Saturday, January 13, 2018
378 - Jabberwocky, United Kingdom, 1977. Dir. Terry Gilliam.
Twas bryllyg, and the slythy toves
Did gyre and gymble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves;
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Those are the words of Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) (1832-1898).
Easy for him to say.
He first wrote them in 1855 and then added them to his novel Through the Looking Glass (1871), the sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865).
The poem is quite a bit longer. Alice reads it and decides it fills her mind with ideas. If only she knew what they were.
Somebody killed something. That's clear at any rate.
These are also the words of the narrator in the opening of Terry Gilliam's first feature film as a director outside of the Monty Python group. He had co-directed Monty Python and the Holy Grail with Terry Jones two years before. Python regular Michael Palin stars here, and Terry Jones appears as a poacher. Neil Innes also appears as the 2nd Herald. Innes was not a member of the troupe but did appear in Holy Grail and later in Life of Brian (1979) and Live at the Hollywood Bowl (1982).
When you approach a Terry Gilliam comedy, you are expecting a parody of history and literature. But do not forget to look at the compositions.
Gilliam knows the history of art as well. And he puts some effort into creating beautiful pictures. He does not merely stick a camera in front of some comedy sketches and press Record. He is an animator, remember. He draws things. He understands perspective. He understands light. He knows painting.
Every frame a Breugel.
Every frame a Caravaggio.
Some frames a Bosch.
Gilliam states on the commentary track that he watched the film without sound and just reviewed the look of it. The moment he said that, I stopped listening to the dialogue and focused on each composition, and suddenly I saw it.
Yes, the production design is good. Yes, the dragon is more brilliantly built than one might expect. But there is something else more excellently at play here. Compositions. Light and shadow. Colors.
He put effort into it. He explicitly staged shots after specific paintings by the painters mentioned above.
Those are the facts. Now for the nonsense!
The Middle Ages.
Mud and feces are in the streets.
Regardless of how much they were in history, they are here in spades.
But that is the least of the people's problems.
A dragon is terrorizing the village!
It eats one man and leaves his bones behind. Like a picked fish.
Everyone is scrambling to decide what to do.
Except for a certain faction who is making money off the fears of the people.
The king, Bruno the Questionable, has offered half the kingdom and the hand of his daughter in marriage to any man who can kill the dragon.
And his daughter is waiting for her prince to come.
Dennis Cooper is a cooper. What is a cooper? Someone who coops. A cooper is a barrel-maker. But Dennis cuts corners, according to his father, Mr. Cooper Senior. Mr. Cooper Senior is a real man, a craftsman, an artisan. Someone who works with wood. With his hands.
Dennis goes in his boat to call on Griselda Fishfinger, a finishing school dropout. She and her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Fishfinger, live in a house on stilts in the water. They eat and induce bodily functions. Dennis vows his love to Griselda. She ignores him as she chomps on her fruit and belches. Her father sticks his head out the window. As he sticks his bum out the other window. Contorting himself. Talking to Dennis as he relieves himself. "How's your father?" "Never better!" Back home Mr. Cooper Senior has a heart attack. When Dennis goes home he finds his father on his deathbed.
Cooper Senior proceeds to tell Dennis what he really thinks of him, complaining especially that Dennis is not a true artisan, does not work with real wood, does not work with his hands. When Senior dies, Dennis returns to tell Griselda that he will go to the city and make good and come back for her. She is not listening. She and her family are eating. And inducing bodily functions. She tosses a potato out the window. He catches it and keeps it as a keepsake. He will remember her. He will be chivalrous. The potato will rot and grow at the same time as it goes with him on his adventure.
I have the holy dogwood for St. Talulah's spot.
Dennis goes on his adventure.
And as you can imagine, the unlikely hero will be mistaken for the prince and accidentally slay the dragon and be given half the kingdom and the hand of the king's daughter in marriage. Too bad for Dennis and Griselda.
As zany things happen along the way.
With individual scenes set up like great Flemish, Italian, and Dutch paintings.
And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
O frabjous day!
Saturday, January 13, 2018
Friday, January 12, 2018
377 - David Lynch: The Art Life, United States, 2016. Dir. Jon Nguyen.
Friday, January 12, 2018
377 - David Lynch: The Art Life, United States, 2016. Dir. Jon Nguyen.
David Lynch is a painter.
He started painting as a child. He trained as a painter. He worked hard at it. He did it every day. He continues to do it to this day.
David Lynch lives in a house in the Hollywood Hills. His studio spills out of the house into the hillside. He walks a path on the side of the hill to get from one part of the studio to the other.
The Southern California sun warms and lights the studio. The patio. As the paintings are painted by Grand Daddio. His granddaughter playing cheerfully beside him.
Lynch slaps the slop on the slab. He pulls at strange materials. Stringy goopy goo. To create three-dimensional pieces. He animates them. Adds sounds. Video. Audio.
Jon Nguyen and Jason S. have put together a lovely meditation on his life and art.
Jason S. works as Lynch's assistant. He lives at his house. He worked as the cinematographer of this film. He would work with Lynch, and then when something would happen, he would film it.
Jon Nguyen directs. He respects David. As David reflects.
They have set up a microphone in the sun room. With his amber lamp behind him. When Lynch is ready he goes and sits inside. He takes his time. He thinks. Deliberates. Remembers.
He shares.
And walks us through the stages of his childhood. Growth and development. What sounds like an idyllic life. A solid family. A house of love.
Missoula, Montana. Sandpoint, Idaho. Spokane, Washington. Boise. Alexandria, Virginia. Nights in D.C. A short run to Salzburg. Time in Philadelphia. And finally. Los Angeles.
An American story.
An American man.
His voice is warm. His accent distinct. His heart open. His movements are sure.
We see his own photographs. We listen to his own music. Both composed and played by him. We watch home videos. We watch him at work. We see his work. His paintings. Many of them.
He smokes like a hickory pit. They backlight him as he blows. And the emanating fume diffuses the room like a permeating fog.
David Lynch works.
He works hard. He works with ease but he works with a work ethic. He talks about working hard even in junior high school. Even as a freshman. He knew he wanted to paint, and he rented a room in the studio of a friend's father. He went after school and stayed late. And the friend's father talked to his father to help him understand what he is doing. David is not goofing off. David is working.
So many people in the film industry are artists. They have their job on set or in the office or in post, and then they have their other work, their other art. They paint. They draw. They sculpt. They write. They take pictures. They make things.
David Lynch is a painter.
Thank you for sharing this with us. It is inspiring. And it is good.
377 - David Lynch: The Art Life, United States, 2016. Dir. Jon Nguyen.
David Lynch is a painter.
He started painting as a child. He trained as a painter. He worked hard at it. He did it every day. He continues to do it to this day.
David Lynch lives in a house in the Hollywood Hills. His studio spills out of the house into the hillside. He walks a path on the side of the hill to get from one part of the studio to the other.
The Southern California sun warms and lights the studio. The patio. As the paintings are painted by Grand Daddio. His granddaughter playing cheerfully beside him.
Lynch slaps the slop on the slab. He pulls at strange materials. Stringy goopy goo. To create three-dimensional pieces. He animates them. Adds sounds. Video. Audio.
Jon Nguyen and Jason S. have put together a lovely meditation on his life and art.
Jason S. works as Lynch's assistant. He lives at his house. He worked as the cinematographer of this film. He would work with Lynch, and then when something would happen, he would film it.
Jon Nguyen directs. He respects David. As David reflects.
They have set up a microphone in the sun room. With his amber lamp behind him. When Lynch is ready he goes and sits inside. He takes his time. He thinks. Deliberates. Remembers.
He shares.
And walks us through the stages of his childhood. Growth and development. What sounds like an idyllic life. A solid family. A house of love.
Missoula, Montana. Sandpoint, Idaho. Spokane, Washington. Boise. Alexandria, Virginia. Nights in D.C. A short run to Salzburg. Time in Philadelphia. And finally. Los Angeles.
An American story.
An American man.
His voice is warm. His accent distinct. His heart open. His movements are sure.
We see his own photographs. We listen to his own music. Both composed and played by him. We watch home videos. We watch him at work. We see his work. His paintings. Many of them.
He smokes like a hickory pit. They backlight him as he blows. And the emanating fume diffuses the room like a permeating fog.
David Lynch works.
He works hard. He works with ease but he works with a work ethic. He talks about working hard even in junior high school. Even as a freshman. He knew he wanted to paint, and he rented a room in the studio of a friend's father. He went after school and stayed late. And the friend's father talked to his father to help him understand what he is doing. David is not goofing off. David is working.
So many people in the film industry are artists. They have their job on set or in the office or in post, and then they have their other work, their other art. They paint. They draw. They sculpt. They write. They take pictures. They make things.
David Lynch is a painter.
Thank you for sharing this with us. It is inspiring. And it is good.
Thursday, January 11, 2018
376 - Mulholland Dr., United States, 2001. Dir. David Lynch.
Thursday, January 11, 2018
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.
* * * * *
* * * * *
* * * * *
* * * * *
* * * * *
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 wants so badly to have Camilla's life that she falls in love with her on the one hand and resents her bitterly on the other. She wants to be her and if she cannot be her, then she wants her. She fantasizes that Camilla is also in love with her, and she is deeply jealous when Camilla falls in love with the director Adam Kesher instead. Diane falls into a deep depression, and when Camilla sends a limousine to take Diane to a party they are having in the Hollywood Hills, Diane shows up late and is awkward and self-pitying. She watches all the people there, many of whom she knows, some of whom she just meets, and she absorbs them in her mind. When Adam and Camilla announce their engagement to be married, it is the last straw for Diane. She decides to hire a hit man to kill Camilla.
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.
The neighbor comes looking for her stuff. She informs Diane that the detectives came looking for her again. Diane must realize that she is about to be caught. She grows hopeless.
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?
* * * * *
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.
* * * * *
Are you sure you want this?
More than anything in this world.
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.
* * * * *
* * * * *
* * * * *
* * * * *
* * * * *
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?
* * * * *
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.
* * * * *
Are you sure you want this?
More than anything in this world.
Wednesday, January 10, 2018
375 - Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, United States, 1992. Dir. David Lynch.
Wednesday, January 10, 2018
375 - Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, United States, 1992. Dir. David Lynch.
Laura Palmer is alive!
Well, at least for another year and seven days, anyway.
Meanwhile, another girl has died. In another town. A similar girl. In a similar town.
The case will be worked by an FBI agent. A similar agent. On a similar case.
David Lynch is an aural filmmaker. His soundscapes contribute significantly to the development of his universe.
The opening credits scroll to the steady strains of Angelo Badalamenti's haunting score. Buster Williams and David Tate lay down an acoustic bass and drum subfloor with Vinnie Bell's soft guitar floor above it. Badalamenti himself carpets the room with his keyboard so that Jim Hynes can fill the spaces with his mournfully muted trumpet.
Of course a muted trumpet. This is David Lynch.
The credits appear over an extreme close-up of a blurry, pulsating screen. Analog television noise. Pixel static. TV snow. A world without transmission. Loss of signal.
Before the credits finish we are already intoxicated.
We float on the raft of those sounds. Floating freely. Down the river. A lazy day. The lazy river. Letting it take us where it will. As the warm sun embraces our skin. Just listen.
We slowly pull back until the points of random dancing light come into focus, until we leave the TV frame, until . . .
Suddenly.
A crash. Some kind of heavy iron bar has crushed the top of the television. Sparks fly in light rays. A blinding white. Glass smash. Electric fireworks. A scream. Nooo!
Everything goes dark.
A body floats atop the shallow muddy river. In white plastic wrap. Cinched with twine like linked sausage. To the thrumming of those underpinning sounds. Undertone. A single title appears.
Teresa Banks.
Found near the banks. In Dear Meadow, Washington. Not far from Twin Peaks, Washington.
Cut to Portland, Oregon.
The first person we see is David Lynch himself. As Gordon Cole. Young. With swept-back hair with no white in it. Standing in profile before a mural. A mural which portrays what can already be seen outside the window. The beauty of the Pacific Northwest. A lake. Old woods. Cumulus clouds in a sky only half as blue as the water itself.
A land of Conifers. Pine. Spruce. Hemlock. Cedar. Cypress. Fir. Sequoia.
He stands before it like a small-station weather man about to deliver the forecast. Both ears plugged with oldstyle earbuds. He yells.
"Get! me! Agent! Chester! Desmond! out! in! Fargo!, North Dakota!"
Is he deaf?
His secretary is standing right there.
He is in his office. An empty wooden desk. An amber lamp. A black phone. An ashtray.
You had better believe these things are important in a David Lynch film.
To the left a red floor lamp. To the right a floor lamp with a green shade. On the black file cabinet a fourth lamp. On the brown file cabinet an old radio. All of the lamps are on and none of them are needed, as daylight smashes into the room from what may be an open window, shadowing his figure against the mural, as though his shadow is the one talking face to face with his secretary beneath the pine fascicles.
His secretary is a young brunette in a charcoal dress with a wide black belt and a pearl choker.
She exits the room.
Cut to Fargo, North Dakota.
A yellow school bus is parked in a grass field. Four men wearing khaki London Fog trench coats over black slacks stand in pattern, apprehending a man and two women, dressed like hookers, outside the school bus, the children inside screaming. No explanation is given as to why the apprehension is taking place outside a school bus. Get used to it. No explanation is given for many of David Lynch's narrative and symbolic choices, and that is what makes him such a delicious filmmaker.
FBI Special Agent Chester Desmond calls Jake to take over so that Chester can answer the car phone. The car honks to let you know the phone is ringing inside. He lowers the antenna to reduce static. The phone is large. Gordon calls him Chet. He yells at him. It is still hard to hear.
"OK, Gordon."
"OR! RE! GON!
Gordon tells Desmond about Theresa Banks. 17. He is assigning him to the case.
Gordon tells Chester to meet him at "the private airport" in Portland. We see a shot of us flying. A single engine low-wing plane with two seats, single-file. The camera in the back looking over the pilot's shoulder, over the controls, out the window as we come in for a landing. For 7 seconds of screen time. Because we can.
Chester Desmond is played by Chris Isaak. The singer whose music sounds so much like it fits onto the soundtrack of a David Lynch movie. And in fact, it does. Three of his first hits came from the soundtrack to David Lynch's 1990 film Wild at Heart. Do you remember the song "Wicked Game"? It came out in 1989. It begins with a simple guitar, sounding like a steel guitar, a note, followed by a higher note, with Isaak's plaintive and anguished vocal. And the refrain, "No, I . . . don't want to fall in love . . . with you." There is the famous black-and-white music video featuring Isaak and model Helena Christensen walking on the beach. Before that one, David Lynch himself had directed a music video for the song.
Just seeing Isaak as Desmond step off the plane and approach Gordon on the tarmac makes you think of this song, even though the actual score has moved to jazz at that moment.
Kiefer Sutherland stands next to Cole, as Sam Stanley. From Spokane. Sam's the man who cracked the Whitman case. Congratulations.
A woman in a red dress named Lil the Dancer emerges from the hanger and does a strange choreography in front of the men.
Cole explains, yelling, "She's my mother's sister's girl."
Her appearance and posture are clues to the case. Because in this world you cannot just tell your fellow agents what they need to know. Even when alone. You must send them signals. Clues. This is Lynch's universe.
So later in the car Desmond explains it to Stanley.
Lil is wearing a sour face. Meaning: They are going to have problems with the local authorities.
She blinks both eyes. Meaning: Trouble higher up. The eyes of the local authority. Sheriff and deputy.
She had one hand in her pocket. Meaning: They are hiding something.
She made her other hand into a fist. Meaning: They are going to be belligerent.
She was walking in place. Meaning: There is going to be a lot of legwork involved.
Cole said she was his mother's sister's girl. Meaning: The uncle is missing. The sheriff's uncle is probably in prison!
The dress was altered. There is a different colored thread where it was taken in to fit her. Meaning: The tailored dress is our code for drugs.
A blue rose was pinned to her dress. Meaning: Well, Desmond cannot tell Stanley about that. We will have to wait to find out.
We have seen those blue roses before. In Tennessee Williams. And in The Thief of Bagdad (1940).
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/10/275-thief-of-bagdad-1940-united-kingdom.html
Desmond and Stanley work the Teresa Banks case. They contend with the local Sheriff and Deputy. They perform forensic work on the body in a wooden shed out back. They encounter oddball locals at Hap's Diner. They encounter, at a trailer park, the great Harry Dean Stanton as Carl Rodd.
In addition to the mystery of Lil's blue rose, Teresa Banks had a jade ring. And it is missing. It too is a mystery.
Strange things pass through the electricity wires.
Meanwhile, Gordon Cole goes to the Philadelphia office. Your man Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) appears and tells him about his dream. It features David Bowie as the missing agent Phillip Jeffries.
Then we go into the Red Room where strange people talk backwards.
What is garmonbozia?
We live inside a dream.
ONE YEAR LATER we go to Twin Peaks.
Laura Palmer is popular at school. She and her best friend Donna Hayward hang out together. She is dating Bobby Briggs. She is seeing James Hurley. She is hooking up with Jacques Renault. She is doing Leo Johnson. She does things at the roadhouse with her friend Ronette Pulaski and the men they pick up there. The Bang Bang Bar. She confides in Harold Smith. She is keeping secrets from her parents Leland and Sarah.
But what is really going on?
Why is she taking cocaine in the bathroom? Why is she so troubled when she seems to have everything going for her? All the boys like her. All the girls want to be her.
Could it be that strange man named Bob who either does or does not break through the window into her room at night? Since she was 12. (It could be real. It could be her nightmares.)
Or is he possessing someone closer to her?
Someone is ripping pages from her secret diary. She gives it to Harold to hide. Bob does not know about Harold. Maybe Harold will be safe.
She has a painting of a room and a door. Her room. There was an angel in the painting. The angel has disappeared. She has another painting of other angels. Does she have an angel? Someone to look out for her?
She wears a half-heart on her necklace. Who gave it to her? Who has the other half? And why is her father, of all people, jealous over it?
A man named Mike might know. He appears out of nowhere like a prophet to drop hints. To give clues. To speak truth. There are many prophets. The woman at the trailer. The mother and her son who wears the mask. The woman who approaches her outside the bar. Puts her hand on her forehead. And speaks directly into her life. Before Laura enters for her penultimate binge.
The good Dale is in the lodge and he can't leave. Write it in your diary.
We fall ever more deeply inside the dream as Laura enters the bar and Julee Cruise sings the aching, otherworldly ballad, "Questions in a World of Blue." Composed by Badalamenti. Lyrics by David Lynch himself. Transporting us. Transporting us. Into euphoria.
To try to hide the pain. To try to hide the pain.
Laura wants to keep her friend Donna from these darker experiences. To protect her. No one should know what she knows. See what she sees. Live what she lives. Donna sees. Donna does. Poor, innocent Donna. Get Donna out of here.
Something is going down tonight.
Bobby thinks she is now only using him for scores.
James really loves her.
She agrees to go with James and immediately regrets it. They go to where Bobby killed that man that night. Was it Bob? She changes her mind. Take me home. She makes him stop in the middle of the street. She jumps off his motorcycle before he comes to a complete stop.
And then . . .
And then.
At the end of this strange, fun, not so fun, way no longer fun, trip, this hallucinatory dream, this oneiric elegy, at the bottom of this free-fall drop down the rabbit hole with our floating Ophelia, we find an innocent little girl, a damaged girl, a broken girl, who had her innocence ripped away from her by someone she most needed to trust.
And who needs the good Dale.
And who needs her angel.
And who finds them.
And is finally, finally free.
375 - Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, United States, 1992. Dir. David Lynch.
Laura Palmer is alive!
Well, at least for another year and seven days, anyway.
Meanwhile, another girl has died. In another town. A similar girl. In a similar town.
The case will be worked by an FBI agent. A similar agent. On a similar case.
David Lynch is an aural filmmaker. His soundscapes contribute significantly to the development of his universe.
The opening credits scroll to the steady strains of Angelo Badalamenti's haunting score. Buster Williams and David Tate lay down an acoustic bass and drum subfloor with Vinnie Bell's soft guitar floor above it. Badalamenti himself carpets the room with his keyboard so that Jim Hynes can fill the spaces with his mournfully muted trumpet.
Of course a muted trumpet. This is David Lynch.
The credits appear over an extreme close-up of a blurry, pulsating screen. Analog television noise. Pixel static. TV snow. A world without transmission. Loss of signal.
Before the credits finish we are already intoxicated.
We float on the raft of those sounds. Floating freely. Down the river. A lazy day. The lazy river. Letting it take us where it will. As the warm sun embraces our skin. Just listen.
We slowly pull back until the points of random dancing light come into focus, until we leave the TV frame, until . . .
Suddenly.
A crash. Some kind of heavy iron bar has crushed the top of the television. Sparks fly in light rays. A blinding white. Glass smash. Electric fireworks. A scream. Nooo!
Everything goes dark.
A body floats atop the shallow muddy river. In white plastic wrap. Cinched with twine like linked sausage. To the thrumming of those underpinning sounds. Undertone. A single title appears.
Teresa Banks.
Found near the banks. In Dear Meadow, Washington. Not far from Twin Peaks, Washington.
Cut to Portland, Oregon.
The first person we see is David Lynch himself. As Gordon Cole. Young. With swept-back hair with no white in it. Standing in profile before a mural. A mural which portrays what can already be seen outside the window. The beauty of the Pacific Northwest. A lake. Old woods. Cumulus clouds in a sky only half as blue as the water itself.
A land of Conifers. Pine. Spruce. Hemlock. Cedar. Cypress. Fir. Sequoia.
He stands before it like a small-station weather man about to deliver the forecast. Both ears plugged with oldstyle earbuds. He yells.
"Get! me! Agent! Chester! Desmond! out! in! Fargo!, North Dakota!"
Is he deaf?
His secretary is standing right there.
He is in his office. An empty wooden desk. An amber lamp. A black phone. An ashtray.
You had better believe these things are important in a David Lynch film.
To the left a red floor lamp. To the right a floor lamp with a green shade. On the black file cabinet a fourth lamp. On the brown file cabinet an old radio. All of the lamps are on and none of them are needed, as daylight smashes into the room from what may be an open window, shadowing his figure against the mural, as though his shadow is the one talking face to face with his secretary beneath the pine fascicles.
His secretary is a young brunette in a charcoal dress with a wide black belt and a pearl choker.
She exits the room.
Cut to Fargo, North Dakota.
A yellow school bus is parked in a grass field. Four men wearing khaki London Fog trench coats over black slacks stand in pattern, apprehending a man and two women, dressed like hookers, outside the school bus, the children inside screaming. No explanation is given as to why the apprehension is taking place outside a school bus. Get used to it. No explanation is given for many of David Lynch's narrative and symbolic choices, and that is what makes him such a delicious filmmaker.
FBI Special Agent Chester Desmond calls Jake to take over so that Chester can answer the car phone. The car honks to let you know the phone is ringing inside. He lowers the antenna to reduce static. The phone is large. Gordon calls him Chet. He yells at him. It is still hard to hear.
"OK, Gordon."
"OR! RE! GON!
Gordon tells Desmond about Theresa Banks. 17. He is assigning him to the case.
Cut to Portland.
Gordon's secretary brings him his coffee. Another secretary.
She is a slightly older dirty blonde in a purple dress with a gray print suit jacket and a pearl choker.
Two secretaries. Two pearl chokers.
Gordon tells Chester to meet him at "the private airport" in Portland. We see a shot of us flying. A single engine low-wing plane with two seats, single-file. The camera in the back looking over the pilot's shoulder, over the controls, out the window as we come in for a landing. For 7 seconds of screen time. Because we can.
Chester Desmond is played by Chris Isaak. The singer whose music sounds so much like it fits onto the soundtrack of a David Lynch movie. And in fact, it does. Three of his first hits came from the soundtrack to David Lynch's 1990 film Wild at Heart. Do you remember the song "Wicked Game"? It came out in 1989. It begins with a simple guitar, sounding like a steel guitar, a note, followed by a higher note, with Isaak's plaintive and anguished vocal. And the refrain, "No, I . . . don't want to fall in love . . . with you." There is the famous black-and-white music video featuring Isaak and model Helena Christensen walking on the beach. Before that one, David Lynch himself had directed a music video for the song.
Just seeing Isaak as Desmond step off the plane and approach Gordon on the tarmac makes you think of this song, even though the actual score has moved to jazz at that moment.
Kiefer Sutherland stands next to Cole, as Sam Stanley. From Spokane. Sam's the man who cracked the Whitman case. Congratulations.
A woman in a red dress named Lil the Dancer emerges from the hanger and does a strange choreography in front of the men.
Cole explains, yelling, "She's my mother's sister's girl."
Her appearance and posture are clues to the case. Because in this world you cannot just tell your fellow agents what they need to know. Even when alone. You must send them signals. Clues. This is Lynch's universe.
So later in the car Desmond explains it to Stanley.
Lil is wearing a sour face. Meaning: They are going to have problems with the local authorities.
She blinks both eyes. Meaning: Trouble higher up. The eyes of the local authority. Sheriff and deputy.
She had one hand in her pocket. Meaning: They are hiding something.
She made her other hand into a fist. Meaning: They are going to be belligerent.
She was walking in place. Meaning: There is going to be a lot of legwork involved.
Cole said she was his mother's sister's girl. Meaning: The uncle is missing. The sheriff's uncle is probably in prison!
The dress was altered. There is a different colored thread where it was taken in to fit her. Meaning: The tailored dress is our code for drugs.
A blue rose was pinned to her dress. Meaning: Well, Desmond cannot tell Stanley about that. We will have to wait to find out.
We have seen those blue roses before. In Tennessee Williams. And in The Thief of Bagdad (1940).
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/10/275-thief-of-bagdad-1940-united-kingdom.html
In addition to the mystery of Lil's blue rose, Teresa Banks had a jade ring. And it is missing. It too is a mystery.
Strange things pass through the electricity wires.
Meanwhile, Gordon Cole goes to the Philadelphia office. Your man Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) appears and tells him about his dream. It features David Bowie as the missing agent Phillip Jeffries.
Then we go into the Red Room where strange people talk backwards.
What is garmonbozia?
Pain and sorrow. Canned corn.
ONE YEAR LATER we go to Twin Peaks.
Laura Palmer is popular at school. She and her best friend Donna Hayward hang out together. She is dating Bobby Briggs. She is seeing James Hurley. She is hooking up with Jacques Renault. She is doing Leo Johnson. She does things at the roadhouse with her friend Ronette Pulaski and the men they pick up there. The Bang Bang Bar. She confides in Harold Smith. She is keeping secrets from her parents Leland and Sarah.
But what is really going on?
Why is she taking cocaine in the bathroom? Why is she so troubled when she seems to have everything going for her? All the boys like her. All the girls want to be her.
Could it be that strange man named Bob who either does or does not break through the window into her room at night? Since she was 12. (It could be real. It could be her nightmares.)
Or is he possessing someone closer to her?
Someone is ripping pages from her secret diary. She gives it to Harold to hide. Bob does not know about Harold. Maybe Harold will be safe.
She has a painting of a room and a door. Her room. There was an angel in the painting. The angel has disappeared. She has another painting of other angels. Does she have an angel? Someone to look out for her?
She wears a half-heart on her necklace. Who gave it to her? Who has the other half? And why is her father, of all people, jealous over it?
A man named Mike might know. He appears out of nowhere like a prophet to drop hints. To give clues. To speak truth. There are many prophets. The woman at the trailer. The mother and her son who wears the mask. The woman who approaches her outside the bar. Puts her hand on her forehead. And speaks directly into her life. Before Laura enters for her penultimate binge.
The good Dale is in the lodge and he can't leave. Write it in your diary.
We fall ever more deeply inside the dream as Laura enters the bar and Julee Cruise sings the aching, otherworldly ballad, "Questions in a World of Blue." Composed by Badalamenti. Lyrics by David Lynch himself. Transporting us. Transporting us. Into euphoria.
To try to hide the pain. To try to hide the pain.
Laura wants to keep her friend Donna from these darker experiences. To protect her. No one should know what she knows. See what she sees. Live what she lives. Donna sees. Donna does. Poor, innocent Donna. Get Donna out of here.
Something is going down tonight.
Bobby thinks she is now only using him for scores.
James really loves her.
She agrees to go with James and immediately regrets it. They go to where Bobby killed that man that night. Was it Bob? She changes her mind. Take me home. She makes him stop in the middle of the street. She jumps off his motorcycle before he comes to a complete stop.
And then . . .
And then.
At the end of this strange, fun, not so fun, way no longer fun, trip, this hallucinatory dream, this oneiric elegy, at the bottom of this free-fall drop down the rabbit hole with our floating Ophelia, we find an innocent little girl, a damaged girl, a broken girl, who had her innocence ripped away from her by someone she most needed to trust.
And who needs the good Dale.
And who needs her angel.
And who finds them.
And is finally, finally free.
Tuesday, January 9, 2018
374 - Eraserhead, United States, 1977. Dir. David Lynch.
Tuesday, January 9, 2018
374 - Eraserhead, United States, 1977. Dir. David Lynch.
This is what it is like watching Eraserhead.
1. I love David Lynch. I can't wait to see this one. I'm excited.
2. Oh, it's in black and white. Cool.
3. Listen to those strange sounds. He's good at that.
4. Hmm. Looks like David didn't have any money. I get it. It was early in his career.
5. Is that supposed to be a planet?
6. How long before he starts telling the story?
7. So this is what this film is about. That's different from my assumptions.
8. Did he make this before or after Elephant Man? I thought it came after but it looks like before.
9. Maybe this is a student film. Was it his Masters thesis or something?
10. I feel like I've seen this same movie at a hundred film-school screenings and low-budget festivals. And I've been an actor in several of them. A lot of those student filmmakers are now doing something else with their lives.
11. Don't eat the chicken!
12. Even though he has a lot of bad special effects in here, he has some good ones as well. Like that creature. Pre-E.T. That's cool.
13. It's also gross. Blech.
14. Which one of them gave birth? Her or him? And out of his mouth?
15. That lady singing prefigures Rebekah Del Rio in Mulholland Drive. "Cry-y-y-y-ing. Over you." Or shall I say, "Llor-r-r-ando. Por tu amor"? But with a bad face prosthetic. Silencio!
16. I could always run to the kitchen and get a snack.
17. This is the kind of film you make when you want film scholars to use words like dread, unease, paranoia, and alienation in their journal articles.
18. What time is it?
19. Well, that was interesting. I still love David Lynch. I'm still excited.
20. That was surreal. Literally.
21. Now I'll go read up about it to find out what I missed. That'll be faster. Then I can move on with my day. The next time around I'll appreciate it more.
374 - Eraserhead, United States, 1977. Dir. David Lynch.
This is what it is like watching Eraserhead.
1. I love David Lynch. I can't wait to see this one. I'm excited.
2. Oh, it's in black and white. Cool.
3. Listen to those strange sounds. He's good at that.
4. Hmm. Looks like David didn't have any money. I get it. It was early in his career.
5. Is that supposed to be a planet?
6. How long before he starts telling the story?
7. So this is what this film is about. That's different from my assumptions.
8. Did he make this before or after Elephant Man? I thought it came after but it looks like before.
9. Maybe this is a student film. Was it his Masters thesis or something?
10. I feel like I've seen this same movie at a hundred film-school screenings and low-budget festivals. And I've been an actor in several of them. A lot of those student filmmakers are now doing something else with their lives.
11. Don't eat the chicken!
12. Even though he has a lot of bad special effects in here, he has some good ones as well. Like that creature. Pre-E.T. That's cool.
13. It's also gross. Blech.
14. Which one of them gave birth? Her or him? And out of his mouth?
15. That lady singing prefigures Rebekah Del Rio in Mulholland Drive. "Cry-y-y-y-ing. Over you." Or shall I say, "Llor-r-r-ando. Por tu amor"? But with a bad face prosthetic. Silencio!
16. I could always run to the kitchen and get a snack.
17. This is the kind of film you make when you want film scholars to use words like dread, unease, paranoia, and alienation in their journal articles.
18. What time is it?
19. Well, that was interesting. I still love David Lynch. I'm still excited.
20. That was surreal. Literally.
21. Now I'll go read up about it to find out what I missed. That'll be faster. Then I can move on with my day. The next time around I'll appreciate it more.
Monday, January 8, 2018
373 - The Black Stallion, United States, 1979. Dir. Carroll Ballard.
Monday, January 8, 2018
373 - The Black Stallion, United States, 1979. Dir. Carroll Ballard.
Shipwrecked. Or Stranded.
The Odyssey. The Tempest. Gulliver's Travels. Robinson Crusoe. Swiss Family Robinson. Lord of the Flies. And Then There Were None. Island of the Blue Dolphins. Gilligan's Island. The Blue Lagoon. Cast Away. Lost. Life of Pi. Swiss Army Man.
Horse Racing.
Sporting Blood. A Day at the Races. You Can't Buy Luck. Home in Indiana. National Velvet. The Story of Seabiscuit. The Rocking Horse Winner. The Galloping Major. April Love. The Horse in the Gray Flannel Suit. International Velvet. Phar Lap. The Horse Whisperer. Seabiscuit. Flicka. Dreamer. Secretariat.
These are two of the most popular topics ever turned into stories. I have listed only a few examples of each. There are many more.
What if you create a story combining both?
Walter Farley published the novel The Black Stallion in 1941. It was so popular that he wrote twenty more novels, the last one with his son Steven, over the course of the next 48 years. Steven has continued the series, adding at least ten more novels since his father's death.
Alec Ramsey rides with his father on board the ship Drake , returning from visiting his uncle in India. His father is gambling with the diverse group of international travelers on board. Rather than betting with currency, each man uses whatever trinkets of value he has in his possession--from gold coins to jewels to a pocket knife to an iron miniature of a horse.
Alec goes to see his father, but his father is busy with the poker game. So he goes up on deck, where he watches some Arab men trying to contain a wild black stallion that is travelling on board the ship. Alec smuggles sugar cubes with him from the rom below. Later when the horse is contained and in his stall, Alec sets the sugar cubes on the window sill where the horse can eat them. The horse does. The horse and the boy bond.
Alec's father is lucky. He wins it all. That night in their room they divvy up their winnings. The knife and the expensive things for dad. Some gold coins and other trinkets for Alec. And the miniature iron horse. The horse's name is Bucephalus.
Dad tells Alec the story of Bucephalus. The horse belonging to Alexander the Great. The most famous horse of all time.
Then the fire comes.
And the ship sinks.
And Alec finds himself on an island with the horse.
What follows is what makes the movie.
Long stretches of shots without dialogue and without much cutting where a boy and a horse get to know one another. Their physicality and their chemistry is real.
The island, filmed in Sardinia, Italy, has such clear water that in at least one shot from high overhead you can watch the undertow moving out beneath the incoming tide.
In the second half of the film, Alec bonds with former jockey Henry Dailey, who becomes his mentor and father figure. The two bond and together help each other as they try to turn the wild horse into a racehorse.
* * * * *
Carroll Ballard was a cameraman who directed his own short films. He worked Second Unit Photography on Star Wars (1977), and two years later directed his first feature.
Caleb Deschanel is the cinematographer. You may know him as Zooey's dad. He has had a long and distinguished career and has been nominated for five Oscars. His work includes The Right Stuff (1983), The Natural (1984), parts of Titanic (1997), Message in a Bottle (1999), Anna and the King (1999), The Patriot (2000), and The Passion of the Christ (2004). He is currently working on Jon Favreau's CG version of The Lion King (2019).
Dailey is played by the legendary Mickey Rooney, himself a veteran of horse movies, including Down the Stretch (1936), Thoroughbreds Don't Cry (1937), Stablemates (1938), Out West with the Hardy's (1938), and of course, the great classic National Velvet (1944) alongside Elizabeth Taylor. After The Black Stallion, Mickey Rooney would go on to star in Lightning the White Stallion (1986), and even later, Lost Stallions: The Journey Home (2008).
Mickey Rooney may be the most prolific movie star in the history of Hollywood. With credits from 1926 to 2017, he starred in two of his own series as a child and young--Mickey McGuire and Andy Hardy--and was for awhile the biggest box office draw in the world. According to the guides at Disney World, Mickey Mouse was named after Mickey Rooney. (If you try to look it up, you will find stories trying to refute it, mostly because Mickey Rooney repeated the story himself. But the official tour guides at Disney World state that Mickey Mouse was named after Mickey Rooney. That would seem to be a good source of information.)
373 - The Black Stallion, United States, 1979. Dir. Carroll Ballard.
Shipwrecked. Or Stranded.
The Odyssey. The Tempest. Gulliver's Travels. Robinson Crusoe. Swiss Family Robinson. Lord of the Flies. And Then There Were None. Island of the Blue Dolphins. Gilligan's Island. The Blue Lagoon. Cast Away. Lost. Life of Pi. Swiss Army Man.
Horse Racing.
Sporting Blood. A Day at the Races. You Can't Buy Luck. Home in Indiana. National Velvet. The Story of Seabiscuit. The Rocking Horse Winner. The Galloping Major. April Love. The Horse in the Gray Flannel Suit. International Velvet. Phar Lap. The Horse Whisperer. Seabiscuit. Flicka. Dreamer. Secretariat.
These are two of the most popular topics ever turned into stories. I have listed only a few examples of each. There are many more.
What if you create a story combining both?
Walter Farley published the novel The Black Stallion in 1941. It was so popular that he wrote twenty more novels, the last one with his son Steven, over the course of the next 48 years. Steven has continued the series, adding at least ten more novels since his father's death.
Alec Ramsey rides with his father on board the ship Drake , returning from visiting his uncle in India. His father is gambling with the diverse group of international travelers on board. Rather than betting with currency, each man uses whatever trinkets of value he has in his possession--from gold coins to jewels to a pocket knife to an iron miniature of a horse.
Alec goes to see his father, but his father is busy with the poker game. So he goes up on deck, where he watches some Arab men trying to contain a wild black stallion that is travelling on board the ship. Alec smuggles sugar cubes with him from the rom below. Later when the horse is contained and in his stall, Alec sets the sugar cubes on the window sill where the horse can eat them. The horse does. The horse and the boy bond.
Alec's father is lucky. He wins it all. That night in their room they divvy up their winnings. The knife and the expensive things for dad. Some gold coins and other trinkets for Alec. And the miniature iron horse. The horse's name is Bucephalus.
Dad tells Alec the story of Bucephalus. The horse belonging to Alexander the Great. The most famous horse of all time.
Then the fire comes.
And the ship sinks.
And Alec finds himself on an island with the horse.
What follows is what makes the movie.
Long stretches of shots without dialogue and without much cutting where a boy and a horse get to know one another. Their physicality and their chemistry is real.
The island, filmed in Sardinia, Italy, has such clear water that in at least one shot from high overhead you can watch the undertow moving out beneath the incoming tide.
In the second half of the film, Alec bonds with former jockey Henry Dailey, who becomes his mentor and father figure. The two bond and together help each other as they try to turn the wild horse into a racehorse.
* * * * *
Carroll Ballard was a cameraman who directed his own short films. He worked Second Unit Photography on Star Wars (1977), and two years later directed his first feature.
Caleb Deschanel is the cinematographer. You may know him as Zooey's dad. He has had a long and distinguished career and has been nominated for five Oscars. His work includes The Right Stuff (1983), The Natural (1984), parts of Titanic (1997), Message in a Bottle (1999), Anna and the King (1999), The Patriot (2000), and The Passion of the Christ (2004). He is currently working on Jon Favreau's CG version of The Lion King (2019).
Dailey is played by the legendary Mickey Rooney, himself a veteran of horse movies, including Down the Stretch (1936), Thoroughbreds Don't Cry (1937), Stablemates (1938), Out West with the Hardy's (1938), and of course, the great classic National Velvet (1944) alongside Elizabeth Taylor. After The Black Stallion, Mickey Rooney would go on to star in Lightning the White Stallion (1986), and even later, Lost Stallions: The Journey Home (2008).
Mickey Rooney may be the most prolific movie star in the history of Hollywood. With credits from 1926 to 2017, he starred in two of his own series as a child and young--Mickey McGuire and Andy Hardy--and was for awhile the biggest box office draw in the world. According to the guides at Disney World, Mickey Mouse was named after Mickey Rooney. (If you try to look it up, you will find stories trying to refute it, mostly because Mickey Rooney repeated the story himself. But the official tour guides at Disney World state that Mickey Mouse was named after Mickey Rooney. That would seem to be a good source of information.)
Sunday, January 7, 2018
372 - The In-Laws, United States, 1979. Dir. Arthur Hiller.
Sunday, January 7, 2018
372 - The In-Laws, United States, 1979. Dir. Arthur Hiller.
Manhattan dentist Sheldon Kornpett's daughter is marrying Vince Ricardo's son.
How wonderful.
Two nice families are coming together to become one big, loving, peaceful family.
Either that or Ricardo is going to get Kornpett killed.
Or imprisoned.
Or lost in the Central American island of Tijada.
Ricardo, played by the one-and-only Peter Falk, seems to have some kind of a problem. He says he works for the CIA, but he entangles his soon-to-be in-law in crazy chases through the streets, breaking into Ricardo's own safe, jumping out a window, running down a fire escape, getting shot at, flying in a private plane, getting shot at again, speeding away in a car with the tire blown out, being thrown to the ground in the hotel lobby, racing through the street of Tijada, crashing into a market of fruit vendors.
The wedding is this Sunday.
Are you looking forward to it?
All of this excitement is over some engravings from the U.S. Treasury Department which were stolen from their truck and given to Ricardo. In an underground sting. To catch the cartel. So he says.
Alan Arkin plays Kornpett. And he and Falk seem to be having a great time engaging in their madcap shenanigans.
If they can just make it to the church in time.
372 - The In-Laws, United States, 1979. Dir. Arthur Hiller.
Manhattan dentist Sheldon Kornpett's daughter is marrying Vince Ricardo's son.
How wonderful.
Two nice families are coming together to become one big, loving, peaceful family.
Either that or Ricardo is going to get Kornpett killed.
Or imprisoned.
Or lost in the Central American island of Tijada.
Ricardo, played by the one-and-only Peter Falk, seems to have some kind of a problem. He says he works for the CIA, but he entangles his soon-to-be in-law in crazy chases through the streets, breaking into Ricardo's own safe, jumping out a window, running down a fire escape, getting shot at, flying in a private plane, getting shot at again, speeding away in a car with the tire blown out, being thrown to the ground in the hotel lobby, racing through the street of Tijada, crashing into a market of fruit vendors.
The wedding is this Sunday.
Are you looking forward to it?
All of this excitement is over some engravings from the U.S. Treasury Department which were stolen from their truck and given to Ricardo. In an underground sting. To catch the cartel. So he says.
Alan Arkin plays Kornpett. And he and Falk seem to be having a great time engaging in their madcap shenanigans.
If they can just make it to the church in time.
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