GALLERY
Directors: Richard Kelly
Producers: Bo Hyde, Sean McKittrick, Kendall Morgan, Matthew Rhodes
Screenplay: Richard Kelly
Co-starring: Mandy Moore, Jon Lovitz, Justin Timberlake, Dwayne Johnson
US Release Date: 22 September 2007
Length: 145 minutes
Genre: Drama
Interesting Character Scale (Helen Shivers=0 Buffy Summers=10}: seven
Best scene for Gellar: Krysta on Pilgrims
Alternate reality as created by a time-shifted actor (Dwayne Johnson), and a time-shifted Iraq vet (Sean William Scott). Set in Los Angeles on July 4, 2008, as it stands on the brink of social, economic and environmental disaster. Gellar portrays Krysta Now, an adult film star developing her own reality television project.
Gellar actually has a song in this film (which was cut from the DVD version). Here it is:
Gellar said this about the cover art of Krysta Now's porn video: "To make the cover look authentic, they put my face on someone else's body. They let me pick the body of the girl they put my head on, so I picked one with a curvy body and butt. No one wants to see a girl with a flat ass!" The dvd cover was shown briefly in the film, and the back cover, with the full body image, was scarcely visible as the Senator's daughter waved it in the air as she spoke. The front cover may have had the full body image to begin with, but in the film it shows mostly as black with Gellar's head on the upper right. The video's title was COCHCUGGERS 2.
The notion is that a time rift is created in the desert and two people go through into the future, and then return, at which time one of them meets himself and the other meets his own corpse, since they come back a bit earlier than they left. The folks who sent them through in the first place arrange for the death of one of their earlier selves.
This temporal paradox leads to revision of reality. The fellow who meets his own corpse is Boxer Santeros, a movie star who, at the time of his departure, was working on a bad science-fiction screenplay. The fellow who drove him through the rift is Roland Taverner, a corrupt cop and damaged Iraq vet. The new reality is altered by the minds of those creating the paradox.
Par example: When Boxer Santeros left he was married to the daughter of a Republican Senator. When he returned he was involved intimately with Gellar's character, porn star Krysta Now. If I could alter reality I might do something like that.
This world is entirely an altered reality, as it begins after the return of Santeros and Taverner. Hence, the characters are not going to behave like people normally behave. They behave as Santeros and Taverner would have them behave in a bad sci-fi screenplay and post-traumatic delusion.
The best performance in this film is that of Cheri Oteri, who plays Zora.
Watch this film when you have the time to pay attention.
Scenes that were in the Cannes cut and either deleted or modified for the DVD have been posted on YouTube. You can find several of them on Fluid Karma, the Southland Tales Fanlisting.
The Southland Tales Soundtrack contains music by The Pixies, Bertha Tilman, Moby, Waylon Jennings, Elbow, Jane's Addiction, Big Head Todd and the Monsters, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, and Roger Webb. Also there is Rebekah del Rio singing the Star Spangled Banner.
The film played in 63 theaters in the US before being released on DVD. It grossed $275,380.
