Roger Balfour is backfor another review. This time it’s cult writer/director Richard Kelly’s third film, “The Box.” Kelly has a tall order ahead of him, trying to follow-up the cinematic masterpiece known as “Southland Tales.” Let’s hope he didn’t employ the 1980s casting director of Saturday Night Live this time around. There are very few guarantees in Hollywood, but one of them is that your movie is always better without Jon Lovitz.
Genre: Conspiracy Thriller, Science Fiction, Horror
Premise: A small wooden box arrives on the doorstep of a married couple, who open it and become instantly wealthy. Little do they realize that the box also kills someone they don’t know…
About: Adapted from the Richard Matheson short story, “Button, Button”. Cameron Diaz and James Mardsen will star. Richard Kelly calls it the most personal film he’s ever made.
Writer: Richard Kelly (writer-director of “Donnie Darko” and “Southland Tales”).
Ask any burgeoning screenwriter what scripts they cherish, which scripts they consider holy not only as tutorial tomes, but as illustrations of the form, and I’m sure you’ll get a laundry list of titles. And I’m sure you’ll find titles like “Pulp Fiction”, “The Shawshank Redemption”, “Little Miss Sunshine”. Stuff you can pick up at Barnes & Noble. What I like to call the Screenwriter’s Starter Kit. Then there’s other stuff, stuff you have to go out of your way to find because it’s not as simple as taking a stroll to the nearest Big Chain Bookseller.
For me, that script is “Donnie Darko”.
I found my copy at a used bookstore about 40 miles away from where I live. And it was at a time when I was first starting to take my writing seriously. I had just written my first two sprawling scripts, and because I had no idea what I was doing, each was 200+ pages long, written by hand with felt-tipped markers (Why? Because that’s how Tarantino did it, that’s why) and had enough plot strands and ideas that would have been better suited for 20 different, individual screenplays.
But whatever, the only way to write is just to do it, and you either catch up to the learning curve or you don’t.
Anyways.
It’s an important movie to me for reasons that I won’t get into here, and despite the criticisms concerning the narrative and plot clarity, I’m in love with the tone and feel and the characters of the movie.
It’s an atmospheric attraction.
And I cradle the script like a conspiracy theorist fondles their sacred Salinger paperback copy of “Catcher in the Rye”.
Quick word about the other stuff Richard Kelly has done. To give you a sense of my palate. I’m not a fan of “Southland Tales” and I think “Domino” is a fun movie, if entirely schizophrenic. But I have a predilection for all things Tom Waits and the movie is so bombastic and Tony Scott-sleazy it’s hard not to love.
Get to it Rog, what’s up with The Box?
It’s Richard Kelly’s adaptation of Richard Matheson’s short story, “Button, Button”. It was previously adapted into a Twilight Zone episode, which was called “The Box”. Interesting info nugget: Matheson used the pseudonym Logan Swanson for the teleplay because he disapproved of the ending.
Do you think Matheson would willingly attach his name to Richard Kelly’s version, or would he go with the Logan Swanson nom de guerre?
You got me, guys. Can’t speak for the man himself. But when I finished reading the script I wandered around my house puzzled. I felt like the Valet from Sartre’s “No Exit” was leading me around my own house on a leash, except there were no mirrors or doors and Richard Kelly was sitting on a barstool laughing at me, taunting me with the key to this narrative puzzle box.
Only problem was, he would never let me lay hands on it.
I don’t know what that means. Explicate.
Takes a deep breath. Okay.
Reading the first 40 or 50 pages of “The Box” is like settling down in your favorite comfy chair in front of the fireplace, while an old friend, who you haven’t seen in a while, sits across from you. While you guys catch up, you realize how much you missed your friend’s voice. How much you’ve missed their presence in your life.
Or, it kinda feels like being a kid again.
It’s after bedtime and I’m under a tent fashioned out of bed-sheets reading the script by flashlight. Devouring the story like it’s a creepy EC Comic.
But then…
Your friend produces a packet of mind-altering drugs and informs you that, to continue, consumption will be necessary. And as you’re dropping acid the comic book turns into a manifesto on existentialist philosophy.
Um. What?
Exactly.
Can you at least tell us what the story is?
Richmond, Virginia. 1976. Arthur and Norma Lewis are seemingly nestled in comfortable suburbia. Norma is a teacher at the Collegiate School, a prestigious private school. Incidentally, their nine-year old son, Walter, is a student at the school. This is important because the School Board has officially canceled the faculty tuition discount.
The Lewis family will no longer be able to afford their son’s tuition.
Arthur works for NASA.
He’s an engineer for the NASA Langley Research Center. He designed the 360-degree camera that’s mounted on the landing module that was sent to the surface of Mars.
When we meet the Lewis family, it’s before Christmas. And someone in a black Sedan, under cover of night, has just deposited a 1’ x 1’ x 1’ cardboard box on their front porch.
And inside of the cardboard box is a wooden box.
Its dimensions are 8” x 8” x 8”. White oak. A clear glass dome is attached to the top on a hinge mount. Inside of the dome is a cylindrical metal button.
The next day, a gentleman in a crisp wool suit and black hat arrives at the Lewis house like a door-to-door insurance salesman. When Norma finds him on the doorstop, he stands in profile. But when he turns, introducing himself as Arlington Steward, the other side of his face is revealed.
We see gums, molars.
Arlington’s face is horribly disfigured. The flesh burned away, forever providing a window into the pink innards of his jaw and mouth.
Although Norma is momentarily repulsed, she feels an overwhelming pang of pity and sadness for this strange gentleman. Why? Because, she too, possesses traumatic physical scars.
However, because it’s her foot that is disfigured, she can easily hide, cover up her shame. It’s as simple as putting on a shoe. Her deformity concealed save for a limp her students whisper and wonder about.
Kelly sometimes it’s hit out of the park with his montages and his cross-cutting sequences. His parallel scenes. And his writing in “The Box” is no exception. There’s a sequence where we are told the origin story behind Norma’s disfigurement, and it’s a tender and poignant series of moments that establishes Arthur’s love for his wife.
Kelly cross-cuts between Norma and Arthur telling this story. Norma tells a class full of curious students, calmly defusing what could have been an ugly situation by, just for a moment, transforming herself from a figure of authority into a storyteller. She becomes transparent, vulnerable, an adult who honestly tells her secret to a room full of teenagers. Arthur tells Norma’s story to a co-worker, his method of the tell framed by the prosthetic he is building for her foot.
And it’s a powerful sequence.
In Norma’s youth, her brother accidentally dropped a barbell on her foot. And while she was having her foot X-rayed, the doctor was negligent and left her alone for way longer than she should have been behind the X-Ray machine. Four toes had to be amputated because of the radiation.
Which is all to say…
Norma Lewis feels a connection with Arlington Steward.
And Arlington Steward feels a connection with Norma Lewis.
The box belongs to Arlington.
And this is not a good thing.
There’s something Mephistophelean about Arlington. And he has a Faustian proposition for Norma, “If you push the button one of two things will happen. First someone…somewhere in the world…who you do not know…will die. Then, you will receive a payment of two-hundred thousand dollars…tax free.”
He opens his briefcase, shows her the money, then leaves.
Obviously, Norma is spooked. But, a seed of temptation has been planted in her soul, and she goes through the next few hours grappling with the possibility and the ramifications of the question, ‘What if?’
Arthur, the consummate engineer, takes the box apart.
It is completely empty.
Does Norma push the button?
Yes.
And…does someone really die?
Yes. The next few pages after Norma pushes the button are INTENSE. It’s actually really cool. We get descriptions of the lingering Kubrick camera floating through the 911 Dispatch Center and we experience the 911 call…and we’re rocketed through the telephone lines and the atmosphere…arriving with the police officers at a house where there is a child, barricaded in a bathroom…screaming her lungs out.
And there’s a corpse in the kitchen.
Does Arlington keep his end of the bargain? Does the Lewis family receive two-hundred thousand dollars?
Yep.
The furious beating heart of the story is exposed as Kelly cracks its rib-cage open when Arlington tells them that the box will be reprogrammed, and delivered to someone else. Norma asks, “So now what? Are you gonna go and make the offer to someone else?”
“Why yes. That’s how it works, Mrs. Lewis. (beat) And I can promise you that the offer will be made…to someone you do not know.”
And his meaning is clear.
Norma’s life is in danger.
Because someone she doesn’t know is going to push the button on that box.
She’s become part of a twisted cycle, a creepy metaphysical experiment with life and death consequences. And in order to survive, her and Arthur have to find out who Arlington Steward really is and who he works for. And the story jumps into conspiracy thriller mode as they dig for clues and discover answers. As they put the puzzle together, they discover enemies and allies; more people, ranks and titles who are caught in Arlington Steward’s chilling web.
Wow. The first half of the script sounds kind of awesome! Does the second half hold up?
Not in this draft. The concepts are really interesting though. I won’t spoil the mystery, but I’ll give you guys a hint. Richard Kelly seems fond of mining Philip K. Dick. Particularly “Valis”. I’m not certain, but he maybe drew inspiration from the fabled, unfinished PKD novel, “The Owl in Daylight”. Just speculating here, though. Arlington does have a sort of witch’s familiar, an owl that watches several of our main players and seems linked to the creepy gentleman. Consciousness-travelling is also a major concept and device.
There are hints throughout the script to Arlington’s true nature. For example, in one scene, the son Walter is reading an Edgar Rice Burroughs-like comic-book at one point and the thematic implications are eerie as hell.
NASA may or may not be hiding photographs from the Viking Project. Photographs taken by Arthur’s camera on the surface of Mars. Photographs that may be major clues to Arlington’s true nature.
Sounds cool. What’s your beef with this draft of The Box?
The execution. How Kelly shoe-horns what should only be a reference to Jean-Paul Sartre’s “No Exit”, but becomes a frustrating, distractive tangent when characters become obsessed with the work like it’s the codex to the encrypted mysteries of the main story and start repeating lines from the play. There’s even a bizarre Jodorowsky-like dream sequence where Arlington is dressed like the Valet from “No Exit”, and the players are trapped in Hotel Hell.
I feel that it muddles up a story that starts out as a cool little thriller and takes it to the realm of obscurantism.
It gets really confusing as characters start to deliver cryptic lines of dialogue about Pandora and Prometheus. I feel like that it may be a substitute for unclear characterization, because, in the first half of the story you have a good feel for who these people are, but once we derail into bizarro world it’s like we’re no longer dealing with characters so much as automatons that recite and reference other works of literature.
Kelly has been recorded as saying, “My hope is to make a film that is incredibly suspenseful and broadly commercial, while still retaining my artistic sensibility.” Does he succeed?
I’d say so. But my quibble is that it feels like two different movies. I’m positive there have been rewrites, as there’s stuff in the trailer that isn’t in this version of the script. My hope is that his artistic sensibilities will lean more towards the coherent in the finished movie.
Look, sometimes I think that Kelly is less interested in telling a coherent narrative than in creating a feeling. A tone poem. He seems more interested in conducting emotions and atmosphere than telling an easy-to-follow story.
Does an audience really need a primer in existentialist philosophy and mythology to understand a story about a box that kills people when you push a button?
I understand the appeal of dropping references. I’m a fan of retelling myths and classical stories.
But the story should stand on its own as well. Sans references.
Think about viral marketing. Alternate Reality Games (ARGs). This is supplementary material that may broaden the worlds of tv shows like “Lost” or movies like “Cloverfield”, but it’s never an intrinsic part of understanding the plots. You could enjoy those stories without even knowing that the supplementary material existed.
Kelly treats it the other way around. All the supplementary material with “Southland Tales” actually becomes an answer key as you try to understand what the hell you just watched. It’s almost the same way with “The Box”. I really hope he boils his witch’s brew of interesting concepts into something easily digestible.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] barely kept my interest
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I Learned: Atmosphere. Kelly is superb at creating a suburban eeriness. Reading his clean prose, I could actually envision and feel the crisp gloom of Steven Poster’s photography. A good eye and ear for spacial and audio details helps not only create an atmosphere, but a time period. Snippets of talking heads on the radio, newspaper headlines, architecture. I not only felt like I was in 1976, the eerie atmosphere made me feel like I was reading an actual Richard Matheson or early Steven King short story. Atmosphere, when melded with voice, can go a long way into making a script an enjoyable read.
For an interview with Kelly about the film, go here.
