E-Mail This Article to a Friend About time More Donnie Darko comes to light BY PETER KEOUGH

When Richard Kelly was offered his first directorial job by Hollywood, a "B" picture called Valentine, he passed on it, saying, it’s been reported, that he only had one chance to make his first film. Turns out he was wrong. His third stab at his first film, Donnie Darko, comes out this week. A hit with audiences at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival, this puzzler about God, time travel, and a giant bunny named Frank bewildered studios. It was finally released in a version that had been edited to limit its eccentricities and bring it in under two hours. This second Darko became a cult favorite, and that’s allowed Kelly to put back the missing pieces, add some more, and come up with Donnie Darko: The Director’s Cut.

"Newmarket [the releasing studio] rescued the film after Sundance," the director explains. "Nobody wanted to touch it. People liked it, but acquisition executives were wigged out. They thought it wasn’t art-house enough for art houses and too esoteric to be commercial. It was about to go straight to home video and debut on the Starz network. Very depressing. It was four months of hell after Sundance, and finally Newmarket said, ‘We’re going to put it into theaters.’ And the rest is history."

History, though, as those who have seen Donnie Darko know, is flexible. Given the right circumstances, an act of God or the decision of a studio, we can remake or undo the events of the past. The added material in The Directors Cut expands on this theme. "When we re-released the film, we thought this was a chance to go back and reassemble. So it became something altogether new, incorporating all the original ideas and the time-travel book [an apocryphal book that serves as Donnie’s guide through the space-time continuum]. The time-travel book was written while editing the film. I knew I would never be able to get any of that stuff into the film under two hours, so I put it on the Web site. Fans could access it there and at least see what I was intending to do. When I didn’t have the restrictions of two hours, I could then incorporate the book into the narrative. It’s meant to answer some questions but add a whole new layer of mystery in terms of the Carl Sagan/Isaac Asimov stuff. Which is really interesting to me. If you can understand two percent of Stephen Hawking, you’re doing pretty good."

A lot of people have been making the effort. And as with Star Wars and The Matrix, some have embraced the film with quasi-religious fervor. "It’s a little frightening," Kelly says, "but at the same time, I’m glad it’s inspired people to talk. If they’re talking about Stephen Hawking and metaphysics and predestination and free will and philosophy, I think that’s better than talking about the Laci Peterson trial and the latest reality-TV craze.

"In the original screenplay and the original cut, there was a lot of talk of God. In order to counterbalance that, it was important for me to introduce the idea of technology in the film with the new effects sequences. The God-in-the-machine idea is a very fascinating theme in literature because that is the combination of technology and divine intervention. To me, there is no greater example of that in science fiction than a time machine. Because time is arguably God, and by breaking the space-time barrier, you are arguably contacting God. That ultimately is where the film is going. The universe exists because of some distant technology that erupts through the space-time continuum, and in effect, it might be that some higher power has been contacted because of it."

Huh?

"It’s pretty complicated stuff," Kelly admits. "But if you really get into the time-travel books and watch the movie more than once, you’ll start to understand the whole logic behind it all and put the puzzle together."

Here’s a coincidence: the film is set in 1988, and it refers to the presidential candidacy of Michael Dukakis. It was finished in 2000, during another presidential campaign. Now The Director’s Cut comes out in 2004. Any thoughts on this?

"History certainly repeats itself," Kelly says. "And it’s interesting to see how it does. We need to study recent history, and I think the message of the film, one of the many messages of the film, is . . . vote Kerry. Or write-in-vote Dukakis."

What about the issues of teenage angst, free will, predestination, time travel, God, and ’80s music?

"Man, just see the movie."

Donnie Darko: The Director’s Cut opens this Friday at the Brattle Theatre for a two-week run; call (617) 876-6837, or visit www.brattlefilm.org