For a diehard fan of Donnie Darko, meeting director and screenwriter Richard Kelly is a thrill in itself. But to first encounter him as a silhouette in a darkened movie theater is to feel almost like a character in one of his films—unmoored by indefinite space and physics, questioning your altered perception.
It’s a hot Friday in mid-August when I sit down with Kelly, 51, at Santa Monica’s Aero Theatre, a beloved repertory venue that makes a key appearance in Donnie Darko, his remarkable debut feature. Released in October 2001 with virtually no marketing due to the tragic events of 9/11 weeks prior (the plot hinges on a plane accident), it couldn’t get a toehold at the box office. But in the months and years that followed, the film became a hit on the home video market and gained a fervent cult fandom thanks to its unique supernatural mystery.
To mark its 25th anniversary, the movie will enjoy another limited theatrical run, beginning on October 2, the date that launches mentally disturbed suburban teenager Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal) on a surreal journey that may or may not lead to the end of the world. Kelly has just finished recording an intro for the new 4K restoration, and snippets of it play without sound on the big screen as we talk.
“My memories of this film run the entire spectrum from fear to love,” Kelly jokes, alluding to the corny pop psychology peddled by Patrick Swayze’s self-help guru in the film. This occasion, Kelly says, is all about the “love,” as he couldn’t be more grateful to “all the people who have continued to support” his work.
That camp should be pleased to hear that on December 15, Kelly will publish his mammoth first novel, The Philosophy of Time Travel, available for preorder now. The 800-page volume picks up right where the movie left off and is intended to set the stage for a film sequel as well. “It’s been very inspiring for me to remain focused on continuing the journey that began 25 years ago, on my own creative terms,” Kelly says. “This film has defined my entire career, but at the same time, it’s set a benchmark in the sense of the movies that I want to continue to make.”
Here, the auteur revisits the unforgettable dreamscape that put him on the map, and considers the artistic possibilities still ahead.
On when he realized Donnie Darko was becoming a cult hit:
There was one specific moment, I think in March of 2002, when I was in New York City. I was walking through the East Village, and I walked past a pizza restaurant called Two Boots, and my poster for Donnie Darko was hanging in their window. I saw the poster and I was like, “What’s going on? This is bizarre. Why does a pizza restaurant have a movie poster?” I went inside and I asked the manager, and he said, “Well, we have a little theater in the back, the Pioneer, and we’re playing your movie every Saturday night at midnight—and it’s selling out.”
I showed up the next Saturday night at about two in the morning, when the movie was finishing. I expected there’d be maybe 10 people there, and he wasn’t joking, it was sold out, and there were people with camcorders and lights in my face, and Michael Musto from the Village Voice was there. I was just completely bowled over by the fact that there were people who cared, who were really, really connecting with the movie. That was the moment I knew that it wasn’t over, that the movie was going to have a second wind.
On how Drew Barrymore and Jason Schwartzman saved the screenplay from Hollywood purgatory:
It all started with Jason Schwartzman. He attached to play Donnie, and by virtue of his attachment, the script got sent around to a whole new round of people. It had been circulating for about a year, and the story was, “Oh, the writer won’t sell it. He wants to direct. It’s his first movie, it’s too ambitious. It’s just a writing sample, he’s never gonna get that movie made. He won’t let anyone else take it away from him.”
Then the script got sent to Nancy Juvonen, who’s partners with Drew Barrymore [at Flower Films]. She read it and flipped out and wanted to meet me, so we went down to the set of Charlie’s Angels. We went into Drew Barrymore’s trailer, and she was finishing the script, and we just immediately hit it off. I’m like, “Drew, would you like to play the English teacher, Mrs. Pomeroy?” And she’s like, “Will you let my company, Flower Films, produce the movie with you? And I’m like, “Of course.” She had a one week window in August of 2000 before she was going to do a Penny Marshall film called Riding in Cars with Boys. We had to meet that deadline and get Drew to shoot her out in one week.
Jason Schwartzman had a scheduling conflict, and then in walks Jake Gyllenhaal. So it all happened really quickly. Nancy and Drew really deserve an enormous share of the credit in getting this whole thing off the ground—and Jason Schwartzman, too. Had he not attached, I would not have a career.
On having real-life siblings Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal anchor a fictional on-screen family.
I heard from Joseph Middleton and Michelle Morris Gertz, our wonderful casting directors—they told me that Jake has an older sister, her name is Maggie Gyllenhaal, and she’s a brilliant actress. She had only appeared in one movie thus far, Cecil B. Demented, a John Waters film. I think she had a tiny cameo, but she had done a lot of theater and was obviously an enormous talent, like her brother, and once I realized there was a possibility of getting her, I was just like, “We have to get Maggie. It will anchor the family with real siblings, and Maggie will be this great foundation for Jake, and for the whole cast, and she was just so essential.” Sometimes the cards are dealt in your favor in terms of who’s available, who is interested, and so much of filmmaking is just the timing. It’s a miracle that any movie gets made.
On giving Seth Rogen his first film role (as a high school bully):
He had done Freaks and Geeks, and he was a standup comedian, performing in comedy clubs. Seth was one of these prodigy kids, really wise beyond his years and ahead of the game. He was maybe 19 years old when we shot the movie, the same age as Jake—incredibly observant, very articulate and funny young actor and writer and comedian, he was already pursuing all these different avenues. I felt like we had access to all the cool LA kid actors, because we shot in Los Angeles, it was the summer of 2000, and there was a commercial [actors] strike where all of the commercials were dark.
On creating the 1980s setting of Donnie Darko.
When we were doing the ‘80s, it was the year 2000, and we were capturing 1988, which is completely insane. That’s 12 years. So you subtract 12 years from 2026 and we are in 2014, which seems completely insane to do a period piece about 2014, because things don’t look that different than they did in 2014—but the disparity between 2000 and 1988 aesthetically was pretty significant. The cars looked completely different, the TVs looked different, the clothing looked different.
In terms of the ’80s aesthetic, we wanted it to feel subtle, we didn’t want a lot of big ’80s hair, and we didn’t want someone wearing a “Beat It” Michael Jackson jacket. We didn’t want it to be kitschy. April Ferry, our incredible, Oscar-nominated costume designer, who we lost a few years ago, was so wonderful in bringing the ’80s fashion for Mary McDonnell and Beth Grant—you see them with the shoulder pads and the different ’80s suburban costuming.
On the movie reference from his original script that didn’t make it to the screen:
In the original script, Donnie and Gretchen went to go see C.H.U.D., just because I thought it was a funny ’80s horror movie. Linda McDonough, who was an executive at Flower Films, was trying to track down the licensing permission for the movie C.H.U.D. as we were approaching the shoot date here at the Aero Theatre, and she was getting nowhere. It was one of the big studios, and there was some woman in charge of licensing at that studio who was just like, “You’re never getting this.”
You would think we were trying to license Lawrence of Arabia or Citizen Kane. They wanted so much money, and we were three days from shooting the scene, and we didn’t have a movie to show. Linda, to her enormous credit, said, “Richard, I am friends with the producers at the studio that owns The Evil Dead, they own the negative. Sam Raimi is a great guy, and they will let us have the poster to show at the front in the lobby of the theater. They’ll let you show any clip from The Evil Dead you want, the music, you can have it basically for free.” It was like a deus ex machina in the form of Sam Raimi. That led to the whole Evil Dead sequence in the movie, that was so perfect. Then we were able to do the marquee with The Last Temptation of Christ—we weren’t showing a clip from the Scorsese film or the poster, just showing the title. That’s an easier ask.
On the influential soundtrack of post-punk and new wave music:
I wasn’t thinking that deep. I was just like, “I love this song.” Like, “Head Over Heels” [by Tears for Fears] was written into the script because I knew that when Donnie and his friends jump out of the school bus, when Donnie’s feet hit the pavement, that first big piano note of “Head Over Heels” starts. When the camera flies through the window and you see all the kids sitting down and Drew Barrymore gathering the class together … “Time flies.” I had to get from the feet hitting the pavement to when they said, “Time flies,” and I had to edit the song down. It was just me doing a music video and loving that song and the vibe and the energy of it.
I have to give an enormous amount of credit to Manish Raval and Tom Wolfe, my music supervisors, who really expanded the canvas of the music in the movie to include Joy Division and Echo and the Bunnymen. It really did form a cohesive musical narrative. We were very fortunate, because no one was really trying to license a lot of that music in the year 2000.
The one song that we could not get—if you go back and watch the dailies, the Sparkle Motion dance scene was choreographed to Pet Shop Boys, but that was a no-go, we could not afford it, so we replaced it with Duran Duran.
On the dialogue that has had a surprising impact—such as the line “Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion,” as delivered by actor Beth Grant:
It’s so ridiculous. You never know it’s gonna connect. Literally that’s gonna be in my obituary, that line of dialogue, the only thing people remember that I wrote. Beth Grant is the best.
On what the social media reaction would be like if Donnie Darko came out today:
I can’t even wrap my head around it. Online discourse is terrifying, and you kind of try to stay away from it. Any filmmaker that gets too caught up in online discourse, that can only have a negative impact on one’s art. You have to be cognizant of what’s going on in the world, but I think you need to curate your own art as the artist. We need more of that, art that is purely what the artist wants to say.
But I’m emboldened and excited about the younger generation going back to the theaters and reading books. Launching a book, the enormous amount of work that’s gone into writing a novel—it’s very gratifying to get to the finish line on something like that because you realize how a novel can help be the engine for something that is very difficult to get made because of the budget.
On the newer films and filmmakers to catch his eye:
Like everyone else, I saw Obsession. I thought it was terrific. Incredibly well done for such a small budget. The performances were great. I love Ari Aster’s work. I love Jane Schoenbrun’s work. I’ve not seen [Sex and Death at] Camp Miasma, that’s next on my list.
On the movie he most wants to make (besides a sequel to Donnie Darko):
There are so many scripts I’ve written and projects that have hit roadblocks for various reasons. I would love to get my Rod Serling biopic made. That is a very ambitious project that tells the life story of Rod Serling using a fantasy and science-fiction language, in conjunction with his daughter Anne Serling and her memoir about her father. It’s an expensive movie to make, given the fantasy elements and the period elements and the scope. If there are big influences, they would be Defending Your Life, the Albert Brooks film, A Matter of Life and Death by Powell and Pressberger, and All That Jazz by Bob Fosse.
