Richard Kelly

James Richard Kelly born 1975 is an American writerdirector best known for his debut feature the sciencefiction cult classic Donnie Darko2001 Kelly was born in Newport News Virginia the son of Lane and Ennis Kelly He won a scholarship to the University of Southern California to study at the USC School of CinemaTelevision He made two short films at USC The Goodbye Place and Visceral Matter before graduating in 1997 Donnie Darko was his first feature and was nominated for 21 awards winning 11 of them including a nomination for a Saturn Award The film later ended up 2 on Empire magazines list of 50 greatest independent films of all time behind Quentin Tarantinos Reservoir Dogs Kelly wrote the screenplay for Tony Scotts biographical crime thriller Domino 2005 and went on to write and direct the postmodern LA satire Southland Tales 2006 and the sciencefiction mystery The Box 2009 inspired by The Twilight Zone episode Button Button Although his three films differ considerably in setting and characters they share similar themes of time travel existentialism and spirituality Kellys particular filmmaking sensibilities can be traced back to his viewing of Terry Giliams Brazil 1985 as told to author Robert K Elder in an interview for his book The Film That Changed My Life 2011 The commercial underperformance of Kellys films has made it difficult for him to secure financing for other projects and as such he has not directed a film since 2009 In 2016 filmmaker Kevin Smith said of Kelly He is insanely creative and is not unlike Christopher Nolan But Nolan wound up in the Warner Bros system where he got special handling and he got a lot of money to make huge art films like Inception Richard can be one of our greatest filmmakers He is right now but just a lot of people dont realize it Hes still a kid and someone needs to Nolan that kid