After finally finishing the film and being nominated for the Palme d’Or at Cannes, Richard Kelly sat down in L.A. to talk about the writer’s strike, working with The Killers and Justin Timberlake, and what it was like to pitch Southland Tales to execs.

Richard Kelly on being writer and director on the same project during the strike, while in production:

"Well, there’s been a lot of talk about that, and I’ve been holed up in my hotel room in Boston doing all of these notes. That’s my process, I rewrite up until production. It’s a constant adaptive process, you’ve got to massage everything into the locations and I work with my crew and my production designer. So I turned in a script after a significant amount of retooling and basically said... it’s a delicate issue because I’m also a DGA member and I’m directing my own script. So if I’m not allowed to change a word we’ll be fine, because I’ve got the script just where I want it."

Kelly on the actors describing the film as if they were walking around in one of his dreams:

"I think that’s the nature of any actor in any film, and if it’s a writer/director, I guess there’s a bit more ownership in a sense. I love that they said that because it gives me a sense of responsibility that I have to live up to, and I feel that the actors, in a weird way, are like my children. That’s not meant to be condescending in any way, but you feel like a father and you have to be responsible for all of them and do them justice and make them look and sound good. Obviously the screenplay for Southland Tales was constantly changing, so it was hard to penetrate for the actors. But I think as long as they understood their role, and the role in the madness of it all, they were going to be okay."

Kelly on the screening version shown at Cannes as compared to the theatrical cut:

"We were still working on the film - far from finished - and we submitted it in the off chance that we might get into the festival. We were very shocked to be nominated for the Palme d’Or, put it that way. At first we were like, ‘Oh my god, I can’t believe this is happening. What an honor.’ And then it was like, ‘Oh my god, this movie is never going to be finished in time,’ but we couldn’t turn the honor down, so we went with what we had. It was a situation where we took our licks and were handed lemons, but Sony bought the film, which was a good thing and we continued to refine and reshape it. Then we realized, what we knew all along, was that the film needed more visual effects to make everything fit together and that was going to require more money. That made it drag on a little more, but then we got the money and were able to finish it the way we wanted. It’s only 19 minutes shorter and I would love to put some of the deleted scenes back in at some point - maybe a director’s cut - but I’m very happy with what we have."

On balancing the film’s sci-fi elements with satire:

"Well, I really wanted to try and just play it straight, with dignity, [and] play it as though all of these people had convictions. You have a lot of eccentric characters in the film, people that are going to speak to the underground, which is... that could be me really, I’m a Neo-Marxist from Venice Beach. So I’m making fun of myself, like the frustrated, disenfranchised Liberal, you know. So they’re eccentric characters and struggling comedians and performance artists. And then there’s the scientists, the alternative fuel engineers from Germany and the Neo-Cons. There are different facets to the film and I wanted everyone to do it with conviction, and that was sort of our rule I guess."

Richard Kelly Interview Page 2