Richard Kelly's 1996 short, THE GOODBYE PLACE

Here's an interesting artifact. In 1996, years before he directed the 2001 cult favorite Donnie Darko, Richard Kelly directed The Goodbye Place, the student film you see below. It has some of the awkwardness typical of student films, including the terribly wooden acting. (It's actually kind of impressive how some of the people in this film manage to give such bad performances when they don't have any dialogue.) But it's far more ambitious than most student films, and gives a hint of the trippy, melancholy sensibility of Kelly's later work. (Click the cover at left to buy Donnie Darko's sequel, S. Darko, on DVD.)






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