Starlog 270 - Supernova - Walter Hill Interview

Anatomy of a Cannes Disaster: What Happened After 'Southland Tales' Was Booed

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/anatomy-a-cannes-disaster-what-890749

Anatomy of a Cannes Disaster: What Happened After ‘Southland Tales’ Was Booed

"I was dazed, confused and deafened by the boos," said Roger Ebert after 2006's festival premiere of the dystopian satire from 'Donnie Darko' director Richard Kelly, who'd turned down an 'X-Men' sequel before Hollywood turned on him. But, says Kevin Smith, "He [still] can be one of our greatest filmmakers."

By Tatiana Siegel

May 9, 2016

On May 21, 2006, director Richard Kelly was standing on the red carpet outside the Grand Theatre Lumiere, ready to unleash his two-hour-and-40-minute postapocalyptic satire Southland Tales on a curious Cannes crowd. It was one of three American films competing for the Palme d’Or (along with Richard Linklater’s Fast Food Nation and Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette).

Kelly knew his film wasn’t finished and the visual effects were underwhelming. But the clock had run out, and no one turns down an in-competition invitation. “I wanted to go into Cannes and tell everyone that it was a work in progress,” he recalls, “but I just remember a lot of people surrounding me saying, ‘Don’t say that. You don’t tell anyone that.’ ”

The critics took a particularly merciless position toward the American crop that year. Marie Antoinette was roundly booed during its press screenings. Ron Howard’s The Da Vinci Code, the opening night film, drew prolonged laughter, catcalls, whistles and hisses from the critics. But few films in Cannes history have received the amount of vitriol heaped on Southland, which opens with a nuclear attack in Texas and wraps with the world coming to an end thanks to a rift in the space-time continuum. The film is led by Dwayne Johnson as an action star having a schizophrenic meltdown and Sarah Michelle Gellar as a psychic ex-porn star bent on creating a reality TV show amid the chaos. A mishmash of pop culture influencers including Justin Timberlake, Amy Poehler, Kevin Smith, Bai Ling and Eli Roth also drop in.

2001’s Donnie Darko achieved cult status and had major studios eager to work with Kelly, the indie film’s wunderkind helmer.

Roger Ebert wrote: “I was dazed, confused, bewildered, bored, affronted and deafened by the boos all around me.”

As Kelly posed on the carpet with stars Johnson and Gellar, while Marilyn Manson whisked by, he realized, “We were just walking into a shredder.”

At the time, Kelly was 31 and one of the hottest talents in town after helming 2001’s Donnie Darko, which launched Jake Gyllenhaal’s career, and writing Tony Scott’s 2005 bounty hunter drama Domino. Heavily courted by studios eager to work with the indie wunderkind, he turned down everything, including X-Men: The Last Stand.

“I’ve always just been so specific in what I do, and it’s hard for me to go and take something, particularly a directing assignment, that just doesn’t feel organic to the kinds of stories that I tell,” Kelly says. “It’s hard for me to kind of alter the fundamental DNA of who I am and the kinds of stories I want to tell.”

Instead, he focused on Southland, a film he began writing as a response to the 9/11 terror attacks and the Bush administration’s reaction. The Virginia native and USC grad had been living in Los Angeles since the mid-’90s and began processing his anxiety and frustration via the ambitious script. Southland started as Kelly’s take on the encroaching madness of the war on terror, juxtaposed with the birth of trash culture and a news cycle in which wars in Afghanistan and Iraq competed for airtime with Kim Kardashian’s sex tape.

THR’s review described Southland as “a slow-paced, bloated and self-indulgent picture.”

“My first impression of the script was, it was a political Pulp Fiction,” says Smith. “It was brilliant and I thought it would win a screenplay Oscar. I was astounded that it was as deep as it was, as relevant at the time.”

In 2005, producer Matthew Rhodes cobbled together Southland‘s $17.5 million budget, calling it “the most complex financial plan that I ever put together in my entire career.” The participants included Universal, which took foreign rights, Wild Bunch, Inferno Distribution (now Lotus Entertainment) and the now-defunct Cherry Road Films. Seann William Scott was the first actor to enlist, followed by Johnson, a bold choice given that the future box-office star still was best known as wrestler “The Rock.” Timberlake was brought in just to do voice­over work, but Kelly kept expanding his role, and the pop star was game. Everyone worked for scale.

Roth recalls learning that his character would be gunned down while defecating. “I was just happy to be a part of it,” he says. “I remember showing up at this dirty location in Venice and sitting on this gross toilet. I was so freaked out that I had to disinfect it before I sat on it, but I got over my germophobia. Instead of reading a porn magazine, I saw a gardening magazine and thought that would be funnier, and Rich agreed. We did it in one take.”

The film was shot in 29 days. Nearly all of the budget went into locations, with much of the project filmed in expensive beach communities — military tanks on the Santa Monica Pier, SWAT vehicles on the Venice boardwalk. Huge gun battles were staged in downtown Los Angeles. There’s a sequence where Jon Lovitz and Cheri Oteri engage in a big bar brawl in Hermosa Beach. A military sniper waits in a parking structure, overlooking a densely populated beach community of bars and restaurants.

“When we fired off the weapon for part of the scene, I remember there was all these people playing volleyball on the beach, and it was so loud, the gun was so loud, even the fake rounds that were in it, the gun was just such a big beast of a cannon, it made this huge echo throughout the entire Hermosa boardwalk area. And the people playing volleyball just hit the ground because they thought a bomb had gone off,” says Kelly.

Southland came into Cannes looking for a domestic distributor, a rarity for an American film in competition. The filmmakers didn’t even have a publicist on the ground to work with the perplexed press. “This movie plays to a younger audience,” says Rhodes. “I looked at the press sitting there and remember thinking, ‘Are they really going to get this movie?’ ”

“I still don’t know what that movie was about,” Timberlake has said of the film, in which he played a drug-addled pilot. Kelly pre- choreographed Timberlake’s song-and-dance routine to The Killers’ “All These Things That I’ve Done” but didn’t have the rights to the song. Fortunately, the band approved after seeing the footage.

Scott Shooman, a then-executive at Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions Group who screened Southland in L.A. before the festival, got it. Despite the cataclysmic premiere, he bought the film for under $5 million before the festival wrapped. But it wasn’t a fit for Sony Pictures Classics, and it wasn’t really a Screen Gems movie either. So Sony took it to Samuel Goldwyn to handle the film’s 2007 theatrical release.

“After Cannes, we were going to get only a tiny bit of money out of Sony to do the visual effects work that was necessary to finish it,” says Kelly. “I literally had college interns working for free to help us.”

Nearly 18 months after the festival, the movie limped into fewer than 50 theaters with almost no marketing budget. But the cast was passionate about promoting it. Johnson was set to host SNL the weekend that Southland opened. Gellar was booked on Letterman, Scott on Jimmy Kimmel. Then the WGA strike began, shutting down all of the talk shows, including SNL. “Nobody could promote the film,” says Kelly. “It was heartbreaking.” The film earned just $275,000 at the box office.

Still, Kelly remains sanguine about the Southland journey. “A lot of people forget that Donnie Darko was not a success out of the gate at all. It took at least three years for people to start calling it a cult hit,” he says. “Southland Tales was a really aggressive, provocative film even for Cannes. I think a lot of people were just never going to accept the film for what it was.”

But not every critic objected to Southland. In her dissenting New York Times review, Manohla Dargis wrote that the film “has more ideas, visual and intellectual, in a single scene than most American independent films have in their entirety … [and] confirms that Mr. Kelly … is one of the bright lights of his filmmaking generation.”

Poehler and Wood Harris in the film. “I made a very conscious decision to find actors who I felt had been pigeonholed or put into a box and had undiscovered talents,” Kelly said of his casting at the time.

Smith agrees. “He is insanely creative and is not unlike Christopher Nolan,” he says. “But Nolan wound up in the Warner Bros. system where he got special handling, and he got a lot of money to make huge art films like Inception. Richard can be one of our greatest filmmakers. He is right now, but just a lot of people don’t realize it. He’s still a kid, and someone needs to Nolan that kid.”

Others, like Manson, wouldn’t change a thing about Southland. Roth says the first time he met Manson, the musician was most excited to discuss the movie and Roth’s brief scene. “He watches it over and over,” Roth says. “Manson knew every single detail.”

Nevertheless, after Cannes 2006, Kelly’s career cooled (he’s directed just one film since, the Cameron Diaz starrer The Box). And more bad luck followed. After years of development, he was in preproduction on Amicus, a true-crime movie starring James Gandolfini, when the actor died suddenly in 2013. Now 41, Kelly is busy working on an original studio project that he declined to name as deals are still being finalized. As perhaps a small vindication, the world has somewhat melded with his dystopian vision of the future, one in which a reality TV presidential candidate inches toward the White House.

“With Donald Trump on the brink of capturing the Republican nomination and the absolute madness of this political campaign here in 2016, 2006 was much more chaste,” he says. “I look at things that I see in the news today and I’m like, ‘That’s too crazy for Southland Tales.’ “

***

Southland Tales - Cannes Premier Soundtrack CD listing

 

http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?threadID=58172&archive=0

01 This is the way the world ends - dialogue
02 Water Pistol - Moby
03 It Looks Down - Moby
04 Me and Bobby McGee - Waylon Jennings
05 Aerial - Moby
06 The Real Thing - The Shakers
07 The Power - dialogue
08 Blue Paper - Moby
09 Welcome to US-IDENT - dialogue
10 Ceanograph - Moby
11 Oh My Angel - Bertha Tillman
12 If I Could Be With You - Louis Armstrong
13 Always the Nerds - dialogue
14 3 Steps - Moby
15 Wave of Mutilation (UK Surf Version) - The Pixies
16 Look Back In - Moby
17 Sheri - Stanley Surrentine
18 Teen Horniness is Not a Crime - Krysta Now
19 Overland - Moby
20 Abendlich Strahlt der Sonne Auge - Richard Wagner
21 Lucky Me - Roger Webb
22 Blackout - Muse
23 Broken Hearted Savior - Big Head Todd & The Monsters
24 Pilot Abilene - dialogue
25 All These Things That I've Done - The Killers
26 Chord Sounds - Moby
27 Jericho Cane - dialogue
28 Planet Telex (live) - Radiohead
29 Three Days (live) - Jane's Addiction
30 Tiny Elephants - Moby
31 Shadows of the Morning Light - dialogue
32 Howl - Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
33 The Star Spangled Banner - Rebekah Del Rio
34 Do You Bleed - dialogue
35 Symphony No 9 - Beethoven
36 Very Soon Now - dialogue
37 Tender - Blur
38 Forget Myself - Elbow
39 Hotel Intro - Moby
40 Live Forever - Moby
41 Memory Gospel - Moby

Everything you were afraid to ask about “Southland Tales”

https://www.salon.com/2007/12/19/southland_tales_analysis/

Everything you were afraid to ask about "Southland Tales"

Baffled by Richard Kelly's latest apocalyptic epic -- the fluid karma, the biblical references, the space-time rift? Get all your questions answered here.

By Thomas Rogers

Published December 19, 2007 12:00PM (EST)

For half of Kelly's epic film about the end of the world, characters are quoting T.S. Eliot or the Book of Revelation. Its plot hinges on a barely explained back story involving rifts in the fourth dimension. For some reason, Wallace Shawn is dressed like a new-wave Japanese pimp. By the time the film reaches its climax -- which somehow manages to combine modern dance, a floating ice cream truck and the resurrection of Christ -- all semblance of logic has long since evaporated.

Although Kelly's first film, "Donnie Darko," was an obtuse cult hit about time travel and an apocalyptic rabbit, few people could have anticipated a follow-up as thoroughly baffling as "Southland Tales." When it premiered in its original three-hour form at Cannes, last year, the response was acidic. One critic wondered if Kelly had ever met another human being. Roger Ebert called it "the most disastrous Cannes press screening since, yes, 'The Brown Bunny.'" But despite the reaction, Kelly managed to secure a distribution deal and, on Nov. 14, released a shortened version of the film in U.S. theaters. As a tie-in, Kelly has also produced three graphic novels ("Two Roads Diverge," "Fingerprints" and "The Mechanicals" -- now available as "Southland Tales: The Prequel Saga") that explain the film's back story.

The theatrical cut of "Southland Tales" has been extensively reedited -- a subplot has been excised, additional special effects shots have been inserted, a new explanatory sequence opens the movie -- and critics have been considerably kinder to it. As Andrew O'Hehir put it, the recut film "transcends its adolescent awkwardness and approaches being magnificent." But even with the changes, the film is still almost impossible to understand, a trait that probably hasn't helped its box office. It's too bad, because "Southland Tales" is one of the more interesting and ambitious American films in recent memory.

In the hopes of helping you make sense of the movie, we've decided to unravel "Southland Tales" as we've done for "Mulholland Drive," "The Wire" and, of course, "Donnie Darko." If you haven't seen the movie and don't want to have it -- or the graphic novels -- spoiled, you should stop reading this right now. Using the graphic novels, the Book of Revelation, friends and whatever else we could find, we've pieced together everything you need to know (or at least everything we've been able to figure out) about "Southland Tales."

We'll begin with a recap of the film. If you'd like to skip directly to our question-and-answer section, click here.

---

"Southland Tales" opens on July 4, 2005, in Abilene, Texas. Kids are shooting home video of their Independence Day barbecue. Suddenly, a bright light appears through windows and a mushroom cloud rises in the distance: Abilene has been nuked. We zoom out to a satellite view, revealing that another nuclear bomb has been detonated in El Paso.

What follows is a hyperkinetic Fox News-style summary of the following three years in the "Southland Tales'" alternate universe: After the nuclear attacks in Texas, the United States reinstates the draft, and by October 2005, war (sponsored by Hustler and Bud Light) breaks out with Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, North Korea and Iraq -- where Pilot Abilene, the film's narrator, is injured in a friendly-fire accident. A blockade in the Strait of Hormuz impedes the flow of oil to the United States, causing an increased demand for alternative fuel sources.

As a result of the attacks, Republicans win the November 2006 elections by a landslide (290 Republicans and 145 Democrats in the House) and they beef up the Patriot Act -- creating USIDent, a think tank that monitors, among other things, the Internet. Liberal extremist cells start to emerge, including a group called the Neo-Marxists. The 2008 election, which is being fought between Clinton-Lieberman (Democrats) and Eliot-Frost (Republicans), hinges on the electoral votes of the state of California.

In June 2008, Boxer Santaros (Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson), an action movie star with ties to the Republican Party, disappears. Three days later, he is discovered in the desert near Lake Mead.

The movie begins in earnest when Boxer wakes up on a beach near the Santa Monica pier. Above him, Pilot Abilene (Justin Timberlake) sits in a gun turret and recites from the Book of Revelation, Robert Frost's poem "The Two Roads" and an inverted version of T.S. Eliot's "Hollow Men."

"This is the way the world ends,
This is the way the world ends,
This is the way the world ends,
Not with a whimper, but with a bang."

The first chapter in the film ("IV: Temptation Waits") begins.

Nana Mae Frost (Miranda Richardson), the wife of Republican candidate Bobby Frost, inaugurates the Los Angeles USIDent headquarters. She cuts the ribbon as USIDent employees -- dressed in windbreakers -- applaud. Elsewhere, in a luxurious apartment, Boxer crawls into bed with Krysta Now (Sarah Michelle Gellar), a former porn star with a reality television show. Together the two have written a screenplay, called "The Power," that tells the story of the end of the world.

We quickly learn that the United States is running low on gas and has cut a deal with a "renegade scientist" named Baron Von Westphalen (Wallace Shawn) and his company, Treer. The Baron has built an enormous machine off the coast of California that generates an electromagnetic energy field called fluid karma. Surrounded by his entourage, which includes Serpentine (Bai Ling); the Baron's mother, Dr. Inga Von Westphalen (Marion Card); Dr. Katarina Kuntzler (Zelda Rubinstein) and Dr. Soberin Exx (Curtis Armstrong) -- all dressed like a Cirque du Soleil troupe -- the Baron explains how fluid karma works: by "quantum entanglement."

At a beachside restaurant, Krysta Now meets Cyndi Pinziki (Nora Dunn), a porn producer with ties to the Neo-Marxist movement, to discuss Krysta's marketing plan. In addition to her reality show, Krysta has launched an energy drink and recorded a hit single called "Teen Horniness Is Not a Crime." When Krysta mentions that she is sleeping with Boxer Santaros, Cyndi decides to use this information to blackmail Boxer's father-in-law: Republican candidate Bobby Frost.

Back at USIDent headquarters, we learn that Boxer was kidnapped at a charity scavenger hunt several days earlier, and a charred body, presumed to be his, has been found in the desert near Lake Mead.

Zora Carmichaels (Cheri Oteri), a member of the Neo-Marxist movement, buys blank bullets from Walter Mung (Christopher Lambert) in an ice cream truck filled with weapons. At their Venice Beach headquarters, we meet the rest of the Neo-Marxists, including Veronica "Dream" Mung (Amy Poehler) and Dion Element (Wood Harris). Elsewhere in the building, Ronald Taverner (Seann William Scott) is in the bathroom, looking at his reflection. As he waves at himself in the mirror, he notices that his reflection's movements don't match his own.

Roland Taverner, his (alleged) twin -- a racist cop -- is sitting unconscious in the main room, having been kidnapped and drugged by the Neo-Marxists. As part of his participation in the Neo-Marxists' plot, Ronald must pretend to be his brother Roland and accompany Boxer during his movie research. With the help of Dion and Dream, Roland will then help stage a double murder that, caught on tape, will incriminate Boxer and destroy the Republican campaign.

When Ronald arrives at the home of Fortunio Balducci (Will Sasso), a movie producer, to meet Boxer and Krysta, Boxer explains that he and Krysta have written a screenplay called "The Power," about a "paranoid schizophrenic cop" named Jericho Cane.

Ronald agrees to take Boxer for a ride-along so he can research his role. As they drive, Boxer continues to talk about his screenplay, explaining a subplot involving a miracle baby that doesn't produce bowel movements. Taverner reveals that he hasn't produced a bowel movement in six days.

Unfortunately for the Neo-Marxists, their operative in USIDent, Kenny Chan, has been compromised. His colleague, Starla Von Luft (Michelle Durrett), has planted a bug on his jacket and is leading the police forces to their hideout. Meanwhile, using a sex tape given to her by Krysta Now, Cyndi Pinziki is blackmailing Frost for money and demanding the passage of Proposition 69 (a bill that restricts USIDent's powers). The police break into Neo-Marxist headquarters and kill Kenny Chan. Roland manages to escape, climb onto the roof, and fall into a dumpster.

Boxer and Ronald have stopped for some lunch. During their discussion, they learn that Ronald has been dreaming of Boxer. While Ronald is briefly distracted, Boxer is beckoned over by Serpentine, who has been hovering nearby. He follows her to the back of a bookstore, where the rest of the baron's entourage is waiting. They claim to have read his screenplay. According to Serpentine, "The future is just as [he] imagined."

The second section of the film ("V: Memory Gospel") begins.

Starla Von Luft, the double-crossing USIDent employee, is reading a copy of "The Power" at work. Starla is in love with Boxer and, in a fit of delusion, has assumed the role of Dr. Muriel Fox, a character from the screenplay.

Back in Venice Beach, Boxer and Roland pull up in front of a house while Dion and Dream pretend to fight inside. According to their plan, Boxer is to videotape their faked murder. But, unexpectedly, police officer Bart Buchman (Jon Lovitz) pulls up and shoots both of them for real. Boxer and Roland run out in a panic.

Boxer receives a phone call from Starla Von Luft -- who is still under the impression that she is Dr. Muriel Fox -- and tells him to call Vaughn Smallhouse, one of Frost's assistants. Vaughn sends a car to pick up Boxer and bring him back to the Frost mansion.

Ronald Taverner, meanwhile, has picked up Zora and Bing Zinneman, a new member of the Neo-Marxists. Bing is freaked out by the murders, and decides that he no longer wants to be part of the group. Zora abruptly pushes Ronald from the car, and runs over Bing.

Back in the dumpster, Roland Taverner wakes up as his hands begins to glow. He climbs out and walks up to the nearby ice cream truck. Walter Mung recognizes him and quickly sedates him with an injection of fluid karma.

Boxer walks up to the Frost mansion, where his wife, Madeline Frost (Mandy Moore), and the Frost team are waiting for him. Although he recognizes Madeline as his wife, she remains unimpressed and demands to know why he disappeared.

Zora Carmichaels and Bart Buchman return to the Neo-Marxist headquarters, where we learn that the two are lovers and have planned the murder of Dion and Dream. Krysta is brought to the Frost mansion, where she is confronted by Madeline. The Baron admits that he has been paying Krysta to deceive Boxer, but also mentions that Madeline is pregnant with the child of Brandt Huntington (Joe Campana), one of her father's assistants.

Once Krysta departs, Boxer receives a phone call from Starla instructing him to go to the Santa Monica pier. Boxer gets into a convertible and drives off. The Baron phones Simon Theory (Kevin Smith), an old bearded man, and instructs him to "remove the body from Utopia Three."

Through voiceover, we learn that Pilot Abilene was injected with fluid karma in Iraq, as part of an experiment by the Baron, and in his quest for global domination, the Baron has negotiated an agreement with the prime minister of Japan, Hideo Takahashi, for fluid karma. As part of the deal, the Baron has Serpentine cut off the prime minister's left hand.

Meanwhile, Martin Kefauver (Lou Pucci), a young man dressed in hip-hop gear, meets Pilot Abilene at the "Fire" Arcade, where he exchanges pot for fluid karma. Abilene injects himself with fluid karma, collapses, and, in a dream sequence, dances a routine to the Killers' "All The Things You've Done," while nurses twirl around him.

The final chapter of the film ("VI: Wave of Mutilation") begins.

We learn that July 4 will be the launch date for the new Treer mega-zeppelin (the "Jenny Von Westphalen"). Krysta Now stops by Zora's place to buy some drugs, when she notices the tape of Dream and Dion's murder on a chair. Thinking it's her sex tape with Boxer, she takes it with her.

Ronald walks up to Martin Kefauver's Hummer, which is parked near the ocean. Martin has just learned that he's been drafted to go to Iraq and is about to shoot himself in the head. Ronald persuades him not to commit suicide, and the two decide to go to Mexico. Cindy meets Vaughn Smallhouse at a restaurant and gives him a copy of the sex tape. When Vaughn threatens her, she tells him that she has multiple copies, then Tasers him in the balls.

Boxer appears at the Santa Monica pier to meet Starla Von Luft. She tells him that he must board the mega-zeppelin and what he is looking for is in the Baron's private chamber. Then she pulls out her gun and threatens to kill herself unless she can give Boxer a blowjob. Pilot Abilene, who has been watching the scene from his gun turret, shoots and kills Starla.

Krysta has decided to make her sex tape public by placing it into a Neo-Marxist drop box. She is pursued by Zora and Bart, who have discovered that Krysta has taken Dion and Dream's murder tape by mistake. Nana Mae Frost is also monitoring the entire situation from USIDent. When a confrontation erupts near the Neo-Marxist drop box, Zora and Bart are both killed by a soldier.

Boxer meets Fortunio on the beach after his rendezvous with Starla. It turns out that Fortunio has been on the Baron's payroll all along. Fortunio's goons inject Boxer with fluid karma and load him into an ambulance. He wakes up in a bed in his apartment in Treer Plaza. Madeline walks in and tells him that he has been speaking in his sleep. He says, "It all ends tonight."

The mega-zeppelin launch is at hand. Neo-Marxist cells have begun to converge on central Los Angeles. Violence has erupted throughout the city. As the party in the Mega-Zeppelin kicks off, Boxer heads upstairs to the Baron's secret chamber.

Once there, Boxer meets Simon Theory, one of the Baron's employees. He learns that "The Power" is correct: As a result of the Baron's Utopia projects, the world is coming to an end and the Earth's rotation is slowing down. This has opened up a rift in the space-time continuum on the outskirts of Lake Mead.

When he first discovered the rift, we learn, the Baron decided that the first human to travel through the rift would be a movie star and that movie star would be Boxer Santaros. He had Roland Taverner kidnap Boxer and drive him through the rift. As a result, Boxer was duplicated. One copy of Boxer traveled 69 minutes back in time, while the other copy was killed by an explosive charge in the car. Ronald and Roland Taverner, furthermore, are not twins, but copies of the same person. If the two Taverners were to touch, Theory warns, the fourth dimension would collapse onto itself and the world would come to an end.

Ronald and Martin Kefauver pull up to the Rove Credit Union where Kefauver tries to withdraw his savings. He learns that his account has been blocked, so Kefauver and Ronald use the Hummer to rip the ATM from the wall.

Unfortunately, Kefauver and Ronald's Hummer soon collides with the ice cream truck carrying Roland. Both vehicles come to a rest in the middle of a shootout and Walter Mung is killed. In the midst of the action, Ronald is shot in the eye but survives. Roland runs to meet him inside the ice cream truck. Their hands begin to glow. As they hold hands, the truck begins to float into the sky with Martin Kefauver on board.

Fortunio and his buddies break into USIDent, killing all of the employees, including Nana Mae Frost. On the mega-zeppelin, Krysta Now performs a dance number. Boxer joins her on the stage, followed by Madeline. The three perform an abstract dance. It is suddenly interrupted when Boxer pulls out a gun and threatens to kill himself unless everybody evacuates the mega-zeppelin.

Outside, the ice cream truck levitates upward. Martin climbs on top of the truck and launches a missile at the mega-zeppelin. Just before it hits, Boxer extends his arms, and his tattoo of Jesus begins to bleed in the nape of his neck. The mega-zeppelin explodes, and its pieces scatter across L.A.

Inside the levitating ice cream truck, the two Taverners continue to hold hands. One Taverner repeats, "friendly fire," while the other says, "I forgive you." On the soundtrack, Pilot Abilene says, "Revelation 21: And God wiped away the tears from his eyes so the new Messiah could see into the new Jerusalem, his name was Officer Roland Taverner from Hermosa Beach, California. He is a pimp and pimps don't commit suicide."

Taverner's eyes fade to gray.

Is it just me, or did that make no sense?

No, it's not just you. But, then again, you probably shouldn't try to interpret "Southland Tales" too literally. It's filled with so many references and so much self-conscious irony that it's nearly impossible to make sense of it all. And then you would miss all the jokes and stop enjoying the dance sequences. It does get easier to understand, though, if you've read the Book of Revelation.

The book of what?

The Book of Revelation is the last book in the New Testament. It foretells the end of the world and the Second Coming of Christ (Pilot Abilene keeps reading it on the soundtrack). Kelly has said in interviews that the film was partially made in response to the rise of apocalyptic evangelism in the United States. For "Southland Tales," he loosely adapted the plot of the Book of Revelation and set it in an alternate version of the present day.

The Book of Revelation, or the Revelation of John, was written by an unknown person in the first century. It's not exactly easy to follow, and its meaning is still heavily debated, but if you read it as a prophecy, this is one way of interpreting it:

In the future, the world will be a miserable place filled with war, famine and disease. Eventually, the Antichrist will show up and take over the world. Among his accomplices will be a "false prophet" -- a deceitful ruler. The false prophet and the Antichrist will create a dominating world system. Then, two "witnesses" will appear. They will start speaking out against the Antichrist and begin overthrowing the evil empire. Lots of scary apocalyptic stuff will happen (judgment, plagues and the like), before Jesus Christ will ride in on a white horse and establish the new kingdom of God.

Although it's part of a different section in the book, Revelation also refers to the Whore of Babylon -- dressed in scarlet and covered in gold -- as a symbol of Babylon's corruption.

If "Southland Tales" is a semi-straightforward reinterpretation of the Book of Revelation, then Baron Von Westphalen is the Antichrist, Sen. Bobby Frost is probably his false prophet, Krysta Now is the Whore of Babylon, the two witnesses are probably Boxer Santaros and Roland Taverner, the white horse is the levitating ice cream truck, and Christ is Ronald and Roland Taverner.

Background newscasts in "Southland Tales" are also constantly referring to earthquakes, wild fires and "red tides." These are all references to the seven plagues that precede the destruction of Babylon.

So the parallels with the Bible are kind of buried. But they're in there.

What's the deal with this screenplay-within-the-movie that all the characters keep referring to?

Ah, yes. "The Power."

According to the "Prequel Saga," "The Power" was written entirely by Krysta Now, who is apparently psychic. She became psychic when a plane she was on -- United 23 -- flew through the rift in space-time above Lake Mead. As Treer employees were interviewing the plane's passengers, they noticed that she was the only passenger who didn't suffer from amnesia and that she could see into the future. They decided to take advantage of her powers. Dr. Severin Exx read Krysta the Book of Revelation while she was under hypnosis. He then asked her to forecast the last three days on Earth, and she made her prediction in the form of a screenplay: "The Power." Most of the screenplay is included in the "Prequel Saga."

So "The Power" is an adaptation of the Book of Revelation, written by a character in a movie called "Southland Tales" that is itself an adaptation of a screenplay based on the Book of Revelation?

That's it.

How meta. What happens in the screenplay?

"The Power" is a pretty hilarious piece of work. It has a similar plot to "Southland Tales," but with different characters and more gratuitous product placement. Its story overlaps with the movie, so it explains some of the back story.

It tells the story of Jericho Cane, a renegade Los Angeles police officer (and Boxer Santaros doppelgänger), who teams up with Dr. Muriel Fox, a psychic stripper (and Krysta Now doppelgänger), to protect a baby named Caleb. The reasons for this are never really explained, but Caleb is the child of Tawna and Rick McBride, a couple in Palmdale, Calif. Caleb does not produce bowel movements, but when he farts, the Earth shakes.

Muriel and Jericho take the child after its parents are killed, and, under Muriel's guidance, drive to a farmhouse, where they are met by Serpentine, the Baron's mistress. Serpentine explains that the world is coming to an end; the rotation of the Earth is slowing at a rate of .000000006 miles per hour every day. The baby, she explains, is the Messiah, and Jericho is his guardian. As part of his job, Jericho must tattoo a symbol from every world religion onto his body and, when the Messiah reaches maturity, the "winning" religion's symbol will bleed snake blood.

The screenplay ends at a McDonald's restaurant, when Caleb starts belching noxious gas and launching fireballs. The restaurant starts floating into space. Cane loses consciousness. The world ends.

Is the screenplay important for understanding the movie?

Not really, but it explains why the tattoo of Jesus on the back of Boxer's neck starts bleeding at the end of the film. This means that Christianity has won the "contest" for Earth and is the one true faith.

Why does the movie start with Boxer Santaros asleep on a beach? And why is he having an affair with Krysta Now?

Three days before the movie starts, Krysta Now was vacationing on a houseboat on Lake Mead with Ronald Taverner, Tab Taverner (Ronald's father) and Fortunio Balducci. After losing a game of cards, Fortunio needed to make his way back into California, and Krysta offered to set him up with a visa. On his way to meet Krysta, Fortunio discovered Boxer Santaros in the desert, stricken with amnesia.

When Boxer and Fortunio met up with Krysta, she recognized Boxer and managed to convince him that she was an actress researching a role in his new movie, "The Power." Also, they had sex. Then, after several detours, Krysta and Boxer made their way to Los Angeles, where Boxer went on a nighttime stroll on the beach, injected himself with fluid karma and passed out. That's why he wakes up on the beach at the start of the movie.

How did the Taverners end up with the Neo-Marxists in Venice Beach?

Several days before the movie starts, on the same houseboat on Lake Mead, Tab Taverner, Ronald/Roland's father, told Ronald -- who has amnesia -- that he must kidnap his brother in order to protect him. Roland, a Hermosa Beach police officer, had gotten involved in a "deep conspiracy" and would be in danger if anybody found out that he was alive. Presumably, Tab was afraid that the Baron's people would find out that Roland had survived the trip through the time rift. Tab wanted Ronald to help the Neo-Marxists destroy USIDent, so he entrusted Roland and Ronald to Zora Carmichaels, who then drove them to Venice Beach.

What do all the characters in the film keep on quoting from?

Much of Pilot Abilene's voiceover consists of direct quotations from the Book of Revelation. The other main reference points are T.S. Eliot's "Hollow Man" ("This is the way the world ends/ Not with a bang but with a whimper") and Robert Frost's "The Two Roads" ("Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-/ I took the one less traveled by").

The first time Fortunio appears in the film, he quotes Karl Marx ("Anyone who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without feminine upheaval"), and several characters quote the song "Three Days" by Jane's Addiction ("We saw the shadows of the morning light/ The shadows of the evening sun/ Until the shadows and the light were one"). The film also evokes Kurt Vonnegut's sci-fi absurdism, Philip K. Dick's philosophical approach to time travel, and Thomas Pynchon's sprawling narratives.

What about movies?

The film that is most obviously referenced is "Kiss Me Deadly," a 1955 film noir about a private detective who uncovers a plot to detonate a nuclear device. The movie plays in the background in several scenes, and in the "Prequel Saga," Krysta tells Boxer it is his favorite movie. As in "Southland Tales," a character in "Kiss Me Deadly" picks up a stranger in the desert, and one of the main characters in the film is named after a poet. The name of Dr. Severin Exx is a reference to the name of an evil doctor in the movie "Kiss Me Deadly," and Boxer Santaros' convertible is the same car driven by Ralph Meeker in the 1955 film.

"Southland Tales" also borrows from "Repo Man," which ends with a flying car. Singer Rebekah Del Rio, who (as herself) performs the "Star Spangled Banner" onboard the mega-zeppelin, is also featured in David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive." Jericho Cane is the name of Arnold Schwarzenegger's character in "End of Days."

What's the deal with the Treer company, and why are there all these references to Karl Marx?

The Treer company is a German defense contractor that employs Dr. Inga Von Westphalen, a zeppelin designer and the Baron's mother. In the "Southland Tales" universe, when war broke out following the nuclear attacks in Texas, Treer was contracted to build several mega-zeppelins to ferry troops and equipment across the world. Kelly has said that this idea was inspired by a real U.S. Army project.

In the universe of the film, Dr. Inga Von Westphalen is also the granddaughter of Jenny Von Westphalen, Karl Marx's wife. The name Treer is a reference to Trier, Marx's birthplace. All of these references to Marxism aren't entirely unconnected to the film's biblical references. The Book of Revelation and Marxism have been connected by academics -- both advocate the overthrow of tyranny. In fact, Marx was indirectly influenced by the Book of Revelation in his writing. If you replace the Antichrist with the bourgeoisie, and the kingdom of God with a communist utopia, you've got the same basic narrative.

Does "Southland Tales: The Prequel Saga" explain what this fluid karma stuff is?

Fluid karma is an "organic compound" that the Treer company discovered while drilling off the coast of Israel. It exists under the Earth's mantle, circles the world like a "serpent," and, as the movie explains, is being used by the Baron to power his Utopia energy plants.

Then why do people keep on injecting it into their neck?

It also works as a drug. As the movie suggests, the Baron conducted secret experiments, headed by Simon Theory, with soldiers in Iraq. The project was named "Serpentine Dream Theory." When scientists injected fluid karma into the soldiers, they became telepathic and could see into the past and, eventually, the future.

Two of the solders that participated in the experiment were Roland Taverner and Pilot Abilene. Before being drafted, Pilot Abilene was also a movie star. He played a character named "Donnie" in a movie with Boxer Santaros (in an obvious allusion to "Donnie Darko"). Shortly after they received their first injection of fluid karma, however, Taverner and Abilene were sent on a mission to Fallujah, and Taverner accidentally injured Abilene with a grenade -- disfiguring him. That's why Taverner always feels so guilty.

Why did Roland Taverner end up driving Boxer Santaros through the space-time rift?

After Roland Taverner came back from Iraq, he got a job as a police officer in Hermosa Beach, thanks to his father. For reasons that never become entirely clear, he was hired by the Baron to kidnap Boxer Santaros from a charity scavenger hunt and drive him to Lake Mead.

Then what?

When Boxer and Taverner went through the space-time rift, they traveled 69 minutes back in time -- creating duplicate versions of themselves. But once they went through the rift, the car's self-destruct mechanism was activated, killing the copy of Boxer that did not travel back in time.

Why did both Taverners survive?

No idea. It never becomes clear what exactly happened in the desert. We may have to wait for the DVD commentary to figure that one out.

What exactly happens at the end of the movie?

Again, we're not entirely sure. But if "Southland Tales" follows the same logic as "Donnie Darko," as laid out in that film's DVD extras, when the fourth dimension is corrupted, it causes the creation of two parallel universes: the Tangent Universe and the Primary Universe.

The Tangent Universe is an alternate reality to our own. You could argue that all of "Southland Tales" occurs in the Tangent Universe -- hence the film's alternate history of the past three years, and its weird mishmash of pop culture. In "Donnie Darko," the world ends when the Tangent Universe collapses, which may also be what happens at the end of "Southland Tales." Why that happens when the Taverners touch, only Richard Kelly knows.

By Thomas Rogers

Thomas Rogers is Salon's former Arts Editor. He has written for the Globe & Mail, the Village Voice and other publications. He can be reached at @thomasmaxrogers.

http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/southland-tales-richard-kelly-interview

The 'Southland Tales' That Never End: An Interview With Richard Kelly

Written by

Abraham Riesman

July 8, 2013 // 01:30 PM EST

After the success of his indie phenomenon Donnie Darko in 2001, writer/director Richard Kelly set out to make his magnum opus. A sprawling, apocalyptic sci-fi thriller/satire set in a dystopian Los Angeles in the then-future of 2008, Southland Tales was, in a word, bonkers. Its surreal take on Hollywood and a post-9/11 America on the brink of social, economic and environmental disaster was as kaleidoscopic as its ensemble cast: Dwayne Johnson (aka The Rock) plays an actor with amnesia, Sarah Michelle Gellar is a porn-star-turned-producer, Seann William Scott is an LA cop, and Justin Timberlake is a pop star just back from a tour in Iraq (Amy Poehler, John Larroquette, Wallace Shawn, Kevin Smith, Lou Taylor Pucci and many more also make appearances).

Loud, colorful, and largely puzzling, it left critics aghast when it premiered at Cannes in 2006, made less than $400,000 at the box office when it hit theaters the following year, and sent Kelly—who was only 29 when we made the film—into a sophomore funk. But Southland Tales also developed a dedicated cult following, and even though Kelly has moved on to other projects (2009's The Box, and a new film in development, Corpus Christi) he has never been able to let Southland go.

For my feature on the film and my encounters with Richard Kelly and his obsessive fans, I met Kelly for about three hours in April. We started at Venice Beach's Sidewalk Café, where many of the film's scenes were shot, and then visited other locations, strolling along the boardwalk toward the Santa Monica Pier. In the interest of shedding more light on this enigmatic—and Kelly says, "unfinished"—beast, below is text of our complete conversation, with photos by Joshua Shultz.

Kelly and I would email subsequently too; when news of the NSA's massive wiretapping program emerged last month, he laughed nervously about the uncanny resonance with the fictional domestic surveillance organization in his film. "USIDENT would have been the better way to go..." (You can see some of the concept art for USIDENT and its guerrilla hacker adversaries in this gallery of artwork made for the film; and you can dive deeper into the story with his until-now unreleased prequel script, which for years he's hoped to turn into an animated or live-action film.) With his weird sprawling epic, Kelly made something unusual and as poignant now as it was when it was released: “I was trying to make a big piece of satire that would be comfort food in light of the terrorist threat,” he told me. “That's what the film is intended to be for people."

+++

Motherboard: Sitting here in the café is surreal. It's like stepping into a tangent universe.

Richard Kelly: It is a tangent universe, that's for sure.

Do you think of Southland Tales as an alternate history?

Absolutely, absolutely. That was the whole intention, was to create a false timeline and an alternate timeline. A ridiculously absurd world, y'know?

What pops into your mind while sitting here?

Sitting here with Dwayne and Sean and just having the best time. It was so much fun. It was the most insane experience. We only had about 29 days to shoot the entire film.

You're kidding.

Yeah. We were just working so fast, and we had two cameras running simultaneously. Y'know, this was like the hub. The Sidewalk Cafe was like the hub. It's where all the characters meet up. It's where everyone breaks bread and conspires. Shooting here on the budget is very expensive. A lot of the budget of the movie was eaten up by our location fees, because we shot in so many different locations in LA. Very expensive beachfront locations. And it was—Los Angeles was very much a character in the film. And it was—y'know, we weren't able to even stop and take a breath, we were moving so fast. We did so much residual digital photography, surveillance photography, outside of those 29 days, just running around and grabbing surveillance footage of the city that was augmented on the screens, in the newscasts and everything.

Shot by who?

My cousin and I! (Laughs) Y'know, when Miranda Richardson is sitting in front of all those screens, we had to fill all of those screens, so we spent the greater part of an entire year photographing all of that stuff. All over the city, every part of the city. We shot all of that stuff. Y'know, and then there was the KTLA news. There was remote, isolated photography that took place outside of the 29 days, but it was a massive undertaking. I mean, never again in my career will I cram that much into 29 days. I don't know how I survived it. And I was writing graphic novels. It was too much. It was just... it was too much.

is that your takeaway? That the movie had too much going on in it?

Yes, but boy, am I proud of what we pulled off. To an extent, I see it as an unfinished film. I can elaborate more on that later, but it's one of those things that you can only really do once in your career: take a risk like that. I've always been about taking crazy risks, and I think that's kinda what happens when you direct your first movie when you're 24 years old. You take those kinds of ridiculous risks that only someone of that age would do.

How old were you when you made Southland Tales?

I was barely 30. 29. And that's still too young to be directing a film! (Laughs) I'm not sure if anyone under the age of 30 should be allowed to direct a film. That sounds horribly hypocritical, but—I mean, I was lucky.

Do you think about it every day?

Absolutely. It's—I mean, I think about it all the time. It's definitely the thing that I'm most proud of, and I feel like it's sort of the misunderstood child or the banished child. You think of all your films as children. I like to think it's the closest thing that a man can do that is a simulation of childbirth, is directing a film. (Laughs) That, again, sounds horrible in the sense of what the experience of childbirth must be —I can never understand that. But it seems like a very emotional experience.

What triggers your memories of Southland?

Well, sometimes it's something horrible happening in the news, or reading something that feels like it could come straight out of the plot of the film. Or is even more ridiculous than the plot of the film, and disturbing. I guess that makes me think of the film. But more than anything, it's just the fondness of the memories of making it and me getting to work with all of those actors, who I love. I really love all of them dearly. There was just something really subversive about it and crazy and provocative about it. And those memories are very fond to me, I guess.

What kind of news events make your mind race back to the world of the movie?

Yeah! It's always disturbing when you have any kind of terrorist event or a terrorist attack and there are residual follow-up events. You've got the crazy ricin guy and the explosion in Texas. Y'know, that was a rough week. One of the worst weeks I can remember. It's very troubling, but I think—thinking back, that was kinda why I pursued Southland Tales and why we made the film. We were very disturbed.

Who's "we"?

I like to say that about all my collaborators. I have to take the credit and/or the blame, but it's—I think I was very disturbed. The whole film was my long-simmering response to 9/11 and response to the anxiety of terror and the terrorist threat and trying to make a big piece of satire that would be comfort food in light of the terrorist threat. That's what the film is intended to be for people.

Comfort food?

Yeah, in a way. I tried to make something you could disappear into and get lost inside of it. And in the transmedia angle with the graphic novels, try to expand it into an expanded world that you could disappear into. I might be the only person who would see it as comfort food, but yeah. (Laughs)

Philip K. Dick said he wrote The Man In The High Castle by scribbling one name on a piece of paper —"Mr. Tagomi" —and building the whole story around the thoughts that came to him from that name. What was your "Mr. Tagomi"?

I think it was the ride-along with Boxer Santaros and Ronald Taverner and the twin brothers and the staged shooting. That was the triggering event at the center of the film: all of these ridiculous people trying to scam this movie star and extort money from him. And what kinda started off more as a satire of Los Angeles crime and buffoonish actors and buffoonish fringe-dwellers in the Los Angeles scene evolved into something much more ambitious and political. The layers of science fiction and the Orwellian political world surrounding the characters evolved in subsequent drafts. And it really became a much more grand, apocalyptic statement, instead of a bunch of morons in LA trying to extort money.

But that was the original idea?

Yeah, it was a kind of extortion attempt on an actor, and the idea of the Hindenburg explosion over LA as the grand denouement. And just like all of my stuff, it just evolves into a place where it becomes exceedingly ambitious and layered and dense and too long for distribution. (Laughs) And it expanded into graphic novels. That's what it needed to be.

Did you start thinking of the movie before 9/11?

No. This was all after Donnie Darko went to Sundance and it tanked at Sundance and was just kind of—it was not received warmly. A lot of people don't remember that, but there's a few of us that really remember it. (laughs) I was just really depressed, and I went and wrote two or three comedy-type scripts. I wrote a script called Bessie, about a genetically engineered cow. I wrote a gun-control satire that Oliver Stone briefly had under option. So I wrote those three scripts and then Southland became something of an obsession. The more I—this is 2003, 2004. I was gonna direct a film called Knowing, that ended up getting made years later with Alex Moyas and Nicholas Cage. I was gonna direct the $15M budget version of Knowing, based on my rewrite of that script at Fox Searchlight. And it fell apart at the very last moment over business affairs issues, and everyone was concerned that it was too ambitious to be able to achieve that film for $15M. I had a lot of big stuff in there, expensive stuff. Everyone was just really nervous that we couldn't pull it off, and there were other business affairs issues. It just collapsed and I went on to Southland Tales.

That's a long gap. Donnie Darko came out just before 9/11--

And it tanked! It tanked at The Box office. It was not easy for me to find a job in the immediate one to two years following the release of Donnie Darko. It wasn't until 2003, 2004 that everyone realized that they liked the movie. It took a while. And then I kinda had a little bit more heat.

You'd put out the director's cut for Donnie Darko by the time you did Southland Tales.

Yeah, and then I was—I saw Southland Tales as an opportunity to do something really subversive and provocative. I had Seann William Scott, and when we got Dwayne Johnson, it was clear that we could get just barely enough to pull it off. The movie cost just about $17 million. We needed 50, but we got 17. (Laughs) It was a major undertaking.

What was your elevator pitch to people for Southland Tales?

Oh god. I don't even know what an elevator pitch is. (laughs) I wouldn't know—I think it was just the idea of a big dystopia comedy-satire about the last three days on earth in Los Angeles.

And what exec wouldn't hear that and say yes.

Oh, I just remember being in a room with so many people, their eyes glazing over. And part of me takes pride in that. But y'know, Donnie Darko was no easy sell, either. It was something people needed to just surrender themselves to.

How much of the casting was just you meeting with people and pitching it?

I mean, it was Dwayne. I remember, I met with Dwayne in Venice Beach. And he was just so lovely. He signed on right away

What did you tell him?

I had a big visual presentation. Ron Cobb had done schematics for the MegaZeppelin. I brought my MegaZeppelin schematics to the Firehouse restaurant in Venice Beach. Dwayne rolled up in his Humvee and I was showing him MegaZeppelin schematics and he was very amused. He said yes immediately. Yeah. It needed a big star. It needed a big movie star, someone that could deconstruct himself. Y'know, if you look closely at the film, every one of those actors —every single one of them —is playing a subversive version of themselves and their celebrity image, in a lot of ways. Maybe a lot of the actors didn't realize it at the time, but if you really go back and look at the film, it's a very—every single actor is playing a subverted deconstruction of their celebrity persona on some level.

Which actors "got it" most? Who were the ones who needed the least explaining about the movie?

There was a whole spectrum. They all knew I had it swirling around in my head. It was the same thing on Donnie Darko. It was like, 'We don't quite understand the whole big picture, but you seem really convinced that you know what you're doing, so we're gonna go along with it!' And when they saw the finished product, they were like, 'Okay, okay.' It's the same thing with the rabbit in Donnie Darko. I drew that original sketch that's the logo for my company now, the original sketch that the mask was based on--

And which pops up in the mise-en-scene of Southland Tales!

Yeah! And it's—when I originally did the rabbit, everyone was like, 'We're not sure about this, Richard. You—this is the way it's supposed to look?' Then, when we finished the mold and lit the set, Stephen lit the set, James Duvall in the rabbit costume for the first time in a school hallway, everyone came up to me like, 'We get it. We get it now. We understand what you're doing. We weren't sure at first.' So Stephen Poster, my cinematographer to this day, is like, 'Once I saw what you did with the rabbit, I'll go out on a limb for you when you wanna take a risk like that.' (laughs) It's the same thing with Frank Langella's face in The Box. Everyone was putting a lot of pressure on me not to do his face digitally. It was gonna be a huge expense, and we could do it with makeup, but I stuck to my guns and we did it digitally, and in the end, everyone was like, 'Thank god we did it digitally.'

Which actors were most eager to get on board?

Dwayne and Seann. Absolutely.

How did Seann get involved?

I think my agency set up a meeting. I needed somebody to play the twins, somebody who had a combination of innocence and sort of a haunted quality, but also really great comedic timing. Seann has all of those things, and he was just the perfect candidate for that role. It was the same thing with Dwayne. The movie would not have gotten made without Dwayne. It was really hard to cast Boxer Santaros. It was such a ridiculous character, and Dwayne is just one of a kind. There's just no one like Dwayne Johnson out there. He's a really special person. Even getting Sarah involved to play Krysta was great, because she comes from—coming out of television and Buffy and her sort of persona and fanbase from that show. She's a very seasoned pro. She's been doing this for a long time. She started on a soap opera when she was barely a teenager, I think. So having her play this kind of—I think the pitch was Jenna Jameson meets Arianna Huffington. (laughs) And she got it. She thought that was hilarious and she went for it.

Rewatching the movie, I couldn't help noticing that Sarah Michelle Gellar plays her lines for laughs far more often than any other actor. was that by design on your part?

Well, the character was just so absurd. She's this spunky porn star, but a lot of what comes out of her mouth is, perhaps, wise on one level, what she has to say. But also just completely ridiculous. And, y'know, if you name a character 'Krysta Now'—I don't know, she needed to be the sorta ray of sunshine in the film. Even at the end of the film, when the MegaZeppelin's ready to go down, she's cool with it. Because it had to be this way. She's the sorta femme fatale of the movie. There's something about making her this fortune teller, on some level. And in the graphic novels, you realize that she's, she has an ability to kinda foretell future events.

Because of passing through lake mead on the United flight.

On the United flight, yes. (laughs) So much story. So much story.

Were any parts of your movie inspired by personal supernatural visions?

I mean, The Power, the script within the film, is definitely a metatextual layer that is definitely a reflection of what I was doing with Southland Tales. The absurdity of it, and the idea of making a film that is intentionally speculating on where things are headed. We shot the film in 2005, so it was a three-year speculation. The running joke was, the film took so long to finish, even beyond what we showed at Cannes, which was incomplete, that we were always just joking like, 'Is this gonna be a period piece by the time it comes out? Can we at least get it out before the real 2008 arrives?' (Laughs) And it didn't come out until November of 2007. But that was fine, because it was always very much a film about that moment, y'know?

But was there an actual outside force compelling you?

Yeah, I mean, there was definitely, um—some, uh—alien intelligence running through my DNA at some point in the process. I look back and sort of laugh and—at where some of this could've come from.

Such as?

Y'know, on second thought, it all comes from a logical place. I just think the ambition of it and the density of it is something that (long pause) is very intimidating, in retrospect. I think I was trying to challenge myself and push myself to a degree that some might regard as masochistic. But that's kind of—that's what being an artist is. If you wanna be great and you wanna really make a mark and leave an impact, you kinda have to beat yourself up. You kinda have to destroy yourself. I'm past a lot of that now, but I'm grateful for having destroyed myself. Because you only get a window of time to push the envelope. Y'know, it was—It was just a lot of, uh—It was a lot to wrestle into submission, but it was such a wonderful obsession to have, and that I continue to have. I just love this town. I really do. And it was about getting lost in the absurdity of this city.

How long had you been an Angeleno when you made the movie?

I moved out to Los Angeles when I was 18, to go to USC. I got an arts scholarship. So, since I was 18, and we made Southland when I was 29, so about ten years. Yeah.

Why do the nuclear attacks happen in Texas?

Well, it's based on a theory floating around the Internet of al-Qaeda smuggling nukes over the border. I have family from Texas, and we shot the opening at my aunt's house in Abilene. My mother is from Texas. She's from the panhandle of Texas, and I had a lot of relatives in Abilene. There is a military base adjacent to Abilene with a lot of history. And the logic of a nuclear attack in Texas, perhaps resulting in the shutdown of the border and just—it felt like a realization of a doomsday scenario that was maybe grounded in some sort of plausibility.

Why don't we find out who carries out the attacks?

It really didn't matter, and it was better left a mystery, I think. And it was also—it needed to result in the invasion of Syria and North Korea and Iran and the Axis of Evil —the full-court press on the Axis of Evil. The idea of a second terrorist attack happening in our president's backyard would be something that would ignite the flames of a counter-attack beyond Iraq and into these other enemy countries.

Does having non-specific attacker allow you to have a world where we attack everybody?

Yeah. Sort of—it was like the world of 2005 all of a sudden on steroids. It just amplified everything to an even greater degree. We were in Iraq and Afghanistan at the time, and it was like, what if we doubled down and went after a few more? It was just sort of amplifying everything.

Is everything in the movie explicable?

Everything there has a point, has a reason. Even the orbs, the glowing orbs.

i was gonna ask about them.

Those are remote antennas for the Fluid Karma energy field. You got one of those orbs around, the energy field is more highly concentrated and that's sort of explained briefly in the graphic novels. Even when Justin Timberlake's character, Pilot Abilene, when he's talking about a 'sea of black umbrellas' in his crazy, drug-fueled monologue, he's talking about seeing back into time, to the early 20th Century at the Santa Monica Pier, with all of the umbrellas.

Oh, was that a thing?

In the Cannes cut, there's a scene where Boxer bleeds back in time to the 1920s and he sees a fortune-teller. He sees Beth Grant in a fortune-teller tent on the beach. There's a lot of stuff that didn't even make—there's a lot of material that people haven't seen.

In the graphic novel, there's the rollercoaster...

Yeah, the bleeding through time. In the Cannes cut, he bleeds through the beach into the 1920s. There's this beautiful photograph of one of the piers in the beach, either the Santa Monica Pier or one of the adjacent piers, and it's just thousands of black umbrellas and people on the beach. This is one of my favorite photographs of old Los Angeles. So, even Justin's dialogue, people probably see as incoherent rambling or something, but it really was rooted in the idea that he was seeing into the past. The idea of a tangent universe and fourth-dimensional stuff.

The whole project is still unfinished. You might be able to say that about—that no film is ever finished, they're just abandoned. But I really, really, really feel like Southland Tales is still unfinished. And yes, there's stuff that I would love to put back in.

Was it frustrating for you to cut the movie such that some stuff can't make sense?

Yeah, yeah. There's absolutely stuff I'd like to put back into the final, finished version of the film. It's still, to me, in my mind, an unfinished film. The whole project is still unfinished. You might be able to say that about—that no film is ever finished, they're just abandoned. But I really, really, really feel like Southland Tales is still unfinished. And yes, there's stuff that I would love to put back in.

But specifically when it comes to the viewer being able to understand--

Yeah, I mean, listen. It's such a huge undertaking to experience the film for the first time. It's definitely one of those repeat-viewing films. That makes some people very angry. Some audience members get very angry if they can't process and understand the story in one viewing, and they see that as a design flaw in the film itself. Other people are more open to obscurity and complexity and the idea of needing to revisit something. Those are my favorite kinds of films. It took me a dozen viewings of Mulholland Drive to begin to grasp components of that film. And, to me, that might be the greatest film ever made. So, it's not everyone's cup of tea, but it's definitely mine. (Laughs)

So, you were okay with that?

Yeah, but listen. There was stuff that—there comes a point where it can only be so long and there's stuff I would love to put back in. I would love to restore Janeane Garofalo's role. That really pains me, that her role got cut out. You see her at the very end of the movie, and it's like, 'What the hell happened?' I mean, she's clearly there, and she's there for a reason. And, y'know, she had all this stuff that was much more esoteric about the environmental cataclysm and the tidal generator and the primer and the idea of this triggering mechanism. The handshake, the cosmic handshake. It was perceived as being esoteric and there was a lot of pressure to cut the film down, and I—that was a concession I had to make. I needed more visual effects money, and they were like, 'Okay, you need to cut some stuff out if you're gonna get your visual effects money.' So I had to play ball, which was frustrating.

What's with the Saturday Night Live obsession in the casting?

I just always loved SNL. I think it's--

But why for this movie?

I think that it was a pop satire. We were making a deliberate, very deliberate pop-art film. We cast the film to be very pop. A lot of people from different parts of pop culture, and SNL is one of our biggest—it's a staple of pop culture and satire, and has been for thirty-some years now. It just seemed a logical place to find—it wasn't this deliberate decision that I made, like, 'I'm gonna go cast a bunch of SNL people.' It was just, I really like a lot of these actors. I mean, Jon Lovitz, Nora Dunn, obviously Amy is a genius. All of these people, I really just enjoyed their work over the years, and it just ended up moving in that direction I guess. (laughs)

I love the Amy Poehler / Cheri Oteri relationship in the movie. All that bickering about what makes for good improv.

There was definitely an All About Eve thing going on with Zora being jealous of Dream and her celebrity and her slam poetry. (Laughs) Sort of planning to have Dream assassinated so she could become the new queen of Venice Beach.

Was there lots of ad-libbing on set?

Yes. Particularly with Amy.

Like in the domestic disturbance scene?

Yes. (Laughs) Yes. I kinda went in and Amy and Wood [Harris] were very uncomfortable in that makeup.

Physically uncomfortable?

Yes. It was really uncomfortable wearing all that prosthetic makeup. It sticks to your skin. It's not fun to have to wear. And I went in there and I said, 'Okay, we're gonna have this jealous fight, screaming at each other.' And boy, did Amy deliver. (laughs) She's one of the best improvisation actors I've ever worked with. And even the stuff when they were monitoring Dwayne and Seann in the police cruiser. The stuff about—I went in there and was like, 'Okay, let's talk about bowel movements and let's talk about animals and bowel movements, whether it's a spiritual thing.' So I was giving them pointers and everything, but then they just went for it. It was really insane and it was all swirling around in my mind, but I'll always do improv on any film that I do, because of those experiences.

Isn't that counterintuitive to your approach, what with all your attention to detail? Did you have to learn how to let go?

Well, I mean, you're just in the moment. And when something is funny, it's funny. I mean, when Amy started screaming about, y'know, someone's--

"Two-hundred-inch penis"?

(Laughs) Two-hundred-inch penis, yeah! Like, it's just—'Yeah, that's a circle take!' (laughs) You just go with it. And again, you've got all these SNL people. I would be a fool not to let some improv happen. I mean, at the end of the day, it was all about going for as much comedy as possible.

What, in the whole film?

Yeah! I mean, obviously, there was a lot of layers. Plenty of darkness in the film. But yes, trying to make sure we were amusing people, absolutely.

The Moby soundtrack often gets in the way of some big laughs. It sorta undercuts lines that are otherwise goofy. Was that intentional?

It was absolutely intentional. That was the design principle of the whole project, and that's why I approached Moby from the very beginning. He composed the whole score before we started shooting. We had the score—I mean, he went and he put together a lot of that music and kind of did it on his own and brought it to me. We'd talked at length about him scoring the film, and he just got really excited and went and recorded a bunch of that stuff. And we had it, I was playing it on-set for the actors. It was a very intentional choice for this sort of melancholy, ambient score to be the heartbeat underneath this absurdity.

What did you tell Moby?

I just wanted a dreamlike, Los Angeles texture. Y'know? Some of the stuff he did for Michael Mann in Heat is just stunning. Stunningly beautiful and ambient. So I took some inspiration from that and—but yeah, it was a very specific choice.

Why did you want to undercut the comedy?

Because I wanted it to have dignity. I mean, on one level, you have to see that it's a very sad film. (laughs) It's about the sadness of the world and where the world was headed at the time. We've gone far beyond where the film implied we were headed. I think we've hit some lower depths than even what the film projected. So I think the Moby score was a reminder of, 'This is really, really sad, but let's try to amuse ourselves with our undoing.'

Was there pressure to make the movie funnier?

I think it was just such a wild card, and everyone was just so intimidated and baffled by the film that it—in the end, it was just like, 'Richard, just cut it down. Just make it shorter.' People were just so freaked-out by it. And when we got into competition at Cannes, everyone was like, 'Awesome! Wow, great!' And then we got torn to shreds at Cannes and everyone was like, 'Cut it down!' I mean, there was—we were lucky to only have to cut the amount that we cut. I had to fight to hold on to a lot of things. I mean, it's a very elaborate story, and it's easy when you only see something once at a film festival. You get people coming out and saying, (growly voice) 'Oh, you can cut a half an hour.' These sort of, just, off-the-cuff comments like that. 'Oh, you can cut a half an hour out of that move.' But it's like, well, no, if you really go in and study it, it all fits together, and if you remove that, this falls apart. It's all tied together. In the post-Cannes finishing stage, everybody who rolled up their sleeves and got in there went, 'Oh yeah, you really can't cut that much, or the whole thing will make even less sense!' So that's part of why the graphic novels came into being, is that it's just a bigger, more expensive story.

So the graphic novels weren't part of the original plan?

Yeah, they were—well, they were part of the plan—they evolved. When we were prepping the movie, I realized I wanted to do the graphic novels. We were preparing the movie. So I wrote the first graphic novel before we started shooting, and I was halfway through the second one, and I didn't finish the third graphic novel until we were well into editing. So they were completed throughout the whole process.

Why create them?

I just knew there was a bigger story that I wanted to tell, and I knew that, one day, I kinda wanted to do the first three chapters as a kind of low-budget animated thing. Or I just wanted—there was just a bigger story there that I wanted to tell. And I thought it would be a cool promotional thing, and I thought it'd be a cool transmedia experiment. But at the time, no one was interested in anything like that, and no one was—there was no marketing money beyond just grassroots, 'Hey, there's these graphic novels!' There was no distribution for them. It became just a personal obsession.

So you weren't expecting the average viewer to have read them?

No, and I realize that was something that 0.05% of the audience might experience, is having read them. But I just wanted them there for the long-term. For, y'know, if this film is going to be discovered over a long period of time, to have those graphic novels there for people who want to seek them out and want to discover them and to have the narrative in place.

Was there a point when you resigned yourself to cult status?

Yeah. I mean, especially after Cannes, it was sorta like, everyone is your—everyone's your best friend when you get into competition at Cannes. But then, the movie is widely ridiculed, and all of a sudden, your phone stops ringing. And it's like, 'Okay, well, I'm gonna rally the troops that are really behind me here and finish this thing the best I can.'

How depressing was Cannes?

It was like deja vu all over again, just on an international scale. Y'know, I was also 30 years old, and everyone who was much more experienced with that festival was like, 'Just shake it off. It happens a lot here.' I mean, they booed Sofia Coppola that year. Marie Antoinette was booed. They booed The Da Vinci Code. It was like, that was the year when all the Americans got trashed. And it's almost become a bit of a—I don't know, it happens a lot at that festival. And obviously, we went in—we were low-hanging fruit. Obviously, the kind of movie that it was. It's a two hour, forty minute pop satire. So, in retrospect, I probably took it too hard and let it—I let the experience hurt me in a way that—I should have blown it off.

Even more so than Donnie Darko?

Oh yeah, it was much worse. Much more painful. But at the same time, Sony bought the film before the end of the festival. So it sold and we got distribution. So it wasn't like—I mean, Donnie Darko took five months to get distribution after Sundance. That was a nightmare. So at least Sony bought it. Scott Schumann at Sony saw it back in LA, they screened it for him in LA, and he was like, 'This is kinda awesome. It needs to be finished, it's still—keep working on it and everything. But we can sell this. This is fun. There's something really special here.'

When did you find out that things had gone south?

They do a 9 a.m. press screening. We were the Sunday night premiere, which is a big night in Cannes, the first Sunday. In retrospect, they should've given us a later slot, because that Sunday slot is when everyone is—it's one of the biggest nights there, and you're front-loaded into the festival, so you're under the microscope. Whereas, I think that year, Pan's Labyrinth was near the end, and it's much quieter near the end, so people are much more chill and I think everyone would've, in retrospect, they would've rather programmed us near the end of the festival so we wouldn't be quite so much under the microscope. But it's definitely when you wake up and they have that 9am press screening, there was a lot of shell-shocked, 'Oh, Richard. Man, people were--'

So you weren't at the screening?

Oh no, no. We were at the red carpet, crazy black tie that night. But they do the press screening in the morning, so you start to get the feedback from the publicists.

How did the evening screening go?

People are much more polite at the black-tie official gala premiere for each film. People are much more polite. It's much more ceremonial. But the early-morning press screening, which is the first time anyone sees it, so the press can write about it and review it prior, that's probably the toughest audience in the world. The 9am Cannes press screenings are brutal. They don't pull punches. They'll boo and they'll hiss. They'll walk out. They're a tough audience.

So you find out when?

No no, it's already programmed. Any movie that's in competition at Cannes, the night of its premiere, there's a 9am press screening prior to the premiere.

So you know it's happening?

And you start getting feedback from the publicists. All the journalists, they write out a few sentences and they give it to the publicists. Like, 'I hated it,' 'I loved it,' 'I thought it was--' They just give a quick critique and they give it to the publicists. So your publicist comes to you around noon or one o'clock and says, 'Okay, here's the feedback. This person loved it, this person hated it, this person was mixed.' Everyone powwows and--

So you're just sitting there in the morning knowing people are watching?

Yeah.

How optimistic were you before that press screening?

We were just really proud. I was anxious because the movie wasn't really finished. There were a lot of unfinished visual effects that were really—it was rough because I didn't have the time or money to finish it properly. We were kind of in a rush. So that was tough, knowing that I was screening something that was kind of unfinished. I wanted to be able to tell everyone that. I wanted to be able to announce, 'This is a work in progress!' But then everyone around me was like, 'No. Do not say that.' And I was like, 'But I wanna say that. That's the truth.' And they were like, 'No. It'll backfire.' So that was frustrating, because I wanted to be able to announce, 'Hey, this is a work in progress.' So yeah, there was a lot of—it could've been handled better. It was—we were very naïve.

How do you get through the black tie screening after that?

Yeah, I barely remember it. It was surreal. And there was this huge party. Wild Bunch threw one of the craziest parties I think ever at the festival, afterwards, and it was just surreal. I was just walking around in a daze. It was an out-of-body experience. But y'know, you roll with the punches. And in retrospect, it all seems kinda trivial. I'm proud that we got that far, that we got that film into competition. I'm glad to Garry Formeau (sp?) and all the programmers of that festival, to this day.

Is it the next day that you say, “I have to cut this down,” or was there a grieving period?

I think we all had dinner the next night and said, 'Okay, we have to cut it down. We need to finish all these visual effects.' Same thing with Darko, is that we had to trim down—when we screened Darko at Sundance, none of that music was paid for yet. So when Darko tanked at Sundance, they were like, 'You're gonna have to cut all that music.' And I was like, 'No! Please don't! No! It's so important!' So there was a period after Sundance where I was gonna have to remove 70 to 80% of the pop songs and replace that with really cheap--

Wasn't the Gary Jules cover of "Mad World" supposed to be "MLK" by U2?

Well, briefly we had "MLK" in there, but we were on the fence about that.

So you already had experience with a festival flop.

It was like deja vu all over again. It was the same thing as with Donnie Darko. Everyone is your best friend going into the festival, and then after the festival, you're completely alone and alienated and people who said they loved the film no longer love it.

[We exit the café and begin walking along the Venice Beach boardwalk.]

+++

All I can think about is Nora Dunn and Lisa Wyatt cackling as they walk out of here. (Shrieks) 'Yeah!'

That's where the SUV was parked, where Seann William Scott runs into Lou Taylor Pucci. Yeah, he shows him his draft notice. That's where the SUV was parked. And then Sarah and the Now Girls were walking out of that store and coming down this way as they walked past.

So is this where—

This is where all the paths are converging, where all the characters are converging. When the girls are walking past, you pick up Lupuci in the SUV and then Seann walks up and sees him and pulls the gun and sits in the car with him and saves him from committing suicide.

Are we near the spot where Zora and Bart get shot?

Yes, that's on Speedway. That's a block over, back that way. Oh wait, no—that's Hermosa Beach. That's way down south. That's the South Bay. But where Zora runs down Bing, that's down on Speedway.

What's a story of being on set that pops into mind?

Well, first of all, shutting down this boardwalk and having a camera crew and having vehicles and, particularly, the Neo-Marxist compound, that raid, with all the SWAT vehicles pulling up —that's very, very expensive, to shut down this boardwalk. It's some of the most expensive real estate to secure in Los Angeles. So, we were a $17 million movie and we had to shoot it all in 29 days because all of our money was poured into these locations to get the production value. We had, like, an hour where we could put SWAT vehicles on the boardwalk and have guys with weapons running around. Our location manager was this wonderful guy named Ralph. His last name is escaping me. You can finish the last name and look him up. But boy, did he deliver for us. It was so ambitious, the shooting locations. Even up to the Santa Monica Pier, putting Humvees on the Santa Monica Pier was crazy.

What’s your favorite Dwayne Johnson story?

Dwayne is just the loveliest person. Absolutely would love with him again and I plan to work with him again. When we were filming the shooting of Dion and Dream, when Amy Poehler and Wood Harris get shot by Jon Lovitz and after that sequence, Boxer has his nervous breakdown and he's bleeding through time a little bit, and he freaks out and runs down the Nowita walk-street, which we had smoked up with atmosphere, the residents of Nowita were not pleased that we were in that. That's a public walk-street. It's very beautiful, and it's covered in trees, and it's this canopy, like, tropical jungle, lush walk-street. It's a public walk-street, but we got a permit to shoot there. But the residents were not happy. (Laughs)

It's a very expensive place to live. So Dwayne's having his breakdown, panic attack, and he's mumbling and rambling and he's pulling off his bullet-proof vest and he's got all the tattoos, and he's wigging out. And the extended-cam operator is really the only one in there. It's a tight space. There's not a lot of space to run around. And Dwayne's running around, having his panic attack. And there's smoke, and it's just this real landscape. And this elderly woman from one of the expensive houses in the Nowita walk-street comes out onto the porch and starts screaming at Dwayne, 'Get the hell outta here you crackhead! You crackhead scumbag! Go do your crack somewhere else! Go smoke your crack somewhere else!' Dwayne is just looking at her like, (timid voice) 'Ma'am, why are you yelling at me?' (Laughs) I mean, just a really hateful woman.

And so here's the Neo-Marxist compound. This is where all the police, the SWAT team vehicles pulling up and charging. This is where the ice cream truck was parked, where Cheri Oteri assaults Christopher Lambert. We had the big techno-crane up there, and we had the big techno-crane jib-arm mounted up here. Only for an hour could we have the techno-crane here before the city was like—so we had the crane sweeping by the Neo-Marxist compound. And it's obviously decked out with all the flyers and the graffiti. All those flyers and that artwork was custom-designed. There's so much detail in it that you can go and study. Dwayne's sort of split into two, like the rumors of what's happened to him.

Why "neo-Marxists"? It's a weird idea for an organization.

It seemed like the extreme liberal response to the neo-cons. Y'know, it was the opposite on the spectrum. I mean, obviously, now everyone's accusing our president of being a socialist and a Marxist, so this has become much more prevalent in our political discourse. But in 2005, when I was going on and on about Neo-Marxism, people would just roll their eyes in disbelief. They didn't quite understand what I was getting at.

Was there an element of leftist wish-fulfillment there for you?

Yeah, we wanted to—it was intended to be comedic. I mean, I am, by some definition, probably something of a Neo-Marxist. I mean, I was trying to not make it a liberal screed, even though I obviously am very liberal. But we wanted to sorta poke fun at the extreme left as we're clearly poking fun at the extreme right. So that was what was so fun about it, was we had all these SNL-type actors who obviously are engaging in political satire throughout a lot of their time while they're at SNL. It was fun to bring them into a film and satirize both polar extremes. I mean, the film was really about polarization and just this great divide. The American flag split in two and bleeding.

So, the interior of the Neo-Marxist compound was in a warehouse downtown. We didn't actually shoot inside. It's a different—that's an architectural firm inside there. It's very pricey. So we found a matching interior that we could deck out with the absurd, where Amy Poehler and Wood Harris have Seann William Scott tied up. And the dumpster where he jumps off the roof is in the back of this.

Jon Lovitz is a very vocal conservative. Did that ever come up on set?

Y'know, I don't really follow Jon's politics, but he was great on set. I think a lot of the actors came in and they didn't really understand the big picture, but they did understand their role. I think Jon understood the absurdity of his role. And he dyed his hair blonde and he went for it.

Was Justin Timberlake your first choice?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, Justin was absolutely who I wanted. His persona, as a pop star. It was a deconstruction of a pop star who gets drafted, sort of a celebrity character.

Yeah, this is the roof where Seann falls into the dumpster. And we had a stunt-double do the dive, but it was actually a digital meld to make it seem like it was all one.

Was Pilot getting drafted supposed to be like Justin himself getting drafted?

It was a riff on Elvis and the drafting of a celebrity and the propaganda, using a pop star as a propaganda tool in light of a draft. Yeah, it was definitely a riff on the Elvis getting drafted.

What was your direction to Justin for the voiceover?

The direction was Apocalypse Now. Martin Sheen. It was a very intentional low monotone. Sort of—it was very much based on Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now. We did have several versions that we played around with. The first version maybe came off as a little too sarcastic. We wanted it to be just more deadpan. Sorta soothing.

What's Pilot's endgame? It's always been unclear for me.

He's the fortune-teller, and he's obviously close friends with Roland Taverner. They served in Iraq together, and Roland Taverner accidentally disfigured him and so he's sort of aware that his friend has been anointed as the messiah, and it's the Second Coming. The whole movie's a big joke about the Second Coming, really. A sci-fi kind of interpretation of Revelations, I guess. He's aware of how it's all gonna go down, and he's cool with it. He's the witness, I guess. Well, he does protect Boxer from Starla von Luft. She probably would've shot him, so he does protect the False Messiah.

So Boxer's the false messiah?

Yes, to distract attention from the real one. That was the idea.

I always saw Taverner and Boxer as both being the messiah.

Yeah, I mean, absolutely, they both went through the rift, but Boxer's doppelgänger did not survive. It burned up. So the handshake can only be—the primer is the Taverner brothers. But Boxer also has the tattoos and at the end, it bleeds.

In the graphic novels, we learn that boxer's tattoos represent all the major world religions, and that whichever one bleeds, it means that religion is the one true religion. Jesus ends up bleeding, of course. So, why Christianity? Why does it win?

Why does Jesus win? (Laughs) Well, because it's Revelation and it is the Second Coming. And the joke is, someone *has* to win, and it's part of the satire.

Sorta like a parody of the bush administration's invocations of god?

Well, I mean, it's the foundation of that entire administration, was Christianity. And Southland Tales is very much a reflection of that administration and those eight years.

Was a lot of time spent on the tattoos?

Well, we designed all the tattoos to reflect every major religion and we spent a lot of time laying them out and sort of designing the whole look. Lula Zara, who's Dwayne's makeup artist, is a very talented guy.

Boxer does that weird little twiddling thing with his fingers a lot. Was that your idea?

This? (Mimes finger action) Dwayne came up with it, and it became a motif. I mean, he's such a great physical actor. He really uses his body in—he comes from a world of acrobatics. In pro wrestling, there's a lot of very coordinated moves, and he brings that into his performance.

So just one day, he started doing it?

Yeah, and I was like, 'Keep doing that.' Whenever Boxer's having his—because there's Boxer, and then there's Jericho Cane, his absurd—the character from The Power. So he knew that, when he was making the transition, he would do the finger thing.

The finger thing is so the opposite of The Rock.

Yeah. Well, we wanted Boxer to be sort of feminine and innocent and childlike. And Dwayne went for it.

You didn't have to coax that out of him?

No, it was a very deliberate discussion. He just trusted me. I mean, he's a very—he's a really courageous, fearless performer.

Let's talk about "Teen Horniness Is Not A Crime."

You mean my songwriting debut?

i hate "where do you get your ideas" questions but... where did you get the idea for the song?

I think we wanted Krysta to have a pop song. It's always very interesting when a reality star or a porn star or someone perhaps not known for being musically inclined or intellectually inclined puts those things together and makes a very aggressively political pop song. (Laughs) It was just very amusing and we thought, 'Well, let's try to inject some legitimate meaning into it.'

What's the "legitimate meaning"?

Well, I mean, the idea of being unapologetic about your sexuality has, perhaps, some legitimacy, some value. It's a porn star saying, 'Don't judge me for the life choice that I've made.' (Laughs) But perhaps that Americans are way too uptight about sexuality and should be more open and abrasive.

How did you write it?

I think I wrote the base lyrics and then a couple friends sorta helped flesh it out for me. I was also thinking of Boogie Nights. Mark Wahlberg's ridiculous songs in Boogie Nights. So it was like, 'It's okay if it's terrible! It's supposed to be terrible!' It's more just a comedy song, a ridiculous song.

Let's talk about the dance sequence--

For a song we couldn't afford and didn't have the rights to use.

What? You didn't have the rights?

When we shot it, we didn't have the rights and didn't know if we could get it. The producers were freaking out and begging me not to waste four hours of our day shooting that. But I insisted and then we cut it together and we showed it to the Killers and they said yes! (Laughs)

So you shot it and just got in touch? What did you tell them it was?

We told them it was a pivotal part of the whole vision of the movie and we would love for them to license the song to us, but we only have a small amount of money. And they thought about it and immediately said, 'Okay, we love it.'

This is the apartment—you know what, they've torn it down. Cyndi Pinziki's apartment was here, I think. It's since been rebuilt. That's some high-end real estate.

Why that particular song?

Well, it's a great song. I love the song. And it just felt like a requiem for a soldier. It felt like it could possibly be acknowledging PTSD and guilt and a lot of things that soldiers deal with, coming back from a war.

Why have it as a dance sequence?

It felt like a character sort of lamenting his status as a propaganda tool. And the Marilyn Monroe, Busby Berkeley dancers being sort of like this USO dance-routine of cheerleading the soldiers along and being caretakers, nursing him back to health. Those dancers, boy did they deliver. They were great. Because we only had one day with Justin. One long, long day.

For the whole movie?

One 16-hour day. I kept adding. Justin is so great, and I kept adding more for him to do. His narration was obviously recorded later. But his character never leaves Santa Monica Pier. You know this.

Why the name Pilot Abilene?

Well, Abilene is where he's from. He's the hometown hero from Abilene. So it's like the propaganda machine has anointed him as the face of the war effort.

Was Wallace Shawn your first pick for the baron?

No one else could've played the Baron. Oh yeah. Y'know, I've always loved Wallace as an actor and as a writer. He's one of those very specific performers. There's no one like him

I can't imagine directing him. He's such a force of nature. How did you do it?

I mean, I had him put together some stuff for when the Baron's being interviewed about energy, to sort of have him rant against his critics and sort of the megalomania of the character and the ridiculous costuming and stuff.

There are a few racially uncomfortable moments in the movie, especially the ride-along, where the n-word gets dropped. Did you start to second-guess putting that in there?

Yeah, I mean, obviously we wanted to acknowledge the deep racial tension in the city and thinking back to Rodney King and the LA riots. And seeing the tension that we continue to deal with in something like the Trayvon Martin shooting. It's a very—Los Angeles is a melting pot, but it's certainly a heated racial environment. Especially with the LAPD.

But while filming that, was there part of you fearing the line?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you're nervous. But they're trying to set him up as a racist cop. It's part of the scam. But yeah, it's a little nervous. But comedy takes risks and we were certainly taking plenty of risks. So that was just another one. (Laughs)

Bai Ling's character, serpentine, is kind of a racist stereotype.

Perhaps. It was definitely intended to be a film noir, femme fatale character that you might see in 1940s or 1950s LA noir. Yeah, it was intended to be just a ridiculous character. But Bai is very talented and she understood the risks, I guess, on that femme fatale character.

What's Baron's endgame?

Well, I mean, that's part of the ending that I'd like to eventually restore. The Baron has been duped by Serpentine, and Serpentine is aware of the handshake and shutting existence down with the handshake. The Baron has dreams of floating over the apocalyptic landscape in his MegaZeppelin and ruling over humanity, and Bai Ling tricks him and shuts down all existence. That's why she's—there's more of it in the Cannes cut.

Who in the movie wants to bring about the end of the world?

Bai Ling and Zelda Rubenstein. Katarina Kuntsler. Inga von Westphalen is aware of it, somewhat. But basically, Serpentine and Katarina hoodwink the Baron into shutting down all existence because the Baron is drunk with power and intends to destroy humanity and lord over humanity in his MegaZeppelin, so they decide it's better to shut down all existence.

Because he's unstoppable?

Yes.

Why the handshake? Why does the world end with a handshake? Is there symbolism there?

Well, it's just sort of like the great conundrum when you think of time travel. You think of Rian Johnson with Looper and even going back to Back to the Future II. There have been movies that explored the idea of two versions of the same person confronting each other from different timelines being inconceivable and it was something that just sorta made sense as a sci-fi trope that could trigger the end. It could trigger a cataclysm or existence shutting itself down.

Why have the end of the world in the movie, at all?

Just getting anxiety out of my system. I think everyone has apocalyptic anxiety, especially in the past decade.

Was Kevin Smith your original pick for General Simon Theory?

Yes. I've always been friends with Kevin, and he's such a great talker. He's such a great speaker. And he's a great actor, in many ways, and also just being a filmmaker. He had the persona for the character, for Simon Theory, the kind of wise, elder veteran with the Dungeons & Dragons stuff. There's more of his banter with Janeane Garofalo that I'd like to restore, that kind of clarifies things.

Did he help with the script?

Yeah, and he read multiple versions. He saw the evolution of it, and he and his partner Bob Chapman helped fund the graphic novels and pay for the graphic novels. Kevin's a real patron of helping out other artists trying to push the envelope.

Did you start writing the prequel script after The Box came out?

I'm always writing. I spent the past three to four years, I've been writing nonstop. I have a deep library of scripts. I'm constantly writing, and I just felt inspired to take a few weeks and adapt the graphic novels. It's just something I wanted to have. I'm always stockpiling material, constantly.

What's your relationship with Southland Tales fans like?

They're my favorite fans, actually. (Laughs) Y'know, again, it's—it's the movie that I like to talk about the most.

Why is that?

I just—there's just something about it. Maybe because it was just such an ordeal and just such a rollercoaster ride. A part of my life that was just so insane that I have fondness for it. I mean, it was always just such a long uphill battle that I find myself continually wanting to defend the film and continue wanting to finish it, to actually finally finish it!

Like Ridley Scott with Blade Runner.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. There's still some visual effects that are not where I want them to be. There's some visual effects work. There are some shots at the end of the movie that I would like to add visual effects. Even just adding some of the content from the Cannes cut and even some of the content that never has still seen the light of day. And the animated—I have always hoped to do the first three chapters as a low-budget, animated feature. To just complete the whole thing or visualize the entire six-chapter story. (Laughs)

Have you ever had any weird interactions with fans? People who have crazy theories about the movie's hidden messages, or something?

Yeah, yeah, there's those people who have read the books and have seen the movie dozens of times and who kind of get a thrill out of digesting the big picture.

But are there weirdoes who think they’ve "solved" it?

Yeah, y'know, as much as it can be solved. I mean, it's a riff on Revelation and it's a riff on the Second Coming. That's the sort of—trying to process the insanity of what's happened to the world.

Is our real world in 2013 worse than the world of Southland Tales?

I mean, I don't know. It's—I don't know. The state of the world as a whole, I don't know what people would say about the state of the world. The economy has been pretty disastrous. We're trying to get ourselves out of Afghanistan and we're pretty much out of Iraq, but we could be going to Syria or we could be going to North Korea. There's always the impending threat. I'm glad to be past all of that, and I'm optimistic.

In the film, July 5th, 2008 is the date of the apocalypse. How’d you feel on that day?

(Laughs) It was definitely a relief when things—things aren't as bad as they could've been. But there's a lot of things in Southland Tales that almost seem understated to what you read in the news every day. I mean, there's some really crazy stuff happening. I mean, Donald Trump was a serious presidential candidate at some point! I wouldn't have even thought to put that in Southland Tales. That would've been too ridiculous to put into Southland Tales. Y'know? Even if, in the news-scroll in Southland Tales, I put in something about Donald Trump running for president, I would've been like, 'Nah, that's too much. Gotta pull that out. That's too ridiculous.'

Let's talk about the ubiquitous product placement. How much of that was your idea, prior to any marketing?

I mean, we got the product placement, but we tried to use it in a satirical way.

But even Hustler? it seems like that was a deliberate choice before they would approach you.

I mean, they let us license their logo.

But it was your idea?

Yes. Yes, the idea of the war machine relying on product placement for funding. I didn't realize it was this far a walk. We might have to take a cab back.

Was the debut and success of The Box a relief?

Yeah, I was definitely trying to simplify things and do a more intimate piece. But of course, with anything I do, it becomes ambitious and layered and challenging and like an algebra theorem. I mean, Matheson's short story was six pages long, but it had this tantalizing conceit and a lot of unresolved questions. And ultimately, you can't solve that conceit. It's not solvable, unless you wanna explain the causality of death, which is unexplainable. That's the mystery of life. So we tried to create a dream-logic that's sort of an existential dream. But again, it was really dark and sad.

But wasn't it a relief in the actual release process? You didn't have to contend with the kind of bad press you had with Donnie Darko or Southland Tales.

So yeah, we were invited to be in the New York Film Festival with The Box, and I really wanted to bring the film to that festival, but Warner Bros was very adamant that we not do a festival, because I just had two disastrous experiences already. They had an ad buy that they were gonna do, a TV ad buy. They were gonna put the movie on 2,600 screens and they didn't wanna jeopardize that expenditure by having the movie play at a festival six weeks before opening. They just wanted to do a lot of TV spots for the movie and play it out that way, as opposed to any festivals. And it was frustrating because it maybe felt like they were hiding the movie, because I was wanting to show it to a lot of people and show it to the kinds of journalists who understand that kind of science fiction.

But there must have been some level of relief. Why did you want to go back to a festival, for god's sake?

Y'know, it's just like—I mean, yeah, but at the same time, how many times—at some point, I've gotta be able to bring a film to a festival and actually have people say nice things. It can't be like this every time. So I'm just gonna keep plugging away, and maybe one of these days, I'll have a hit.

Donnie Darko was a hit, though!

Eventually! But I mean, at the outset, the word 'hit' was not uttered. It was a flop. It was a misfire.

@abrahamjoseph

@joshuashultz

+++