Richard Kelly: pushing more buttons

"Kelly has taken his penchant for logic-bending science fiction from Indiewood to the Big Show, as Warner Bros. has produced "The Box", his enigmatic adaptation of Richard Matheson's short story "Button, Button".In Kelly's 1976-set thriller, a NASA engineer (James Marsden) and his high-school teacher wife (Cameron Diaz) are financially strapped Virginia parents who have been gifted with a curious wood box, topped by a cherry-red button. Soon after, a man named Arlington Steward (Frank Langella) arrives unannounced, missing half his face due to a burn and some killer CGI, and imposes a moral dilemma on the couple: push the button, and they'll earn a million dollars in cash, tax free. The catch, however, is that a complete stranger will also die as a consequence. -Come on, admit it. You'd push that button.-[laughs] Listen, it's easy to be self-righteous and say, "Oh, I would never push it." I look at it more from the logical point of view of a scientist. I'd see this little contraption and be like, "Okay, this thing has no technology in it. Whoever built it is playing a trick. If they want to give me a million bucks to come into my life, annoy me, and freak out my wife, I'm going to push it as an act of defiance, to call their bluff." The violence isn't on me unless this thing has some sort of computer chip that's going to shut down someone's pacemaker, you know? I'd push it out of curiosity.-It's appropriate that this is a period piece. In this age of instant gratification, it seems like people are far more inclined to push a button for the sake of ease today.-Absolutely. Now we have all this technology that we didn't have in 1976, the way computers and the internet have transformed our way of life. We're so much more cynical today. That was one of the reasons why I couldn't set the movie in present day. I didn't want to have that scene where Norma goes onto the computer and Googles Arlington Steward. For half the movie, the characters would be sitting in front of laptops. That wasn't really dramatic for me, and it made it implausible. It's an absurd premise. Part of what I love is that it's mischievous.

-So you want to continue working within the studio system?
-Yeah, I would very much love to stay in the studio business. At the same time, I would love to be able to expand and branch out. I've got my new script and I feel like it's very, very commercial, probably the most accessible thing I've ever written. So maybe I'm trying to make things a little easier. [laughs] But I'll never forget "Donnie Darko", which is a movie that people continue to appreciate and revisit. When it was released at Sundance, everyone was like, "This is a mess. It makes no sense. No one will ever see this movie. It's unreleasable," and it barely got released. Almost nine years after we made the film, people are still talking about it, and that makes me remember where I came from. Maybe that's why I still try to push the envelope in terms of experimental narrative, ideas or technique.

Jake Gyllenhaal in the opening sequence of "Donnie Darko" (2001).

-Although it's relatively minor, I believe you've committed a crime against cinema. How could you have changed the opening sequence in your "Donnie Darko" director's cut by replacing Echo & the Bunnymen's "The Killing Moon" with an INXS song?

-That was the song that we had at Sundance. It was always originally supposed to begin with INXS, and the Echo & the Bunnymen is my favorite song of the movie. It got moved to the end of the party, and [Donnie's] coming down the stairs in that big emotional moment. I was trying to utilize Echo & the Bunnymen there to give it more punch. Some people prefer it at the beginning. There's always the theatrical cut. Some people give me shit for it, but there are other people who saw the movie at Sundance for the first time, and they're like, "Oh my god, that INXS song at the beginning is so great!" Sometimes it's what you see first that you hold onto". Source: www.ifc.com