The director of Donnie Darko on why the film is so misunderstood

Donnie Darko turns 25 this year — and heads back to theaters on October 2nd. To mark it, director Richard Kelly sits down with Big Think’s Executive Editor Stephen Johnson for a wide-ranging conversation about the film’s cult afterlife, including the story of the meeting where Francis Ford Coppola circled a single line of dialogue and told him that’s what the movie was really about.

Kelly walks through the true origin of the bunny mask (it started as an Easter costume note and ended up part wolf, part coyote), the $4.5 million shoot that almost fell apart before it started, and why — 25 years later — he’s finally publishing “The Philosophy of Time Travel,” the official sequel novel, out December 15th.

Celebrate 25 years of Richard Kelly’s mind-bending masterpiece in a stunning 4K presentation – https://hubs.la/Q04wnCmM0

This video is featured on Big Think.