Richard Kelly

About me:

THE BOX

Director and Screenwriter: Richard Kelly
Producers: Sean McKittrick, Richard Kelly, Dan Lin
Cast: Cameron Diaz, James Marsden, and Frank Langella


Norma and Arthur Lewis are a suburban couple with a young child who receive an anonymous gift bearing fatal and irrevocable consequences. A simple wooden box, it promises to deliver its owner $1 million with the press of a button. However, pressing this button will simultaneously cause the death of another human being somewhere in the world--someone they don't know. With just 24 hours to have the box in their possession, Norma and Arthur find themselves in the crosshairs of a startling moral dilemma and face the true nature of their humanity.





SOUTHLAND TALES

Director and Screenwriter: Richard Kelly
Producers: Sean McKittrick, Bo Hyde, Kendall Morgan, Matthew Rhodes
Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Seann William Scott, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Curtis Armstrong, Joe Campana and Nora Dunn.


The city stands on the brink of social, economic and environmental disaster. Southland Tales is an epic story set over the course of three days that culminate in a massive 4th of July celebration. A large ensemble cast of characters includes Boxer Santaros (Dwayne Johnson), an action star stricken with amnesia, Krysta Now (Sarah Michelle Gellar), an adult film star developing her own reality television project, and Roland Taverner (Seann William Scott), a Hermosa Beach police officer who holds the key to a vast conspiracy.





DONNIE DARKO

Director and Screenwriter: Richard Kelly
Producers: Sean McKittrick, Nancy Juvonen, Adam Fields
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Jena Malone, Mary McDonnell, Holmes Osbourne, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Drew Barrymore.


During the presidential election of 1988, Donnie Darko, a troubled teenager, encounters a six-foot rabbit named Frank, who tells him the world will end in 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, and 12 seconds.





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Read Southland Tales Yet? Follow the links below to get a copy
Purchase Book 1 at View Askew

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper. --T.S. Eliot

The conclusion of T.S. Eliot’s 1925 poem “The Hollow Men” has been altered for satirical effect in SOUTHLAND TALES, a comedic spin on the apocalypse, as it should occur in the great city of Los Angeles. Trust me on this one… if the end is indeed upon us (apparently 59% of fundamentalist Americans believe that it is ), it is going to happen in Los Angeles first.

I have always been obsessed with this whole apocalypse thing… and trying to decipher the encrypted symbolism in the Book of Revelations is enough to give anyone a headache. A friend once remarked that there is a legitimate debate among religious scholars that the Book of Revelations was written while the Apostle John was under the influence of hallucinatory mushrooms. Go figure.

Another friend sent me a very disturbing link to a story about something called “American Hiroshima”. Apparently this is one of many planned terrorist attacks that Al-Quaeda has in the works. This is the one where they smuggle nuclear weapons (purchased by Osama bin Laden from Russian gangsters) over the Mexican border into Texas with the aid of Mexican guerrillas. They detonate the nukes in mid-size cities where there is little domestic counter-terrorism surveillance.

Sounds like the apocalypse to me. Where would we go from here?

These are the sordid tales of what happens next… how it all comes crashing down. In the alternate future of SOUTHLAND TALES, the war machine is running out of gas, and there is no alternative. Alternative fuel, that is.

Global warming may indeed be the “whimper” that T.S. Eliot foretold. Perhaps our destiny is to slowly drown ourselves into oblivion.

Southland Tales will take you down that other road. The one that ends with a “bang”. What if there is a path to end all suffering, and hidden somewhere along the way is a primer? A primer that could help us extinguish this great big mess of a planet once and for all. Quick and painless.

There is no alternative. Alternative fuel, that is.

Until one day… when a mysterious German corporation arrives in the Southland with a kick-ass new formula. A cure for our sickness…