September 01, 2006

Southland Tales - Richard Kelly talks Cuts

(Posted In Comedy Drama Film News Sci-Fi / Fantasy USA and Canada )

southland-poster.jpgA little tidbit on the ongoing saga of Southland Tales. Richard Kelly's quasi-post-apocalyptic political/cultural sprawling near-future-set opus premiered at Cannes to open boos and confused festival-goers (there were a few folks who loved it though). That version of the film was nearly 3 hours long, was deemed unreleasable by Sony Pictures, and rumours of harsh cuts or possibly no North American theatrical release abounded for quite some time after. More recently, a magazine article was quoting Kelly as distraught over the cuts he was going to have to make to his film was circulated around the web.

Richard Kelly posted this response to it on his MySpace page a couple days ago:

"I just wanted to give everyone an update on Southland Tales, as there was recently an article published in Hot Dog Magazine about the film being taken away from me and cut down by an hour. This interview took place during the Cannes Film Festival and WAS TAKEN OUT OF CONTEXT WITHOUT REFERENCING MANY POSITIVE DEVELPMENTS THAT HAVE OCCURRED SINCE THEN.

Thank you guys for your continued support, and please know that I am incredibly proud of this film and excited for it to be seen. What you will see in theaters will absolutely be my cut of the film!

Best,
Richard"

I'm of two minds on this, I'd love to see the lengthy Cannes cut, but I wholeheartedly prefer the shorter version of Donnie Darko to the lengthier Directors Cut which is overly explanitory and bloated. On the other hand, Southland Tales is much more ambitious in scope, so cutting it down may seriously hurt the film (at least until the inevitable DVD of the longer version). In the end, there is still no word on any sort of release date for the film (my gut says they dump this into theatres in January/February 2007, but that is pure speculation).

[Source: FilmRot via Filmstalker]

» Posted by Kurt at September 1, 2006 08:28 AM
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Reader Comments

I found the main problem with the Donnie Darko director's cut was the fact it destroyed the rhythm of the movie. Most cuts were explained on the original DVD and made sense. At least when Scott re-cut Alien, he removed/tightened up scenes to balance out the added material. For me, it went from a great, unpredicatble film to a mess of ideas.

I would worry that Southland Tales may well also be a mess in it's longer form. I hope Kelly shows the same restraint he did overcoming his problems to create the original cut of Donnie Darko, and will produce an excellent film. He has much promise, but obviously needs to be reigned it.

That said, it may be that the original is perfect. Whenever I want to see how a sprawling collection of interweaved stories should be done, I go back to Robert Altman's 'Short Cuts.' It's a shame many directors wanting to do something similar don't check that film out also.

» Posted by evil:cat at September 2, 2006 05:07 AM

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