The director of Donnie Darko on why the film is so misunderstood View our Twitter (X) feedView our Youtube channelView our Instagram feedView our Substack feedView our Spotify feed The director of Donnie Darko on why the film is so misunderstood Richard Kelly on 25 years of Donnie Darko, the true origin of the bunny mask, and The Philosophy of Time Travel, and his new novel. The director of Donnie Darko on why the film is so misunderstood Richard Kelly is an American writer-director best known for Donnie Darko (2001), the cult sci-fi classic marking its 25th anniversary this year. He also wrote and directed Southland Tales (2006)[…] The director of Donnie Darko on why the film is so misunderstood Richard Kelly is an American writer-director best known for Donnie Darko (2001), the cult sci-fi classic marking its 25th anniversary this year.
He also wrote and directed Southland Tales (2006)[…] “You might as well go for it. You might as well do the thing that you dream about doing for heaven's sake.” Donnie Darko turns 25 this year — and heads back to theaters on October 2nd. To mark it, director Richard Kelly sits down with Big Think's Executive Editor Stephen Johnson for a wide-ranging conversation about the film's cult afterlife, including the story of the meeting where Francis Ford Coppola circled a single line of dialogue and told him that's what the movie was really about.
Kelly walks through the true origin of the bunny mask (it started as an Easter costume note and ended up part wolf, part coyote), the $4.5 million shoot that almost fell apart before it started, and why — 25 years later — he's finally publishing "The Philosophy of Time Travel," the official sequel novel, out December 15th. Celebrate 25 years of Richard Kelly’s mind-bending masterpiece in a stunning 4K presentation - https://hubs.la/Q04wnCmM0 Richard Kelly: Anytime I am writing a screenplay, I have to articulate the whole novel in my mind — and then I'm adapting the novel just without having bothered to write it, kind of. I love the idea of big world building.
And the irony is, I'm about to publish a gigantic novel in December that's the official epic sequel to Donnie Darko. There's enough material in this gigantic book for three movies. The complexity and the ambition, the scale of it — I don't think there's any other way to achieve it.
The story isn't finished yet. There's a lot more to it. I didn't want to live out the rest of my life and not really have a crack at continuing to tell what I really felt was an unfinished story — that the movie was only the beginning of something much greater.
Stephen Johnson: I'm Stephen Johnson, executive editor at Big Think, and I'm joined today by Richard Kelly, the director and writer behind films like Southland Tales, The Box, and the 2001 cult classic Donnie Darko, which is being re-released in theaters on October 2nd. Richard, thank you so much for taking some time to talk to me. Stephen Johnson: Donnie Darko is famously a movie that could be picked apart in various ways — it could be called a Superman story, a love story.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
