376 - Mulholland Dr., United States, 2001. Dir. David Lynch.
I was sitting in a booth at Coco's when a woman told me she had seen a movie that had just come out called Mulholland Dr. It was playing at the Laemmle's Playhouse 7 on Colorado Blvd. in Pasadena, just one block south and three blocks west of where we were sitting.
Coco's on Lake and Union is a combination coffee shop--like a Denny's or IHOP--and bakery, with cakes and pastries, where they also sell beer. It is a regional chain, and it is not unlike the Winkie's coffee shop in the film itself, which was filmed at the old Caesar's Restaurant on El Segundo in Gardenia, just southeast of the 105/110 interchange.
Coco's does not, however, have a strange man behind the dumpster in possession of a blue box controlling everything. At least to my knowledge. But then I did not go out back to look.
The woman was telling me that the film disturbed her and that she regretted having seen it. However, the more she described it, the more exhilarating it sounded. By the time she finished telling me about Mulholland Dr., I had to go see it as soon as possible. So I did. I have seen it many times since then.
Mulholland Dr. feels like the movie David Lynch was always preparing to make, as if his other films, as great as they were, were leading up to this one. It is a film about our dreams, and about dreaming about our dreams, and it takes place in our city, The City of Angels. What more could you want in a film?
Jitterbug.
It begins with jazzy music. And people dancing. And the strange flickering of three people, an elderly couple and a young woman, on and off on top of the people dancing. Then we enter a dark room, where we see an ashtray and a red lamp. (Remember, I told you yesterday these kinds of objects are important in a David Lynch film.) And we move down onto a pillow.
A limousine drives down Mullholland at night. To the haunting strains of Angelo Badalamenti's score. Because a David Lynch movie should always have an Angelo Badalamenti score. And it should always be haunting.
The limousine stops on a curve. At the foot of a residential hill. Where there is a pathway leading up to the estate above. The woman protests. "What are you doing? We don't stop here." We will hear those words again. The driver turns and pulls a gun on her. Another man, in the front passenger seat, watches. "Get out of the car." She does. It saves her life.
Two hotrods full of shouting kids come careening down Mulholland racing each other. They round the corner and crash into the limousine. We will discover later that several of them died. And that the two men in the limo died.
The woman, a tall brunette in a black dress, stumbles out of the carnage and begins her slow descent down the side of the Hollywood Hills. She crosses Franklin Avenue. She crosses Hollywood Boulevard. She ends up at Sunset Boulevard.
A movie called Mulholland Dr. begins at Mulholland Drive and takes us to Sunset Boulevard. Mulholland Dr. (2001) has as its backdrop the movie industry. Sunset Blvd. (1950) has as its backdrop the movie industry. And is a story being told by a dead person.
It is the middle of the night. The woman seems skittish. Afraid. She has just escaped a violent car crash and may have suffered damage. She crosses the street as if she does not want to be seen by the passing police car. She ducks down as if she does not want to be discovered by the couple walking the sidewalk. She falls asleep beneath the bushes.
Back at the car, the two detectives stand and watch as the officers process the scene of the accident. One of them holds up a bag. It contains a pearl earring. They agree that the hotrod kids were not wearing pearl earrings. They deduce that someone is missing.
We will spend the rest of the movie looking for someone. Several people will be looking for someone.
Someone will be looking for herself.
As the sun rises, a red-headed woman leaves her apartment and packs her car. She seems to be going on vacation. The brunette awakens and ducks inside the apartment. The redhead returns for her keys but never sees the brunette hiding beneath the table on which they sit. She leaves. The brunette has a temporary place to stay. She takes a shower.
In the morning at Winkie's two men sit at the booth. Dan explains why he has asked Herb to join him there. He has had two dreams. They terrify him. Herb is in the dream, standing over by the counter looking back, and Dan himself is seated in the booth, feeling scared, "like I can't tell ya." There is a man, "in back of this place. He's the one that'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."
But Dan does see that face outside of a dream. After they eat--or rather, after Herb eats, as Dan never touches his food--they go out back, behind the dumpster, so that Dan can show Herb what he has been dreaming about. But sure enough, the man is there, a bum, in real life, with his hair and face covered in grime. He moves out where Dan can see him, and he has a knowing look on his face, as if he were expecting them, as if he was waiting for them. Dan appears to have a heart attack on the spot.
Someone calls someone.
Hello?
The girl is missing.
That person calls someone else.
Talk to me.
The same.
Glorious music plays as the palm trees shoot up over the streets of Los Angeles. At the airport people are landing, bringing with them their dreams. The blonde, Betty, looks up as she descends the escalator to baggage claim, her new friends and traveling partners--the elderly Irene and her unnamed companion--with her.
Irene is excited for Betty. They have spent the flight talking. The international flight. The flight from Ontario, Canada. And Betty has told Irene all about her Aunt Ruth, and how Ruth works in the industry, and how Ruth has an apartment where Betty can stay while Ruth is on vacation, and how Betty is going to try to make it big in the movie business.
Irene is encouraging.
I'll be watching for you on the big screen.
Won't that be the day!
They say goodbye. Betty looks for her bags. The taxi driver already has them and is placing them in the trunk for her. This city is that wonderful.
She gives him the address. 1612 Havenhurst. She is on her way.
The entrance to the courtyard apartments looks like the gates at Paramount. She herself will enter those gates later on. For her first audition. The one where she will nail it and surprise everyone. For now, she will enter the courtyard apartments, in the very same way she will soon enter the Paramount lot.
Betty meets Mrs. Lenoix. The property manager. In all her living glory, baby. Just call me Coco. Everybody else does. She stops to scream at Wilkins, a man who has let his dog poop in the courtyard. Then they talk and she lets Betty into Aunt Ruth's apartment. She gives her the key.
There seems to be something about people giving people keys.
It is a glorious apartment. Betty walks through every room, taking it all in.
Then she stumbles on the brunette in the shower.
Oh. My.
I'm sorry.
My Aunt Ruth didn't tell me someone was gonna be here.
She offers her name. Betty. The other one does not give hers in exchange. Betty apologizes. She leaves the bathroom. When the brunette gets out she sees a poster of Gilda (1946) on the bathroom wall. This is Hollywood. People have classic movie posters on their bathroom walls. She sees the name Rita Hayworth. She goes into the bedroom and tells Betty her name is Rita.
And so begins the relationship. The two girls, the blonde and the brunette, in Aunt Ruth's Hollywood courtyard apartment.
And the mystery. Rita will admit that she does not know who she is. That there was an accident. That she cannot remember her name. Betty will take to it like Nancy Drew. Let us solve this mystery together.
"Come on. It'll be just like in the movies. We'll pretend to be someone else."
Oh, you will, all right. You certainly will.
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SPOILERS
DO NOT READ THE FOLLOWING UNTIL AFTER YOU HAVE SEEN THE MOVIE.
Generally speaking, the last forty-five minutes of the film portray reality, with some fantasy included, and the first one hour and thirty-five minutes show Diane's dream fantasy, with some real events included.
We begin the dream at the beginning of the movie by entering the bedroom of the Sierra Bonita apartment 17, with the camera slowly moving down onto the pillow.
We wake up in the same room when The Cowboy sticks his head in the door and says, "Hey, pretty girl. Time to wake up."
We end the movie in the same room when Diane rushes in there and lies on the bed and shoots herself in the mouth.
Naomi Watts' character is really Diane Selwyn. She dreams of being a Hollywood star and is extremely jealous of Camilla Rhodes. Laura Harring's character is really Camilla Rhodes. The two women meet at the audition for the feature film The Sylvia North Story. Diane wants the lead role very badly, but Camilla gets it instead. Camilla is then nice to Diane, becomes her friend, and helps her get small roles in Camilla's films as Camilla goes on to become a star.
Diane comes from Deep River, Ontario, to Los Angeles to pursue her dream of acting. She won a local jitterbug contest and that put it in her mind that she could be an actress on the big screen. Her aunt Ruth, who did work in the industry, has actually died and left her a little money, just enough to get here and get started. Because Aunt Ruth is dead, she no longer has a great apartment and Diane never stays there. Diane's real apartment is the Sierra Bonita apartments where she lives in the end, and where she sleuths in the dream. She started in apartment 12 and traded her neighbor for apartment 17. When Betty and Rita see the dead body on the bed, it represents the real Camilla's body now dead somewhere else and the soon-to-be real Diane's body about to be dead on that very spot.
Diane meets the hit man, Joe (Mark Pelligrino), at Winkie's. They sit in that booth, which will become important throughout the movie. Dan (Patrick Fischler) is standing at the counter paying his tab when he looks back and sees Diane. He does not know what she is doing. He does not know that she has just slid Camilla's headshot to Joe and that she is giving Joe a bundle of money. But he picks up on the vibe of it and goes home and has two horrible dreams about it. In the dreams, he is the one sitting in Diane's spot and his friend Herb is the one standing at the counter.
While sitting in the booth, Diane and Joe are waited on by a waitress named Betty. Diane sees Betty's name tag and processes it. Later in her dream she gives herself Betty's name. When, in the dream, she as Betty and Camilla as Rita go to that same booth, the waitress is now wearing a name tag that says Diane. So in real life the waitress named Betty gives Diane her dream name, and in the dream the waitress points to the truth about her Diane's own name.
The hit man Joe shows Diane a regular blue key, and he says, "When it's finished you'll find this where I told you." Later when she wakes she is going to see the blue key on the coffee table. He may have left it out back behind the dumpster and she may have found it there and brought it home, thus giving the back of the dumpster the evil feeling that it seems to have, as well as the blue box in the hands of the bum in the end. But that is speculation.
After hiring Joe the hit man, Diane goes back to her apartment and lies down and goes to sleep. Then she has the dream fantasy that takes up much of the movie. In her dream she believes that she is the lucky star and that Rita is the woman she helps. Her aunt is alive and allowing her to live in this grand apartment. She goes on her first audition and blows everybody away.
Bob Booker, the director of The Sylvia North Story in real life, who in turn casts the real Camilla and launches her career, in the dream becomes a mindless bumbling idiot who cannot discern real talent when he sees it. And all the people around him can see that. The male star Jimmy Katz (Chad Everett). Casting director Wally Brown (James Karen) and his assistant Martha Johnson (Kate Forster). Visiting casting legend Linney James (Rita Taggert) and her asssitant Nicki Pelazza (Michele Hicks). Everyone in the room knows that Betty is a star in the making. Only the director, who has the power to cast her, is too stupid to do see it.
So in the dream casting legend Linney James takes Betty under her wing and takes her to the other audition. Adam, who loves Camilla in real life, stares at Betty in the dream audition and cannot take his eyes off her. She is the one who has to leave early as he wistfully watches her go. The only reason he does not cast her as the lead in his picture is that he cannot. For all the powers of Hollywood conspire against him. Mr. Roque. The Castiglianes. The Cowboy.
The Cowboy is a person she saw at the party, and she brings him over into the dream as the muscle who enforces Mr. Roque's will. What dark resentment Diane must be hiding against Camilla that in her dream she would make her win the role only by the threat of Adam's life.
In the dream Camilla is not Camilla but Rita. The dream Camilla is someone who in real life is also closer to the real Camilla than Diane is. At the party she enters and whispers into Camilla's ear while glancing over. They seem to have a private moment. Then they kiss. Diane feels hopeless. In addition to being jealous of Adam she now has this other woman to be jealous of. She sinks into despair.
The dream Camilla (Melissa George) is a blonde. And in the dream Rita also becomes a blonde and begins to look like Diane, or more precisely the imagined Betty. Every girl who performs in the dream begins to look like Betty. A blonde. Every girl who does not perform, the assistants, the neighbor, remains a brunette. In the dream blondes are the ones with talent.
Adam's wife cheats on him with the pool man in real life. When Diane has the dream, she carries that story into it with her.
Joe the hitman is also real, so she carries some of his imagined actions over into the dream as well.
Coco, Adam's mother in real life, becomes the apartment manager in the dream.
Wilkins (Scott Coffey), who sits next to Diane at the party and puts up with her stories of self-pity, becomes her neighbor in the dream. The one with the pooping dog.
There is more, but we will leave it at that for now.
Diane wakes up.
As she starts to make coffee, she goes into a fantasy. "Rita! You've come back." And Camilla as Rita is standing there and then they make love again on the couch. During that fantasy the blue key is not there, but a piano figurine is. After Diane snaps out of her fantasy and back into reality, the blue key is there again.
Irene and her companion show up to haunt her and she goes into her bedroom and ends it.
When I told my theory to a friend, it ruined it for her, because she realized that a film so filled with joy and whimsy is really about bitterness, resentment, murder, and suicide. She said, "That's terrible. Why not be grateful for what you have? If she got to go to Los Angles and work in the industry, if she got to be friends with Camilla and work on set, if she got invited to those parties and spent time with those people, why not be happy with that?"
Indeed, why not be grateful? Why not be happy?
Things were going just as well for Diane as they were for most of the people at that party. They too labored behind the scenes and were not rich and famous. But they were content.
Why not be grateful for what you have?
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I'm from Deep River, Ontario. A small town. I always wanted to come here. I won this jitterbug contest. That sort of led to acting. You know, wanting to act. When my aunt died . . . she left me some money. She worked here.
In the movies?
Yes.
Well, how did you meet Camilla?
On The Sylvia North Story. . . . I wanted the lead so bad. Anyway, Camilla got the part. The director . . . he didn't think so much of me. Anyway, that's when we became friends. She helped me getting some parts in some of her films.
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Are you sure you want this?
More than anything in this world.
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