Area 52 - Southland Tales Reviews: 34 of 52... The Goodbye Place...

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A soundtrack cover for Southland Tales vs. the title screen for the Richard Kelly short film… The Goodbye Place…

Alright, I just took a double shot of NyQuil, let’s see if I can fire out this review before the drowsiness kicks in!

This is my last week having only one day off after tomorrow I will be unemployed yet again.

I think there were two problems with last week’s review/day off.

  1. A lack of nachos.

  2. I watched Southland Tales when I was pretty sober and watched The Box when I was drunk and ornery.

So this week I made some gourmet nachos (using a habanero cheddar cheese and a jalapeño Havarti with bacon.)  

More nacho fixin’s… I’ve always liked chips and dip as a meal…

I also went with another Richard Kelly marathon, but this time I watched the movie I wasn’t familiar with while I was sober and was borderline blacked out during Southland Tales.

At 2:30 in the pm on Sunday… October 6th… I tracked down Richard Kelly’s student film The Goodbye Place.

This little film really kicks off the Richard Kelly mythos in a great way.

It has bits and pieces that felt very connected to both Donnie Darko and Southland Tales, even stuff from the Southland Tales prequel material (possibly The Box, but I was honestly too drunk to remember anything from that movie.)

First off it’s a story that makes you work.

The kid’s voice-over is reminiscent of Justin Timberlake’s voice-over in Southland Tales.

The sort of omnipresent missing children milk cartons kind of reminds me of the news cut-aways in Southland Tales.

There is an old man that materializes out of nowhere just like Frank the bunny in Donnie Darko.

The strange old man from the short film… The Goodbye Place… by Richard Kelly…

There’s an awkward mention of penis smell got me thinking of the Rock asking to see the Cock Chuggers in Southland Tales.

About halfway through the movie… the kid dresses like a cop and I couldn’t help but think about Seann William Scott in Southland Tales.

Kid cop that reminds me of the cops from Southland Tales… from the short film The Goodbye Place… by Richard Kelly…

There is a symbol that is created out of sand that felt like it was straight from the prequel material for Southland Tales.

And here we have the sand maze from a lot of Richard Kelly’s work…

And most of all the story was about the mysterious death of the main character which seems to be Richard Kelly’s thing.

I followed up this short with lots of booze and YouTube and at around 8:30 in the pm… I fired up Southland Tales and have choppy memories of watching that.

I consider this a successful day off.

See you next week!