Review: [untitled] Author(s): Martha P. Nochimson Reviewed work(s): Mulholland Drive by David Lynch ; Mary Sweeney ; Alain Sarde ; Neal Edelstein ; Michael Porlair ; Tony Krantz ; Pierre Edelman Source: Film Quarterly, Vol. 56, No. 1 (Autumn, 2002), pp. 37-45 Published by: University of California Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1213908 Accessed: 05/04/2010 11:55

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http://www.jstor.org Mulholland Drive Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) in "Twin Peaks." If vision is always shadowed by the imbalances and ag- in the lower, toxic of the Director/Writer: David Lynch.Producers: Mary Sweeney, gressions depths imagination, Alain Sarde, Neal Edelstein, Michael Porlair,TonyKrantz, provoked by the despotism of manufactured culture, Pierre Edelman.Cinematographer: Peter Deming. Universal. each new film gives Lynch a new opportunity to spur his audiences toward the vision that arrives when we depart from standard procedures and cross beyond the n Mulholland Drive, David Lynch pushes forward narrow confines of what a too restricted world thinks his ongoing investigation of the human condition of as reality. Now, in Mulholland Drive, he woos us and the ways in which learned habits of mind not only again, with a Hollywood fable. fail to support our needs, but often loom as frightening Although, in his latest film, Lynch ostensibly sets adversaries in our struggle to cope. As a matter of his sights specifically on Hollywood, the contempt he course, Lynch centers himself in the expansive energy heaps on its ludicrous power structure conveys the of the dreaming subconscious and looks with sadness, heinous absurdity of the entire entertainment industry, horror, and confusion at the (often darkly comic) and with such vigor, that it is no wonder that ABC, grotesque results of the tyranny of a very reductive seeing its face in this dark mirror, pulled away from it form of reason fabricated by our culture. Nevertheless, in its earlier incarnation as a television series.' Mul- despair is not a feature of Lynch's cinematic universes. holland Drive, however, is much more than a literal Help always resides in the highest reaches of the expose of commercialism. It is a visionary epic about human imagination in the forms of dreams and visions, the cosmic degeneration that originates in the thwart- as in those of the sublime, albeit doomed detective, ing of the creative act by the mechanistic forces of

FilmQuoarterly, Vol. no. 56, Issueno. I, pages 37-45. ISSN:0015-1386. ? 2002 by The Regentsof the Universityof California.All rightsreserved. Send requestsfor permissionto reprintto: Rightsand Permissions,University of CaliforniaPress, Joumals Division, 2000 Center Street, Suite 303, Berkeley,CA 94704-1223. 37 commercialism,and an affirmationof Lynch'sbelief in and the laconic CastiglianeBrothers (Dan Hedayaand the abundanceof robustcreative potential in mass cul- Angelo Badalamenti), two thugs replete with the ture. Hollywood often plausibly referred to as the wardrobeand props of movie Mafiosi, who dictate to "dreamfactory," makes a perfect setting for the drama the defiant directorthe terms under which he will be of the lethal implications of the loss of creative free- permitted to make his film: a stock ingenue named dom. The malignant oppression of "dream"by "fac- CamillaRhodes will be the star.At first,the film seems tory"is representedin the film by a criminalcartel that to have a comic trajectory.The "darklady," who may controls Hollywood productionand therebybrings on or may not be an actress, is renderedamnesiac by the the catastrophe that is Lynch's subject, as he, pre- crash,but seems to be on the roadto regainingher iden- dictably,weighs in on the side of dreams. tity when she accidentallymeets Betty; upbeatBetty is In Mulholland Drive, Lynch continues to pursue sweetly determinedto help her new friend, who com- dreams by making the logical temporal, spatial, and ically adopts the name Rita after seeing a poster for psychological mechanismsof ordinarynarrative defer Gilda, featuring a picture of Rita Hayworth.Adam's to dreamnon-logic, which reflects the malleability of adversaries, the Castiglianes and an equally bizarre time, space, and identity.Certainly, there is something Western figure called the Cowboy (Lafayette Mont- in the way of an ordinary through-line in the film's gomery), are so grotesquelyhilarious that it is hardto story of Betty Elms (Naomi Watts), who comes to believe that they will pose any real problemsfor him. Hollywood from a small town in Canadadreaming of But the comedy that comes of their impenetrable movie stardom and does not succeed. However, this monomaniaabout the leadinglady for Adam's film has is not the usual indictment of tinseltown. Yes, Betty a desperately serious subtext. Adam, like Betty, also begins with everythingthat it takes-including the req- undergoes a morbid sea change, though his name re- uisite perky blonde charm,the talent, and the connec- mains stable. Beginning the film as a levelheaded tions-to "make it," and, yes, even all these assets Hollywood director struggling to keep control of his cannot win her the brassring in a corruptindustry. But movie, he ends as a hollow shell of a man. Moreover, Betty does not undergoreversals in a cause-and-effect the adorablybefuddled dark, sultry "Rita" ends the film plot. The initial events of the film simply evaporate as Camilla Rhodes, now a dark,sultry, vampiric diva, two-thirdsof the way through,and the charactersturn althoughCamilla Rhodes has previouslyappeared in a inside out. A spatialblack hole opens in the film in the completely differentform, thatof a cute blonde. These form of a dark passage into a mysterious blue box, discontinuitiesconfound our rationalexpectations for which pops up in various scenes, an ineffable portal a narrativeexperience. Surely,logic insists, one of the availablesuddenly and every so often.At a crucialmo- characters,probably Betty, is dreaminga brightHolly- ment in the film, Betty and the audience sink into the wood wish-fulfillment fantasy that is dispersed by a darkness within the blue object and emerge into a terribleHollywood reality of failure. But such a read- nightmareof catastrophicdisappointment so total that ing would make the film a facile critiqueof the Byzan- the initiallyfortunate Betty is transformedinto a cursed tine problems of success and self in Hollywood, and soul. But not only does she re-emerge from the blue Mulholland is anything but facile. Rather it presents box with a newly darkeneddestiny and depressedpsy- the unique Lynchianrendition of the dream'sperspec- chology; she also has a differentname, Diane Selwyn, tive on mechanism,here a mass-marketmachine that although in an earlier scene Betty has already con- feeds on genuine,not imaginary,creative impulses and frontedthe corpse of a woman of that name quite dis- turnsthem into waste products. tinct from herself (creditedas Lyssie Powell). The film MulhollandDrive propels the audiencethrough a is awash in the instabilityof the ordinarypoints of ra- set of disorientingtransformations in order to follow tional reality for Betty.2What has this to do with not the life of creative integrityto its demise, an issue of making it in Hollywood? life and deathimportance to David Lynch.Such an ex- Centralto our graspof Betty's problemsis thatshe tinction is not, according to this film, a single event, is not alone in the experience of uncanny shifts. Her but the devastationof the web of interconnectionthat tale unfolds as three almost simultaneousevents begin supportsa securereality; an onslaughtagainst the very the film:Betty's arrivalin Los Angeles; a car crashthat stability on which time and space depends. There are saves a mysterious,dark woman (LauraElena Harring) cosmic implications when Adam is coerced by the from the being victim of a hit in a limousine on criminalpower structurelurking behind the visible ap- Mulholland Drive; and a preproductionmeeting be- paratus of Hollywood in a sterile inner sanctum ac- tween movie directorAdam Kesher (JustinTheroux) cessible to very few. The absurdCastiglianes and the

38 MichaelJ. Anderson as Mr.Roque.

Cowboy are the mere emissaries of a totally isolated, also a strongintimation of a force for good thatoccurs almost completely silent figure,a Mr.Roque (Michael when the humanwill is relaxedor even abdicated,and J. Anderson). Roque, the organizationkingpin, exists for most of his careerLynch has celebratedthe power only in a glass-enclosedoffice, immaculatelydetached of this force. From Eraserhead to Fire Walk with Me, from Adam's film, a lord of a static-void cut off from Lynch'sprotagonists have in some involuntarymanner the ebb and flow of creative energy. He and his emis- had their chance for a modicum of victory over op- sariesare exercises in puredominating will thatstymies pressive social structures.Mulholland Drive represents any form of organicdevelopment. (Camilla Rhodes is a new directionfor Lynch,however, one thathe began their choice for no discernible reason, not even the in Lost Highway,a new concernwith protagonistswho usual casting-couchor box-office issues.) How crucial miss their moment. Yet, even his tales of missed op- is their relentless desire to dominateAdam's project? portunitiesconserve hope. The Roque/Castigliane/Cowboy axis is deadly. Lynch signals us immediatelythat life and death, Roque's is the silence that is the death of popularcul- defeat and hope, are fused in his tale of Hollywood, as ture in its most far-reachingsense. the crucial main title sequence establishes a tone of Mulholland Drive is Lynch's own Sunset Boule- simultaneous aspiration and angst. The initial black vard (1950) though it is neither a remake or an imi- screen yields to a scene of dread,an anonymousfigure tationof Billy Wilder'sremarkable saga of the darkside tremblingunderneath a blanket in a dismal bedroom of the movies, which is, if not Lynch'sfavorite film, at desaturatedof color; later we will learnthat this is the least one of the masterpiecesof classical Hollywood scene of Betty's suicide. We then cut to the inversion thathe holds in the highest esteem. Mulhollandis a re- of this image, a saturated color visualization of a vision, Lynch's unique account of what held Wilder's crowded dance floor populated by leaping, smiling attentiontoo: humanputrefaction (a term Lynch used teenagers;later we will learnthat this is the dance con- several times during his press conference at the New test thatbrought Betty to Hollywood. Inversionof ex- York Film Festival 2001) in a city of lethal illusions. tremes will structurethe film to come. Similarly, the Lynchadds anotherdimension to his journey:his hard- compressionand destabilizationof time and space will won optimism about making movies. Unlike the pes- mark the rest of the film, as will the reference to the simisticWilder, Lynch believes the cultureindustry has clear artifice of filmic representations:the crowded, options for producingauthentic public dreams. pulsatingdancing groupis peopled by doppelgdngers In my five years of interviewswith Lynch, I have of several of the same couples while shadows, black gleaned the importancehe places on an optimismthat cutoutsof gyratingcouples, move among them against most critics overlook; Lynch's depiction of the dark a monochromaticbackground, instead of the contextof side is easily accessible, perhaps because it is con- some recognizable space. Into this complex of forms nected with willful action, something with which our burstsa luminositythat also turnsout to be Betty. The cultureis comfortable.But in each Lynch film there is main title sequence foreshadows a stubbornbelief in

39 JustinTheroux as AdamKesher.

radiance even after depravity has taken its toll, and the ever, the Castiglianes form more of a nexus among the conflation of death and life that will characterize three than is initially apparent. Adam's compliance Mulholland Drive as it did the beginning of Sunset with their demands about the casting of Camilla Boulevard, though it is rendered with much greater Rhodes is the irrevocable turning point in all their lives. liberty and audacity than the speaking corpse of Joe Ironically, the most important link among them is the Gillis (William Holden) in the opening of Wilder's connection that is pointedly not made, that between film. And there I leave Wilder. Pushing the analogies Adam and Betty. to Sunset Boulevard in this film and its overt allusions The multiple ramifications of Adam's capitulation to it-the Sunset Boulevard street sign at the begin- surprise the film with the kind of connections predicted ning of Mulholland, or Lynch's shots of Betty's court- by Chaos Theory, which explores how the beating of yard that evoke his favorite of Wilder's shots, the a butterfly's wings affects the weather half way around courtyard of Norma Desmond's (Gloria Swanson) the world. Herein Lynch requires that we read differ- house-would not be a productive strategy. Rather, the ently than we ordinarily do, because he does not pro- relationship of the two films measures the distance be- vide us with the conventional line of cause-and-effect. tween their interpretations of the tradition of reflexive Rather he asks us to ride the snaking spirals of a vor- Hollywood movies, the immensity of the creative leaps tex of energies. Because Adam falls, and is prevented Lynch has taken off the springboard of the best of his from meeting her, Betty's cheerful expectations, both forerunners. about her career and about her ability to help Rita, enter The interconnected stories of Betty, Rita, and a black hole. But that does not mean that Betty's Adam glitter briefly in isolation until Lynch links them, original, flakey euphoria is not real. She is, rather, ob- challenging all that audiences have been conditioned to livious to the unseen forces that no one in the film un- expect about multi- plot narratives. The linkages are derstands and over which no one has control. These elliptical, shot through with a number of comic and forces strike with Adam's capitulation. Betty never grotesque subplots involving minor characters that em- knows what has hit her. Indeed by the time she has phasize both dreams and criminal violence. For some been hit, she isn't Betty anymore, but a new entity time, Adam seems to have nothing to do with the spawned by the destruction of her dreams. women, except that ominous men resonant of the world Betty's dire transformation, and all the others, of the Castiglianes pursue him and Rita alike. How- moving through a space of darkness rather than cause-

40 and-effect, is a form of typical Lynchian dream logic. unplanned, and makes possible the vitality of mass cul- And at the deepest level of our beings, we know that ture. Betty represents that unexpected moment for this transformation has taken place for all of us in sub- Adam, but he is too intimidated to seize the fresh en- conscious darkness, more or less desperately varying ergy she brings with her that is necessary to his work with our circumstances. In life we maintain continuous and to his life as well. signs of identity, like our names. But our young, inex- If Adam is already compromised as Betty arrives, perienced dreams routinely undergo such transforma- she seems on the threshold of wonderful possibilities. tions, as they collide with forces unleashed by power Her audition, which precedes the meeting that does not establishments and our own internal obsessions, that take place, is extraordinarily high comedy in which a new name and identity would be entirely in keeping Betty shows her acting stuff for a bunch of hacks, with the profound alterations in us, especially the com- paired with a has-been matinee idol, Woody Katz mutation of early assumptions about our possibilities. (Chad Everett). Her reading creates something-a Betty's sea change is catastrophic, and it is not only dangerously erotic mood-out of absolutely nothing. about her. Beginning in someone else's life, it hits just The lines Betty is given are utterly cliched, the direc- when all her dreams seem magically on the brink of tions she receives from the director are meaningless, fulfillment. Betty is fresh from a very successful audi- and her scene partneris made up of equal parts of snake tion when she fleetingly intersects with Adam on a oil and suntan. Her triumphant seizure of victory from sound stage. He is ostensibly conducting auditions, but the jaws of inanity is a distillation of the lowest form is actually waiting-to be confronted by Camilla of the "magic" of mass-market movies, a chemistry Rhodes (in the first third of the film a blonde, slick ver- that appears out of the blue without either warning or sion of Betty) and to speak the code words of submis- significance. sion, "This is the girl." As Betty and Adam graze each other's narrative Betty's appearance on Adam's set is a sophisti- trajectories, they intersect momentarily in a mutual cated, visionary re-reading of the extremely familiar gaze when Adam turns to see Betty for the first time. plot point in movies about making shows or movies A sequence unlike any other in Mulholland, this inter- when the director is struck immediately by an unknown locking gaze is a part of a long history of similar gazes girl whom he catapults to stardom. We have laughed at in the films of David Lynch that goes all the way back that cliche in 42nd Street, but we have not forgotten it. to Eraserhead. It is the shock of authentic contact, the By giving us a story in which the failure of that mo- Lynchian site of what is most precious in human life, ment of inspiration does not take place, Lynch reveals and one of the few interactions in his filmic universes why. What has long been thought of as a tired old endowed with the power to pierce hollow social forms. cliche is revealed here as a lighthearted expression of For most of Lynch's career, he has celebrated the power a very meaningful part of the entertainment industry: of this gaze, and here in Mulholland, it is the one rush the necessary moment of creation which is unexpected, of authentic energy in a world of dry husks and violent

Adamand Rita/Camillashare a travestyof romance.

41 Mr.Roque is the lord of a static-void.

manipulation. In Lost Highway, Lynch began to ex- acters descend into the decomposition of the self- plore a situation in which its abundance of meaning is enclosed imagination, because the fertile higher form overwhelmed by the power of solipsistic emptiness. In of intuitive leaps has been barred from their lives. We Mulholland, he returns to that new direction, showing must make the leaps as we bear witness to them. The us very clearly the precise moment of spiritual atro- toxic trajectory begins as Betty (instead of meeting phy. When Betty leaves the set, when Adam does not Adam) drags a timid Rita to the house of a woman call her back, it is the end of Betty's life, although her named Diane Selwyn, because the name has popped suicide does not take place until much later; it is also into Rita's mind, and they both hope that it is a clue to the moment when Adam's already tenuous hold on Rita's forgotten identity. But the discovery of Diane emotional life is destroyed, although it will not be until Selwyn's corpse is the discovery of Betty's identity, much later that he reaches full petrification as a brittle now that whatever might have happened between her shell. It is at this moment that the offbeat comedy of the and Adam has been prohibited. sinister silence loses its funny edge. The silence of the The narrative turn into a sterile solipsism has sublime gaze was the portal, now closed, to the finer started at the top with Mr. Roque but has worked its reaches of the imagination. The wrong silence, Mr. way down into the mockery of Betty's hopeful mobi- Roque's, wins. lization of Rita to find Diane Selwyn. At the sight of The denied entrance into the film's narrative of the Selwyn's corpse, Betty and Rita each literally fan out character's higher form of imagination has conse- into multiple images of themselves, as if.layers of their quences for them and the film itself, but mostly for the personhood were being shaken apart. And they are. detective role the audience is called on to play. There Back at Betty's apartment, the layers are reconfigured is no one in the film's diegesis, like Dale Cooper, to as Rita takes on Betty's appearance by covering her anchor us in the courage and faith needed to inhabit luxuriant, dark hair with a short, blonde wig. The nar- the high reaches of intuition. From this point on, we rative excuse for this is that Rita is fearful that the mur- must assert that power on our own as the main char- der of Selwyn means that the thugs chasing her are

42 getting closer. But the tonal weight of this image is the The blue box, empty, does not represent anything, move of Rita into Betty's place as the dominant per- the question a rationally trained audience will puzzle sonality, which she becomes when Betty invites her to over. It is the darkness that has been waiting since the share the bed rather than sleep on the couch and Rita beginning of the film, foreshadowed by a mysterious initiates sex. blue key initially discovered in Rita's purse, which she After this lesbian encounter, there is another de- cannot identify, ostensibly because of her amnesia. It velopment in the shift of realities and power; Rita is in will be helpful to mention here that Lynch does not see charge, and a dominant Rita is the victory of the crime darkness as a morally negative space, but as a space cartel. For Rita is now on her way to assuming the of the unknown of the subconscious from which any- identity of Camilla Rhodes, the girl chosen by detached thing, both the marvelous and the terrible, can emerge. political power rather than by the organic shock of cre- From the moment when Adam and Betty do not meet ative intuition. Confusion about identity contains the what emerges from the darkness is destined to be ter- possibility of discovery. False identity is the end of rible because the betrayal of Adam's creative choices possibility and the beginning of disintegration. That has rendered the unknown toxic. process, begun as the women lose coherence outside of This is a mesmerizing representation of the con- Selwyn's bungalow, becomes critical in Club Silencio, dition of film production, one may protest, which al- an after-hours nightspot to which Rita takes Betty. Club ways involves the allure of what is absent in substance. Silencio-its stage enclosed by red curtains featuring It would be possible (and reasonable) to argue that on a poorly attended, shabby show-is not the pathetic this basis the potentially fruitful meeting of Adam and operation it seems to be. The portal through which Rita Betty can never take place: the conditions of film pro- and Betty travel to the next stage of their blighted lives, duction by nature mandate illusion not substance. And Club Silencio will remind Lynch aficionados of the yet the breathtaking, indeterminate presentation of that Red Room in "Twin Peaks," a place, as I have estab- moment-there is a tremulous instant when we are not lished elsewhere, that alters depending on who enters sure whether or not Adam will turn toward Betty- it.3 For Betty and Rita, it is a site of disintegration. suggests, as have Lynch's previous films, that popular The show at Club Silencio, the most original and culture can provide a fullness of meaning even though stunning sequence in an original and stunning film, di- or perhaps because it is an imaginary signifier (to bor- rects attention to its insubstantiality and silence; no row a term from Christian Metz). There was a moment one on stage produces the sounds they seem to pro- in this process when fullness might have been married duce. We hear a band, but there is no band; every sound to the images of popular culture. The question for is a recording. Nor are the apparently present bodies re- Lynch is always whether the imaginary connects with ally there. They disappear and appear abruptly, illu- something beyond itself or languishes in the void of sions of sight and sound in a reality of silence. The solipsism. most of powerful these silences is obliquely rendered Diane Selwyn, the detritus of Betty that remains Rebekah Del a by Rio, singing Spanish translation of after the immersion in the darkness of a depleted imag- Roy Orbison's "Crying." As Del Rio sings (a cappella) inative vision, inhabits a room desaturated of color: the which lyrics, speak of "crying for your death," Rita we have found the trembling figure of the main title and clutch each other and Betty weep copiously at this and know it to be the impoverishment of the initial pos- revelation. The presentation of an American song in a sibilities. In the room there is only one object rich in drives "foreign" language home the difference of this color, a blue key, the same color as the mysterious tri- exotic turf where illusion confesses the insubstantial- angular key and the blue box it opens, but here in the of its ity seeming solidity. Del Rio, a seemingly sen- shape of an ordinary latchkey, a key only to the most full-bodied sual, presence, at one point collapses like reduced level of reality, not the possibilities of the dark- a hollow while her rich doll, voice continues to intone. ness within the blue box. Narratively, this is established The issue here seem may to some to be about life and as the sign that the contract killer has killed Rita/ death, but it is actually about fullness and the void, as Camilla for Betty/Diane. Yet narrative is now unfo- is the entire film. Confronted by hollowed-out image, cused. Diane, Camilla, and Adam continue to play out Betty goes into heaving convulsions. She is coming the incidents that lead to this conclusion. Time and further and when the unglued two return to the apart- space have come unglued, along with the identities of ment, as does after she Betty disappears, Rita, opens the three leading characters. Pieces of time and space the blue box which has been previously glimpsed but are splayed along with the wages of compromised spir- never before peered into. itual wholeness. Betty/Diane and Rita/Camilla now

43 Rita/Camilla's identityis in question.

share a sadistic/vampiric relationship, and Adam and as contingent on the integrity of the sensibility that en- Rita/Camilla share a travesty of romance. Camilla en- ters the darkness. Had Adam not capitulated ... But ters Diane's room as a hyper-vital force, bearing the even though he has, destruction is never final in the life siphoned from Betty. Camilla's make-up is exag- Lynchian universe. Lynch has told me that there is al- geratedly rich in color, her skin glowing while Diane's ways hope, even, according to him, Fred Madison's is almost grey. The Camilla metamorphosis of Rita is seeming doom at the end of Lost Highway would have placidly sated, as if with her victim's blood. Energized been mitigated had there been more time to pursue his by Diane's thwarted passion, Camilla incites her sex- story in that film. Had Mulholland Drive been the con- ually and then rejects her; and, at a fateful party on tinuing story on television for which Lynch had origi- Mulholland Drive, enjoys watching Diane squirm at nally planned, ostensibly the detective audience would Adam's announcement of what appears to be their en- have moved fluidly between the emptiness and full- gagement. But things are not as Rita/Camilla believes. ness of the dark unknown from which all manner of The announcement aborts, as Adam, with a malign things are born (surely also Lynch's thwarted plan for laugh, leaves off the word "married" from his initial Twin Peaks). Perhaps the Internet, Lynch's newest pas- "we are going to be" prefiguring the fact that they are sion, with its capacity for continuing narrative will not "going to be" anything. Being has been supplanted serve his turn as the Mr. Roques of network television by nothingness through Adam's fatal capitulation; have not. Betty will kill both Rita and herself. They are all al- As it is, at the closure of Mulholland Drive, Lynch ready dead, in some way, anyhow. seeds the darkness with hope when he haunts the screen A grim view of mass culture, and life in general? with radiant, cloudlike images of Betty and Rita as they Well, rather a grim angle of perception. The narrative once were. Traces of better possibilities remain despite structure, dependent on the neutral, Lynchian darkness the narrative triumph of Hollywood's criminal solip- of the blue box, relativizes the events that have un- sism. Similarly, Lynch returns to Club Silencio in the folded. Given Lynch's faith in darkness as the loam of final frame, empty now save for a woman.(Cori Glazer) both creativity and destruction, these aspects of the un- seated in a box overlooking the stage (we have seen seen that emerge from the box, are most fruitfully read her before), whose blue hair, of the saturated color of

44 the mysterious box that holds the indeterminate dark- dering if the film is in part or whole a dream. Trying to an- ness of the unknown, tops a face haughty and secretive, chor the film to some kind of ordinary logic, he goes as far as that a scene in which mastur- as she murmurs, "Silencio." Club Silencio now be- speculating Betty/Diane bates may explain it all: perhaps the film is a masturbatory to the and which silence does it longs audience, res- fantasy. To his credit, Lopate lets the film carry him away onate? This is a closure sparkling with complex even though he maintains a logical distrust of its power. resonance. Full of the signs of both empty illusion and However, his suspicion is so strong that Lopate is willing the fullness of possibility, this closure opens into the to think he may have been seduced by pornography.("Wel- come to L.A., Outside David questionable future of popular culture, not for Betty, Hollywood Lynch Plunges into Tinseltown's Dark Psyche: Philip Lopate on Mulhol- Rita, or Adam, but for us. land Drive," pp. 44-50). Others with a similar rationalist itch have wondered if Betty and Rita are dead at the be- Martha P. Nochimson is the author of The Passionof ginning of the film. In a figurative sense, Betty and Rita DavidLynch:Wild at Heart in Hollywood.(University of Texas can be viewed as already dead, as the processes in motion Press, 1997). Her latest book is Screen CoupleChemistry: will lead inexorably to their demises. But to insist on it lit- The Powerof 2. (Universityof Texas Press, 2002). erally means that Rita died in the crash in the initial frames and, if the film is to make any sense, such cannot be the case. The crash is an unexpected interruptionof a murder the crime cartel. Given the role of that cartel in Notes planned by the film, then, the crash has to be a glitch in ordinaryHolly- wood power relations that permits Rita to escape briefly from them. It is clear that neither of the men in the I wish to thank David Lynch's production company, Asym- car who threatenRita is Joe metrical, for making available to me a complete cast list. (Mark Pellegrino), the man with whom Betty/Diane contracts to kill Rita/Camilla. If it is not Betty 1. As many readers know, Mulholland Drive was originally who is the cause of the eradication of her former contracted as a miniseries for ABC-TV. On October 4, friend/lover, there was no need for us to take a trip on Mul- 2001, David Lynch discussed the relationship of his film to holland Drive. the mini-series at a conference at the original press New 3. Martha P. Nochimson, The Passion of David Lynch: Wild York Film Festival 2001. He revealed that the film was a at Heart in Hollywood (Austin, TX: University of Texas product of two shooting schedules, a total of eight weeks Press, 1997), p. 185. shot in two four-week segments approximately one-and- a-half years apart, and that some of the story lines of the NEW IN PAPERBACK original series had to be dropped from the film. He did not disclose what had been excised. However, the script for "Thisis a vital the television pilot ends after the discovery of Diane Sel- contributionto American wyn's corpse by Betty and Rita, which takes place about studiesas wellas filmand race studies." half way through the film's narrative. Thus Lynch devel- -Publishers Weekly(starred review) oped a significant amount of new material for the film. However, the script for the pilot points to a comparable se- "Williams's ries emphasis on the subconscious, to which its last images achievement is to refer. First, we go deeply into Rita's to find the purse mys- recapturethe terious blue key to the blue box. Finally, we end with a of our Bigfoot-like figure that is also in the film as part of a dream complexity of a peripheral character about a monster behind a fast- tangled racial food restaurant,identified in both the pilot script and in the history without film credits as a "bum." Whatever Lynch may have in- sanitizing tended, the uncanny impact made by the figure distin- racism." guishes it from any ordinary understanding of the word -New YorkTimes "bum." In the sense of tone and the tele- largest meaning, BookReview vision series seems to have been headed in a direction sim- ilar to that of the film. At the press conference, Lynch spoke of inner know- "Anintellectually as the to and of the ing key creativity, need to "trick the rousing book." mind"into its closed of An opening beyond system thought. -Boston Globe allusion to the blue box? These are variations on themes he has frequently discussed with me during interviews, and his comments at Lincoln Center strike me as an oblique Paper$16.95 statementabout the substance of Mulholland Drive, both in ISBN0-691-10283-X its initial and evolved stages. DueOctober 2. In the September/October 2001 Film Comment, Phillip Lopate, an avowedly incurable rationalist, attempts to deal with the narrativeinstability in Mulholland Drive by won-

45