Movies
Why 'Donnie Darko' gained a following, got second chance

By John Hartl
Special to The Seattle Times

KEN LAMBERT / THE SEATTLE TIMES Drew Barrymore visited the Seattle International Film Festival last weekend to present “Donnie Darko.” She is the executive producer and plays a small part.

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One that did was Richard Kelly's dreamy apocalyptic fantasy, "Donnie Darko," about a jet engine that crashes into the bedroom of a sleepwalking teenager (Jake Gyllenhaal). Donnie is given the opportunity to rearrange events, including this catastrophe — which should have killed him.

"Kelly's high-school Gothic seems perfectly attuned to the present moment," wrote The Village Voice's J. Hoberman when the picture was released in October 2001. "The events of Sept. 11 have rendered most movies inconsequential; the heartbreaking 'Donnie Darko,' by contrast, feels weirdly consoling."

Yet, when it was first released, the movie flopped outside New York and Los Angeles, failing to earn back its modest $4.5 million in costs. It wasn't until it was released on video and DVD that it became a hit, earning $10 million. It also became a British box-office success and a midnight cult movie, and today it's getting a prime-time reissue at several theaters.

To kick off the world premiere of this 133-minute "director's cut," Kelly and some cast members, including Mary McDonnell, Jena Malone and the film's executive producer, Drew Barrymore, brought it to the Seattle International Film Festival last weekend. It begins an area run today at Grand Cinema (Tacoma), Grand Cinemas (Lynnwood), Uptown and Varsity theaters.

	Noah Wyle and Drew Barrymore in the director's cut of "Donnie Darko," which is being test-marketed here.

"I think this movie allows teenagers to see themselves as heroes," said two-time Oscar nominee McDonnell, who plays Donnie's mother. "I loved the script; it was visionary, spiritual, it took my breath away, and it gave me the opportunity to play a middle-aged mother who was a human being."

Malone, who plays Donnie's girlfriend, said she was impressed that Kelly "really understood what he writes. That's rare. Richard knew everything."

"I'm just an enabler," said Barrymore, without whom the low-budget movie would probably not have been made. Her production company, Flower Films, backed the film shortly after she read the script. "It's made for young people but it transcends ages. ... It's not spoon-fed. It leaves room for fantasy and interpretation. I feel like this film got to be somehow left alone. It's true to Richard's vision."

She was so taken with it that she would have played any role, because "there's a playfulness there." She ended up taking a small but crucial part as Donnie's frustrated literature teacher.

"It's a miracle that we got this through the system," said the 29-year-old Kelly, who has been working for the past couple of months on the director's cut. He added approximately 20 minutes of footage from the original shoot and redesigned the sound, in an attempt to clear up some points of logic.

Kelly has also been preparing a new picture, "Southland Tales," which he described as a comedy/musical/thriller/science-fiction hybrid.

"I want to make comedies the rest of my life," he said. "When I'm dying of cancer, I want to be watching 'The Simpsons.' "

Kelly doesn't regard the new version as definitive: "I think there can be two versions, just as there are two versions of 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' and 'Brazil,' and 'Blade Runner' with the voiceover and without."

No one knows why some movies, like "Donnie Darko," find more success on video and DVD than in theaters. Some venture that there is a big film audience that simply will not go out to moviehouses. Others speculate that improper marketing is to blame.

But Kelly knows who to credit for his film's revival. It's "because of the fans that this exists," he says. Seattle is the test market. If it does well here, the expanded "Donnie Darko" will go elsewhere.

John Hartl: johnhartl@yahoo.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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