Dick On The Box

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I just went through every post I've done on Richard Kelly's next flick The Box to see when it was the first time I heard about the movie being made - and if you know of A) my style of "post the shit out of every tiny morsel of news that's revealed" on the things that obsess me, as this film surely is, as well as B) how long this movie's been delayed for since inception, then you know that was a lot of things to look through - and found out that it was way back in July 0f 2006. Right here. I'd forgotten this but it had supposedly started as a sort-of-collaboration between Kelly and Eli Roth, which appropriately blew my mind back when. Roth was supposed to do the film first and... didn't. Kelly took it over. Made it his own. Cut to three full years later... and the flick still hasn't come out.

But come out it shall! Or say they promise. It's got a release date of October 30th and Richard seems very very happy with where things stand right now judging from this great new interview with him over at AICN. I highly recommend reading it if you've fetishized the Donnie Darko director even a tenth of the amount I have - believe me, a tenth is enough for any sane person to handle. He talks about all sorta of shit, from the technical aspects of what he's accomplished - he mentions that he was trying to make the film look like vintage Polanski, which swoon - to how he took Richard Matheson's short-story "Button Button" on which the film is based and broadened it by taking a whole slew of his own personal history and mashing the two together.

He brings up the trailer - which apparently will be hitting online within the next week, yay! - which leads to him bringing up the film's score, which you may recall has been created by a collaboaration between Arcade Fire and Final Fantasy:

"Kelly: ... It was a long, long courtship to get them to do it. The score from the trailer is not them. It's sort of trailer score, you know?

AICN: And this is the score that will be on the final trailer?

Kelly: Yes, I believe so. Just so you know that, when you hear the score, it's not Win and Regine. You've probably heard the trailer score before. But in a weird way, when you're trying to broadly market a film... I don't question the science of it. Because they do have it down to a science. But the score that [Win, Regine and Owen] did is very Bernard Herrmann. It's very lush. They did eighty minutes of score.

AICN: Really? Depending on the run time of the movie, that's a lot. Did you let them score long passages of the film?

Kelly: There's a sequence in the library with no dialogue for four minutes that's all music. It's a very score-heavy film. And there's pop songs in it, too. We have Eric Clapton, Grateful Dead, Wilson Pickett, Scott Walker and The Marshall Tucker Band. It's Virginia 1976, so I wanted to have that Southern Rock flavor.

(Laughs) I'm just grateful to have a film coming out on more than fifty screens with a marketing budget of more than $300,000."

Yeah no kidding, Richard. Being a fan of his work is exhausting - looking through all the posts I've done on him only proved that I similarly went through years of anguished anticipation for Southland Tales release and, well, we know how that went. Not that I haven't developed a healthy appreciation for that flick. But he sounds positive, as if the studio's finally getting behind him and the film now.

Also, I wanted to add that he talks a great deal about Frank Langella's character in The Box, and his appearance - apparently they digitally removed a third of his face! I was wondering why we'd seen so little of Langella in the admittedly scant press materials released so far.


So a trailer within a week, y'all! Exciting! And Kelly's all set to show some shit at ComiCon too. And hopefully the release date stays put. This time. For the love of god.
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