Writer-director RICHARD KELLY and the cast of DONNIE DARKO recall the making of this modern cult classic.
Words: Christina Radish

In a funny, moving and distinctly mind-bending journey through suburban America, one extraordinary but disenchanted teenager is about to take Time’s Arrow for a ride. An outrageous accident almost claims the life of Donnie Darko on 2 October 1988. As Donnie begins to explore what it means to still be alive, and be in love, he uncovers secrets of the universe that give him a tempting power to alter time and destiny.

From 26-year-old first-time writer-director Richard Kelly came the provocative Donnie Darko, a genre-busting fable that blasted the American suburban drama into a wildly imaginative realm of time travel, alternative universes and the manipulation of one’s fate. But at the core of Donnie Darko is the simple story of a boy trying to make a stand in a lonely, chaotic world, and discovering that every little thing he does counts on a cosmic scale.

“I think it’s a coming of age tale,” says Kelly, “a science fiction fable. I was trying to explore every element of suburban life. A young person might experience some interaction with teachers or with fellow students. Hypocrisy that can occur within a school can cause havoc and dysfunction within the school system. Even though the family is presented with a certain level of dysfunction, we were careful to make it a very functional, really great family. There are great families that have a kid who may be schizophrenic, so it was a conscious choice not to make it where the mom is an alcoholic and the dad is having an affair. I didn’t want it to be presented where you’d think, ‘Oh, that’s why,’ because that’s not why. First and foremost, it is a linear fiction mystery that has a lot of different clues coming from a lot of different directions.”

Changing Fate

Seen at 2001’s Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, Donnie Darko became one of the 2001 festival’s most talked about and debated films and was praised for blending SF fantasy with an original vision of a modern suburbia teetering on the edge of dread and disaster. Since its release in the States in cinemas and on DVD, the cult of Donnie Darko has steadily grown.

“I remembered an urban legend about a big piece of ice falling from the wing of a plane and landing on some kid’s house,” says the University of Southern California graduate. “I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I thought, ‘What a great set-up for a movie!’ Then I thought, ‘What if they didn’t find the plane and this jet engine just fell out of the sky?’ It became this big science fiction concept. From there, our hero needed to have a personal journey along the way, so I wove it all together into some kind of greater conclusion. A lot of it was just logical storytelling, like, ‘How did this situation with this engine come to be and what was the sequence of events and how can we make people laugh and cry, and how can we make them jump out of their seat and experience the wide rollercoaster of emotions that is life?’”

It was from there that Kelly developed the rest of his ideas for the film. “There was a Twilight Zone episode about a guy being hung and he escapes and he’s running away and it’s a dream at the moment of his death,” he explains, “or there’s the idea that this is truly a parallel universe, a break in the space-time continuum in this small community. [That’s where I got the idea of] this parallel universe that is formed and it’s unstable and it’s going to collapse in 28 days, and this kid is chosen to send this jet engine back as a lifeline to the stable world to save everyone. That’s the more science fiction concept. Ultimately, there’s the question of fate and us not being able to really change our fate and acknowledging that whatever happens was meant to happen.”

In his approach, Kelly purposefully wanted Donnie Darko to mean different things to different people, without ever really providing any outright answers to any of the questions it brings up. Because Donnie is so many different things – hero, nutcase, threat, rebel, lover, prodigy – to so many different people, finding an actor who could handle the different facets of the role, while still being a very believable teenager, was pivotal to the project’s success. Although the filmmakers began with extensive auditions, the process paid off when they met the then 21-year-old Jake Gyllenhaal.

“In all honesty, I read the script and said, ‘I don’t really, totally understand everything that’s going on and it doesn’t all connect right,’” explains Gyllenhaal, who was lauded as one of the most promising young actors in Hollywood at the time of release. “But there was something in the incoherence of it that helped me to know there was a vision in there. It was written by a writer out to direct it, so I had faith that the person who was making it knew what they were doing.

“Then, I met Richard,” he continues, “who I expected to be this totally gothic, weird, dark guy, and I got this totally preppie frat boy, and I knew I had to do it. I was like, ‘I have to make this film,’ because, obviously, something came out of his head that he may not be aware of, which is really cool, and it needs to be said. I think that Drew [Barrymore, the film’s producer] felt the same way too. No one else was prepared to take on the film and support it, and she was.”

Actress Drew Barrymore says that she was blown away by the script when she read it, prompting her to want to make sure the film reached the big screen with Kelly’s original vision intact. “Reading the script provoked not only a lot of questions, but also deep emotions,” she recalls. “The script really captured that burning desire to figure out life’s mysteries and the idea that there’s always this underlying possibility for you to follow another path and make a change. It was a real hero’s journey. But most of all, it was clear right away that Richard had something extraordinary inside him and was going to make a wonderful, original movie.”

Barrymore adored the depth of Donnie Darko, but it was ultimately something else that inspired her profound attraction to it and led her to put her Flower Films seal of approval on it. “Donnie Darko isn’t just philosophical and poetic,” she explains, “it’s also very real and very funny and moves with the lightness and accessibility of a comedy. Even though he goes into alternate worlds and questions the rules of the universe, Donnie Darko’s experiences at school, with his girlfriend, with his family and in his dreams seem incredibly true to life. And that’s what makes you follow him.”

Gyllenhaal was committed to the project. “If I’m going to devote three months of my life to something,” he says, “I feel like I just want to have it be interesting for myself. I guess I’m selfish in that way. The only really interesting roles that are being written are roles like this because they involve a range of emotions. What Richard and I decided, and what I really loved about the process, was that Donnie was going to be sane and he’s totally cognisant and cool in certain spots, and then weird things happen. It’s a relatively straightforward character, it just so happens that the movie is [complex]. I’m attracted to people who have problems and make mistakes. It’s actually less of an attraction than it is just a need to communicate that part of yourself.”

Gyllenhaal was drawn not only to the character of Donnie Darko, but also to the tapestry of people whose lives his character touches. Chief among these people is Gretchen Ross, the new girl in town who is carrying a darkly disturbing past of her own. Gretchen is played by 16-year-old Jena Malone, who fell in love with the script that she describes as “part-sci-fi adventure, part-hot teen romance and part-original look at life and destiny.”

“The first time I met Richard, I was completely blown away,” says the young actress. “This director knew visually exactly what he wanted. Story structure-wise, he knew exactly what he wanted, what was on the page and what wasn’t, and what he needed to be there. With first-time directors, you really don’t know what to expect. You don’t know whether they’re going to need a lot or what you’re going to need to bring and how you’re going to depend on yourself or them. I loved working with him. He has a long career ahead of him.”

The fact that Kelly was a first-time movie director made Gyllenhaal a little nervous. “I have worked with experienced directors and inexperienced directors,” he says. “There’s really nobody that I’ve worked with yet that has been like him. When I worked with Richard, there was a sense that we leaned on each other. The wisest thing about Richard is that he chose, very consciously, not to answer any of the questions because, if he had, it would have been so pretentious.”

One of the big themes explored in Donnie Darko is that of destiny. When it comes to the question of destiny in his own life, Kelly says he just tries not to think about it. “You can think about it until your head explodes, but ultimately all you can do in life is try to make the right decisions and try not to hurt people. Do what you think is best for you. I never really find the answer. I try to write and tell stories about it. You can’t obsess over what would have been and it’s a bummer to really regret a decision that you’ve made, but everyone has that feeling. You just have to keep moving and try not to live in the past.”

This interview was originally published in Dreamwatch Issue 99 (December 2002).