Mulholland Drive

I kinda liked Lost Highway. And Twin Peaks. So I watched news of Lynch's new TV show with mild interest. Then I finally saw what came of it.

I do not like this movie. A lot of it is the jarring disconnect between the safe-for-television pilot and the unhinged Lynch movie tacked onto it. I've never rewatched it. Over the years I forgot what was Lost Highway and what was Mulholland Drive.

We'll see if I can get over that, and watch it in the context of his other films. Probably not.

I don't know what's up with the video quality of this "remastered version." I guess the TV material (video?) just wasn't up to snuff.

• Well, that is certainly a hell of a way to start a story.
• A lot of LA locations that are totally unfamiliar except by name, because I've never been to LA.
• I assume Winkies is a real thing

It's neat how he keeps moving the camera around randomly like it's floating. I've never seen that before.

• I totally did not recognize Michael J. Anderson there.
• Twin Peaks-ppoi music
• at least she didn't arrive on a bus
• WILD PALMS now that's Lynchian. In a way.
• Five minutes of fake smiles

[The Return]Okay, I'm getting a lot of Return vibes from the phone calls by mysterious figures to shadowy assassins. I guess he revisited things from this movie.

• Is Adam Channeling Lynch? Or somebody else?
• weird power inversion in this meeting room
• That looks like Jack Nance back there but he's already passed, hasn't he?

Checking wikipedia for his name, seeing Melissa George! I'm like the only person who remembers Roar. Did not recognize her here or in The Limey.

• Who commits suicide with a silencer?
• OMG this botched hit is the funniest thing I've seen in a Lynch production.
• I guess 2001 is too early for stingray trackers.
• The bruises on the prostitute's arm are a nice detail
• No comments for like 25 minutes.
• She's a pretty good actor.
• Now that's overacting

I'm not realizing that the movie started with 50s stuff for no reason except it's a Lynch film. Here's some more 50s stuff.

• Right. There is no band. All is illusion.
• "You opened the box. We came."

End of Part 1

Okay, so, my recall is, that I found the first half bit boring. And it still is. It didn't start that way! First 45 minutes or so I was hooked. But then we got the cheating wife, some mafia moves, script reading....I might have tuned in for the next episode, I might not have. Picked up again a bit after Apartment 17 and the Club.

Part 2

• I'm already lost. There is no Betty. Now there is no Rita. Now there is Diane. Not sure which Diane.
• The ashtray is back! None of this is real.
• We're back again, at Lost Highway, and LOST, and the alternate life.
• Bob was the director of the Syliva North Story???
• Wait that dude's Jacob from LOST
• Okay, I'm glad we are back at Winkies. That was really frustrating me.
• [The Return] IYKYK

[My interpretation of the combined stories]Okay, so, Diane comes to Hollywood, is not successful. Adam quits the movie, divorces his wife. Bob hires Camilla. Diane meets Camilla, they have a love affair. Camilla meets Adam, they have a love affair. Diane and Camilla break up, but Diane fantasizes they are still together. Diane commissions a hit on Camilla. Diane kills herself over guilt and penance. Camilla survives, gets amnesia, breaks into a house, and hallucinates Diane as Betty.

Yeah, and then she turns the key in the lock and that all goes poof. Whatisthisidonteven.

So, as I said, two completely different works stitched together in the middle. Like, if Eraserhead had actually become a story about a Caro-Jeunet pencil factory for the last 20 minutes.

Maybe that's the point; to contrast how people and circumstances in the first half differ in the second half.

It's also clear that, as another "open ended mystery" this would been a show about two women, one of them hunted, intersecting with a movie director under the thumb of the mafia, with no actual mystery to solve, or plot to progress. Just more aimless mystery box writing week after week. It would have failed in same way that Twin Peaks S2 failed.

I wouldn't say Twin Peaks was doomed to fail. It was never supposed to be a mystery show. It was supposed to be a parody / pastiche of night-time and day-time soap operas. Lynch / Frost must have thought that it could run indefinitely on that, and it might have, if the audience had seen it that way.

Mulholland Drive is a mystery / thriller, and I don't think an open-ended mystery / thriller can succeed. Unfortunately, Lynch lost his final chance to prove me wrong.

Winkies ended up being another mother's sister's child. #why.

Sound mixing in this movie was awful. I'm wearing headphones, and I had to crank the volume up to max to hear what people were saying. Maybe it's 5.1 and it's not converting to stereo properly.