Entrevista al director de Southland Tales

Extracto de la entrevista con mención a Justin Timberlake:

Q: Did having Justin Timberlake in the film prompt the musical elements or did the musical elements come first and then Justin followed?

RICHARD KELLY: The musical elements were always there. Moby was involved early on. He wrote a lot of the score before we started shooting even. There was always a pop star actor who was drafted and disfigured in Iraq by his best friend and then returns home and that was always the character and I became obsessed with the character and then when I met Justin, I became convinced that he was the right person to play it. And it was the kind of life imitating art imitating life thing that he’s kind of arguably the biggest pop star in the world right now and for him to be the narrator and the voice of this film and the way we did his make-up, Louis Lazzara did his great make-up. He felt like he could be a voice for the disenfranchised veteran who doesn’t’ have a voice and has to deal with all the trauma and torment of having been in war and has to deal with all the things that we take for granted. So it became really bigger. I kept expanding his role.

We had one day with him at the Santa Monica Pier. We shot that musical number in 4 hours. I had to bring in the dancers. We pre-rehearsed with the dancers for two weeks with Maguerite Derricks, our great choreographer who did «Austin Powers» and a lot of other films. We pre-rehearsed with all the dancers in Santa Monica Pier and then Justin came. And I played Justin’s part with the dancers and worked it out and like «He’s gonna kinda do this and everything.» And then we had Justin for one day and he walked in basically to a live set with all these dancers and smoke and bubbles and a six-pack of Budweiser that he just kept drinking [laughter] and he just went for it. I said, «Lip sync as much as you want.» He was like, «Rich, I don’t know all the words. I kind of know them.» And I was like, «Who cares? You don’t care. You’re just kind of going in and out and do whatever you want and dump the beer on your head if you want. We had no costume so I threw a T-shirt on him and he was like, «Rich, it’s just a T-shirt.» So I grabbed a bunch of fake blood and I just painted it all over him and he was wearing blood.

We were going to throw blood all over the nurses but that was a little bit too much and we just went for it. I’ve got to give a lot of credit to the dancers who played the nurses. I wish I knew their names but they were great. They really performed and they kind of gave him an opportunity to play off of them. I had to do one take with no lip synching because we didn’t have The Killers’ song. and the producers were like, «Rich, we can’t afford the song. They’re never going to give it to us. It’s like a fortune.» They’re the biggest band in the world so we did one take with no lip synching. I ended up doing the first take with no lip synching because we were getting everyone warmed up and then we lip synched the second, third and fourth take because we had to move on. We cut it together and like the next day my editor had a cut of it and we sent it off to The Killers, to their management, and we were just like, «Please God. Please let them like this because we can’t afford this song.» And the management saw it and they were like, «Okay. We love this. How much money do you have?» And we were like (gestures to indicate a very small amount) and they were like, «Okay. You can have it.» They said yes right away and it set in motion us getting all this other music because it’s sort of «Oh, well The Killers are doing it for how much?» and then it was The Pixies and Muse and Radiohead. Thank God that they…

I still have never met the band but I’d give them a hug if I did, you know, because they… I had hoped that we actually had some of the extras in the background in that arcade were real veterans that we brought in to be extras. The actor who plays Falcon who’s a character in the book who’s on the drug and comes back from Iraq who actually shoots Cheri Oteri and Jon Lovitz on the gun mount. He’s a friend of mine who served in Afghanistan. And so I got him the role and when he loads that gun, he has major experience doing that. His name is Jon Falcone. He’s an Afghanistan war veteran. He was part of the hunt for Bin Laden that continues.

A continuación la entrevista completa:Q: Bai Ling says she walked into the room to try out for the part, saw you and thought you were really hot and decided she wanted to do the movie.

RICHARD KELLY: Wow!

Q: Did you know that?

RICHARD KELLY: I love her! How nice of her to say that.

Q: I know you went to Hinano’s after you came up with this great idea. How much of this script did you write sitting at Hinano’s drinking?

RICHARD KELLY: You know, that’s a good question.

Q: I love Hinano’s.

RICHARD KELLY: It’s a great bar. I love dive bars but it’s not as good as the Poop Deck in Hermosa Beach. Has anyone been there?

Q: I have many a time.

RICHARD KELLY: We’re trying to put the Poop Deck on the map with the Poop Deck implosion with Cheri Oteri and Jon Lovitz and their dramatic death. I actually went to a bachelor’s party at the Poop Deck where there was a stripper during the day. I’ll end that right now. Anyway, this script was not written under the influence of alcohol although…

Q: If it was, you should keep drinking.

RICHARD KELLY: [Laughs] Yes!

Q: Let me tell you!

RICHARD KELLY: Oh thank you. But we wrote the script right when we… I say I wrote the script but my producing partner, Sean McKittrick, is obviously very closely involved when I rewrite the script so he deserves a lot of credit for that. But we were just back from Sundance with «Donnie Darko» and we didn’t have a distribution deal so we were like, «Ugh! Is our career over? Are we going to be able to keep doing this?» And it was like we were frustrated and I was like, «Okay. I’m going to write this big L.A. comedy which ends with rioting and the Hindenberg.» And that’s what it was. It was always the movie star and the cop with the twin brother who is an actor and the porn star and an acting troupe that wanted to humiliate the actor and after 9/11 it was like, «Okay.

I’ve got this apocalyptic comedy and now the apocalypse is arguably happening» as everyone felt when they woke up that morning. And maybe this can be a comedy and like a tonic to help deal with 9/11 anxiety and let’s make it more political and the actors became neo-Marxist freedom fighters. They’re all struggling entertainers who felt rejection in Venice Beach and became… That’s like me. Like I’m the neo-Marxist from Venice Beach and I figured let me make fun of myself first. You know I could be selling guns out of an ice cream truck if I weren’t doing this. [Laughs] I could be Christopher Lambert one day. So it evolved and it became more of a political piece and that became the challenge of trying to balance this massive story. It became bigger and it expanded into this.

Q: How did you get such an incredible cast together?

RICHARD KELLY: Well it started with Seann William Scott who was the first one to sign on and he stuck with me as I kept rewriting and tried to assemble people and when we got Dwayne was when we finally had a green light. We knew we had a green lightable film. We didn’t have enough money but we would figure it out. We’d somehow make it work. We would do it really fast and we would just try to figure out how to do this big spectacle of a film and we eventually got a little more money later and we kept piecemealing financing together. And the actors just rolled the dice and they trusted me. When you have that trust from an actor, you want to make sure they look good and they sound good and that…

What was really frightening is that for a while there after Cannes it was like, «Oh my God, are we going to be able to finish the movie? Is it ever going to get released?» And I felt like the last thing I wanted to do was let the actors down and disappoint them because they had put their trust in me and they’d all worked for nothing and you know you don’t want to disappoint. They’re like your children in a way. You feel like a father when you direct a movie. So just getting the movie to this point now that it’s finally getting released, having Dwayne here…I would have been really, really, really devastated had I not gotten the film completed properly and released properly because I didn’t want to disappoint him or Seann or Sarah and all of the actors.

Q: Did having Justin Timberlake in the film prompt the musical elements or did the musical elements come first and then Justin followed?

RICHARD KELLY: The musical elements were always there. Moby was involved early on. He wrote a lot of the score before we started shooting even. There was always a pop star actor who was drafted and disfigured in Iraq by his best friend and then returns home and that was always the character and I became obsessed with the character and then when I met Justin, I became convinced that he was the right person to play it. And it was the kind of life imitating art imitating life thing that he’s kind of arguably the biggest pop star in the world right now and for him to be the narrator and the voice of this film and the way we did his make-up, Louis Lazzara did his great make-up. He felt like he could be a voice for the disenfranchised veteran who doesn’t’ have a voice and has to deal with all the trauma and torment of having been in war and has to deal with all the things that we take for granted. So it became really bigger. I kept expanding his role.

We had one day with him at the Santa Monica Pier. We shot that musical number in 4 hours. I had to bring in the dancers. We pre-rehearsed with the dancers for two weeks with Maguerite Derricks, our great choreographer who did «Austin Powers» and a lot of other films. We pre-rehearsed with all the dancers in Santa Monica Pier and then Justin came. And I played Justin’s part with the dancers and worked it out and like «He’s gonna kinda do this and everything.» And then we had Justin for one day and he walked in basically to a live set with all these dancers and smoke and bubbles and a six-pack of Budweiser that he just kept drinking [laughter] and he just went for it. I said, «Lip sync as much as you want.» He was like, «Rich, I don’t know all the words. I kind of know them.» And I was like, «Who cares? You don’t care. You’re just kind of going in and out and do whatever you want and dump the beer on your head if you want. We had no costume so I threw a T-shirt on him and he was like, «Rich, it’s just a T-shirt.» So I grabbed a bunch of fake blood and I just painted it all over him and he was wearing blood.

We were going to throw blood all over the nurses but that was a little bit too much and we just went for it. I’ve got to give a lot of credit to the dancers who played the nurses. I wish I knew their names but they were great. They really performed and they kind of gave him an opportunity to play off of them. I had to do one take with no lip synching because we didn’t have The Killers’ song. and the producers were like, «Rich, we can’t afford the song. They’re never going to give it to us. It’s like a fortune.» They’re the biggest band in the world so we did one take with no lip synching. I ended up doing the first take with no lip synching because we were getting everyone warmed up and then we lip synched the second, third and fourth take because we had to move on. We cut it together and like the next day my editor had a cut of it and we sent it off to The Killers, to their management, and we were just like, «Please God. Please let them like this because we can’t afford this song.» And the management saw it and they were like, «Okay. We love this. How much money do you have?» And we were like (gestures to indicate a very small amount) and they were like, «Okay. You can have it.» They said yes right away and it set in motion us getting all this other music because it’s sort of «Oh, well The Killers are doing it for how much?» and then it was The Pixies and Muse and Radiohead. Thank God that they…

I still have never met the band but I’d give them a hug if I did, you know, because they… I had hoped that we actually had some of the extras in the background in that arcade were real veterans that we brought in to be extras. The actor who plays Falcon who’s a character in the book who’s on the drug and comes back from Iraq who actually shoots Cheri Oteri and Jon Lovitz on the gun mount. He’s a friend of mine who served in Afghanistan. And so I got him the role and when he loads that gun, he has major experience doing that. His name is Jon Falcone. He’s an Afghanistan war veteran. He was part of the hunt for Bin Laden that continues.

Q: You got so many alumni from Saturday Night Live, did you all know each other?

RICHARD KELLY: Saturday Night Live, I love Saturday Night Live, I’ve always watched it and I’ve always found it – it’s one of the great talent pools. Look at who they’ve given us, some of the great comedic actors of the past forty years have come out of SNL, and I thought if I’m going to try to do this movie that is the blackest of black comedy, the darkest subject matter, that we’re trying to make the intolerable somehow tolerable, let’s try to bring in some of the funniest people like Lovitz and Nora Dunn and the Sweeney sisters and the skits that they used to do. I grew up watching them so it was just great, and comedians are adventurous spirits, they’ll take risks, and they’re okay with the script being incomprehensible or unfinished and crazy, improve.

There’s a lot of improv in this movie. Every day we were making stuff up and I was just like, «Any ideas I want to hear them.» And Amy Poehler, that whole argument she has with Wood Harris in the prosthetic make-up, man, because Amy is such a lovely person but when she gets in prosthetic make up she gets really terrified, because it’s scary to be under all that stuff and I think she got claustrophobic. She’s so outgoing and nice and fun to hang out with on set, and then we put the make-up on her and she came out of her trailer with sunglasses on and she was like Greta Garbo. She was like, «Leave me alone.»

She was so freaked out being in that make-up, and she was hiding under an umbrella and like terrified, and I’m like, «Amy, we need to do the argument now, where you and Wood are screaming at each other.» And they’re wearing these ridiculous prosthetics and they’re both like not happy to have all this stuff on all day, because they had to leave it on all day because it was a low budget movie, and we didn’t have time. So I put them in there to do their big domestic dispute and they just unloaded on each other with all this stuff. It was like all bottled up. That was funny.

Q: Can you talk a little about casting Sarah Michelle against type?

RICHARD KELLY: She’s a really smart girl. She’s like a New York girl. She grew up very well educated, among the high end New York kids who all had money, and she was on a soap opera when she was a young teenager, so Sarah’s been around the block. She knows the deal and she gets it. And there’s part of the concept of a porn star, and this character is like Arianna Huffington meets Jenna Jameson, and there’s something about that, how ambitious and driven she is with the energy drink and the talk show and the perfume, and all the multi-branding.

She got it, she understood the absurdity of it, and I think being an actress you understand what it’s like to be exploited. And actresses are tough, they have to have a tough demeanor to survive in this town, and she kind of saw in Krysta this subversive version of herself in a way. I think she ran with it, and the more time I spent with her I’m like, «Okay, she was meant to play this part.»

Q: What inspired the levitating ice cream truck?

RICHARD KELLY: A lot of people bring up «Repo Man,» but it was never «Repo Man.» It was something I had to really fight for to get the truck to lift off, because for awhile it was just Seann and his twin find each other and shake hands inside the truck, and then it was just cut to black. I was like «Oh man, it’s the end of the world. We need something bigger than that.» [SPOILER ALERT] This is obviously a spoiler material about the ending. There’s a tidal wave. Did you guys see the tidal wave at the end? When Johnson is dancing at the party in the end, you cut to a wide shot of Santa Monica Pier and there’s a big black wave building.

You’ll see it on the second viewing, but it’s the machine basically – it’s going to blast the coast with a massive white wave that’s going to drown everyone. And the truck is suspended, and there’s a gateway that opens, and it’s the implication that – you take what you want from all that but, the wave I guess – it’s funny, there’s so much going on that a lot of people don’t notice it. It’s a wave, but it’s dark and mysterious looking. So the levitating truck was something I was very fortunate – Tedd Hamm, who is now investing in my company came in and we got the levitating ice cream truck. It was an additional shooting day.

Q: Can you talk a little bit about the editing? You cut 19 minutes after Cannes, was that because someone said 19 minutes had to come out?

RICHARD KELLY: What happened at Cannes is, we submitted a rough cut DVD to the selection committee under the one in a million chance we thought we would have of getting in, because the movie was still in very rough shape, and they came back and were like, «We want to nominate you for the Palme D’Or. We want to put you in competition and we were like, «Holy crap!» And it was this huge honor that we couldn’t refuse and we were like, «Holy crap, we’re not going to have this movie finished in time.» So we kind of had to do the best we could and finish with what we had, and we knew it was silly and running too long, and there was a lot of visual effects missing that weren’t even completed, or hadn’t even begun to be completed, so we just went with what we had and we knew it was a dangerous decision to make. We were like, «You know, we’re really proud of it, even in this shape. Let’s just go with it.» It was a rough experience, but we got Sony to buy the movie, which was a great victory in our minds, and then they opened up an editing room. Obviously they wanted it shorter.

That was the big thing, get it shorter. They didn’t give me a number but it was sort of like – I felt like, okay if I cut – the more time I cut, the better odds of them giving me more visual effects money. And then they started to really get invested, Scott Shuman, the executive at Sony, was great. He got really invested and they started to understand the film. They were reading the graphic novels and everything. They were like, «Okay, we get this.» I got them to kind of fall in love with it, and then they gave me the money, and it ended up only being 19 minutes shorter at the end. So there was awhile where I was really scared thinking I’d have to cut 45 minutes or something, and I was worried, God, it won’t hold together, so – there’s a little bit of deleted stuff that I like, particularly Janeane Garofalo‘s subplot I’d love to be able to reinsert at some point like in the director’s cut.

Q: In the DVD?

RICHARD KELLY: Yeah, I’m sure I’ll do a longer cut at some point down the road.

Q: Did your Cannes experience inspire that Entourage episode?

RICHARD KELLY: I’m friendly with a couple of the guys from Entourage, and sometimes I wonder, what’s the character of the crazy director’s name?

Q: Billy Walsh

RICHARD KELLY: Sometimes I wonder if that’s me. I’m going to get Southland Tales tattooed on my back.

Q: Can you talk about product placement and tell us about the graphic novel?

RICHARD KELLY: The graphic novel is the prequel. The film is chapters 4, 5 and 6. In the book it’s chapters 1, 2 and 3. Literally, the movie picks up right where the book leaves off. It’s like a whole movie before the movie in graphic novel form. And there’s an animation of the doomsday scenario interface at the beginning. You see little glimpses of this, and it gives like a – it’s a primer for the film and it’s ultimately – it’s a whole other movie really. It sets everything in motion, so it’s a cross media experiment to try to do the graphic novel and tie in with the movie.

Q: When is that available in stores?

RICHARD KELLY: It’s available in stores this week.

Q: Will there be a packaging deal with the DVD and the book later on?

RICHARD KELLY: Yes, I’m sure they’ll put together some highly overpriced big thing with everything in it.