Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly’s new movie Southland Tales has a little something to do with the US government’s reaction to 9/11. In fact, it’s about the government instituting a police state after a second major terror attack. So obviously, he’s a terrorist. At least that seems to be the reaction of the United States government. Kelly trying to get to Cannes for the premiere of his new movie, but according to several different sources the Department of Homeland Security has put his passport under review.
Homeland Security says they’re reviewing his status because of the similarity between his name and a known terrorist named James Kelly. So wait, anyone with the last name of Kelly is now a terrorism suspect? That makes no sense it all, and so Richard is quite reasonably a little suspicious. He says, "The paranoid conspiracy freak inside me is starting to think this has something to do with the film."
Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t; maybe the Department of Homeland Security really is so completely incompetent that they’d delay a well known public figure just because his really common last name is the same as that of a guy on their terrorist watch list. The Bin Laden family doesn’t seem to have much trouble flying hither and thither. I’m not sure which is worse: the US government persecuting artists for their views or the US government actually being that completely inept. Pick your poison folks.
