Donnie Darko Trivia
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This Donnie Darko trivia quiz has 48 free questions with answers and covers Richard Kelly's 2001 cult classic from every angle: the plot (the jet engine, Frank's countdown, Grandma Death and The Philosophy of Time Travel, Jim Cunningham's dungeon, the Halloween party), the cast (Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jena Malone, Drew Barrymore, Patrick Swayze, a debuting Seth Rogen), and the making of it on a $4.5 million budget in 28 days. It also digs into the release story: the Sundance premiere, the post-9/11 marketing freeze that sank it at the box office, the midnight screenings that saved it, the UK revival, the Director's Cut, the Gary Jules 'Mad World' Christmas number one, and the sequel Kelly had nothing to do with. Some questions are easy for anyone who has seen it once; several are for people who own the book. Every answer was checked against a reference page and each question carries the sentence that supports it.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who wrote and directed Donnie Darko, his debut feature?
Richard Kelly
Richard Kelly refused to let anyone else direct his script, which kept it unmade for more than three years until a star's production company finally backed him.
Q 02At dinner, Elizabeth Darko announces she is voting for which presidential candidate?
Michael Dukakis
Michael Dukakis, which dates the story to the 1988 election: it is the script's opening line, a liberal teenager needling her conservative parents at the end of the Reagan era.
Q 03Donnie survives the accident at the start of the film because he was doing what?
Sleepwalking
Sleepwalking leaves Donnie waking up on a golf course the next morning, where the men who find him joke that he must have been sleep-golfing.
Q 04What falls onto the Darko house?
A jet engine
A jet engine hits the house and nobody can say where it came from; the director built the script on that image after reading of ice from an airliner landing in a boy's empty bedroom.
Q 05Frank appears to Donnie wearing what costume?
A rabbit
A rabbit, but not the Easter Bunny that early sketches kept suggesting: the director wanted Frank disturbing and animalistic, so the mask was sculpted with a twisted grin.
Q 06What does Frank tell Donnie will happen in 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds?
The world will end
The world will end, Frank says, and when Donnie realises at his Halloween party that the deadline is only hours away, he rushes his friends out to find Grandma Death.
Q 07Who plays Elizabeth, the eldest Darko sibling?
Maggie Gyllenhaal
Maggie Gyllenhaal was cast at her brother's suggestion: the film's lead says the two were in a competitive phase, which fed straight into the Darkos' dinner-table squabbles.
Q 08Donnie's girlfriend Gretchen Ross has moved to town under a new identity to escape whom?
A violent stepfather
A violent stepfather, who stabbed her mother, is why Gretchen and her mother live in town under new names; Jena Malone plays her.
Q 09The book The Philosophy of Time Travel was written by which character?
Roberta Sparrow
Roberta Sparrow was a nun who left the church overnight, wrote the book and taught at Donnie's school; by the time of the film the town's teenagers know her only as Grandma Death.
Q 10Who gives Donnie the copy of The Philosophy of Time Travel?
Kenneth Monnitoff, who teaches science
Kenneth Monnitoff, who teaches science, hands the book over and warns Donnie not to say where he got it, then cuts a later talk short because going further could cost him his job.
Q 11Patrick Swayze's Jim Cunningham is what?
A motivational speaker
A motivational speaker, Jim Cunningham sells a 'Fear versus Love' philosophy that gym teacher Kitty Farmer turns into classroom attitude lessons.
Q 12What do firefighters find in the burned remains of Cunningham's house?
A hoard of child pornography
A hoard of child pornography turns up in the ruins after Donnie, on Frank's instruction, burns the house down; Cunningham is arrested.
Q 13Kitty's decision to defend Cunningham means Rose Darko has to chaperone what?
The dance troupe's flight to Los Angeles
Q 21Which star's company, Flower Films, agreed to produce Donnie Darko?
Drew Barrymore
Drew Barrymore was asked to play the English teacher and answered with a deal of her own: she would take the part if her company could produce the film.
Q 22What was Donnie Darko's production budget?
$4.5 million
$4.5 million was the finance the director says he needed, and it arrived only once a star's production company signed on.
Q 23Which ER star plays the teacher Donnie quizzes about time travel?
Noah Wyle
Noah Wyle was one of the established names who came aboard once a star producer was attached, which reassured actors wary of working with a first-time director.
The dance troupe's flight to Los Angeles is for a spot on Star Search, and it matters more than it seems: the flight bringing Rose and the girls home is the one caught up in the film's final twist.
Q 14Which song does the dance troupe Sparkle Motion perform to?
'Notorious' by Duran Duran
'Notorious' by Duran Duran backs the routine, one of the hardest scenes to light: the cinematographer filled the auditorium with smoke so the girls would stand out as silhouettes.
Q 15Donnie's psychotherapist believes his visions of Frank are 'daylight hallucinations' symptomatic of what?
Paranoid schizophrenia
Paranoid schizophrenia is how Dr. Thurman explains the visions to Donnie's parents, and her answer is more hypnotherapy and a higher dose of his medication.
Q 16The Halloween party at the Darko house celebrates Elizabeth's acceptance to which university?
Harvard
Harvard has just accepted Elizabeth, and with both parents out of town she and Donnie decide they can get away with throwing a Halloween party at the house.
Q 17In which fictional suburb is Donnie Darko set?
Middlesex
Middlesex is modelled on the suburb where the director grew up in the late 1980s, right down to the self-help lessons, which he says really were on his school's curriculum.
Q 18Where does Donnie shoot Frank?
In the right eye
In the right eye: the wound explains the hollow, bleeding eye of the Frank in Donnie's visions, who answers only 'I'm so sorry' when Donnie asks what happened to it.
Q 19Where does Frank first take off his mask in front of Donnie?
At a movie theatre
At a movie theatre, during a screening of The Evil Dead, Gretchen falls asleep beside Donnie and Frank appears in the next seat and removes his mask.
Q 20Which actress plays Kitty Farmer, the gym teacher in Donnie Darko?
Beth Grant
Beth Grant plays Kitty Farmer, who champions Jim Cunningham, coaches Sparkle Motion and delivers the line 'Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.'
Q 24Where did Donnie Darko premiere in January 2001?
Sundance Film Festival
Sundance Film Festival audiences saw it first, in January 2001, but every major distributor passed on it there, and for months it looked likely to go straight to video.
Q 25What hurt Donnie Darko at the box office on its first release?
It opened just weeks after 9/11
It opened just weeks after 9/11, when audiences were wary of a story built around an air disaster; it took barely half a million dollars in American cinemas before home video made it a cult film.
Q 26Which New York cinema ran midnight screenings of Donnie Darko for more than two years?
Pioneer Theatre
The Pioneer Theatre in the East Village began the midnight screenings after the March 2002 video release and kept them going for more than two years, turning the flop into a cult hit.
Q 27What does Donnie leave buried in the head of the school's bronze mascot?
An axe
An axe is left in the skull of the school's bronze mascot on the night Donnie floods the building, beside the spray-painted words 'They made me do it'.
Q 28After reissues, roughly how much did Donnie Darko gross worldwide in cinemas?
$7.5 million
$7.5 million is all it has grossed worldwide, reissues included, yet it earned more than $10 million on home video in the US, which is where its cult following was built.
Q 29Which singer's cover of 'Mad World', recorded for Donnie Darko, became the UK Christmas number one?
Gary Jules
Gary Jules sang it for his schoolfriend Michael Andrews, the film's composer, and two years after the film flopped their single beat The Darkness to the 2003 Christmas number one.
Q 30'Mad World' was originally a 1982 hit for which band?
Tears for Fears
Tears for Fears made it a hit in 1982 with Curt Smith singing; for the film's final montage its composer stripped the song back to a sparse piano version sung by a schoolfriend.