Apocalypse how

Richard Kelly sees the end in Southland Tales.

It seems safe to characterize a movie in which the biblical end-times are hastened by an amnesiac Hollywood action-movie star and an L.A. porn queen with her own energy drink and hit single (“Teen Horniness Is Not a Crime”) as atypical multiplex fare. But writer-director Richard Kelly doesn’t see it that way.

“Maybe people will call me crazy, but I think Southland Tales is mainstream,” Kelly says on the phone from Los Angeles, of his divisive follow-up to his 2001 cult hit, Donnie Darko. “Everyone laughs when I say that. But I feel like there’s enough comedy and action and spectacle in the movie to keep people engaged, even if they’re not necessarily following the plot completely.”

Well, yeah. In addition to the aforementioned homegrown Antichrist and Whore of Babylon, Southland Tales pivots on a pair of nuclear explosions in Texas (one chillingly depicted in the film’s prologue), a Venice Beach, California, cell of “neo-Marxists” largely played by SNL alums, a multiply rigged presidential election and a corporation helmed by the progeny of Karl Marx, who exploit a risky alternative energy source even as they conduct drug experiments on American troops in Iraq. As for following the plot, a working knowledge of the Book of Revelations, Robert Aldrich’s frenzied 1955 noir classic Kiss Me Deadly and the writings of Philip K. Dick helps, as do a trio of graphic novels now available as Southland Tales: The Prequel Saga, which make up the story’s first three chapters (the movie covers the final three).

This density of influences partially explains Southland Tales’ harsh reception at Cannes in 2006—where it was loudly but not unanimously derided—and subsequent revision. “We realized while we were there that there was a whole lot more work we wanted to do,” Kelly, 32, says diplomatically. “Sony gave me the time. They said, ‘Here’s an editing room, keep doing your thing. We would love it if you got it as short as possible. [Samuel Goldwyn Films is releasing the movie in partnership with Sony.]’ ”

His great whatsit of a movie still packs a lot in at just under two and a half hours (including a couple of showstopping musical numbers), and retains what may have been another source of the ire in France: a ferociously skewed perspective on U.S. cultural banality that’s more heartsick than strident, and that doggedly sidesteps overt partisan platitudinizing. “Here’s the thing,” Kelly explains. “I’m the angry liberal who’s frustrated and feels disenfranchised. Basically, I’m a neo-Marxist. I could be in Venice Beach trying to do stand-up comedy and buying automatic weapons out of an ice-cream truck to force the revolution. So I felt like if I was going to satirize the neocons, the far right, then I needed to be fair and satirize the far left as well.”

While Southland Tales has its share of fun at the expense of American political intransigence, Kelly also acknowledges the gravity of the real-life situations incorporated into his kitchen-sink-Armageddon narrative. “The deaths happening [in Iraq] are accidents and suicides,” he says, referring to a pivotal subplot involving a pair of veterans (Seann William Scott and Justin Timberlake) who share a grievous battlefield bond. “It’s not Iraqis killing Americans, it’s Americans accidentally killing other Americans. You think of a person who comes back and has to endure that.… You want to give them a voice.” As with Donnie Darko, the resulting aura of irrevocable tragedy pervades even the film’s lightest moments.

Not exactly blockbuster material, then, despite a viewer-friendly cast that includes Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jon Lovitz and leading man Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. “He was really excited to deconstruct himself,” the director says of Johnson, “and become this schizophrenic, deranged actor who’s researching the role of a renegade, macho film-noir cop. He had such a great time coming up with all these choices.”

Perhaps widespread appeal is next up for Kelly, who says, “I’m actually starting production on my next film here in a couple of weeks, and I’m trying to intentionally change course and do something that is a bit more ‘mainstream.’ It’s called The Box, and it’s a psychological thriller starring Cameron Diaz that I adapted from the Richard Matheson short story ‘Button, Button.’ ” Whether or not he’s hedging on his latest project’s box-office potential, it’s clear that Kelly is relieved to have dodged a career-killing bullet at Cannes: “I’m very excited to be moving forward into something else. I get to make a third one—I’m not done yet!”

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