Hey, I'm a popcorn movie guy. Sue me.

I have since learned that I didn't watch it right. In my little town of 25,000 people, it was near impossible to get my hands on the single crummy VHS copy my local video store had on hand. That was what first intrigued me, so I did the unthinkable. I actually reserved it. When I finally did get to watch it, I had the misfortune of being in a terrible mood. The channel wasn't open. Not only that, but the tape quality was so brutal from overuse, I was missing half the movie. DONNIE DARKO is broad in visual scope, which brings me the substance of today's adventure.

It's a typical Friday morning in Santa Monica, California; sunny, seventy-two, not a cloud in the sky. Settled on a cheery downtown street corner on the city's nouveau-quaint Main Street is The Firehouse, a nice little patio eatery a few blocks from the beach. Richard Kelly is tearing into a hearty breakfast of bacon and eggs like any normal person would. At the outset, he reminds me of any of my film nut buddies from college: affable, approachable, a veritable well-spring of film knowledge and terminology. Except instead of talking about it, Kelly does what most of my armchair director film school buddies will spend the rest of their natural born lives pining for: he makes groundbreaking movies. Well, to be fair, he's made one so far. The next one's on the way, though. More on that later.

There's a fey quality to this down-to-earth guy, and while I get the impression that such descriptions might make him a touch uncomfortable, there is something piercing and wizened in Richard Kelly that goes far beyond his young age (he was 29 when he made DONNIE DARKO). He's got it in the eyes, for one, an intensity, a gaze that is heavy with the weight of an endlessly inquisitive nature. This guy sees in a way that most of us don't. Watch his films for evidence of that. But one on one, in conversation, you get the impression that Kelly looks through the looking glass the rest of us only see our reflection in.

As he munched his morning meal, we shot the bull a little about a subject Richard Kelly has talked about a lot: DONNIE DARKO...

Q: A lot of your fan base relates to you because they’re aspiring directors and writers who feel they’ve got something different to offer. Your first film was a very original vision. At the same time, you’re one of the guys who made the jump from being a film junkie to the director’s chair. How does it feel to be that guy?

Richard Kelly: You feel very lucky, and very fortunate to be given these opportunities, to be given the chance to make a film. You just don’t want to blow it. That’s part of why I’m being very careful in putting together the second film [SOUTHLAND TALES] because I don’t want to disappoint myself, and I don’t want to disappoint people who loved the first film. I don’t want to make a second film that doesn’t stand up to DARKO in people’s eyes. It’s also very important to me that I don’t try to make the same film over and over again, that I try to do something completely different. I’m very lucky. You’ll never hear me complaining about my situation because I’m getting to do pretty much what I want.

This whole “director’s cut” thing is pretty absurd. For me to have gotten to do this for my first film is, well, it’s something you’re supposed to get to do ten years down the line. I’m hoping that it will set some sort of precedent. I don’t know if it will, but I’m hoping that this will make it easier for younger directors to get final cut. There’s all sorts of loopholes in the term final cut, though, too. A lot of it has to do with contractual running times, and your version has to test above 80, and if the studio’s version tests higher, then those cuts may need to be made.

Q: Is that why there are two cuts of DONNIE DARKO?

RK: No. They never tested DONNIE DARKO, thank god. It takes maybe fifty to a hundred thousand dollars to hire NRG to conduct the test. At the time, we were just barely going to get distribution at all. They were only going to put it out in a few theaters, so it wasn’t really worth the expense to test it, and the expense to keep re-cutting the film.

Q: Tell me about yourself before DONNIE DARKO.

RK: I went to USC. I was a complete film geek. I spent at least two hours a day in the film library. This was way back in the day before DVD, 1993 to 1997. I was digesting every film I could see, non-stop. None of us could afford a Laserdisc player at the time, which just goes to show you how far we’ve come. Back then, you couldn’t even get anything widescreen, even on VHS.

They had every print known to man in the library there. We’d get to see every Hitchcock film up on the big screen, you get to see PATHS OF GLORY. You get to see THE BICYCLE THIEF. You get to see KUROSAWA’S DREAMS on film at USC. For me film school was a huge, life-changing experience because I grew up in Richmond, Virginia. I love my home town, but it’s not really an epicenter of film culture. This is before DVD mind you. DVD has changed everything. You could be in a third-world country and open your notebook and pop in the most obscure Indian cinema.

Q: Some filmmakers have said that film school wasn’t an essential part of their journey as an artist. I’m assuming that statement isn’t true for you.

RK: It can be a complete waste of time. For me, with that library there, I just went and saw every film. I also learned a lot of technical information, for instance, getting into camera and sound. There’s a sound class at USC which Thomas Homlin teaches. According to Thomas Homlin, THX stands for Thomas Homlin’s Experiment, not Lucas’s film [THX-1138]. I’d don’t know what the truth is, but he did help Lucas develop THX. He teaches this class about the rudimentary nuts and bolts of channels and tracks and sound mag, and 16mm, 35mm, where the soundtrack is. It’s all about the real science of film. That’s stuff that can put you to sleep, or it can really give you a language to work with. You don’t really need it to be an artist. But at the same time, it can teach you to be a technician.

Q: A few of the newest directors feel its important to be involved on every level of their movies. Soderberg writes, directs, and does his own camera work. Robert Rodriguez is very hands on. Kevin Smith writes, directs and edits. Is it important to do everything?

RK: Being a filmmaker is like being an architect on some level. If you want to know all about everything, if you want to know how everything functions, there’s an enormous amount of technical information available to you at film school to go and learn all that stuff. You can be a great filmmaker and not know a lot about film stops and aspect ratio, but for me, I come from a family of engineers. I wanted to have all of that technical knowledge.

Q: Speaking of your family, I wonder how your own people felt about how you depict the decay of the American family in DONNIE DARKO. Did that have any basis on your own upbringing?

RK: I think Premier Magazine was the first interview where I dropped an F-bomb. My Mom said, “Richard, do you have to cuss?” I’ve never heard my mother say a cuss word in my entire life. It’s not really based in my reality. I was trying to illustrate, with the family, the dichotomy in having politically conservative parents who are really kind of liberal about things around the house. I think a lot of the reason people are conservatives around the country has to do with economics: they don’t want to pay taxes. I thought it would be interesting in that the family was politically conservative, but the kids are socially liberated. But it’s not my family. There certainly are some auto-biographical elements to the film, but my family would never talk like that around the dinner table. As writers and directors, we make shit up for a living, y’know?

Q: When one first sees DONNIE DARKO, it's cryptic. In the director’s cut, you’ve added some story elements and subplots we don’t see in the first film. Did you intend to bring a little more clarity to the storyline in adding those items?

RK: Yeah. The characters are all obsessing over this book. I had written the pages, and I had wanted to keep it in the film, and then my rough cut came in at two and a half hours, and I had to cut it. It ended up going on the website as a sort of primer. For me, adding it back makes the film a more complete journey, where you actually understand that Donnie is processing all of this information. Being able to read the book as Donnie’s experiencing it, you begin to understand more of what’s happening. I hope it brings people a greater understanding of the film, and what my intentions were. There are those other people who want things to remain a little more esoteric, and that’s fine, too. We’ll see which version people prefer.

Q: I see DONNIE DARKO as a very complex patchwork of ideas, but a theme that jumps out at me personally is that Donnie is facing up to a fear of death. Was that a big issue for you? Donnie takes a huge journey that brings him to a point of sacrifice, and he's rather optimistic about it once he makes his choice.

RK: Sure. I think if you look at THE STRANGER [an existentialist book by Albert Camus], when he’s walking to his execution, he’s laughing. I think if you look at THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE by the Cohen Brothers, I think that these are artists who are struggling, trying to comprehend what life is all about. Certainly, art is about trying to confront pain head on, or anxiety, or frustration. But you can do that through comedy, too. I mean DR. STRANGELOVE, maybe the greatest comedy of all time, is about nuclear annihilation and the end of the world. For me, making DONNIE DARKO was a way to try and disprove the statement, ‘God is dead.’ I don’t want the answer to be yes to that question, because I think that would just be kind of depressing. The movie addresses that when Donnie’s psychiatrist has a talk with him about the differences between being an agnostic and an atheist. I think that’s maybe part of why Kevin Smith made DOGMA. DOGMA was a sort of confrontation, confronting the Catholic church on his own terms, ultimately in a very loving way. Any artist should try to confront things in a way that’s therapeutic.

Q: You’ve been talking about DONNIE DARKO for three years now. Are you about talked out on that subject?

RK: [Laughs] Absolutely. But people still seem to want to talk about it, and that’s fine. I’ve been warning people that I just sort of want to do comedies from now on, that I sort of want to be the next Mel Brooks or something.

Q: Are you serious?

RK: I kind of just want to make comedies. I just want to have a good time. It’s such an ordeal to get a film made that you might as well be laughing while you’re doing it. Just because a film is a comedy doesn’t mean that it can’t also be a thriller or a science fiction film. I don’t think I’ll ever put any parameters on my films. I think that there’s no greater weapon than comedy. I say weapon as a way of targeting your audience and proving a point. I mean, look at what Michael Moore has accomplished. He wouldn’t have accomplished what he as without laughter. His films cut deep, but they’re funny. Even if you disagree with what he’s saying, or how he’s saying it, the guy knows how to make people laugh. That’s sort of why I love Kevin Smith and his films so much, because they’re laugh out loud funny. I look at the Cohen brothers. Every film of theirs is a comedy on some level, even MILLER’S CROSSING. I think most of my favorite filmmakers are kind of snickering behind the monitor.

Head out to your local cinema and catch the new cut of this vital, engrossing film. There's a lot to see that justifies a trip to the movie house and eight to ten of your hard earned bucks. First off, a few crucial story elements have been brought back from the cutting room floor. A book on time travel Donnie continuously consults, which was written by the movie's enigmatic Grandma Death, helps us understand that Donnie's not alone in his perception of what's happening to him. As well, the final session Donnie has with his therapist reveals surprising new details about not only his drug therapy, but what Donnie's major internal conflict may just be about.

It's hard to tell if these tidbits make the movie easier to understand on a broad scale, but they do seem to help in some intangible way. Read up on the movie a little, too, if you can. It helps put a line on the many themes and mini-stories packed into the new two and a half hour running time: the decay of the American family, what it means to be an intelligent teenager, commentary on the superhero genre, time travel, the perils of trickledown Reganomics, and so on. The score has been not only been remastered, but many of the songs have been moved around a bit to lend a more choreographed feel to their inclusion in the film's composition. Listen to the lyrics. They're intended to help telegraph a bit more about what's going on in a scene. Taking the flick in at a big screen is a good thing, since it was shot in anamorphic widescreen format, a choice that makes viewing the film on a small screen an obstacle to taking in its grandeur.

And, if you can arrange it, have a sit-down conversation with the movie's architect the night after you watch it. It helps.

Return soon for an exclusive, if cagey, Q&A on Richard Kelly's next film, SOUTHLAND TALES.

DONNIE DARKO: The Director's Cut returns to theaters in New York and Los Angeles July 23rd, 2004

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