Cult classic directors can't seem to get any respect from Hollywood's major studios. Last week we had the controversy over Mike Judge's studio slapped Idiocracy, this week it's Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly on the chopping block.
Garth over at DH has dug up an interview from Kelly from a women's lifestyle magazine called Female First in which Donnie Darko's daddy talks about being pissed off at the way his new movie Southland Tales is being treated.
Apparently, distributors are giving him an ultimatum: Cut an hour off the film or forget about showing it. Kelly says that may mean we'll never get to see the movie at all. "What's disappointing, frustrating is that now I don't know that Southland Tales will be seen in the United States. Maybe it will, but potentially it could be shown with almost an hour of it missing. I don't quite know what that film is," he says.
Of course, all of this should probably be couched with the fact that the film received a critical lashing when a three hour version was shown at Cannes. By all accounts the thing's a massive disaster, and if it's really that bad you can perhaps understand why distributors might agree to show it only with some changes. Bad movies are rough enough, but a three-hour long bad movie is almost intolerable, even from the director of Donnie Darko.
