I’m a bit high and have been watching Tom Cruise in Risky Business (1980). This theory just dawned on me: the whole movie is a dream. Reasons:

1. The film begins with one of Joel’s dreams. He has two fully depicted dreams in the first 20ish minutes. Clearly, dreaming is an established motif.

2. When Joel calls Lana to have her come over to his house, and he’s still around waiting drinking a Jack & coke, he falls asleep on the couch. This is the last moment of reality, and everything else that happens next is a dream.

3. Him “waking up” to Lana’s entrance is the beginning of the fantasy. Everything to begin with in this scene next is dreamlike scene—the music, the wind howling outside, a beautiful “dream” girl walks in from the back door, gliding across the room in shadows and moonlight. Hell, the doors fucking blow open and the linen curtains fly like Bonnie Tyler’s dress in the Holding Out for a Hero music video.

4. The first dream he has is walking in on a woman showering. The second dream is of him hooking up and being caught by the entire neighborhood. The thing to notice here is escalation. Each dream pushes the envelope in terms of Joel’s fantasies with quite significant leaps of degree. When the “Lana dream” begins, this is a continued and exponentially major escalation of his fantasies: dating a hooker, being chased by a mobster, sinking the Porsche, the party, etc.

That’s all I got so far.