4. Richard Kelly Worked Backwards When Writing Donnie Darko From An Idea About A Falling Jet Engine
Donnie Darko is one of those movies in which you feel like the director has spent their entire life working out the incredibly comprehensive and complicated plot, to the point where they know so much that you don't, and how could we even think to understand what they were trying to say? Alas, no true: Donnie Darko is an undoubtably awesome movie, but it's actually nothing more than a brilliantly entertaining hodgepodge. According to its director, anyway. Richard Kelly originally sat down to write Donnie Darko with only one idea in his head: a falling jet engine. This, of course, would form the basis of the story, which begins with teenager Donnie narrowing avoiding death when a jet engine lands in his bedroom. But watching the movie, it's easy to think that Kelly had the rest of this crazy story planned out from the get-go. Nah: he took all the things he liked and worked backwards - his goal was to write something that resolved the problem of a mysterious jet engine coming out of nowhere, opted to include time travel, and Donnie Darko is what his brain spat out. Not a bad way to write if you're talented enough.