Southland Tales

Ronald replies that it was not their fault, with Roland conceding that it was friendly fire. Abilene narrates that a new age is beginning, with Roland as its Messiah, concluding that he is a "pimp" and that "pimps don't commit suicide."

Cast

Dwayne Johnson as Boxer Santaros, an amnesiac action star whose life crosses paths with Krysta Now.
Nora Dunn as Cyndi Pinziki, a porn director and principal member of USIDeath, an organization with plans to destroy US-IDENT.
Christopher Lambert as Walter Mung, an arms dealer who sells weapons inside an ice cream truck.
John Larroquette as Vaughn Smallhouse, an advisor to Senator Bobby Frost.
Justin Timberlake as Private Pilot Abilene, an Iraq War veteran.

Wood Harris appears as Neo-Marxist activist Dion Element. Zelda Rubinstein, Beth Grant and Curtis Armstrong portray Dr. Katarina Kuntzler, Dr. Inga Von Westphalen and Dr. Soberin Exx, respectively, all being members of the baron's entourage. Will Sasso plays Fortunio Balducci, while Janeane Garofalo appears as General Teena MacArthur, whose scenes only appear in the Cannes Cut. Eli Roth cameos as a man who is shot by US-IDENT while on the toilet.

Production

Kelly wrote Southland Tales shortly before the September 11 attacks. The original script involved blackmail, a porn star, and two cops. After the attacks, Kelly revised the script. He said, "[The original script] was more about making fun of Hollywood. But now it's about, I hope, creating a piece of science fiction that's about a really important problem we're facing, about civil liberties and homeland security and needing to sustain both those things and balance them." He described the film as a "tapestry of ideas all related to some of the biggest issues that I think we're facing right now . . . alternative fuel or the increasing obsession with celebrity and how celebrity now intertwines with politics". With the film's premise of a nuclear attack on Texas, Kelly wanted to take a look at how the United States would respond and survive while constructing a "great black comedy."

Kelly said: "[Southland Tales] will only be a musical in a post-modern sense of the word in that it is a hybrid of several genres. There will be some dancing and singing, but it will be incorporated into the story in very logical scenarios as well as fantasy dream environments." The film often references religious and literary works; a policeman says, "Flow my tears," in reference to a Philip K. Dick novel of that name. ("Taverner" is the name of the main character in the same book and suffers identity problems of his own.) Pilot Abilene (Justin Timberlake) quotes Biblical scripture from the Book of Revelation in narrating the film and allusion is made both to Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening and an altered version of T. S. Eliot's The Hollow Men. Kelly met with Rick Moranis about playing Vaughn Smallhouse. Kelly consciously sought out actors that he felt had been pigeonholed and wanted to showcase their "undiscovered talents." Filming began on August 15, 2005, with a budget of around US$15–17 million.

Post-production

Kelly sent the organizers of the 2006 Cannes Film Festival a rough cut of Southland Tales on DVD assuming that it would not be accepted. Much to his surprise, they loved it and wanted the film entered in competition for the Palme d'Or. He stopped editing the film and was also unable to complete all of the visual effects in time for the screening. Kelly describes the negative reaction at Cannes as a "very painful experience on a lot of levels" but ultimately felt that the film "was better off because of it".

Universal Studios had originally optioned the U.S. rights, but after the Cannes screening, it was sold to Sony, although Universal still retained studio credit only and some international distribution rights. Kelly sought more financing to finish visual effects for the film, and he negotiated a deal with Sony to cut down on the film's length in exchange for funds to complete the visual effects.

Kelly edited the film down to the basic storylines of the characters portrayed by Scott, Gellar, and Johnson. The director also sought to keep the musical number performed by Timberlake, based on "All These Things That I've Done" by The Killers which he felt was the heart and soul of the film.

Soundtrack

Southland Tales: Music from the Motion Picture is the original soundtrack of Richard Kelly's 2007 film Southland Tales.

"Wave of Mutilation" (UK surf version) by Pixies
"Oh My Angel" by Bertha Tillman
"Howl" (extended version) by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
"Look Back In" by Moby
"Me & Bobby McGee" by Waylon Jennings
"Chord Sounds" by Moby
"Lucky Me" by Roger Webb
"3 Steps" by Moby
"Broken Hearted Savior" by Big Head Todd and the Monsters
"Teen Horniness Is Not a Crime" by Sarah Michelle Gellar, Abbey McBride and ClarKent
"Tiny Elephants" by Moby
"Forget Myself" by Elbow
"The Star-Spangled Banner" by Rebekah Del Rio & the Section Quartet
"Three Days" (live version) by Jane's Addiction
"Memory Gospel" by Moby

The soundtrack for Southland Tales was released in stores and online on November 6, 2007. Amongst the songs not available on the soundtrack but featured in the film are Muse's "Blackout", The Killers' "All These Things That I've Done", and Blur's "Tender". Additionally, tracks from Radiohead, Louis Armstrong, Beethoven, Kris Kristofferson, and several tracks from Moby's Hotel:Ambient are likewise absent from the album. The reason for the exclusion of some of these tracks, like the song by The Killers was as a result of a dispute with the record label.

Release

Marketing

Southland Tales was initially planned to be a nine-part "interactive experience", with the first six parts published in six 100-page graphic novels that would be released in a six-month period up to the film's release. The feature film comprises the final three parts of the experience. A website was also developed to intertwine with the graphic novels and the film itself.

Part Four: Temptation Waits
Part Five: Memory Gospel
Part Six: Wave of Mutilation

Theatrical release

thumb|right|Director [[Richard Kelly (filmmaker)|Richard Kelly at a screening of Southland Tales]]

Following its May 21, 2006 premiere at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, where it was poorly received, the final version of the film premiered at Fantastic Fest on September 22, 2007. The film was originally scheduled to be released in the United States on November 9, 2007, in partnership with Destination Films and Samuel Goldwyn Films, but eventually opened in limited release in California on November 14, 2007. It opened in Canada, as well as nationwide in the United States, in just 63 theaters, and was screened on May 21 at the Grand Lumiere Theater. Jason Solomons, in The Observer (UK), said that "Southland Tales was so bad it made me wonder if [Kelly] had ever met a human being" and that ten minutes of the "sprawling, plotless, post-apocalyptic farrago" gave him the "sinking feeling that this may be one of the worst films ever presented in [Cannes] competition." A handful of the American and European critics, however, were more positive. The Village Voice critic J. Hoberman, for example, called Southland Tales "a visionary film about the end of times" comparable in recent American film only to David Lynch's Mulholland Drive.

Critical response

41% of 106 reviews compiled by review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes are positive, and the average rating is 4.9 out of 10. The site's consensus states: "Southland Tales, while offering an intriguing vision of the future, remains frustratingly incoherent and unpolished." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 44 out of 100, based on 26 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".

Glenn Kenny, in his review for Premiere criticized the film's style, "Kelly's camera placement and framing are at best textbook and at worst calamitously mediocre." In her review for the Los Angeles Times, Carina Chocano wrote, "You get the sense that Kelly is too angry to really find any of it funny. It's easy to empathize with his position, not so easy to remain engrossed in a film that's occasionally inspired but ultimately manic and scattered." David Edelstein's review in New York magazine criticized the film's writing, "Kelly aims high and must have shot off his own ear, which is the only way to account for the dialogue."

On the program Ebert & Roeper, Richard Roeper and guest critic Michael Phillips gave the film a negative review. While Roeper called the film "Two hours and twenty-four minutes of abstract crap," Phillips felt that "the film has a head on its shoulders despite the fact that it can't find any direction" but nevertheless gave the film a thumbs down. In his written review, Ebert gave the film 1 star out of four, stating he admired Kelly as a "cinematic anarchist", but criticized him for having "no sympathy at all for an audience unable to understand his plot", lambasting the narrative and dialogue as incomprehensible. Manohla Dargis also gave the film a positive review in The New York Times, writing, "He doesn't make it easy to love his new film, which turns and twists and at times threatens to disappear down the rabbit hole of his obsessions. Happily, it never does, which allows you to share in his unabashed joy in filmmaking as well as in his fury about the times." In 2013, Kelly said he considered this work as "the thing that I'm most proud of, and I feel like it's sort of the misunderstood child or the banished child."

Box office

Southland Tales grossed $275,380 in limited release at the North American box office and $99,363 in Turkey and United Kingdom for a worldwide total of $374,743, against a production budget of $17 million. He stated that discussions are ongoing as to whether the projects should be released as films or in a long-form format through a streaming service.