L'Horreur! L'Horreur!

Kelly, 31, holds on to his glass of water poolside at the Martinez Hotel and explains the feeling: "It's incredibly difficult and it's the reality of my world. I have no, absolutely no, concept of what's going to happen to this film and what version will be seen in the United States and what it will look like or sound like or what message it will convey."

The man is showing two of the three symptoms of shock. "Right now, I'm just so exhausted I'm at a loss."

He begins, "All my colleagues . . ." and stops.

Kelly reunited the "Donnie Darko" team and shot "Southland Tales" for $20 million in 30 days on the streets and beaches of L.A. After principal photography ended, the filmmaker rushed to complete and edit his project for Cannes, and perhaps in retrospect that wasn't the best thing.

In his remarks, The Rock Johnson confessed that he didn't quite know where the movie was going as it was being filmed.

Kelly says he took as his inspiration "Pulp Fiction," "Brazil," "Blade Runner" and "The Big Lebowski."

This almost makes you want to cry.

What will happen now? Universal Pictures owns the international rights to the movie, but it has not yet sold the film to a distributor in the United States. For that to happen, Kelly has been told by his producers, the film will very likely have to be recut.

"Ninety minutes," Kelly says. "A distributor would make me cut it to 90 minutes, that's what I've been hearing."

We do the math, 162 minus 90 and calculate, like, that's a lot.

He sips some water. He appears to be fading.

"Apparently I need a babysitter. It's my reality. I don't have final cut. I want the film to be seen, so I got to. I got to do it. I just hope all my work, all their work, will be seen."

Will be seen.

We mention that there was this funny scene where Gellar, who plays the retired porn actress Krysta Now, develops her own reality talk show, in which other porn stars gather to discuss, like "The McLaughlin Group" (but in bikinis on the beach at Malibu), the issues facing society today. Then the show lists them: "Issues like terrorism. Civil rights. Education. Crime. Poverty. Abortion. Quantum teleportation. Teen horniness. War." And then of course all they talk about is teen horniness.

That was funny.

"Yeah, thanks," Kelly says. "That's probably all getting cut."

Okay.