Starring: Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Seann William Scott, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Cheri Oteri, Amy Poehler, Jill Ritchie, Miranda Richardson, John Larroquette, Jon Lovitz
Directed by: Richard Kelly
Screenplay by: Richard Kelly
Release Date: November 14th, 2007
MPAA Rating: R for language, violence, sexual material and some drug content.
Box Office:
Studio: Samuel Goldwyn Films
About The Production “It’s a comedy about the end of the world,” states writer/director Richard Kelly. But summing up SOUTHLAND TALES as merely a comedy is a bit of a simplification. Like Kelly’s debut feature, the critically acclaimed 2001 cult favorite DONNIE DARKO, the film defies categorization.
SOUTHLAND TALES might be part comedy, part action satire, part thriller, part drama and even part musical, but it is definitely all one thing: the singular vision of Richard Kelly. “It’s a Richard Kelly film. I think that’s the best way to describe it,” explains Seann William Scott, who plays twins Ronald and Roland Taverner in the film. “With DONNIE DARKO, I think everyone has their own interpretation of what it’s about. And I think the same will go for this movie.”
Kelly first began writing this apocalyptic ensemble piece, set against the backdrop of a 2008 Fourth of July celebration in LA, in 2001, shortly after DONNIE DARKO premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and had left without a domestic distributor (Newmarket Films would eventually release the film that fall). “We were re-cutting and going through this struggle and pressure and I was really frustrated and angry. And I felt like my career was probably over, or ending, or in the process of ending because our movie didn’t get picked up and it didn’t seem like it was going to,” recalls Kelly. “And I wanted to write something about Los Angeles and my frustration with Los Angeles, even though it’s a town that I really love and continue to love.”
Kelly wrote the initial draft of SOUTHLAND TALES in about three weeks before showing it to his producing partner Sean McKittrick. “I gave it to Sean and he immediately called me and said, ‘We have to make this. This is like, my favorite thing you’ve ever written.’ And it was basically the shell of the story that exists four years later.”
The original draft of the script featured several characters who would make it into the final incarnation, including Boxer Santaros, the action star stricken with amnesia played by Dwayne Johnson; Ronald and Roland, a cop and his twin brother, played by Scott; and Zora Carmichaels, a tempestuous neo- Marxist played by Cheri Oteri. What began as a futuristic satire of Los Angeles, however, soon took on a more political bent.
“In subsequent years, 9/11 happened and then the Patriot Act and the war in Iraq. I started embedding all these sort of layers of political subtext into [the script], and took on more of the influences of Phillip K. Dick, Kurt Vonnegut, Andy Warhol and film noir,” explains Kelly. “So, it evolved over four years into something more significant and meaningful.”
Another member of the ensemble is the key role of Krysta Now, an adult film star developing her own reality project. Sarah Michelle Gellar was cast, against type, as Krysta, and believes that the film ultimately became “a love letter and a hate letter to Los Angeles.” It was in this spirit that Kelly turned to a variety of cinematic influences. “Certainly, you look at something like THE BIG LEBOWSKI, an influence on this film in terms of some of the bottom feeder elements of Los Angeles culture,” he says. “But, I think that any movie about L.A., any film noir that takes this town to heart is gonna be filled with some kind of decadent underbelly.” The screenplay actually features a scene from one beloved noir, Robert Aldrich’s 1955 KISS ME DEADLY, in which Ralph Meeker’s character encounters numerous shady ones on his way to discovering a box that triggers the apocalypse. “There’s something about those kinds of L.A. stories being just a means to kind of weave your way through the underbelly All information sanitized to de-classified level by of Los Angeles, to arrive at some grand revelation. And, this is designed in that kind of style and, is a tribute, I guess, to those kinds of films.”
In order to set the stage for SOUTHLAND TALES, Kelly wrote a series of THREE GRAPHIC NOVELS with illustrations designed by Brett Weldee that serve as a prequel to the film: SOUTHLAND TALES BOOK I: TWO ROADS DIVERGE, SOUTHLAND TALES BOOK II: FINGERPRINTS and SOUTHLAND TALES BOOK III: THE MECHANICALS.
SOUTHLAND TALES, the film, functions as the FINAL THREE CHAPTERS in Kelly’s saga. The three graphic novels will be released as a compilation for the first time in conjunction with the film’s release.
They can be purchased at Amazon.com, Graphittidesigns.com and at comic specialty and traditional bookstores everywhere.
These novels set the tone and portray the events of the days prior to where the movie begins.
Where THE BIG LEBOWSKI and KISS ME DEADLY took place in the present, SOUTHLAND TALES needed to create a futuristic world on an independent budget. “I always hoped that this would be in the league of something like BRAZIL or BLADE RUNNER, not that it’s as futuristic as BLADE RUNNER or as design-heavy as BRAZIL in its attention to detail. What, I hope, is a really great visual accomplishment in terms of the production design and cinematography,” says Kelly. “But, to do all that stuff with 30 days and not too much money is a real challenge.”
To face the challenge, Kelly assembled a skilled below-the-line team including cinematographer Steven Poster, costume designer April Ferry, and production designer Alexander Hammond, all of whom the director worked with on DONNIE DARKO. To compose the film’s score, Kelly turned to award-winning contemporary music artist Moby.
Despite the month-long shooting schedule and budgetary constraints, Gellar believes there was a genuine camaraderie on set. “Everyone was so enthused to be here,” the actress believes. “Obviously cast and crew were not earning what they’re used to making. It was a very, very tight schedule. But, we had some of the best people in the business. All of these people were here because they loved it.” One of the real challenges for the SOUTHLAND TALES crew and cast was that many of the scenes and visual concepts imagined by Kelly weren’t necessarily in the script. “I hope that visually and with the editing and the music, when audiences see the film all put together, that it will make a lot more sense on screen than it does on the page.”
The editing of the script and Kelly’s desire to re-imagine scenes during shooting was often a daunting experience for the actors. Dwayne Johnson jokes that he even began to give up on fully comprehending the final product. “I’ve been close to this project now and close to Richard for more than a year, and I stopped trying to completely understand everything that’s happening in the movie because there are so many stories that are taking place, all of which, wind up being connected. So, I thought the best thing for me to do is to completely understand and have my interpretation of Boxer Santaros—where he comes from, where he wants to go, what he believes in and things like that.
Because, there are a lot of things that only Richard Kelly could tell you.” “I think that it is probably overwhelming,” Kelly agrees, “in the sense that the script, to the actors, is probably a little confusing and, what is it all about in the end? I think it’s about where our country is going, our current dilemma when you’re talking about alternative fuel, terrorism, our civil liberties being taken away from us, and the potential effects of environmental degradation on human behavior, neurological responses, global warming. You know, there’s a lot going on here.”
For a movie that deals with so many current, hot-button issues, it might seem surprising that Kelly has cast the film with actors known primarily for their roles in television and film comedies, and the lighter side of pop culture in general. In addition to Johnson and Scott, who previously starred together in the 2002 action comedy THE RUNDOWN, Kelly also cast pop superstar Justin Timberlake, actress/singer Mandy Moore, “Night Court” star John Larroquette, CLERKS director Kevin Smith, and well-known “Saturday Night Live” alumni Cheri Oteri, Jon Lovitz, Amy Poehler and Nora Dunn in pivotal roles. “It just so happens that ‘Saturday Night Live’ has cultivated, in my opinion, some of the funniest people ever in the entertainment business. And, I think if you can do improv and sketch comedy, and you can do it really, really well, I’m convinced you can do anything. I think if you have that ability, you can be an extraordinary dramatic actor.”
“Richard’s a free-thinker who thinks outside the box,” says Gellar. “And, I think, unfortunately now, Hollywood and movie-making has become incredibly formulaic. Richard does the exact opposite. Whether it’s casting or story ideas or camera shots, it’s about doing something that’s different. And, I think, as an actor, what’s enticing and why he can always get such terrific casts is because of the excitement of the unknown, of doing something that hasn’t been done.”
“I feel like there’s a real pop art value to what we’re doing in the sense that we’ve cast a lot of actors who are usually associated with pop culture,” explains Kelly. “With Dwayne, Sarah, Seann and a lot of the supporting cast coming from either ‘Saturday Night Live’ or sketch comedy or improv, in addition to having started in action films, teen comedies or horror films, we have people with muscles they haven’t flexed yet - - who may not have had the opportunities to really show what extraordinary actors they are. It’s great for me to take people from that environment and put them into a new one, and, yet, I get the benefit of their charisma and their pop value. This is a very big, dense tapestry of ideas and, it’s a very political film, I think.”
After premiering a 2 hour and 43 minute work-in-progress version of the film at Cannes in 2006, SOUTHLAND TALES was received with less than stellar enthusiasm. When Kelly got back from the Festival, Sony opened up an editing room for him and they continued to edit the film for the rest of 2006 under the supervision of Scott Shooman, Executive Director of Aquisitions and Production, Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions Group. In January of 2007, Sony agreed upon additional funds for visual effects sequences that everyone felt were needed. They spent five months creating the new effects and then re-mixing the sound for the film. In total, it took them fourteen months post-Cannes to finish the film, but, according to Kelly: “A long time… but, it made the film better.”
The film now runs 19 minutes shorter.
“This is the first time I can really say that the film is finished to my absolute satisfaction. It is significantly different from what we showed at Cannes - which was always a work-in-progress. The new visual effects really saved the film in my mind. Had I not gotten the additional funds, the film would never have lived up to my expectations… nor would it have fired on all cylinders.”
Although the visual effects process was “long and tiresome, it was a lot of fun. I fell in love with the film again because we got to fix all the problems and fill in the holes where audiences were getting confused. Thomas Tannenberger, our visual effects supervisor, worked wonders. We needed to stretch every penny to cover the massive workload. I was really hands on… working with two young artists we found out of ChapmanUniversity. Two twenty-one year old kids! Shane Paugh designed all of the news screen graphics throughout the film and Chris Bayol did the three-minute animation near the beginning. We call it the Doomsday Scenario Interface. It took us four months to finish.”
The Cannes experience taught him a lot. “I learned that you should never take your film to a festival until you know it is finished and you’ve had a chance to screen it internally for several audiences and work out all of the kinks. But the thing is… I regret nothing. We showed it to the toughest audience in the world… some people loved it… others hated it. But we got nominated for the Palme D’Or! What an honor! Everyone agreed that it was too long and it still needed work… including us. So we took our lemons and we went home and we tried to make lemonade. It was tough because a lot of people assume that you can’t recover from a film festival experience like that. But, we became determined not to just recover, but to triumph over it. We wanted to fight our way back. I didn’t want the actors to feel as if I had let them down… that I couldn’t pull it together. And, as the months wore on, it became more exhausting, but eventually a light appeared at the end of the tunnel. When you make a film, the last few weeks of post-production are the most essential… because you can either sprint across the finish line or coast across… short of breath and wheezing. I sprinted as fast as I could.
This film is such a complicated puzzle… and I became obsessed with solving it. I couldn’t allow myself to be defeated by the scope and ambition of my own film. We had to keep on working diligently, problem solving, finding solutions… adding all of these new visual effects shots. There are now more than 500 visual effects shots in the film.”
In thinking about this new and final cut, Kelly describes it as “a complete roller coaster ride down the road not taken. That’s the best analogy I can make. We have tried to create this big political satire about the apocalypse, about the worst case scenario of another terrorist attack, and make it accessible to a wide audience.”
“I have always felt that my films are commercial. Others may disagree, but DONNIE DARKO turned out to be very commercial in its own way. I hope that the same audience will turn out for SOUTHLAND TALES.”
The shit hits the fan
The variety of acting backgrounds and techniques that Kelly employs in SOUTHLAND TALES might be unconventional but is ultimately appropriate for a film commenting on the unnerving political mood of a current and futuristic United States. The director ultimately believes that what he has made is a movie that moviegoers from everywhere will find accessible: “I think this film kind of comes from the left, but it arrives somewhere in the middle, in a way that’s trying to, you know, find comedy in our sort-of big cultural divide right now as a country—in how divided we are, and speculate into sort-of the final shit hitting the fan.”
And that, Kelly says with a smile, is the best way to sum up his vision that just about no one else involved with the film can seem to sum up: “It’s about the shit hitting the fan on the Fourth of July weekend.”
