BUNNY PECULIAR
BOY MEETS GIRL – IT’S AN EVERYDAY story. Except when boy meets girl in a Tangent Universe created by a rupture in the space-time continuum, due to boy sleepwalking as a jet engine falls on his bedroom, setting girl on the path to being run over by a car driven by a guy dressed as a demonic rabbit. Then boy must set the universe back on track, sacrificing himself to save girl – and the world.
Twenty years have passed since Richard Kelly’s mix of mind-bending sci-fi and high school slice of life debuted at Sundance, and the film continues to fascinate (and confound) audiences. It’s an achievement even more remarkable when you consider that the first-time director was a callow 25-year-old when the cameras rolled. “I was very young,” Kelly tells SFX, seemingly scarcely able to believe it himself, “And god, the world was so different. I was just out of college, I’d gotten this incredible opportunity, and it was a life-changing experience. But it’s an ongoing experience!”
David Fincher is responsible, to a degree: his video for Aerosmith’s “Janie’s Got A Gun” inspired the 14-year-old Kelly to become a filmmaker (he called up MTV to ask who made it!). But the specific spark was a newspaper article about an occurrence in Kelly’s home state, Virginia.
“A large piece of ice fell off the
