There’s something about hanging out with cool people that makes you try as you might to act just as cool. I’m definitely in touch with that as I meet Richard Kelly, the gifted young writer-director of the now cult sensation Donnie Darko; as dark and intriguing a take on teen angst and alienation as committed to film.

In person, Kelly is a handsome and deceptively youthful appearing guy who looks like he’s stepped out of an Abercrombie store or might just play the lead in the next Hollywood youth comedy. He’s in town to talk about Donnie Darko: The Director’s Cut, an extended version of his now famous film, presented for the first time as he intended it to be seen before the film’s unlikely trajectory of creation and rejection in a post September 11 theatrical release that all but dismissed his dark genius and left most unsuspecting critics scratching their heads. Buoyed by a rabid cult following, his first film is now hailed as one of the decade’s truly independent and visionary movie experiences, making it safe to say Donnie Darko: The Director’s Cut has secured an inadvertent place in modern pop culture and maybe film history.

Lee Shoquist, Reel Movie Critic: You’re on the verge of releasing the director’s cut of Donnie Darko. Can you talk about the differences between the two versions and what exactly was your intent with this new cut?

Richard Kelly: This was always to me a comic book movie about a kid who becomes not only an anti-hero, but also a superhero. And there was always a really elaborate science fiction logic to the film that in the truncated, shorter theatrical cut, a lot of that stuff got lost or kind of implied; whereas in the director’s cut it comes more to the surface, the way it was always photographed and written. And a lot of the deleted material, the time travel book and (a) lot of the visual effects that we were able to complete, and a lot of comic book imagery that ties it all together in a more elaborate way ¾ that answers some questions about the plot, but also opens up a lot of new ideas and a whole, I think, new layer of meaning that I hope people take out of it.

LS: Wow. More ideas in this film?

RK: Yeah, even more ideas. Answers and then there are new questions. And I hope that people go into it with an open mind and pretend like they’re watching the movie for the very first time and not to be fixated on what’s different, or that maybe this new, extended version of the film isn’t what they expected, or not what they thought the film was, or if they always thought it was about mental illness. That’s valid, and the theatrical cut will always exist. And I wanted there to be this longer, extended ‘remix’ of the film out there just letting people know what my intentions always were, and to have my impression and my take on the material out there in its more complete version. At the same time, I want to reinforce that the theatrical cut of the film is just as valid a version of the film.

LS: At what point did you realize that Donnie Darko had sort of taken on a life of its own and was becoming a cult film? When did that first cross your mind?

RK: I think I was in New York and I saw the poster hanging at the Pioneer Two Boots, and found out it had been playing there for months and months and months. And then when I got to the United Kingdom and I saw that it was getting this really big reception and for an art house film, it was a really big hit there. It was amazing to me because I always knew that the film would probably have some sort of afterlife. Even when it failed at the box office I thought maybe it would get rediscovered on DVD. But I had no idea that it would build to this.

LS: Did you have big box office expectations for it? I mean, it’s such an offbeat work, you have to know that any film like this is going to ultimately find an audience, you just don’t know if it’s going to be the Friday, Saturday, Sunday audience.

RK: When we were making the film we thought we were making this innovative yet commercial film. We always thought that this had a chance of being a commercial hit. We thought people might not get it on the first viewing, but we thought if they really got in there, it could be a real popcorn film. We thought we were making an intellectual, sci-fi comic book popcorn film. And I say that in a positive way because there’s nothing better than saying that an art film can be vastly entertaining. Those are the best ones—you have your commerce and your art mixed together.

But then after Sundance, all of the distributors, all the acquisitions executives took three steps back and they were like, ‘This is so inaccessible. No one is ever going to get this. Doesn’t make any sense. Doesn’t add up to anything.’ Immediately the film was considered a failure. No one wanted to touch it—like an STD or something. It was literally like nobody wanted to come near it.

LS: Really? Even with that cast?

RK: It was so depressing. We were just all looking at each other like, ‘What the f**k? Are we all crazy?’ We started doubting ourselves, and even the financiers of the film; everyone started to lose faith in it.

LS: What were you hearing, like, ‘We don’t get it?’

RK: Acquisitions executives have these comments that they make where they’ll be like, ‘We love the film, it’s just not for us. We just don’t think there’s an audience for this film.’ They come up with all these excuses, and after you leave the room they badmouth the film to everyone they talk to because they don’t want someone else to succeed with it, and then they’d look bad. So they immediately badmouth it to everyone else. It becomes really obnoxious. And up at Sundance nobody really knows what they’re talking about because the air is really thin up there, you know?

So it was really upsetting. It took five months to sell the film, and we thought for a long while that it was going to go straight to debut on the Starz! network. That was probably what was going to happen with it. That was the most viable financial offer for the film. For the people who financed it, the best way for them to make their money back was for it to debut on the Starz! network. And we were all just like, ‘If that happens to this film, if this film can’t get a theatrical release, then we’re all just going to leave the business and just like quit, because it’s over, you know, f**k it. I’ll go move back to Virginia and get a job and become a starving artist, you know?’

Finally when Newmarket stepped in and said ‘Okay, we’re going to give it a theatrical release’; and then when September 11 happened, we were just so grateful that it got released in even one theater. The film disappeared quickly, but it was like, at least we got a theatrical release. It played in a few theaters for a few weeks. That was all we cared about. We were so beaten down by that point. So for all of this to happen, it’s like icing on the cake, wow. I’m most excited for the actors.

LS: Can you talk a little bit about communicating this type of material to actors during the production? Obviously it’s difficult to give a definitive read on exactly what the material means, what is happening, etc. So what are the challenges of working around those things with the cast and making it all come together?

RK: I think the biggest trap that first time directors fall into is they overcomplicate things or they just hide from the actors because they are just so overwhelmed with the task at hand. They become frightened of the actors and they just neglect them, or they overcomplicate things. They don’t really know what they’re doing so they try to fancy it all up with a bunch of method dialogue or something, when really I think you’ve just got to let them know the intent of the scene and let them know the character’s back story, and know your tone and have a good ear for dialogue. I don’t know. It’s just an organic process. I kept it simple and tried to answer every question that they had. They were all really good actors too. I was really blessed. They end up doing ninety percent of the legwork, you’ve just got to hold their hand and pat them on the back when they’re feeling insecure. Just try to talk to them like you would a friend, I guess, not overcomplicate it.

LS: Let’s talk about the era of the 80s—where Donnie Darko exists—and a time when you and I were both in school. To me, I remember it as an optimistic time in American pop culture; a very sweet time…

RK: A very innocent time. A lot of people maybe remember the New York club scene with everybody doing lines, and spiked hair and everyone wearing beaded jackets and stuff. But I remember the 80s as being a really innocent time in the suburbs—a vastly different time than we live in now. You could see the onset of something—Kurt Cobain was just around the corner from the New Kids on the Block. Everything goes in cycles. But the 90s- I remember the first time I heard "Smells Like Teen Spirit." I’ll never forget it. It was like, ‘Holy s**t. There’s something new.’ And I don’t remember feeling that way probably since then or prior to that point. But 1988 is a pretty negligible year in human history! I don’t want to say human history. American history- was not an eventful year in terms of there wasn’t a war; there was an election.

LS: What about culturally, in terms of what we were cranking out then as far as music, movies, fashion?

RK: A lot of really bad movies.

LS: Great bad movies. I sometimes return to those…

RK: Really great 80s Schwarzenegger films like Commando.

LS: Bad comedies like Just One of the Guys.

RK: Just One of the Guys! There’s this guy- the dude- the blonde villain guy who was in all of those movies. Back to School.

LS: Billy Zabka. The Karate Kid villain.

RK: Yeah! He was in Just One of the Guys.

LS: Yeah, that’s him.

RK: Those movies were great.

LS: We don’t have movies like that anymore, really. I don’t think they can possibly be made. If they are, they’re all about cynical teenagers.

RK: Eli Roth, who did Cabin Fever, has a real affinity for 80s teen sex comedies like Zapped!

LS: Zapped! is a great, awful movie!

RK: And Weird Science and Midnight Madness. He’s got a real affinity for those films and he wants to bring the artistry back to the teen sex comedy. Clearly the horror films are a passion for him, but there’s also this other absurdist deconstruction of Losin' It. (laughs) Remember that Tom Cruise movie?

LS: Of course, with Shelley Long and the trip to Mexico. Yeah!

RK: After you make a film like Donnie Darko, what comes next? Is there a pressure to reach as far as that film does; to be as visionary?

LS: Yes, we’re ready to start shooting this Fall. It’s been a struggle to get it off the ground. It’s a big film. A very elaborate film. I think it’s exactly what all the fans are waiting for. It’s an original project that I’ve written called Southland Tales, and we’re scheduled to start shooting it this fall. We’ve been prepping it for over a year now. It takes a long time to get movies like this off the ground. The studios aren’t interested in making these kinds of movies. You have to put all the piece together and beg the studios to distribute it. They’re not in the risk game. They want to make remakes. They want to make sequels. They want to make movies based on TV shows. They want to make horror films. And then they want to make movies about princesses who go to London and find their long-lost dad and become a pop star and slapstick mayhem ensues. They have certain kinds of movies that they want to make. That’s all that they’re interested in making.

LS: It’s odd because a lot of those films don’t really clean up at the box office, when you look at them across the board. Sequels in the summer, yes.

RK: It’s about the ancillary value. They can map out and project how much it’s going to make on home video and they want to be able to map and chart everything into a category. So any original idea is very hard to get through the system. You need to have a big movie star more than anything and it becomes very difficult even to get access to big movie stars because there are six thousand people vying to cast the same six people, but it’s those six people who get you your financing. So it’s very tough! It’s a treacherous time right now to get a film like Donnie Darko or any of the material that I like to do.

LS: Do you feel the pressure ever to go down that commercial route?

RK: Yeah, but the renewed success of this film has given me more hope to stick to my guns and keep trying to do unusual stuff, provocative stuff, just because if you can just prove that it’s financially successful, then they’ll just let you keep doing it. For awhile there, it was like every sentence that was written about Donnie Darko was ‘box office disaster.’ And that can hurt.

LS: Now it’s been called a ‘key American film of the decade.’

RK: Yeah, that helps man, because for a long time it was, ‘He has crummy numbers. We’re not going to invest in his other projects.’ It sucks to have that curse, and if that curse can be lifted it helps. It sure does. I’ve got a bunch of other projects that are just as out there, man, but they’re bigger. Unfortunately, my imagination is pretty elaborate and it gets a bit more expensive.

The average cost of a studio film now is probably fifty million dollars. And most of the films I want to do can be done between twenty and thirty. So it’s not like- even if a studio wanted to do them, it’s not an expensive film for them.

LS: Donnie Darko was made for 4.5 million dollars. What’s on the screen is pretty incredible for that amount of money.

RK: Yeah. Hopefully the other movies that I do are going to have that—they look like they cost a lot more. I think the biggest power that a director can have in this business is to convince actors to work for cheap. If your material is good enough that they want to do it because of the material and not because of the paycheck. Then keep the budget low enough where almost all of it ends up in the production value of the film and you get a bigger, elaborate story told for a responsible budget, and then they just kind of leave you alone. The bigger the budget, the more they get in and meddle. It’s got to be under two hours, it’s got to be PG-13, and all those restrictions they start putting on you, and the budget gets bigger. So if you can keep the budget down by keeping your ‘above the line’ talent salaries (low), then it just lets you have more creative control. But the material has to be good enough so that actors will be willing to do it without getting paid. They make these huge paychecks usually on movies that aren’t so challenging.

I’m really anxious to make another film and I’m ready for the challenge. The scripts are all written. I’ve got 5 scripts waiting to go. Once we get this next one up and running provided it doesn’t bomb, I’d like to do one film a year. It sucks to have to go three years between films, man. It’s excruciating. At the same time, I want to make sure that the second film lives up to whatever expectations people have. I don’t want it to be a disappointment. I also want to make sure it’s something completely different—just as messed up, but completely different.

LS: How often do you get asked what Donnie Darko actually ‘means?’

RK: All the time. And the worst is at a party. I’m at a party or a restaurant, and someone comes up and asks me to explain the film to them, and it’s like…

LS: ‘What do you think it means?’

RK: Yeah! Just throw it right back on them! Or I’m like, ‘Just go online and read one of the sixteen million interviews I’ve done.’ Listen to the director’s commentary. I love the fact that it gets people thinking and they have questions, because to me those are the best films, that I love, or the ones that are worth watching more than once and are going to inspire people to debate.

LS: What do you think it is about that movie that sort of drilled into the zeitgeist of this particular cult audience? I can feel it when I watch it, but I just don’t know how to say it.

RK: Something about time-travel movies or any movie that delves into the unknown, Carl Sagan kind of stuff, Arthur C. Clarke. I mean, look at The Terminator. People are endlessly fascinated with a well-executed time-travel movie. Back to the Future had a big impact on me when I saw it. It was like, wow. When that movie came out, for me at least it was so cool. They put together this elaborate story…

LS: Yes, the internal logic…

RK: Putting the parents together and he’s got to get them to date. His hand is disappearing in the photograph, and I remember seeing that as a kid and being like, ‘This is so cool.’

LS: But I think for me, the thing about Donnie Darko that really resonates, beyond the mind-bending stuff, is that there’s an odd poignance that sneaks up on you. There are many movies about the apocalypse or time-travel that are cool but they don’t grab you. Donnie is not the most accessible guy. But there’s something about it by the time it finishes.

RK: Yeah, I think there’s something about the humanity that Jake brought to the role. And there’s something also about this really charismatic actor playing this very alienated individual. You’re playing an outsider—an anti-hero played by a very charismatic person. And I think maybe that, to audience members who identify with alienation or identify with that type of character, or see themselves as being like that type of character, to have this really charismatic guy like Jake filling that image for them, is maybe putting a positive spin on alienation. It’s also maybe- I think the film is a black comedy. That’s the thing I’m most proud of, is the laughs we get in this film. It’s a funny movie also, and even with the poignance and the suspense, there’s sort of like a- it’s a rollercoaster ride that takes you into every kind of emotional place really.

I guess there’s a little something for everyone. It really services every genre and kind of age group in a way, in the way that marketing people talk about quadrants. Ironically, this movie kind of does speak to teenagers, science-fiction aficionados, there’s a period quality to it that’s innocent for people who grew up at that time, there’s a romantic angle…

LS: It’s a thriller too.

RK: Yeah, there’s a lot going on for people to digest. We just set out to try to tell this epic fable about this kid who becomes- I picked that name because I thought, ‘Superman, Batman, Donnie Darko.’ I picked that name and I knew it was going to be kind of the sci-fi comic book movie about a kid who becomes a superhero, but let’s do it in 1988 and let’s have all this science-fiction stuff. It can maybe operate on two levels—comic book tableau and the big portals opening up in the sky, and stuff you see happening in comic book frames, which is all about force fields and- stuff you see in comic books, like super power imagery and stuff. Do all that stuff in a 1988 suburb as a black comedy and maybe it will operate on a satirical level. Maybe the jet engine is a symbol of the Reagan era coming crashing down. That was a thought in my head. Maybe this can all be seen as social satire in addition to comic book.

LS: You mentioned the idea of the portal. If you could open up a portal to anywhere right now, where would it be?

RK: Where would I- if I were to look into the past? You see the old photographs of Venice, the canals, the umbrellas—there’s something really fascinating about history before motion pictures; before videotape existed. Because now almost as we get further- almost all history is recorded. You’re on camera a million times a day now. I mean, when the first tower was hit, someone was there- a camera caught it. There’s something endlessly fascinating about history in that no one was there to photograph it. No one was there on the Titanic. Imagine seeing real footage from the Titanic; venturing into the past. That’s why I’d love to make a big period piece to be able to recreate some sort of historical event in meticulous detail, the way Kubrick did Barry Lyndon—a stunning technical accomplishment. To me it’s the most beautiful film ever made. And just to be able to recreate the past would be something really wonderful to be able to do.

LS: I have a feeling you’re not talking about Merchant Ivory.

RK: Well, I’m not the biggest fan of Masterpiece Theater-type cinema. I love Barry Lyndon and Kubrick is in a whole different category for me. I’d love to do a film that takes place in that world but have it be like a ridiculous comedy, you know? But still with integrity. Barry Lyndon is an insanely sly black comedy; very funny; a devastating critique of man as a jackass, who destroys everything and everyone around him.

I’d love to make every kind of film in my career. I’m going to be moving more into comedy. To me that’s the most satisfying. The most satisfying thing for anyone sitting in the theater is to laugh or cry.

LS: They’re closely linked and often they follow each other.

RK: Yeah. I think if there’s a movie that can make someone laugh and then also to move them and make them cry, that’s the most successful piece of art, right? Comedy is really undervalued because it’s so hard to do.

LS: What’s a great comedy to you?

RK: For me, The Big Lebowski. Anything that Christopher Guest does, like Best in Show, is just a masterwork. So brilliant. Even something like Meet the Parents I really loved. A lot of comedies end up being kind of crass. I’m getting ready to do my version of a comedy film, but it’s also many other things. We’ll see. But more than anything it’s fun to laugh on the set; to be behind the monitor and laugh is the best part of the whole thing.