Area 52 - Southland Tales Reviews: 8 of 52... The Richard Kelly Retweet Week!!!

​What an interesting week.

First… the above happened… after last week’s review… later in the week… I found out about the below….

I had no idea this was happening, but these are custom shoes made to promote the short film 487, that I wrote, that’s gearing up to shoot in the next couple of weeks.

Finally… this happened.

I never in my wildest dreams thought that I would be in a band, but there I am on my cellphone in the middle of a Gilbert Grape and the Trucknuts performance.

I was all amped up while also being tuckered out when I sat down at 1:30 in the am Tuesday, April 9th, 2013 for this week’s viewing of Southland Tales.

One of the new readers who found out about this project via the above-mentioned retweet pointed out that there is a Cannes Festival Cut of Southland Tales. I’ve heard that there’s more to this movie but have yet to do any research. I’m still trying to watch the movie without being tainted by anyone else’s explanations or theories.

Without doing much research I tracked down a copy of the director’s cut hit play and was blown away by my findings.

I’ve been a fan of this film throughout the entire process of this experiment, but when I saw how this movie is supposed to be seen, it made me very sad. This was meant to be a good movie and was a good, good movie at one point, and not just a fun, good movie. ​

This was my eighth time viewing this movie and the first time it made total sense and that’s not just because I’ve seen the movie so many times. This cut makes sense all the way through.

Everything that I’ve been confused about up until now was totally clear. Every joke that fell flat, ended up being part of a bigger scene where the joke actually works. Every time I used to say, "Wait? Why's that happening?" seemed clear as everything played out in the proper order.

Even my favorite rouge continuity character that I pointed out last week wasn't acting up in this cut. The bald extra with the goatee that jumps in and out of existence in the theatrical release… calmly sits and enjoys his tea and fries as the entire uncut scene is allowed to play out.  

There’s also something about the director’s cut that tones down how over the top the theatrical release ended up being. The way it is theatrical release is cut together things seem way faster paced as if to play up the comedy. Though the director’s cut has the same humor, it plays out as a serious movie with humorous elements and not the quirky, over-ambitious film that missed its mark that it eventually became.

​I hate to say it that way because as you've read, I do like and have fun watching the theatrical release but there is no question as to where things went wrong. This director’s cut is 160 minutes long. I'm guessing one of the "experts" decided that they would rather scare off an established fan base by putting out this convoluted comedy rather than let it run long and have a smaller hit on their hands, that I'm sure would have lived on in the aftermarket if it didn't do all that well in the theaters.

​There’s part of me that’s created this story where Richard Kelly put up the fight to release it as is, but then after losing the battle created a new, separate Southland Tales that adds to the story even more.

​Just like there are two the Rocks in the movie, now there are actually two Southland Tales in the world. The original that got dragged out to Cannes, this was a regular film that made sense, then the bomb dropped killing this old version to let the theatrical release live on unaware that it’s an inferior clone, just like the Rock clone created during the time travel this new version has flaws in its logic and memory.

Now I really can't wait to watch both versions and really explore what happened!!!