Over Zoom, I ask the writer and director Richard Kelly if he’s aware of Phoebe Bridgers. The cover art for her groundbreaking album, Punisher, features the musician wearing a Halloween-esque skeleton costume in the California desert, her neck craned towards the sky. The look is partly a reference to Donnie Darko, Kelly’s debut feature. In the music video for Bridgers’ single “I Know the End,” she even accents the jumpsuit with a grey zip-up sweatshirt, just like the one Jake Gyllenhaal, playing the film’s titular character, wore in the movie’s climax. “I know of Phoebe Bridgers. I hadn’t seen her wearing that costume, but I think that’s great,” Kelly says. “When I wrote that costume into the screenplay, I never thought it would ever become anything iconic because to me it was just a simple idea — one of those costumes that you buy at Kmart or something.” Released wide on October 26th, 2001 , Donnie Darko tells the story of a troubled teenager named Donnie who’s …
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