Richard Kelly Movies and Career Information

James Richard Kelly (born March 28, 1975) is an American film director and writer, best known for 2001's Donnie Darko. Kelly was born James Richard Kelly in Newport News, Virginia, the son of Lane Kelly and Ennis Kelly. He grew up in Midlothian, Virginia where he attended Midlothian High School and graduated in 1993. When he was a child, his father worked for NASA on the Mars Viking Lander program. He won a scholarship to the University of Southern California to study at the USC School of Cinema-Television where he was a member of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity. He made two short films at USC, The Goodbye Place and Visceral Matter, before graduating in 1997. Donnie Darko was given a budget of just $4,500,000.00. This was his first feature and was nominated for 21 small awards, winning 11 of them, including a nomination for a Saturn Award. The film later ended up #2 on Empire magazine's list of 50 greatest independent films of all time, behind Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs. He has written numerous scripts that haven't been produced, most famous of which are the adaptations of Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle and Louis Sachar's Holes. The latter screenplay is available as a PDF on