Mulholland Drive (2001) Noir from the Twilight Zone

Written & Directed by David Lynch. 

Director of (Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks -Fire Walk with Me, Wild At Heart, The Straight Story, Lost Highway, the two Twin Peaks mini series and more). Cinematography was by Peter Deming and Music by Angelo Badalamenti. 

The film stars Naomi Watts as Betty Elms/Diane Selwyn, Laura Elena Harring as Rita/Camilla Rhodes Justin Theroux as Adam Kesher,  Ann Miller as Coco, Mark Pellegrino as Joe, Robert Forster as Detective McKnight, Brent Briscoe as Detective Domgaard, Dan Hedaya as Vincenzo Castigliane, Angelo Badalamenti as Luigi Castigliane, Monty Montgomery as The Cowboy, Lee Grant as Louise Bonner, James Karen as Wally Brown, Chad Everett as Jimmy Katz, Richard Green as The Magician, Rebekah Del Rio as Herself, Melissa George as Camilla Rhodes, Geno Silva as Cookie/Emcee. Billy Ray Cyrus as Gene, Lori Heuring as Lorainne Kesher.

We can interpret this film on one level as a Film Noir about Hollywood that has a lot in common with Classic Noir Sunset Blvd. 

On another level the Mulholland Drive "experience" is non linear, mythological Hollywood, filtered through a dreamscape that drunkenly weaves intermittently along the cusp between reality and fantasy, illusion and delusion. Lynch has fashioned a wild carnival coaster ride that explores this dream dimension this as Rod Serling termed it Twilight Zone. 

The real Mulholland Drive traverses the Santa Monica Mountains ridge the de facto cusp between The San Fernando Valley "The Valley" on its Western end to the basin The City of Angels sits upon on its Eastern end.

Characters introduced depict both real people, their dreamscape counterparts or appear to be Hollywood versions of various sibyls, oracles. mischievous sprites, and magicians. Most films are designed so that 12 year old brains can easily grasp them, Mulholland Drive is artfully directed to actually make you think and entertaining enough to want to. If you are a bit rusty, it will probably leave you confused or guessing after a single viewing but upon multiple views it starts to gel nicely. Angelo Badalamenti's score is woven throughout the piece, emphasizing the eerie unsettling atmosphere. 

We all dream. We daydream while awake steering the dream to where we wish things will be and we sleep dream untethered to reality often drifting randomly on various currents about vivid places and strange nightscapes. We can even dream dreams that portray the future and remember them. 

When I was a child I dreamt one dream where I was in this strange small place. It was like a little house but off, a one room house, more like a small kitchen with a sink and a counter. I was opening something (don't remember what), but that was the whole gist of the dream. Nothing stupendous just a doing a small chore in a very strange place. Months later I was out fishing with my father and a friend of his on his cabin cruiser. At lunchtime the men sent me down into the bowels of the boat to get some pickles out of the galley. And there I was in that strange kitchen like space opening a jar of pickles that I had dreamt about. 

I was working years later as a surveyor building logging roads in Western Montana. For one of the guys Steve, it was his first day. I gave him a flagged HI stick, tied two 100 foot tapes to his belt and gave him the end of another 100 foot tape. We measured 100 feet from a stake in the ground and hammered in another stake. I took a shot at the HI stick and recorded the % grade. At the new stake we took a cross-section of the ground left & right of that centerline stake using those two other 100' tapes tied to Steve's  belt. Then repeat, the only variance from the routine was at curves where we switched to 50' stations. Anyway, after doing a couple of stations Steve tells me that that he had this dream once where he was walking through the woods holding a flagged stick doing strange things. That jogged my memory of the dream I had and I related it to Steve. I'm sure that he will one day hear about another "prescient" dream and in turn relate what he and I both dreamt. It's a curious version of the original Dark Shadows (1966-1971 TV series) "dream curse" lol. 

There was in the 1970s an underground "head comix" called MEEF - The Overland Vegetable Stagecoach Nos. 1&2, published by The Print Mint ( "ground zero" for the psychedelic poster.). The creators of MEEF were Fred Schrier an artist, writer, and animator, and partner underground comic book artist Dave Sheridan. They explored dreams a lot. One story postulated that there is a planet somewhere in the universe that revolves so slowly that the days and nights are 100 Earth years long and beings that live there dream us, and our total surroundings vividly and totally, basically what we think of as our lives. lol.  

"I close my eyes then I drift away. Into the magic night. . ." (Roy Orbison)

Back to Mulholland Drive. The opening credits show a 1950s jitterbug contest to Badalamenti's "Jitterbug" partially rotoscoped, like the title rotoscoped sequence for Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars. 

The credits show with a headshot of Betty superimposed on it then fades out, but the it returns later and this time contains Betty and the two, what we could term "sprites," (called in the cast Irene & her companion). The first prize in the The Jitterbug Contest is, what Betty tells us later, is what set up her trip to Hollywood. 

Later the sprites sitting in a cab both display very mischievous "mission accomplished" grins. It begins. The credits segues to a bed with carnal red sheets. 

A hidden figure lays under those red sheets. 

What follows below is a breakdown of the principal characters in the the films set up and a few observations and impressions. 

Rita 

We segue again this time to a Mulholland Dr, street sign. The sign flickers in reflected light from a cars fluttering headlights. Traveling, with a cone lighting up the wasteland as it goes around a curve, is a limousine in  silhouette, trailed by it's cherry red taillights. 

Taillights that are traveling Mulholland Dr. and the roads curving contours traversing ridgeline slopes of the Santa Monica Mountains. This whole sequence is "our signpost up ahead" as Rod Serling used to tell us, to the "Tinsel Town" that's always has one foot in the Twilight Zone.

Sitting in the back seat of the limo, we see a raven haired beauty with red lipstick wearing a black cocktail dress . Two men are up front. The limo unexpectedly pulls over to the side of the road. 

The woman asks "What are you doing? Why are we stopping here?." The driver points a gun at her and tells her to get out. The second man in the front seat has already gotten out and opens the door for her. 

Enter catastrophe. 

Jump cut to a wild insane race between two speeding convertibles. They are taking up both lanes and full of partying kids coming pedal to the metal in the opposite direction. It sounds like a loud screeching Fourth of July whizz-bang rocket. 

They round the curve. Their headlights flood the interior of the limo. One of the cars cannot avoid smashing head on into the limo sending it spinning and killing all in both vehicles except the woman in black. 

Silence.

She stumbles out of the open door into a silence broken only by the ticking sound of cooling metal and the small flickering fire that has just started under the crumpled hood of the limo. 

She collapses. She gets up. She sees the lights glittering from Sunset Strip.

She has a red line at the corner of her lips that isn't lipstick. Fixated on the lights and in a concussive trance she walks with clicking heels across Mulholland drive and disappears down the scrub brush slope into the darkness.

(This is the second accident Lynch has incorporated into one of his films. The first I saw was in Wild At Heart. He may have more is his shorts. There may even be some in his two Twin Peaks mini series. 

Accidents are horrible things to be in, in person. But it is also a horrible thing to obverse. When I was a kid the corner of my street, 49th Street, and 21st Ave., had a reputation for accidents. It was right near the crest of two hills. Our house was the third house away. One summer evening I was riding my two wheeler around in the street when I heard the crash and took off to investigate it. Its not only a visual experience but also an aural and an "olfactoral" one as an observer. A weird smell that I know now as 90 weight oil mixed with steam and burnt rubber. It was quiet except for the ticking sounds of cooling metal. There were two cars involved but I never go to the second one.  

At the end of a furrow that cut  straight through a hedge and lawn close to the side of the Wright's house was a 1956, two tone, green/sea green station wagon. It's front drivers side fender was crumpled. At about the time the divers side door opened the sirens began their distant squeal. This guy got out much like our raven haired woman, dazed. I might of started to ask him if "are you OK mister." but  I don't remember if I did.

The sight I'll never forget all the while the sirens are getting louder and louder is that this guy had a shard of glass sticking right out of his forehead. Think of it as looking like a clear plastic drawing triangle sticking out of his head.  And he's just standing there like he's waiting for somebody to push his "on" button. He looked like the living dead. Of course I'm just myself stupefied rooted to the ground looking straight at this guy trying to make sense of it all until the cops got there and lead him away).  

Our wounded raven haired beauty ends up at the bottom of the hills probably passing through Runyan Canyon Park from her trajectory. 

She crosses both Franklin Ave., and Sunset Blvd. She's clicking on heels in a fast shuffling walk, traveling roughly three miles to Hancock Park. 

We cut back to the accident scene where Robert Forster and Brent Briscoe do what I like to think of as their version of the deadpan Joe Friday and Bill Gannon interpretations from Dragnet.  

Our wounded beauty avoids all contact with others. A passing car repeats the flash of headlight before the accident. It floods her face. 

She scuttles across the street. While walking through a residential neighborhood she hears laughter and spies a young couple laughing and enjoying each others company. She dips into the grass and while huddling alongside a clay flower pot by the entrance pathway and stoop to Le Borghese Apartments. There she passes out.

An early morning door slam and conversations awakens the raven haired woman and she watches as an older woman and a taxi driver are loading her suitcases and boxes into the cab. While this is going on the wounded woman runs up into the courtyard. She spots an open door and slips into the apartment of the woman leaving to go on a trip. The apartments owner comers back in for one last look around before grabbing her keys and locking up. We last see the raven haired woman hiding under a counter curled up sleeping in a fetal position. 

Dan & Herb

Winkies, it looks like a wannabe Los Angeles chain restaurant that's seen better days. Two men Dan and Herb are sitting in a booth. Dan is describing a recurring nightmare he's had about a dark stranger living behind this particular Winkies. As he tells his friend about the dream it becomes real. 

Enter Fate.

Dan: I just wanted to come here.

Herb:  To Winkie's?

Dan: This Winkie's.

Herb: Okay, why this Winkie's?

Dan: It's kind of embarrassing.

Herb: Go ahead.

Dan: I had a dream about this place.

Herb:  [sighs] Oh, boy.

Dan: See what I mean?

Herb: Okay, so you had a dream about this place. Tell me.

Dan: Well, it's the second one I've had, but they're both the same. They start out that I'm in here, but it's not day or night. It's kind of half-night, you know? But it looks just like this... except for the light. And...

[shaking his head]

Dan: I'm scared like I can't tell you. Of all people, you're standing right over there... by that counter. You're in both dreams and you're scared too. I get even more frightened when I see how afraid you are and then I realize what it is. There's a man... in back of this place. He's the one who's doing it. I can see him through the wall. I can see his face. I hope that I never see that face, ever, outside of a dream.

[Dan looks down and shakes his head again, clearly terrified of the memory, and sniffs, as though close to tears. Herb cocks his head, waiting for more. The background music becomes increasingly ominous]

Dan: That's it.

Herb:  So... you came here to see if he's really out there.

Dan: [leans in] To get rid of this god-awful feeling.

Herb:  [nodding] Right, then.

When they go out around back to find the stranger, a dark homeless person pops out suddenly and frightens the dream teller Dan to death. The shot is your classic horror film jumpscare. 

It's even more horrifying when you realize the homeless person looks like ukulele strumming Tiny Tim in blackface. lol. As Sidney Pollack would say it gives me the "heebie jebbies."

I have had similar dreams where various inconsequential things are happening that eventually lead up to a point where in one instance you feel like you are falling into a black abyss that you are never coming out of. Its a darkness that triggers some instinct defensive mechanism that says whoa, don't go there and it always wakes me up. It's not always a feeling of falling occasionally it's something else, like going through a doorway, but it still manifests itself as that black abyss. 

Here the film cuts to one of the manipulators of our mortals the Greeks would have called him one of the lesser Gods. He's Mr. Roque a diminutive Imp, who sits in a leather lounger in one of Lynch's signature color palette rooms. Intestine green rug, carnal red walls a blood red desk and a pine green couch. The Imp makes a call to a man and tells him cryptically that, "the girl is still missing." 

This man in turn, dials another number this one rings a puke yellow wall phone in the kitchen of a creepy, dingy, intestine green painted flop. 

The cabinets are dry bone white and grease smeared. The phone is lit by a unusual looking fluorescent light. A man's hand picks up and queries "talk to me" the caller replies "the same."

The man hangs up the yellow phone and dials another number that rings a pushbutton phone sitting by a desk lamp with a blood red lampshade. A multicolored "summer camp" ceramic tile ash tray is full of crushed and bet buts. No one answers. 

Betty 

Cut to Betty and Irene the sprite coming out of LAX. It's Betty's first view of Los Angeles, it a right of passage for all would be Hollywood starlets. Badalamenti provides the appropriate awe inspiring music. 

Irene and her companion wish Betty luck and depart but you get the feeling when you see them sporting shit eating grins in their cab, that they are thinking, here's another naive bimbo full of hopes about to skid out on the Boulevard of Broken Dreams. 

Coco the manager of the place lets Betty in. . Betty is staying a her aunt's posh apartment. Betty wanders about her new digs. The apartment is  done in in a Lynch-esque Hollywood deco-dense, this time Lynch manipulates a more muted Neo Noir palette that reflects again the same colors, but the dingy puke yellow is softened into old gold and mellow yellows, highlighted by green accents and some  not so carnal i,e,, "cooked" reds.

The apartment reminds me of being more aligned with those Hopper-esque Neo Noir.  It's not enough to state just once, of how important these color schemes are in enhancing the overall unsettling Noir-ness of the film. 

In her aunts bedroom she spots a woman's black dress, heels, purse, and underthings laying dropped on a Persian rug. In the bathroom a surprised Betty finds our naked raven haired beauty taking a shower. Betty asks her name but the woman doesn't answer. It's a good question, Betty apologizes for surprising her. The women explains that there was a car accident.

Betty, naturally assumes the woman is a friend of her aunt. Here I like to think of Lynch giving a cultural nod to the old Archie comics. If this is Betty then our raven-haired beauty is naturally Veronica. 

But this Veronica has a classic film noir malady, amnesia. 

She doesn't know who she is. Spotting framed Gilda poster showcasing Rita Hayworth, our Veronica tells Betty that Rita is her name. 

Traveling along with this same comic drift if you look closely at CoCo and her hair style she resembles Olive Oil, lol. Maybe Lynch has tucked more of these into Mullholland Drive, another excuse to for a re-watch.

Betty is babbling on while she unpacks, about the pros and cons about being a movie star vs a great actress, and she is being so excited and caught up in the Hollywood dream, that she doesn't notice until Rita stumbles backwards into a wall, that the woman is seriously hurting. 

Betty makes Rita sit on the bed and asks where is she hurt. Rita pulls her hair up and show Betty the bruise on her upper temple. 

Here is the classic Noir moment. Like the one where in Detour (1945) Al Roberts doesn't call the cops after he finds Joe Haskell Jr. dead. Betty wants to call a doctor, Rita tells her no that she just wants to sleep, and Betty goes along with that, She lets Rita laydown and covers her with a carnal red robe, instead of doing the correct thing. In one way the film starts tipping Noirsville right here.

Adam Kesher - The Director

We cut to an aerial view of the de facto tombstones of Bunker Hill, the "new" downtown Los Angeles (built in the mid 1960s on the grave of the iconic Los Angeles neighborhood). We hover over the street grid. 

We cut to the Castigliane Brothers, Luigi and Vincenzo. They are the mob money big shots, pulling the strings on a production of a film entitled the "Sylvia North Story" a bio about a female rock & roll pop singer. The Castigliane Brothers are going to a meeting with the producers from Ryan Entertainment, the yuppie director Adam Kesher, and his agent Robert Smith. Like the trademark riding crop that Erich von Stroheim used to sport director Kesher carries a golf club. 

Something, that is never explained, happened to the original casting choice (another McGuffin). The Castigliane brothers want a certain woman, a Camilla Rhodes to get the role. 

The meeting is hilariously unsettling with more Lynch-esque humor. The brothers walk in. Shake no hands that are proffered. Acknowledge no one. They sit down. The producers are very nervous. This mob money is the whole enchilada.

Vincenzo opens the briefcase he is carrying takes out a manila envelope and launches it sliding across the table to the producers. Its got the Camilla Rhodes's head shot. There's a whole expresso sequence that's a hoot. 

Shiiiiiiit!

Meanwhile the agitated yuppie Kesher is demanding "what's the photo for?" The Castigliane Brothers tell Kesher "this is the girl." Kesher and Vincenzo have a sort of Spaghetti Western stare down.

Culminating in Kesher stating that "that girl is not in my film." It goes Noirsville for Kesher when Vincenzo replies that, "it's no longer your film." Kesher grabs his golf club petulantly, and walks out.  

It's no longer your film!

In the street Kesher spots the Cadillac limo that the Castigliane brothers arrived in and he whacks it a few times with his golf club. He runs off hopping in his 1997 Porsche Boxster and speeds off. 

This results in Mr Roque and the Castigliane's shutting down the picture. 

Joe Messing - The Hapless Hitman

An office somewhere on S. Broadway downtown LA. 

Two men are laughing over a story. One is our low rent hitman, Joe Messing, the other his victim. They know each other, which is probably why the hitman was chosen for this particular job. 

He's there to off his buddy and pick up "Ed's Black Book" of phone numbers. lol. (if you got an imagination this could be a Lynch in joke, and maybe it is the list of phone numbers for the easiest lays in LA., run with it in subtext, but of course it's another McGuffin,). 

Anyhow, the hitman leaning against the file cabinets pulls out a gun with a silencer and shoots the other guy in the head. All is going to plan nicely. Then he wipes off his fingerprints with a handkerchief and puts the gun in the dead man's hand. He places his finger over the trigger and shoots a bullet randomly into a wall to make it look like a suicide. 

The bullet hits the husky Health Plus +  Enzymes lady sitting in the office next door in the ass. She jumps up and  starts screaming, the hitman runs next door. She tells him that she just got bit by something bad. 

He goes over and grabs her by the neck and starts dragging her out of the room with difficulties as she fights him every step of the way. Outside in the hallway the building janitor about to start the vacuum sees Joe while he's trying to get her into the dead man's office. 

Joe yells to him, asking him to come down and call the ambulance for him. Joe gives him the impression that she is having a fit and he's trying to keep the hysterical woman from hurting herself. 

When Joe finally drags her into the dead mans office, he drops her to the floor, runs over to the dead man and grabs the hand still holding the gun, and shoots another bullet into the Health + Enzymes lady  back, just as the janitor walks into the office from the hall pushing the shut of vacuum with it's extra long extension cord. 

Joe shifts aim and drops the janitor. He falls backwards, but while doing so flips the switch and turns on the vacuum. He runs over to the janitor and drags him further into the office. So far so bad, but still under control, until it goes Noirsville when he decides to use the gun to shoot the vacuum instead of just turning it off. 

The vacuum shorts out and sparks, and a cloud of smoke fills the room just enough to set off the sprinkler system and fire alarm. He has to go out the window carrying the black book and head down the fire escape. 

Rita & Betty

Betty while talking on the phone to her Aunt Ruth, finds out that Rita is not one of her friends. Ruth wants her to call the police. Betty tells her she doesn't think it's necessary, there must be some explanation. Betty goes to confront Rita and finds out that she doesn't know who she is. Rita has amnesia. 

This switches Betty into the Nancy Drew sequence. Opening Rita's bag to see it she has an ID Betty finds stacks of $100 dollar bills and at the bottom of her bag a triangular blue key.  

Betty and Rita, just like in the movies, decide to be their own detectives. At Winkies, while having coffee, Rita reads the name tag on the waitress that serves them. She tells Betty she remembers something a name Dianne Selwyn, maybe that's my name. 

The call the number in the phone book, no answer, but a voice message comes on. It's not Rita's voice, but Rita tells Betty that she recognizes the voice. 

Adam Kesher 

Adam gets a call from Cynthia his secretary, in his Porsche Boxster. She tells him that they fired everybody, they closed the set and everything's gone. She tells him to get down to the office, but he decides to go home. 

There he finds his wife in bed with the pool man "Gene Clean" She acts all indignant that he's not home at his regular time.. He grabs her jewelry box and dumps paint on them. Gene Clean beats him up and throws him out of the house. 

Later Adam is holed up in room 16, The Park Hotel a dive somewhere in old downtown L.A. Cookie, the manager tells him that his bank card is no good. 

He also tells Adam that two men from his bank stopped by to let him know. Adam is surprised that anybody knows where he is at. He calls his secretary and finds out that he is indeed broke. 

Cynthia also tells Adam that he should go see The Cowboy our stories oracle / soothsayer.. He appears in a coral a circle / corrida located at the top of Beachwood Canyon. 

Adam drives up the canyon road to the corral. The corral is dark and deserted but a light buzzes on and The Cowboy appears. The Cowboy tells him 

Cowboy: When you see the girl in the picture that was shown to you earlier today, you will say, "this is the girl". The rest of the cast can stay, that's up to you. But the choice for that lead girl is NOT up to you. Now... you will see me one more time, if you do good. You will see me... two more times, if you do bad. Good night.

Rita & Betty

There's a knock on the door of the apartment its the Sibyl, Louise Bonner asks if Ruth is there, she tells Betty "Someone is in trouble. Something bad is happening!“ When Betty says “My name’s Betty I'm Ruth's niece, Louise says, “No it’s not." 

“No it’s not." 

"In dreams I walk with you, In dreams I talk to you, In dreams you're mine all of the time, We're together in dreams, in dreams" (Roy Orbison)

At this point we are through only the first hour of a two hour and twenty minute film. All these characters not only intertwine with each other throughout the rest of the story but also exchange identities and may also occupy different or even multiple characters in a surreal Hollywood dreamscape.  

Noirsville

David Lynch once again delivers a masterpiece of cinematic magic. This film was originally a 1999 pilot film for an ABC mini series that was rejected. David Lynch took the original footage re working and massaged it a bit, added some scenes, and created a masterpiece. 

Both Naomi Watts as Betty Elms/Diane Selwyn, and Laura Elena Harring as Rita / Camilla Rhodes are compelling in their performances. The full supporting cast led by Justin Theroux are all quite excellent. There are many vignettes in the film that are highly entertaining throughout. You can also detect that the Robert Forster and Brent Briscoe "Dragnet" sequence was obviously just the introductory to characters who would have had continuing parts in the shit canned mini series.  Things that are McGuffins in the film (like the stacks of C notes in Rita's handbag and Ed's Black Book), were probably going to be story lines if Mulholland Road would have been picked up as a mini series

There are also references, in-jokes, and maybe nods to actual places and events that David Lynch is possibly, channeling, in the film. I mentioned earlier about the way he depicted car accidents in this film, and in Wild At Heart. They feel to be informed from someone it the know of how it affects the person who has been in an accident, or has observed first hand the aftermath of one. It could also be just coincidental, but in Lynch's birth place Missoula, Montana there was a notorious dive hotel called The Park Hotel (below). In the film director Adam Kesher hides out in an equally decaying, flee bag, hotel called The Park Hotel. 

The Park  Hotel (Missoula, Montana)

Badalamenti's score swings between dream come true fantasies to dirge like, mournful performances, in a "cathedral" of jazz, with a distant sax and an almost forgotten, muted trumpet, giving accents at various points. A surreal visual and aural masterpiece, 10/10  Bravo!

 "Mulholland Drive’ can best be described as a deep delve into the human subconscious. Exploring the idea of dreams in a way which frequently transcends the barriers of reality, it is always captivating, and often disturbing. It can be viewed as a cautionary tale about the pursuit of fame, a projection of a young girl’s feelings of inadequacy, or simply a thrilling mystery which is entirely open to interpretation; however you view it, Lynch’s work is an achievement on grand proportions. If you haven’t already watched ‘Mulholland Drive,’ it is an experience you will not want to miss out on." (FILMS TO WATCH BEFORE YOU DIE)