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dauntingday · 3 months

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top 15 tv shows (in no particular order except i did number them bc otherwise i would forget to do 15)( love u @soleadita and fuck with the icon change immensely)

crashing (2016) call me marissa cooper the way i am ruthlessly stealing this pick but yeah it's. it's insane and fantastic and terrible and beautiful and so much happens so fast but its so so important to me

inside job (it's gross and weird and funny and sad and it's one of the only times i was genuinely upset when i heard about a show being cancelled)

young justice (pointing at an on fire garbage can - this is my son and i love him)

gilmore girls (comfort media of all time what else do you need)

bob's burgers (similar to the above it's very i am falling asleep to the weird bisexual man who is a mess at all times except for how much he loves his family)

fleabag (why yes i have a perfectly normal relationship with the catholic church and the concept of being truly known. why would you ask. and yeah i real life cried)

yuri on ice (idk if anime counts but fuck around and find out this is My List (tm)) ((it's beautiful and soft and lovely and sad and stressful and i listened to the instrumental track so many times it was on my spotify top songs. it's literally just a piano and a boy with a dream and i have wept about it))

given (it's the first anime i ever watched all the way through which in retrospect, fucking insane way to come out of the gate. as a Band Kid (tm) who wanted to be a theater kid but was bad at speaking in front of groups of people, this show did a lot to my psyche in the best way possible)

will (enough with the tears its time for something almost embarrassingly niche. in 2017 TNT had a drama series about william shakespeare and to this day it remains one of the greatest things ive ever seen. jamie campell bower plays the sluttiest version of christopher marlowe you've ever seen in your life. it's chaotic and ridiculous and i absolutely adore it. i have no idea where to find it im pretty sure they want us to forget it exists but i cant)

numb3rs (silly little show about a nervous man who solves murder with the power of math and being a pathetic little wife guy to the hottest woman ive ever seen. theres an episode about trains that i think rewired something in my brain)

white collar (look at me. obviously im a white collar guy. come on now)

invincible (i think ive seen the pilot episode like 4 times. i genuinely think it redefined to me what superhero media could be. oh i adore it more than anything. it's only 9 because i haven't seen season 2 yet but holy shit. holy shit. media of all time. if you want to know me fundamentally and wholly please watch the pilot. i'll watch it again anytime im not kidding)

teen titans (cherished childhood media of all time. only group of people who have ever understood dick grayson)

bridgerton season 2 (i'm bias on account of just finishing it yesterday but holy shit two people have never been in love like they are in love)

the flash (cw) (im sorry to both my mother and god for this one but unfortunately i don't have taste and also it's the reason i started caring about dc in the first place which is the reason i got back on tumblr and met all the cherished gay people in my telephone so yeah. barry allen's allowed to be cringe as fuck i owe him everything)

leo already tagged everyone i know on here but if u see this pls do it and @ me im nosy

#btw if i think about how many of these i've seen with and/or because of the gayest person in my telephone i will start crying again #been thinking about richard gansey too long now im emotionally compromised #i love you fucking freaks so much what the fuck #anyway watch crashing. i think thats the main takeaway

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thanksjro · 4 years

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Children of a Lesser Matrix: It’s Like A Saturday Morning Cartoon, But With… Genocide

Children of a Lesser Matrix is by no means a complete work- more of an outline that never got past the “slap some ideas in as they come to you” stage. Fun fact: you don’t have to write in sequential order if you don’t want to. It can actually help with writer’s block to jump around.

Let’s take a look at the writing process, shall we?

I wasn’t kidding when I said the self-insert got the shaft in Eugenesis.

It turns out that back when the Transmasters UK club was a thing, it was pretty common for the members to have a sort of mascot for themselves, a character that would show up in their work repeatedly. You see it nowadays with fanfic writers too, so it isn’t exactly an odd phenomenon, but it’s something I found interesting.

You know who else shows up repeatedly in Roberts’ other works?

Throwback.

But that’s a topic for another day.

This story takes place in the year of 1990. No peering into the future here; this was probably set in the modern day at the time of writing. Seeing as Eugenesis was first published in 2001, it’s safe to assume that we’re looking at the work of a very young Roberts.

Our focus at present is an asteroid in uncharted space.

Oh!

Oh.

Looks like these guys are Autobots, and their ship crashed into this space rock, killing them instantly. These must be the equivalent of Transformers’ red-shirts, because it usually takes a little more to take them out. There’s also a Decepticon, but we’ll get to him in a second.

What else is on this asteroid? Oh, y’know, nothing special. Just the Creation Matrix.

AND IT’S EVIL.

And everyone knows that green is the color of EVIL.

We’ve got an interesting take on the Matrix here, in that A) it’s evil, and B) it’s sentient. Like, really sentient. Also, it can summon demons, and is gonna stuff them in these Autobot corpses it found in the ship.

No mention of what it does with Thunderwing, if anything at all.

Yep. Thunderwing. If you read the IDW Stormbringer miniseries, or the MTMTE Revolutions one-shot, you know about Thunderwing at least a little. In the Marvel UK comics, his whole shtick was that he was obsessed with obtaining the Creation Matrix, believing himself to have an affinity with it. Guess that sort of backfired on him here.

This is the first time I’ve seen something bolded like this in Roberts’ work, and I really couldn’t tell you exactly why, but it’s oddly endearing. Maybe it the mental image of this 14-year old kid just furiously getting this outline down, underlining the word “will" so hard the lead in his pencil breaks off.

We get hit with an interlude, taking place inside a robot grandpa.

Of course, I’m being facetious, but this is a little interesting. Perhaps this is referring to his base on Cybertron, and not Alpha Trion himself. It seems more likely than Roberts mistaking the name for a place.

And who’s inside Delta Triton? Why, it’s Skimmer!

You probably don’t know Skimmer.

Skimmer was actually in MTMTE #41- or at least, he was mentioned. Hailing from Caminus and serving under Thunderclash, the comic doesn’t even know what gender he is. He’s male. Probably can’t put that on the wiki, seeing as this is about as far from “canon” as it gets- an unpublished, basically unwritten fanfiction. It’ll be our little secret, just between you, me, and James Roberts.

Skimmer runs into his boss Quillion- who does not show up anywhere else, as far I can can tell- who doesn’t look terribly happy at the moment. There’s a huge blip on the radar, and it isn’t anyone they want to have over for tea.

Language!

Quillion orders for these massive rocket boosters they’ve strapped to the moon be turned on so they can get the hell out of the way of this honestly preposterously large pile of Decepticons coming their way. They flip the switch, and moon #3 blasts off.

Oh hi, Luna 01, didn’t recognize you there!

Back at the asteroid, the Matrix went and brought the Autobots back from the dead, and proceeds to wax poetic on the nature of life, and how its new underlings will serve it.

That’s the royal we, baby. The Matrix is making no bones about it, this thing is KING. Seems like the Omniforce is a Roberts-original idea. Wonder what that’s all about. And what of this new force of evil?

Oh my fucking god his name is Genocide.

If I were a middle-school kid reading this outline, I’d be losing my mind over how cool and edgy this was. Roberts is trying so hard here, and I’m all about it. You go, tiny JRo. You go full cowl on these evil robots.

Our Omniforce have personalities to match their new looks and identities, and it’s about what you’d expect- these boys are a drop of blood in the water away from going completely feral. Also, Thunderwing’s starting to wake up. So, that’ll be a thing soon.

Back at the interlude, everything’s settling down as the gravity rights itself. The moon almost hit light-speed- which, holy shit- but it looks like the laws of inertia in a vacuum are on vacation today.

Not that I expect a kid from the 90’s to know about that.

They’re roughly 7000 hours away from Cybertron, so they better start heading back now. Assuming that there’s still a Cybertron to go back to.

Back with the first plot, Thunderwing’s having a seizure- Roberts’ prose characters seem to do that a lot- and the Matrix is freaking out, because if he dies, they won’t have a ride off this barren space rock. There’s only one thing to do!

The Matrix zaps Thunderwing with green (evil!) lightning, saving him from the brink of death. Thunderwing is less than enthused with this turn of events.

You get redundancies like this when outlining, it happens.

Thunderwing is pissed, and the brand-spanking new Omniforce isn’t super sure how to handle the current situation. The Matrix, thinking quickly, merges with Thunderwing.

This does not help the situation.

You’ve had them for five minutes, and you’re already killing them. I know you’re new to this, Matrix, but come on now.

TWENTY THOUSAND YEARS LATER, it turns out that Quillion’s estimate of their arrival back at Cybertron was off by just a smidge. The moon runs into a tomb of all things in the depths of space, and brings it on inside to see what all the hubbub’s about.

It’s got a Mind-Krell in it.

No, I have no idea what a Mind-Krell is. Another Roberts original. He’s always been rather ambitious as a writer, it would seem.

Jumping back in time, Thunderwing’s throwing out his rawest lines, and it’s amazing.

Like holy shit, I unironically love this. I wish he’d decided to do more with this, it’s fantastic.

We get our first taste of action. Theres a lot going on here: Genocide is apparently a necromancer, capable of controlling the dead, which Thunderwing currently technically is. However, this takes time to set up, so it’s Black Fusion’s turn to step up to the plate. He shoots off a volley of Black Fusion from his eyes, knocking Thunderwing over.

Yes, they’re named after their powers. Or are their powers named after them? Anyway, they’re about to head for the shuttle, when Genocide orders Kaos to use his- you guessed it- Kaos Energy.

We’re also dealing with the “can’t just use said” phase that every young writer goes through. Kaos’ staff, which he’s had this whole time, turns into a gun? It’s not clear, but he shoots Thunderwing and then dives into the shuttle at the last possible second, Indiana Jones-style.

As the shuttle takes off, Genocide warns their resident possessor Daemon to not do the thing, even though he really, really wants to. With that, they train the onboard weapons systems on Thunderwing below- all of them.

And that’s all we got for Children of a Lesser Matrix.

Clearly there would have been more if he’d continued with the ideas, but as is we have a fascinating snapshot of what was probably one of Roberts’ first forays into writing. You don’t get to do this with very many authors, where you can go this far back and see what they were doing, what changed, what stayed the same. I wasn’t expecting to see ideas from MTMTE pop up here- and certainly not ones that were as big as the moon thrusters.

If this entry seems a little soft around the edges, it’s probably because it is. I’m of two mind about covering this at all. On one hand: it was published online for others to read, which makes it free game, and it’s a part of his growth as a writer, so of course I’m going to look at it! On the other hand: Literal. Child. I wouldn’t make fun of a kid just starting out now, and I’m definitely not trying to rag on a young writer retroactively. That being said...

I’m not gonna lie, this is kind of a rough sit. I mean, other than it being an idea springboard that never went anywhere. There are some neat ideas, but… look, anything that’s truly made from the bottom of one’s heart, out of pure love, is always going to be at least a little cringe-inducing. That’s just how it goes, even with the best writers, and this is an outline written by a kid who grew up on 80’s-era media and was just starting out.

Still, there was a lot of potential here. It’s ambitious, it’s over the top, it’s silly and earnest. I like it. It makes me smile to read it and think about the person creating it and having fun doing it.

It just goes to show that no one starts out amazing at what they do.

Up next, a relic of a bygone era- the ‘zine! It’s The Mystery of the Transformer Decoys, a ‘zine that was printed out and sent via snail mail. We truly are spoiled by the internet.

#transformers #jro #children of a lesser matrix #maccadam #Hannzreads #text post #long post #prose writing

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gobbochune · 6 years

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What fantasy stories do you enjoy? And what makes something fantasy vs not fantasy? Not to argue, I'm just curious how you define it

Never be afraid to ask me about my personal nitpicky definitions for media, i love this shit!

the reason it took me so long to piece together my feelings about this show is because, like i said, its tied up with the uncanny valley of my personal tastes. There is no one obvious decision that is bad, but rather it consistently presents a character or theme I might enjoy and ruins it for me. The characters are somehow simultaneously over explained and unrelatable. The world is too realistic but also so cartoonishly dark you cant take it seriously. everything that happens is predictable, and yet i still manage to be disappointed by the execution. it is so out of synch with the bare minimum of what i’m willing to tolerate that its almost impressive. Usually when i hate something i’ll consume everything i can from the franchise so i can properly illustrate my complaints (or in the hopes that it will redeem itself) but game of thrones was so contentious to me specifically that i couldnt even be in the room if it was on. The only other show that has ever offended me that badly was scandal, which coincidentally is also a shock value political drama.

Its not enough to say “Game of Thrones shouldnt count as fantasy because XYZ” because I have examples of the same things being done in different fantasy books without contending with their classification. I don’t even like some of these books, and yet I still got a clear taste of the world and characters in a more tactful way then game of thrones does anything.

But my initial interest in Game of Thrones (and subsequent disappointment when it doesnt live up to my expectations) can be boiled down to one complaint:

The Tone

When I think of the perfect fantasy adventure that exemplifies what I lowkey want from any fantasy world my mind inevitably drifts to the presentation of The Last Unicorn. What this surreal not-quite-a-kids movie from the 80s lacks in vague writing and a pretty lackluster 3rd act it makes up for with its almost oppressive tone of loneliness, searching, loss, and wonder.

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The film opens with a song about a world that wastes away waiting for just one glimpse of a unicorn before everything succumbs to the cynicism and apathy. The lyrics express how it feels to slowly lose your sense of wonder as nature crumbles, seasons change, and time passes. But at the end of each verse, as if to represent a silver lining, there is a reminder that there is just one unicorn left. She’s old and broken and you might never see her, but she’s a reminder that magic lives somewhere out there. And for that, you feel alive.

That feeling of carrying on with the bittersweet hope of seeing a unicorn follows throughout the movie. Every single character the unicorn comes across has had their hope destroyed, but those who kept believing are able to see her and join her on her quest. It presents optimism and faith as an unquestioned truth, but a truth that weighs on your soul as you grow up.

Like game of thrones the world of the last unicorn is cruel and unfair. In such a world hope is a heavy burden, and those who wait for unicorns instead of moving on with their lives destroy themselves waiting. Its so sad and unfair that when they finally meet her they fall to pieces.

The last unicorn journeys is to find others like herself, other spots of light in the darkness that have been stolen away by the cruelty of men. It is this sacrifice of her own innocence that saves the other unicorns, and though she can return to the forest happy there are unicorns in the world again she’ll never truly go home again. Her home was defined by the eternal and immortal hope she represents, and with that gone, it will never be the same.

The Last Unicorn is haunting and oppressive and bittersweet, and it never has to explain its themes to anyone.

We never learn what happened to Molly Grue in the years she waited to meet the unicorn. She doesnt get a monologue where she explains in masochistic detail every terrible thing she saw and did to make her so ashamed to stand before the unicorn now. If you’re young like I was when I watched this scene, you might have no idea why Molly is angry at all. The answer comes with age and experience, not through the writer describing the disgusting abuse she faced from her husband and his men. This scene is darker and sadder than anything that happens in Game of Thrones because of its sincerity, not its content. We can listen to Cersei talk about how the period-appropriate misogyny made her sad as a kid but she never allows herself to be as vulnerable as Molly Grue in this scene. By comparison we know Molly a lot less than we know Cersei, but Molly manages to instantly have my sympathy in one scene while I still dont give a fuck about Cersei after six seasons.

This refusal to explain itself is present in the lore as well. Rules are not drawn up and given context but instead referenced with such certainty that you believe and remember them.

Why must one never run from an immortal? Because it will only attract their attention.

This rule of the universe is brought up once but I think about what it could mean all the time. What if it means that immortals are so powerful that your only hope to avoid their notice? That their nature as an eternal truth makes running away pointless? Perhaps theres something about immortals being so ancient that they can only see you if you’re moving quickly. It is such an alien and vague statement thrown out so casually that it makes you feel confused and out of place in a strange environment you dont understand.

Like, I dont know, you’re on an adventure through a fantasy land or something.

While its cool that I know the scientific properties of fire that keeps burning until its all gone, if I understand that fire as a threat its mere presence in the story already spoils its effect. Its a fire that keeps burning. Big Whoop. I guess those ships are gone now but what exactly did that add to my experience? The dragons are neat but they’re a type of lizard that is capable of preforming magic. Once you know what that magic is theres nothing all too mysterious or dangerous about them. They’re just large aggressive carnivores. Of course its a stupid idea to let them run rampant through a city. Anything shocking that happens because of the dragons isn’t a reminder that this world is a strange world filled with unpredictable consequences, but that these big fire-breating animals are being managed by idiots.

It doesn’t matter where the Harpy came from or what exactly happened to Molly Grue. The harpy is terrifying despite having no special powers and Molly’s arc begins and finishes within a minute and 16 seconds and it manages to be more believable and tragic than anything that happens in Game of Thrones. And while the idea of a dry political drama within a fictional universe is a cool idea, its just not one I have any interest in and I’m tired of people insisting i need to watch it.

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foodieworldmelbourne · 5 years

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Why Bianca Spender is skipping Australian fashion week

I dont think I can capture everything I want to in a traditional show format, she explains. My runways are never straight.

Cut from the same cloth ... Bianca Spender (right) with her mother, designer Carla Zampatti. Last year, Spender staged one of the standout shows at Fashion Week, featuring a diagonal series of catwalks that snaked through the crowd. The critics loved it but photographers hated not being able to capture the perfect front-on shot. Over a shared meal of grilled whiting fillets, a dish of fregola with seafood that is like a more chewy risotto, and salads, we discuss the front, back and sides view of fashion, as more people explore fashion through two-dimensional images, often on their smartphones. Spender believes social media, specifically Instagram, has had a huge change on the way people can market ideas. I feel lucky because my clothes are better in movement. When online shopping first came out and everyone was straight front, back, sides, I was like, You dont have any idea how that skirt floats or feels, and I was really struggling with working out how to translate my ideas. Movement is at the core of how Spender designs and produces her clothes, joking that skirts must pass the Martin Place test, named after the notorious wind tunnel in the Sydney CBD. Since becoming a mother to two sons, now aged seven and 10, those tests have expanded to include the carrying the baby test to determine dress lengths (Spender doesnt own a pair of jeans).

Costume collaborators ... Spender with Sydney Dance Company's Rafael Bonachela.Credit:Louise Kennerley Spenders obsession with movement was put to the ultimate test recently, when she designed the costumes for the Sydney Dance Companys 50th-anniversary production of Cinco, under artistic director Rafael Bonachela. Some of the dance movements were so physical that three costumes ripped during rehearsals, and there were many repairs required. Each [costume] fitting, the scope of movement was amazing and even if I had mimicked it I couldnt mimic what would happen to the costume when it was on [the dancers], she says.

Fregola, calamari and mussels at Totti's.Credit:Wolter Peeters Spender said the project, even if it has forced her to sacrifice other work this year, was a dream come true for the one-time ballet student. Every family photo from the age of five to 11, I am in my ballet costume. I loved it so much I wouldnt take [my costume] off, she says. I call myself the tortoise. My mum loves running fast and loves winning. Bianca Spender Spender's gazelle-like physique and flowing strawberry blonde hair means she could easily pass as a professional dancer, although she admits age and the way she moves has taken its toll on her body. I only recently realised at the physio when he asked how I move everything is always very extended, I am not holding my core very much," she says while demonstrating how she would pick up a vase off a table, arm outstretched. "I love how everything looks when its long but then you dont protect your body.

Grilled whiting fillets at Totti's.Credit:Wolter Peeters Spender grew up in Sydney the middle of three children to fashion icon Carla Zampatti and John Spender (her parents separated in 2010). She recalls living in big, spacious houses where classical music was often playing and small talk was non-existent, the family preferring to tackle politics or business at the dinner table, sometimes to the bemusement of Spenders classmates. At school she would demonstrate her eccentric fashion taste on mufti days, but it wasnt until Spender reached adulthood that she truly understood her familys notoriety in Sydney's cultural scene.

Bianca Spender has formed a reputation at fashion week for her non-linear catwalks.Credit:AAP Only years after I left school and I [reflected on] certain conflicts with certain kids that Id never understood. People would say, Well your mum is Carla Zampatti, and I was just like, Oh.

The Zampatti-Spender family on the steps of their Sydney home in 1986. Clockwise from left: John Spender, Carla Zampatti, Alex Schuman, Allegra Spender, Bianca Spender. Credit:Ian Charles Cugley/SMH My mum is pretty normal, shes a postwar immigrant. What that means to me is you have to finish all your food, you live in a beautiful house but you understand the value of money. For a pre-teen Spender, that meant school holidays spent working at her mothers inner-city office, doing every job from tea lady to banking clerk. I am the most ridiculous jaywalker because I have been walking around the city since I was eight, Spender jokes. A firsthand apprenticeship in the Carla Zampatti offices, coupled with her familys work and social ethic, meant Spender had quite a feminist upbringing. I never felt the need to answer to a man, dress for a man, or been dependent on a man for anything. They dont have to approve of how I talk, what I wear, what I earn, what I spend my money on. Last year, Spender reached another milestone when she and Zampatti divided their businesses into separate entities, including a new head office in Rushcutters Bay for Spender. The pair are clearly close, often travelling together overseas or to fashion shows in Australia (both brands are carried at David Jones, for example). But when it comes to their work practices, Spender admits they are quite different. Loading I call myself the tortoise. My mum loves running fast and loves winning. She has racing car blood in her family (both Zampattis brothers were race-car drivers) but I am about the journey. Its not that I dont want the end result to look great. You can get a good result and have a terrible journey but that doesnt mean the same to me. I am [about] the long game. Which comes back to Spenders Fashion Week dilemma. She has a big vision of a project involving 10 women who have influenced her, dressing 10 other women, using her carefully archived collections. Its still morphing but she knows it wont be ready by mid-May, when fashion week takes place. I am probably being too ambitious in what I want to achieve out of it. But at least if I am pushing myself to strive for something. I wont do what I expect and Ill find that new form. (A week after our lunch, Spender phones to say she has decided to sit out of Fashion Week and will instead stage a solo, more intimate event in early May.) Recently, Spender has experimented with salon-style showings, where she revels in getting up close with the clothing and the customer. As someone whos more comfortable at a dinner party for 10 than a cocktail function for 300, Spenders aversion to big-production shows is understandable. At least if I am pushing myself to strive for something. I wont do what I expect - and Ill find that new form. Bianca Spender At a big party, my partners wings will get bigger. Whereas if you have me at a dinner party, I am passionate put me around lots of people and they are asking, Whats wrong with you? I am so not a show pony I find shows an incredible creative process but the way you only get eight to 10 minutes to present your world I remember once saying 12 [seconds] to [stylist] Mark Vassallo and he said, No, 12 is way too long. And I said, That dress took 12 weeks to get right and I cant have it on stage for eight seconds. I want to challenge that.

The bill at Totti's. One point on which Spender and her mother are in lockstep is on the retention of Australian fashion talent (Zampatti funds a scholarship for a UTS graduate to study overseas, with the intention of them returning home). Unlike some of her peers, Spender, who worked in France and Italy in fashion for four years after completing a commerce degree, has resisted aggressively chasing sales or the limelight overseas. We know we [Australia] are leaders in sport compared to our population ... in fashion theres still a, Whats everyone else doing? attitude. New Zealand has a very strong vision for its fashion with a small population but Australia is often very outward looking. We need to find a bit more confidence in ourselves and our own vision and our own style. Our need to be revered by overseas comes from our lack of supporting ourselves and our culture Whenever [a journalist] writes on a designer, its X is stocked on [e-tailer] Net-a-Porter. Do they need to be stocked there for you to love them? A lot of people go bankrupt trying to catch the overseas dollar. I am focused on building my Australianmarket. If my international market comes quicker, great, but I am not running after it. I dont need it to prove to myself that what I do is unique and has a strong vision. THE BILL, PLEASE Totti's 283 Bondi Road, Bondi 02 9114 7371 Open: Mon-Sat 11.30am-10pm, Sun 11.30am-9pm Melissa Singer is National Fashion Editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Most Viewed in Lifestyle Loading https://www.theage.com.au/lifestyle/fashion/why-bianca-spender-is-skipping-australian-fashion-week-20190410-p51csm.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_lifestyle

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topsolarpanels · 7 years

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Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly: ‘Sometimes movies need time to marinate’

The director of the cult favorite Donnie Darko was once hailed as the next David Lynch. Now, as fans rediscover his 2007 flop Southland Tales, he explains why patience is still a virtue and Trumps victory was a grotesque inevitability

Talking with the writer and director Richard Kelly, its easy to steer the conversation toward the end of the world. After all, Kelly developed a fervent cult following( and alienated it) through narratives of prophesied apocalypse 2001 s cult curio Donnie Darko and 2007 s cult-classic-in-the-making Southland Tales. But its not the collapsing builds or rivers of blood that fascinate Kelly; its what comes right before. The creeping panic. The normalizing of madnes. The casual neglect for your neighbour. The clod in your throat that signifies your newfound understanding that this was inevitable.

If those impressions audios familiar in our current Trump-addled dystopia, that was not Kellys intention. Southland Tales, a post-9/ 11 satire melded with a retelling of the Book of Revelation that also includes a complex theory of day travel, was never meant to feel like a pre-game show for the next decade of global misery.

The sprawling narrative set in an alternative 2008 in which a nuclear attack on Abilene, Texas, triggers a third world war is organized around an amnesiac action star named Boxer Santaros( played by Dwayne The Rock Johnson) who falls in love with a porn star/ talkshow host/ entrepreneur/ pop star/ clairvoyant who goes by the professional name Krysta Now( Sarah Michelle Gellar ), who has written a screenplay about the end times.

Oh, and theres also a government agency dedicated to spying on Americans, an underground neo-Marxist cult, an alternative energy source that might be rending a pit in the space-time continuum, a United States military sponsored by Hustler and Bud Light, and a mind-altering drug that maintains American soldiers docile and dependent. Jon Lovitz plays a racist cop, Seann William Scott plays identical twin police officers, Amy Poehler shows up as an anarchist improv comic, Justin Timberlake plays a drug-addled war veteran and Wallace Shawn of The Princess Bride fame is the antichrist( or a reasonable fax ).

Its overwhelming to process, and reflects so much of the anxiety of our age, even if it isnt always pleasant to watch. I truly wanted it to be something that you would get lost in and that would sustain multiple viewings, Kelly tells me over dinner in Los Angeles. When discussing the movie, his eyes widen and he projects an impish yet tentative exuberance as though hes feeling out whether youre going to receive his ideas without judgment. Now, that aspiration can be a self-defeating prophecy, as we assured clearly.

Kelly seems wistful about the experience of making and releasing the movie, which, after a disastrous Cannes screening at which the movie was booed heavily, almost lost theatrical distribution. We were in Boston, in pre-production on[ his Southland Tales follow-up] The Box, the weekend Southland Tales opened in 50 -some theaters. The upcoming Monday was our first day of principal photography. We were scrambling for our first day. We had done the AFI Fest premiere and they rushed me back to Boston. And then, I remember that morning, were shooting Cameron[ Diaz] and Frank Langella, that is something that emotional scene in the Boston Public Library. Someone comes up to me and tells me per-screen medians on Southland Tales. It was such a bummer. A screening Kelly attended with the actor James Marsden was attended by only four other people. Roger Ebert likened the movie to the third day of a pitch conference on velocity. One of the rare positive reviews of the movie came from the New York Times critic Manohla Dargis, who called it funny, audacious, messy and feverishly inspired.

I definitely remain proud of the aspiration of it. I feel like sometimes things merely need time to marinate, he says. The movie has started to find a new audience. At the time of our meeting, hes in between hosting screenings of Southland Tales thanks to a roadshow tour of the movie sponsored by the Alamo Drafthouse chain of arthouse theaters. The newfound expressed appreciation for Southland Tales by both audiences and emerging pockets of critics hasnt yet translated to tangible opportunities for Kelly. I dont ever want to feel defeated or that Ive let the organizations of the system defeat me, he says.

Sarah Michelle Gellar in Southland Tales. Photo: Publicity image from movie company

Southland Tales finding an audience almost 10 year later would not mark the first time one of Kellys cinemas gained esteem upon second( or third) glance. Donnie Darko grossed a scant $517,375 when it was released a month after 9/11. When it found a huge audience on video and DVD, Kelly became a hot commodity, an heir apparent to the surrealist tradition of directors like David Lynch. Sometimes, the wind is at your back. Sometimes, its at your front, Kelly says about the ups and downs of his career. Darko remains his greatest up, a movie thats become a touchstone work for the generation that grew up with it. Darko was a disaster at Sundance too, he tells me. No one remembers that, but it was. Im grateful for any rosy light of hindsight. I remember it took us almost six months to sell the movie. It almost went immediately to the Starz network. We had to beg them to set it in theaters. Christopher Nolan stepped in and convinced Newmarket to set it in theaters.

After those issues, Kelly could have gone the expected road and taken on a big-budget studio tentpole. He could have directed the sequel, which he declined to do( it objective up being terrible and going straight-out to DVD ). Instead, he choice this peculiar, dense tale about the decline of American power.

President-elect Donald Trump was only a reality show curiosity when Southland Tales was released, but his mixture of profane and pious could easily have attained him a character in the film. I think that Donald Trump is this grotesque inevitability that has get this far because there was something truly, really dangerous concealing beneath the surface, that has been concealing beneath the surface for many, many years. The Republicans Kelly imagined in Southland Tales were the neocon religious zealots that seem almost quaint to modern eyes. They seemed like the ultimate boogeymen in 2007, but as Kelly points out , no one in the Bush family would even show up at the RNC[ Republican national convention ].

What Southland Tales expressed better than most politically charged cinemas of the Bush era was the sentiment that it would get worse, that something had been unleashed that could not be put back. At the time that we were stimulating Southland Tales, it was Iraq war and Britney Spears. That dichotomy on your Tv screen. The branding and everything was happening. It seemed inevitable that everyone would start to co-opt branding. Social media hadnt truly exploded yet. To find politicians going after each other on Twitter, its bizarre. To find Elizabeth Warren quoting the monorail on the Simpsons. To find politicians co-opting this millennial social media branding, its a blurring of the lines.

Each of his three cinemas reflects that sheepish rebellion that is part of his personality. Donnie Darko was a mostly passive protagonist fighting against both the oppressive system of high school and the levers of fate that he could only pull at the cinemas climax. Boxer Santaros is a pawn in a conflict between fascism and socialism, religion and science, and love and demise. Eventually, those characters succumb to a power greater than any on Ground, something unknowable. So does Kelly believe all this is down to higher power pulling the strings?

I dont believe any of this happened by accident. Thats just depressing and absurd, in my opinion, he answers. I do think theres a design to things, and we can never hope to know it in any of our lifetimes. Component of the challenge is trying to make sense of it. Thats whats cathartic for me as an artist, to try to make sense of it.