Please don’t see this as a pile on, it’s just what’s next, but yes, we saw Richard Kelly’s “The Box,” last night at Lincoln Center and the director was in attendance for a Q&A afterwards (read our review, we didn’t love it).
The tendency, in some circles, arguably ours, is to hate on Kelly, call him a jocky douchebag and dismiss him outright, but last night he presented himself as a rather inquisitive and thoughtful guy, which was nice to see.
He may not have made a great picture, but we are rooting for him to one day do so.
Regardless, one of the stranger things that came up last night was the reaction to any mention of “The Twilight Zone.” It’s fairly well-known that Kelly’s suspense thriller was based on the 1970 short story “Button, Button” (“6-10 pages” by Kelly’s count) by horror-sci-fi writer Richard Matheson and later adapted into an episode of the 1980s incarnation of the “The Twilight Zone” TV show.
But something was up and Kelly didn’t even ever mention the show by name. “I’m not supposed to talk about a certain TV show for legal reasons,” Kelly told the NYC crowd looking slightly annoyed and as if he wanted to change the subject.
During the Q&A if the show topic was ever broached it was quickly called, “that show,” and then the conversation moved on.
Later on, an audience member asked about “The Twilight Zone” version of the story that they had never seen and the differences between the two and Kelly opted out of answering the question responding with a half-joking, half-serious, “I’m worried if I answer that question I’ll be answering calls by lawyers in the morning.”
James Marsden was in attendance as well and when he accidentally said, “The Twilight Zone,” in one of his responses, quickly caught himself and said “that show,” Kelly winced with an almost, “dude, I told you not to mention that,” look.
Interestingly enough, Movieline ran a pretty large, three-page interview with Kelly and “that show,” never comes up once, not even from the writer in passing. Someone’s obviously threatened to sue. The makers of the show we presume, since Matheson was talked about liberally throughout the evening? Did Kelly borrow too freely from that adaptation? Here’s “The Twilight Zone” version of “Button Button” below. It’s rather long so if we have anything salient to say we’ll respond after the clip momentarily. Interestingly enough, the episode is directed by Peter Medak of 90s fame for decent indies like, “The Krays” and “Romeo Is Bleeding” (the 1993 film with Gary Oldman and Lena Olin; not to be confused with the lame, “Romeo Must Die”).