In Josh Horowitz’s preview of Richard Kelly’s new Southland Tales in the latest Filmmaker, Kelly describes his film as a “dystopian fairy tale about the apocalypse.”

Jeffrey Wells has the latest on Kelly, namely that his portrayal of an emerging American police state may be more realistic than even he imagined:

Southland Tales director-writer Richard Kelly ‘s passport has been stuck “under review” for the past several days in Washington, D.C., because, I’m told, there’s a guy named James Kelly on the government’s terrorist watch list. The Donnie Darko director’s full name is James Richard Kelly, hence the confusion. But c’mon…one guy may have done something criminal and the other’s a friggin’ cult director, for Chrissake. It’s only a couple of weeks before the festival begins and the situation, says Kelly, has not only failed to improve but is “getting out of control .” So he’s now seeking help from Senator Diane Feinstein’s staff, who are in contact with State Department logjammers. To prove he’s not a terrorist, Kelly’s mother “is having to submit my Junior High School Yearbook, among other things,” he said today. I suspect he’s only half-joking when he says, “I might not make it to Cannes after all, and I might be stuck watching it on E!” Southland Tales is partly about police-state measures that the U.S. government imposes after a second 9/11-type disaster, and given this, says Kelly, “The paranoid conspiracy freak inside me is starting to think this has something to do with the film.”