A reader, who we'll call Boxer for the sake of this article, got his nifty little hands on a copy of the script for Richard Kelly's SOUTHLAND TALES and wrote in to tell me all about it. Like I kindergarten teacher, I said, "let's involve the class" and encouraged him to share his thoughts further in written form. Which he did. Now I will warn you in advance of a few things: 1) MAJOR SPOILERS. I cannot stress this enough. MAJOR. SPOIILERS. I've put some of the bigger spoilers in swipe-to-read format but still, the spoiler-conscious should proceed at their own risk. 2) Some of the items talked about in this review may have changed as Kelly shoots (i.e., the name of Scott's characters have changed from Terrance and David to Ronald and Roland). 3) It's really confusing. All set? Well as Laurence Tierney would say, alright ramblers, let's get ramblin'...
SOUTHLAND TALES is…shit, where I do begin? Well it’s really complex and dark and funny and philosophical and every other adjective that was great about DONNIE DARKO, but on a much, much bigger scale. Let me set the stage: it’s the fourth of July weekend in the year 2008, two years after a pair of nukes slammed into the Texan-Mexican border. The war that ensued in the Middle East put a huge strain on oil relations. Enter the Treer Company (www.treer-products.com), which has apparently built the world’s first perpetual motion machine. It’s supposed to solve all of the fuel problems and is run by a thing called “Fluid Karma.” Yeah, I don’t get it either.
After the attacks, the government designed a program called US-IDENT, a merger of all law enforcement divisions of the government into one institution. Basically the government watches your every move, no matter where you go or who you’re with. Things started swell but now someone on the inside is leaking information on a website called www.usideath.com. There’s the stage. Here’s the story.
The first main character we meet is Krysta Now! (Sarah Michelle Gellar) the porn star with very ambitious dreams of mass marketing herself. She approaches a female porn director about a plan she has involving her new boyfriend, Boxer Santaros (The Rock). Apparently he has amnesia and doesn’t remember the last two years. The only thing he has is a screenplay he wrote himself called “The Power,” which is all about the end of the world. Apparently he is also the husband of the daughter of a presidential candidate (Mandy Moore) but she hasn’t seen him in weeks and he doesn’t remember her. Krysta plans exposing his meltdown and potential election-changing story while reaping the benefits to launch her chain of energy drinks, t-shirts, purses, etc.
However, Krysta’s not the only one with a plan surrounding Boxer. The “neo-Marxists” (those who oppose the US-IDENT stuff) also want something from him, and they plan on using Terrence Clark (Seann William Scott) to get it. He is a “cop” who Boxer rides with to research his role for “The Power.” Terrance has a twin brother named David (also Scott) who is being held captive in the Marxist pad. They use a crazy “red syringe” drug to sedate the David and keep him knocked out. Apparently this is the new drug of the future and it pops a lot throughout the film.
At this point we get the first musical number of the film, a commercial for Gold’s Gym directed by Cyndi Pinziki featuring the gorgeous dancer, Zora Charmichael (Cheri Oteri). She is looking to score some blanks from a dude named Walter Mung, who sells guns and ammunition form the back of his ice cream truck. All this is taking place in the Gold’s Gym parking lot as Terrance and Boxer pull in so Terrance can get the blanks from Zora. He tells her that he is apprehensive about the whole plan and wants to back out, but Zora of course doesn’t let him.
The guy who is leaking information from US-IDENT shows up at the Marxists compound, and they discuss a lot of tech stuff as the real yarn begins to unfold. As Senator Bob Frost is trying to run a campaign, he is also trying to find his son-in-law, Boxer. All his advisors know is that he hiding with the aid of someone, he spent a little time in Nevada, he was riding in an SUV that was set on fire, that there was one other person in the SUV found burned to a crisp, and that he might have been kidnapped, possibly drugged. Also around this time the Senator receives a message from Deep Throat 2 (Krysta and her cronies) who knows where Boxer is and is willing to withhold a sex tape between him and Krysta for a large sum of money and a vote yes on Proposition 69, which would put restrictions on US-IDENT.
After this exchange we meet a young drug dealer named Larry Weiss. Not only does he sell weed, but he also has a “mutli-colored syringe” drug like the one before, he calls “Fluid Karma.” He hooks up an army gunman named Paul Pilot, an ex-pop star. I guess it’s better than heroine, the real good shit. Back at the Marxist compound, David wakes up and freaks out because he wants to see his brother, Terrance, because “he doesn’t know who he is.” At this time Terrance is taking Boxer to a “random disturbance call” where Zora and other Marxists are waiting to stage a scene.
This is where the next musical number occurs with Paul Pilot, who I’m guessing is going to be Justin Timberlake. Kinda worried but we’ll see... He has a funny speech during his performance. After that Terrance and Boxer arrive at the staged “disturbance” and things start to go wrong when a REAL cop sees the scene and decides to assist the police officer and his friend. Everything that was supposed to happen goes wrong and the REAL cop thinks the scene is real and he goes in guns ablazin’.
[swipe to read]Zora, Boxer, and Terrance all get away before it’s too late. At the same time this is happening a SWAT team raids the Marxist compound and kills everyone who is there, but not before David can escape through a window. Boxer and Terrance get separated and this is where shit gets crazy weird [Ed. note: This is where it gets weird?!]
In fact I’m not gonna even try to explain it, but it’s called liquid distortion, and it erases the fabric of space and time. I can’t wait to see what this looks like. This only happens to Boxer and it kinda trips him out. Then he gets a call form US-IDENT Headquarters. [swipe to read]A woman tells him that everything in his screenplay is true and there has been a rift in the time space continuum. It has occurred over the Nevada desert….uh oh. Boxer is told to call a secret phone number for more information, which he does and then soon finds himself back in the company of Senator Frost, his wife, his manager, and a whole crew of heads. He explains to his wife that he got amnesia and she doesn’t believe him. They tell Boxer he was abducted by Neo-Marxists and taken to the Nevada desert for reasons unknown. This is where Krysta Now! shows up and is introduced to her boyfriend’s wife and senator father-in-law. To say the least, things don’t go so well. The Senator decides to pay Deep Throat 2 and retain the sex tapes.
While this is happening, David is trying to make his way anywhere besides the neo-Marxist compound and he gets on a bus headed for downtown. At the same time Terrance Clark is hitching a ride with Walter Mung, the ice cream/arms dealer from before (keep this in mind, it’s important). The next thing Boxer finds out from his manager is [swipe to read]about the burned corpse found in his car and that it might have been Boxer who murdered that person. That and his wife is pregnant with another man’s baby. Then we find out that Zora apparently paid the REAL cop who killed her friends to do so. That and she does a terrible Sam Kinison impersonation on Leno. Back with Boxer, he runs into Larry, the drug dealer, who gives him one of those “red syringes.” Boxer takes it and leaves his wife and the Senator’s home. Boxer has one of those liquid distortion moments again and he then reveals that in his screenplay the world ends on July 4, 2008, the date it just so happens to be. After that there are some scenes where all the characters kinda go nuts, which is supposedly because of the corruption of the tides and the lunar moons and some other stuff I still don’t get, which then brings us the end of the film.
This is to be Richard Kelly’s most ambitious sequence of events in his entire career, even if he goes on to make thirty more films. It involves a mega zeppelin floating over downtown LA in honor of Treer’s launching of “Fluid Karma.” Before it can leave, everything is explained by a group of scientists. Here’s what they have to say about it all: [swipe to read]the scientists tell Boxer that once this perpetual motion machine was invented it affected the entire acceleration of the planet to such a significant degree that certain anomalies began to show up. Anomalies such as a rift in the fourth dimension over the Nevada desert. At first the government sent a monkey through the rift to see what happened, and it died. Only a human subject could survive such a trip; a subject like Boxer Santaros. Apparently 69 minutes before Boxer was to go through the rift with his captor, someone hired by the head suit of Treer, a duplicate version of Boxer Santaros appeared, therefore his future self met his past self from 69 minutes from then. At that moment the car burst into flames as the self destruct switch was hit from within the car. His past self killed himself before he could meet his future self. Apparently this saves humanity because if two of the same souls exist together at the same moment in time, existence will end. Right?
OK so back to the end, basically everyone comes together in downtown or the near downtown area as riots break out all over the city right as the zeppelin leaves. On the zeppelin, Boxer talks to some people who know the real story and they tell him who it was exactly who kidnapped him and took him to the desert: David Clark. This is also where he finds out that [swipe to read] David went through the rift as well and that Terrance is not his brother, but rather the future David and they are the same person/soul and that if they meet each other, the world will end. Well there is another dance number on the Zeppelin before [swipe to read]Boxer rips it apart with bullets and the entire thing crashes to the ground. All this while the riots are occurring and at the same time [swipe to read]David’s past and future get closer and closer to meeting until they finally meet and touch hands in Walter Mung’s truck and thereby igniting a “sonic boom [that] echoes throughout the universe as the fourth dimension collapses…extinguishing all existence.” THE END
Set photos courtesy of JustJared.com
Source: JoBlo.com
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