Richard Kelly’s Response to Leaving This Reporter Clueless as to What “Southland Tales” is About: After interviewing Richard Kelly numerous times, I’m no closer now to figuring out what “Southland Tales” is really all about than I was the first time I heard the film mentioned. When I told Kelly I have no idea what the film’s about, Kelly responded, “Nor do I. I’m just kidding.”
Just the Tiniest Insight Into “Southland Tales:” “Basically ‘Southland Tales’ is, more than anything, it’s… There’s a TS Elliot poem called ‘The Hollow Men’ where at the end of the poem the last three lines are:
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but with a whimper
And in a movie starring The Rock, you can’t end the world with a whimper. It needs to end with a bang. So that’s what the movie’s about.”
The Music: “The music; the piece of music on the web site is called ‘Rose Petals.’ It’s an original composition by Moby. It will be in the film.”
Writing and Directing: “When you’re the writer, it’s almost – you become the screenplay. [It] becomes like part of your DNA and you get frustrated with it because you’ve gotta keep re-writing it because locations change, and the budget, and you have to adapt the screenplay to fit the circumstances and the parameters of the money. And as you cast it, you keep re-writing it and sculpting it. I went through the same thing with Tony [Scott], adjusting things and getting it right for Delroy Lindo. Getting it right for, you know, ‘Oh it’s gonna be Jackie Bissett. Okay let’s do like…’ Just massaging it. So you’re constantly re-writing the script and the script has changed significantly many times.
Sean [McKittrick] and I just spent two years re-writing it and we’re gonna be re-writing it constantly over the next four weeks. I think you get kind of, as a director, you get annoyed with the script because it’s all in your head and it’s like, ‘F**k the script.’
When you’re directing your own screenplay sometimes there’s just a shorthand and you forget that you need to explain it to everyone, otherwise, they’re like, ‘What?’ I’m not making any sense. Did I answer your question?”
Richard Kelly on Themes That Come Up Repeatedly in His Work: “I don’t know. God, I don’t know. I hope I just evolve more into writing comedy. Seriously. I mean it’s like ‘Darko’ was great, but it’s been like frustrating because I’m more into… I wish I could have made another film by now, but just getting the second one right has been a big ordeal. It’s been very difficult to get ‘Southland Tales’ off the ground.
I guess more than anything I just want to continue making movies. Making movies is such a pain in the ass, or doing them the way we try to do them is. The studio system isn’t set up to support the kind of stuff that, you know, Sean and I and all of my people, all my team, [are interested in]. It’s stuff that really doesn’t fit the parameters of what the studios are looking to do. So it just takes a long time to push this through the system, you know? I’m thinking I’ll just retire after this. If this one doesn’t make money, I’ll just have to go sellout and do something seriously, a lot more commercial because this has been a son-of-a-bitch to get off the ground.”
The Status of “The Box:” “‘The Box’ is, we’re just getting the script. We want to get the script perfect before we move, but that’s definitely in the pipeline. Eli [Roth] and I are obsessed with it. We just want to get it right. I optioned Richard Matheson’s story and we’re just hopefully gonna get it right.
Richard Kelly on Balancing Multiple Projects: “I’m just glad to be employed. Yeah, I like having more things in the air. It’d be great if I had like a staff. Sean [McKittrick] and I, we have our production company, but we don’t even have friggin’ business cards or an office or anything yet. It’d be great to have an overhead and like a budget to employ staff, development staff, but we don’t have that yet. We don’t have that. So we’re trying to do as much as we can, which is basically me and him. Hopefully it’ll be a situation where I can multi-task even more. [Laughing] I’m not good at answering these [questions]. I walk around the question.”
