starting Nov. 17 in Boston. "Casting is underway, and the story just broke on Variety, so I am happy to confirm that Frank Langella will be playing the role of Arlington Steward in the film. Expect more casting announcements soon!"

Southland Tales will have a red-carpet world premiere at the Arclight Cinema in Hollywood as part of AFI Fest on Nov. 2. Kelly said the movie will hold preview screenings in select cities and universities (Harvard, Columbia and the University of Southern California) later this month and early next month.


RELEASE DATE CHANGED

Hey everyone...

I have been incredibly busy prepping THE BOX! We start shooting
November 17th in Boston... casting is underway and the story just broke on
Variety so I am happy to confirm that Frank Langella will be playing the role of
Arlington Steward in the film. Expect more casting announcements soon!

As for Southland Tales, the film will have its big red-carpet premiere
at the Arclight Cinema in Hollywood as part of AFI Fest on Friday,
November 2nd.

I also just got word from Goldwyn that they are bumping the release
date from Friday November 9th to Wednesday November 14th (LA/NY), to expand
to other cities on Friday November 16th. I know... yet another delay...
but they felt this was a strategic move that would help the film:)

But for those of you who want to see the film earlier there will be
many advance previews scheduled for select cities and universities (Harvard,
Columbia and USC screenings are being set for late October/early
November). I will try and get a full schedule to you guys soon!

Best,

RK

[©brad]

they may have to delay 2008 for this movie.

[pumba]

The European poster is much, much cooler: Check it out

http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=21256

[ElPandaRoyal]

The European poster is much, much cooler: Check it out

http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=21256

Except for the fact that Sarah Michelle Gellar looks like the mother in a Jennifer Lopez film, yes it is...

[MacGuffin]

Booed at Cannes, but Now the Real Test
By DENNIS LIM; New York Times

"IT'S about the end of Western civilization as we know it," the writer-director Richard Kelly said of his second feature, "Southland Tales," which finally arrives in theaters next month, six years after his first. "That's why it needed to be an epic. That's why it took so long."

Another reason it has been held up: When the film, Mr. Kelly's eagerly anticipated follow-up to his 2001 cult hit "Donnie Darko," had its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival last year, the critical reception — except for a few staunch defenders — ranged from negative to vicious.

"It was painful," Mr. Kelly said of the Cannes screenings, which were marred by walkouts and boos. "I just thought, 'Please let it be over.'" At his press conference, seemingly shellshocked, he fielded hostile questions and muttered that he hoped the film would not "bomb." In interviews at the time he expressed concern that he would basically have to mutilate his movie, which then ran nearly three hours, if he ever hoped to get it released.

In hindsight the reaction seems typical of the distorting atmosphere of Cannes. Within a week of the festival, said Sean McKittrick, Mr. Kelly's producer, they had three distribution offers. Sony ended up buying the movie and footing the bill for the re-editing, which proved far less intrusive than Mr. Kelly had expected.

"Part of me feels like I got away with murder," Mr. Kelly, 32, said in a recent interview in Manhattan. "It's a film some people might consider an inaccessible B movie, and it's been slaughtered at the biggest film festival in the world. They could have been like, 'You want more money now?'"

"Southland Tales," set to open Nov. 14, unfolds during the 2008 presidential campaign in a parallel-reality America. The country is reeling from a 2005 nuclear attack in Texas and apparently heading for an even bigger catastrophe. A cosmic phantasmagoria studded with pop-culture luminaries including Dwayne (the Rock) Johnson, Justin Timberlake and Sarah Michelle Gellar, the movie traces a tangled web of interlocking conspiracies. The result is something like a Comic Book of Revelation, an Armageddon countdown in a plastic-fantastic universe where celebrities are military pawns in the Iraq war, and the quest for alternative energy is linked to Nikola Tesla's tidal-wave generator and a breach in the space-time continuum.

The great appeal of Mr. Kelly's films — the reason they lend themselves to fanboy worship and scrutiny — is that they seem like parts of a bigger whole. An entire cosmology lies off screen, waiting to be unraveled. In "Donnie Darko," which mingles teenage angst and time-warp physics, the plot pivots on a book called "The Philosophy of Time Travel." Mr. Kelly wrote a few chapters of this imaginary tome, posted them on the film's Web site (southlandtales.com) and later folded excerpts into the director's cut.

"Southland" has even more extra-textual stuff. Early on, when comic book publishers proposed tie-ins, it occurred to Mr. Kelly that he could expand the narrative beyond his shooting budget. "I had this really elaborate back story inside me," he said. He decided to present the movie as Chapters 4, 5 and 6 and conceived of the first three chapters as graphic novels, which he produced in collaboration with an artist, Brett Weldele. (Already published separately, they will be available as a single volume next month.)

As "Southland Tales" was going down in flames at Cannes, Mr. Kelly was still sorting through the details of his back story. He wrote the first book before the shoot and completed the second just before Cannes. He wrote the third while re-editing the movie. Working on them simultaneously helped clarify the big picture. "I needed to solve the riddle in my own mind," he said.

Perhaps the most significant change in the new cut is a brisk prologue that charts the major developments in the film's post-nuclear America. Mr. Kelly added special effects ($1 million worth) and reordered and tightened scenes (it now runs 2 hours 24 minutes, 19 minutes shorter than the Cannes version). The major casualty, lopped off at the studio's urging, was a subplot with Janeane Garofalo as a general. He also rerecorded Mr. Timberlake's voice-over.

"I misdirected Justin," he said. "It was a little too sarcastic. When we did it again, I had him watch 'Apocalypse Now,' so he ended up doing it very deadpan, very dry," like Martin Sheen's narration in that film.

Mr. Kelly's new cut may be easier to follow, but he has not altered the movie's kaleidoscopic structure or diluted its psychedelic nature. In other words, it's still far from commercial.

"It's a challenge," said Meyer Gottlieb, president of Samuel Goldwyn Films, which is releasing it in partnership with Sony. "But that's one of the things I like about it." The distributors will be counting on the obsessive fan base for "Donnie Darko," which opened to mixed reviews and weak grosses but went on to a robust midnight-movie and home-video afterlife.

It can't hurt that even more than "Darko," "Southland," with its dizzying pile-up of references, invites repeat viewings. There are nods to Robert Aldrich's doomsday noir "Kiss Me Deadly" and David Lynch's Hollywood noir "Mulholland Drive." But literary allusions seem to outnumber cinematic ones.

Mr. Kelly cited as important influences Philip K. Dick, Kurt Vonnegut and Raymond Chandler. The film's antic absurdism and mad sprawl could be considered Pynchonesque. A recurring refrain inverts the conclusion of "The Hollow Men" by T. S. Eliot ("This is the way the world ends/not with a whimper but a bang"), and the title of the first "Southland" book, "Two Roads Diverge," comes from "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost. (The Republicans in the film have nominated the presidential ticket of Eliot-Frost.)

Karl Marx emerges as the movie's presiding spirit. Marx's hometown, Trier, Germany, and his wife's family name, von Westphalen, are reference points. The political left in the film has devolved into a violent resistance movement known as the neo-Marxists. "I'm making fun of myself, the angry liberal," Mr. Kelly said. "The joke is that things have gotten so bad that even neo-Marxists have been forced to bear arms."

Characters are as apt to quote Marx and the New Testament as they are to recite lyrics by Jane's Addiction, whose song "Three Days" is prominently featured. The music is as lovingly chosen as the '80s staples in "Donnie Darko." In a druggy fantasy sequence Mr. Timberlake's character, a disfigured war veteran, sneering and clutching a can of Budweiser, lip-syncs to the Killers' "All These Things That I've Done." "I heard that song and couldn't stop thinking about Iraq," Mr. Kelly said.

"Southland Tales" simulates the oversaturation of the 21st-century mediascape and delights in, even as it mocks, the vulgar absurdities of celebrity culture. Ms. Gellar's character, for example, is a multitasking, politically minded sex-film star — "Jenna Jameson meets Arianna Huffington," Mr. Kelly said — with a "View"-like talk show and a hit song called "Teen Horniness Is Not a Crime" (co-written by Mr. Kelly and to be released as a single).

"American pop culture is certainly embedded in the DNA of this film," Mr. Kelly said. In casting the ensemble, which also includes Seann William Scott and Mandy Moore, he undertook a kind of Warholian experiment. "I wanted to utilize not just the talent of the actors but their pop value," he said, likening the strategy to how Warhol "took the image of celebrity and corrupted it."

Beneath their slick, jokey surfaces, both his films are rooted in primal anxieties. "Donnie Darko" evoked the nuclear dread of an '80s childhood. "I remember going to bed at night and being afraid of the bomb," Mr. Kelly said. "Southland Tales," he added, originates in part from that "childlike fear" being reawakened after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Mr. Kelly's apocalyptic fever dreams, centered as they are on messianic figures, riff on the Christian notion of end times. This dovetails with the political critique of "Southland Tales." "Some might argue the motivation for Iraq is rooted in fundamental Christian ideology," he said. To his befuddlement "Donnie Darko" has attracted a sizable Catholic following. "I've heard that it reinforces Catholic values," he said.

Mr. Kelly, who grew up in Richmond, Va., had an agnostic upbringing. "My mother did try to be a good Texas Methodist," he said, taking her boys to church, but the influence of his father, a NASA scientist, won out. To research the biblical dimensions of "Southland Tales," he said, sheepishly, "I bought 'The Book of Revelation for Dummies.'"

Despite having directed only two features, Mr. Kelly wrote furiously through his 20s, "out of fear," he said, that he would later lose his nerve and inspiration. He now has "a drawerful of scripts," one of which will be the basis for his next feature, "The Box," a psychological thriller adapted from Richard Matheson's short story "Button, Button" that he is about to start shooting with Cameron Diaz. He's aiming for "something a studio can comfortably put on 3,000 screens," he said.

Mr. Kelly could have chosen a safer sophomore film, but he made "Southland Tales" to capitalize on a "window of opportunity," he said. "Who knows if I'll ever be able to take these kinds of risks again." "Donnie Darko" is set during the Bush-Dukakis contest of 1988; Mr. Kelly said that at the time of its release he had never voted in a general election. But he has since become politicized by the war and now considers "Southland Tales" an activist salvo.

Citing the viral popularity of "Donnie Darko," he said: "We're hoping with this to get kids turned on in a more political way. You can use subversive humor as your delivery mechanism. It's like, hey, none of this is real, yet, but it certainly could be."

"When the elections are lost again and again and again, someone's going to start selling automatic weapons out of their ice cream truck," he continued, referring to a sequence in the film. "I feel like maybe I'm being a neo-Marxist, but instead of selling guns I made this movie."

[MacGuffin]

Gellar Defends Southland Tales

Sarah Michelle Gellar, who stars in Richard Kelly's upcoming SF epic film Southland Tales, told SCI FI Wire that the movie has changed since its disastrous debut at the Cannes Film Festival in 2006, but not that much.

"I think that's also a misconception, too, in terms of how many changes have been made," Gellar said in a telephone interview last week. "I really do think the movie sort of got an unfair rap from Cannes."

Gellar plays an entrepreneurial porn star named Krysta Now who befriends an amnesiac movie star played by Dwayne Johnson in the movie, which is set in near-future Los Angeles on the eve of an unspecified apocalypse.

Gellar said that the movie, which was blasted critically after an early version screened at Cannes, was really dealt with unfairly. "Looking back, we all sort of realized, the movie takes place in Los Angeles: It is a story about here, about us," Gellar said. "And we truly believe it should have been shown for the first time here. I think it was really the wrong audience. If you're at Cannes, they're looking for a different kind of movie. And that's not what this movie is."

Since then, director Kelly (Donnie Darko) has trimmed the film, added several scenes to clarify the complicated narrative and included new visual-effects shots, including a new ending. "I think those were edits that were always going to happen," Gellar said.

Gellar added that her own piece of the story remains uncut from the early version of the movie. As for how audiences will receive the quirky story—a mixture of drama, comedy, science fiction and musical numbers—Gellar said: "You know, at the end of the day, I hope people talk about it. That's the whole point of it. It's not a movie made for every audience. This isn't a film made to go across the board. And what I love about it is, I went and saw the new cut with, like, five people. And afterwards for about three hours we all talked about it, because everybody took different things out of it."

Gellar added: "Dwayne said something today that I loved. He's like, 'No matter what you take out of it, you're not wrong.' Because it's about the movie that each person sees." At the end, she said, "the true fans, the people that are the Donnie Darko fans, that are my fans, Dwayne's fans, I think they're going to enjoy it. And you know what? Those are the reasons I make movies." Southland Tales, which also stars Seann William Scott, opens in limited release on Nov. 14.

[Pubrick]

"Looking back, we all sort of realized, the movie takes place in Los Angeles: It is a story about here, about us," Gellar said. "And we truly believe it should have been shown for the first time here. I think it was really the wrong audience. If you're at Cannes, they're looking for a different kind of movie. And that's not what this movie is."

yeah, those wacky cannes audiences, SO INTOLERANT of movies that are quintessentially about a foreign city.

Gellar added: "the true fans, the people that are the Donnie Darko fans, that are my fans, Dwayne's fans, I think they're going to enjoy it.

so she thinks the "true fans" of donnie darko are also "true fans" of Scooby Doo, and fucking Wrestlemania? my god she is the stupidest actor in hollywood, and that's no easy feat.

oh right.. her husband.

[MacGuffin]

Southland Has New Shots

Richard Kelly, director of the upcoming SF epic movie Southland Tales, told SCI FI Wire that he added about 100 visual-effects shots and several other scenes to clarify the movie's complex narrative.

"The whole prologue, the 'Doomsday Scenario' interface in the prologue, that was added," Kelly said in a telephone interview last week. "All of the news content—the state-of-the-world news in the film—was all added."

Much of the new content hadn't been completed when the movie screened at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, garnering harsh reviews. "That wasn't ready for Cannes," Kelly said of the news bytes. "And then all the rioting and the burning buildings and the thousands of people in the streets [in the finale], all that stuff was [added]. [Before, the scene] was just empty. It was just like, there was supposed to be rioting, but the streets just looked empty. So it was unfinished. And [the changes mark a] significant improvement in all that stuff."

Southland Tales stars Sarah Michelle Gellar, Dwayne Johnson and Seann William Scott in a story about the apocalypse in a near-future Los Angeles. The movie mixes comedy, drama, science fiction and musical interludes.

Kelly said that he had planned to make the changes all along. "We ran out of time, and we ran out of money, because we were just fighting against a deadline for Cannes," he said. The filmmakers were invited to screen the movie at the famed film festival because it had been nominated for a coveted Palme D'Or award, but Kelly said that it wasn't ready for public viewing at the time. Southland Tales opens in limited release on Nov. 14.

[Sunrise]

The critics are ripping this up...so far only J. Hoberman at the Village Voice is completely for it. I'm still looking forward to it, but now my expectations are tempered.

[modage]

i've already added it to my queue.  sorry mr. kelly, but movies are $11.75 now and i just can't justify seeing this when i know it's going to suck.