Why is donnie darko a cult classic

As Seth Rogen , who co-starred in the film, infamously told Collider in , "I didn't get it back then, and still don't, but had a good time. Disorienting narrative aside, one look at Donnie Darko's casting sheet would be enough to make one think it was destined for box office glory, in spite of its intensely disorienting narrative.

However, a closer look reveals why this cast didn't push people into theaters. Fact is, in , the Gyllenhaals were far from established Hollywood players. Donnie Darko was Seth Rogen's first movie.

And the star power of both Ross and Swayze had, by , all but faded entirely. While, in retrospect, Donnie Dark certainly helped put its hot young cast on the path to cult stardom, the audiences of certainly weren't rushing to buy tickets to the new Jake Gyllenhaal flick.

Kelly had absolutely no involvement with the sequel S. It was made against my wishes and much to my discomfort. I always keep an open mind, I try to, and again, people are still talking about the story, so who knows?

Before we ended the interview, we asked Kelly about his Donnie Darko follow-up, the ambitious but critically-panned Southland Tales , which premiered at Cannes but barely had much of a release. We asked him whether he has any intention of releasing a longer or remastered version of that film. He's a…. Skip to main content area.

Share: Share on Facebook opens in a new tab Share on Twitter opens in a new tab Share on Linkedin opens in a new tab Share on email opens in a new tab Comment: Comments count: 0. It certainly was seen as non-conformist to fly so much in the face of authority and even ask a question, let alone a difficult question, of these people in perceived authority. Well, it places Donnie as a bit older than I was in , but it was a world that I remembered.

I intended it to be at a time of transition, setting it on the eve of an election where Ronald Reagan was leaving office, and you had all these teenagers who were rejecting the war on drugs and seeing censorship and The Last Temptation of Christ being banned from theaters.

You know, stuff like that, and the self-help movement and motivational speakers showing up in schools, gave kids something to fight against. And, of course, a new sort of liberalism emerged in those teenagers, who obviously went on to help elect Bill Clinton four years later. I wanted to capture that time and it became an essential part of the fabric of the movie, really. Where did Donnie Darko come from? Tell me where the story and where the character and the art come for you as a storyteller in your 23 years that lead up to it?

I think it was very much an expression of my internal anxieties as an adolescent, first and foremost. That was the plot seed. I was never a big fan of Echo and the Bunnymen, and yet when I heard the song used in the film, it took me back to the time and place, but it also created an intense emotional connection to the film and the scene. How important is getting the right song for the right scene, and do you write with a particular song in your head—do you have a soundtrack as you go along, a playlist—and how do you come to those choices?

Well, an overwhelming yes to everything you just said. Music is everything to me in the filmmaking process. I design and select many songs very, very early in the screenwriting process. I even choreograph scenes to specific songs. I will play the songs for the actors on set, and I will even storyboard to the lyrics. I will hire a composer to start composing the score to the movie before we even start principle photography. Music is a fundamental, foundational element to me as a filmmaker.

So do you ever get turned down and have you ever had to work around that? Only a couple times. Of course, I always shoot to a back-up, or I always have a back-up plan. But then again, there are parts in us, and the people around us, that are content, forgiving, and so on. We are the people surrounding a Donnie Darko in our lives. We are all human, and familiar with human emotions, whether we choose to express them or not.

And who knows? Maybe we'll meet our Donnie some day. Maybe not. Posts on Darko websites tend to follow these two trends. There are those Jake the Rabbits for whom this film represents an excuse to sound off on complex scientific theory, and more generally engage in a bout of nerdish one-upmanship. And there are those, like Alice, for whom the entire experience is a painful reminder of their teenage loneliness.

But almost all Darkoists, or whatever one calls a member of this network, admit, like Alex from Manchester: "I watch this film daily and sometimes at night Every night I'd argue that it doesn't fit with my rational beliefs. And, having now read more about this subject than is probably healthy myself, I have my own crackpot theory.

It is inextricably tied up with the film's initial commercial failure, its strange, hypnotic imagery and its embattled teenage hero. I would like to contend that this film does not mean anything.

And that is why it is so utterly, utterly beautiful. In other words, the appeal is in the very fact that the narrative does not arrange itself with any regard for traditional "Hollywood" storytelling.

The crucial reason Donnie Darko doesn't get past the starters at the Hollywood power lunch is because it has no recognisable beginning, middle and end. Indeed, time travel and a distorted chronology are built into the fibre of its narrative.

And the film-going public, as Hollywood knows, need structure. They need to feel as if a film is going to go somewhere to die. That it will conclude. But Donnie Darko doesn't.