05/14/2002 Entry:
"Donnie Darko DVD bonus materials"

Donnie Darko has two commentaries - one is Richard Kelly (director) and Jake Gyllenhaall (Donnie) and it is annoying. Whenever Richard Kelly begins to discuss something seriously - themes, technical details, whatever - it seems like Gyllenhaall pops up with a joke or starts goofing off and the thread is lost. It just seems like Gyllenhaall has this attitude that there is something wrong with taking things too seriously which really rubs me the wrong way. If you don't take it that seriously then go get another fucking job, there's a thousand actors who do and are probably more talented waiting to crawl up the ladder. It just rang of this whole attitude of discussing something like film in a serious manner is pretentious and dull.

Another problem is that Kelly basically spells out every facet of the film, which I just feel is unnecessary. He obviously spent a good deal of time trying to make a movie that was ambiguous and open, with lots of aspects to explore and ponder, so why just lay it all out now? It just seems stupid, and again I got the impression that he didn't take the project as seriously as he could have, which was disheartening. Additionally, I was really hoping that when he got to the point where the voiceover comes in at the end, he would reveal that the studio forced him to add it to make things clearer. But no, he basically says that he thought we were all too stupid to remember a conversation we heard an hour ago.

There is a second commentary labeled "cast and crew" which I'll probably skip unless I read somewhere that it is worthwhile. For whatever reason, commentary by actors always seems to fail. I've never heard a good one. This may be partially due to my desire to hear more details of the filmmaking process, but it just seemed that whenever you get an actor in front of the mike all they want to do is goof off.

There are also 20(!) deleted scenes which I found more interesting. They were all pretty much good candidates for the trash heap, although there is a really nice scene with Drew Barrymore showing the class Watership Down which its a shame they had to cut to get the film down, because as Kelly says, he didn't have final cut and had to deliver a film under two hours.