Mulholland Dr. - A multi-layered Analysis

Understanding Mulholland Dr. (by Frank Todarello)

The following should make it easy for you to understand the movie. I put it in order/sequence the way I think it would've went. Of course there may be a bunch of ways this movie could work...I just read one too many reviews saying that the movie is NOT supposed to make sense. Nonsense. It makes perfect sense.

Lets begin:

1) Diane wins a Jitterbug Contest. There's an old couple with her when she wins. Maybe they are the judges. They ARE NOT her parents. Either way, winning the contest sparks her interest in acting (she says this later).

2) While auditioning for a role she really wants in the movie The Sylvia North Story, Diane meets Camilla. Even though Camilla gets the role, the two become friends (Diane says this later). Camilla helps Diane get some small parts, and, Diane falls in love with Camilla. The two begin a relationship.

3) While Diane watches Camilla on the set of one of Camilla's next movies, the Director, Adam, feels the need to show the lead male actor how to kiss Camilla for the scene. But Adam orders everybody off the set (Camilla asks if Diane can stay and watch). Adam and Camilla kiss while Diane, getting jealous, watches from the side. Adam and Camilla seem to be enjoying themselves a bit too much. Adam yells for the stage lights to be dimmed so he can continue to kiss Camilla in private. Is Camilla cheating on Diane with Adam? Probably.

4) So at Diane's apartment, we see Diane and Camilla fooling around; on the couch (Diane is topless only wearing light blue jean shorts. Camilla's breasts are exposed also but she has black sleeves on). Even though Camilla says, "You drive me wild" to Diane to make her feel good, after a few seconds of foreplay Camilla eventually says, "We shouldn't do this anymore". Diane fires back with, "Don't say that". Camilla responds with, "I've tried to tell you this before". Diane says, "It's him (Adam), isn't it"?

5) Next, Diane is kicking Camilla out of her front door. They obviously had a big fight about Adam. Camilla, trying to hold open the door, says, "Don't be mad". Diane yells, "It's not easy for me and I'm not gonna make it easy for you"! (Diane is wearing a see-through grey top and light blue jean shorts while Camilla is wearing the red top with black sleeves).

6) Diane, wearing the see-through grey top and light blue jean shorts, is hysterically crying and masturbating on her couch. She is wildly depressed and mad.

7) [IMPORTANT SCENE. Pay attention when watching]
At Diane's apartment, we see Diane dressed up in a dark red one-piece dress, obviously dressed for going out. The phone near the tree-based lamp with red lamp-shade rings. Diane looks as if she shouldn't answer it and screens the call by letting her answering machine pick up. We hear Diane's machine greeting say, "Hello it's me, leave a message" (Diane will incorporate that greeting into her dream when Betty and Rita call the "D. Selwyn" from the phonebook). It's Camilla calling, she says, "Diane"? Diane now picks up the phone and we hear Camilla say, "The car (Limo) is waiting. You coming?". Diane seems cautious, like maybe she shouldn't go. Diane seems like she doesn't want to go, but does because she still loves Camilla. Besides, Camilla said "it means so much to me". Camilla tells Diane the address is 6980 Mulholland Drive. Diane goes in the back of the Limo but the Limo stops. Diane tells the driver, "What are you doing? We don't stop here" (remember those words). Its a surprise. Camilla comes DOWN from out of the woods to greet Diane and take her via a shortcut back through the woods to a party Adam is throwing (at the same location where Diane dreams Rita has her accident). At the party, Diane meets Adam's mom, Coco (she'll be the landlord in Diane's dream). At the table during this party, Diane is obviously not too happy to see Camilla so close to Adam. Anyway, she mentions that she won a Jitterbug contest which sparked her interest in acting. She also mentions that her Aunt died. Diane says she met Camilla on the audition/set of The Sylvia North Story, a part that Diane really wanted, but Camilla got. We hear Camilla, in Spanish, say, "Yo nunca fui a Casablanca con Luigi" ("I never went to Casablanca with Luigi"). A few guys at the table respond with, "yeah, right" ("que va" in Spanish). Diane also says that Bob Brooker, the Director of The Sylvia North Story, didn't like her. Diane tells them that after Camilla and her became friends, Camilla helped her get parts/roles.
Now you'll hear Adam say, "So I got the pool, and she got the pool-man" (obviously speaking about an ex-wife of his). As Adam and Camilla are about to make an important, seemingly romantic announcement, a woman whispers in Camilla's ear. Then Camilla and this woman make-out. This clearly upsets Diane. When this woman walks away, Diane sees her pass by a man in a Cowboy Hat (Diane will later put this woman and that Cowboy in her dream). Now, Diane, after sipping her espresso in this moment of torment and uncomfortableness, looks up and across the room at some older guy (Diane will later make this "older guy" become the older Castigliane Brother who spits out the espresso). Diane is twitching and agitated. Finally, Adam and Camilla announce that they're engaged to be married.

8) At Winkies Diner, Diane (wearing a white, sleeveless shirt with an angel print) meets the hitman she must have just hired to kill Camilla. The hitman has a black-book with him set on the table. Diane doesn't know what its for (and neither do we), but, it'll pop up in her dream later). The waitress, who pours them coffee, is wearing a nametag that reads: BETTY (now you know where she gets the name "Betty" from). Diane shows the hitman a photo of Camilla and says, "This is the girl" (remember those words). The hitman, holding up a blue key, says, "When it's finished, you'll find it where I told you" (in other words, when the hitman kills Camilla, he'll hide the key near the dumpster behind Winkies). As the Hitman is holding up the blue key to show Diane, Diane looks over to the Winkies register and notices a mid-aged man looking back at them (Diane thinks this man knows what they are doing and will later dream him to be Dan, a guy who has nightmares about Winkies and a monster). Diane asks, "What's it (the blue key) open"? The hitman just laughs. (So, because Diane asked what the blue-key opens, it shows up in her dream as a mysterious blue key...that eventually opens a mysterious blue box).

9) Time goes by...(Camilla must be dead because, although we're not shown it yet, Diane has the blue key on her coffee table. You'll see it when she wakes up)...and Diane goes to sleep with guilt (we're shown this in the first person mode from Diane's point of view going down into the pillow from the beginning of the movie). Now Diane dreams.....

DIANE IS ABOUT TO INCORPORATE ALL THE ABOVE REAL EVENTS INTO HER DREAM... although they pop up in different forms, names, visuals...

DREAM A: Diane/Betty & Camilla/Rita
DREAM B: Dirty Hollywood
DREAM C: Horror behind Winkies

DREAM-A9) Limo driving on Mulholland Dr has Camilla/Rita in it. The driver stops up high above Hollywood on Mulholland Drive. Camilla/Rita says, "What are you doing? We don't stop here" (same thing Diane really said to the driver on the way to Adam and Camilla's diner party). The driver pulls a gun on Camilla and says, "get out of the car" but before she does, racing cars crash into the Limo. Notice the location of the accident: up above Hollywood city; the same location where Adam and Camilla had their dinner party; where Diane heard the dreadful news which caused her to hire a hitman. Camilla/Rita, although very injured, is the only survivor. She escapes the wreckage and walks DOWN through the woods and ends up sneaking in an empty apartment off of Sunset Blvd after a woman leaves for a trip. (This is to show that the dreaming Diane is trying to convince herself that maybe Camilla was never actually killed).
Diane also dreams that a blonde haired guy (the hitman she hired in real life) is talking to a long-haired guy about the accident. The long-haired guy has a book they call "Ed's famous black book", or, "The history of the world in phone numbers". The blonde guy (hitman from Diane's real life) kills the long-haired guy and takes the black book after a string of foul-ups. He leaves out the window (this scene shows that the dreaming Diane must've noticed the black-book with the hitman in real life and dreamt up an entire scenario of how he might have acquired it). What's in the black book of numbers? That's not important. What is important is that its just showing us, the viewer, that Diane sees things in her real life and drops them in random places in her dream.
Anyway, that blonde guy, outside of Pink's Diner, asks a bruised girl if she's seen any new girls on the street.

DREAM-B9) A weird looking man in a wheelchair calls an unseen man and says, "The girl is still missing". The unseen man listens, then hangs up briefly, picks it up again and dials out. We see a yellow rotary phone ring. We hear, "The same", when it's answered. The person at the yellow rotary phone hangs up for a second and then calls a black push-button phone near a tree lamp with a red lampshade. It rings...It's not shown being answered (that's the phone in Diane's apartment in real life that she hesitantly answers when Camilla invites her to the dreadful dinner party at Adam's).

DREAM-A10) [Diane renames herself Betty in the dream because her subconscious remembers reading the nametag at Winkies]. We see Betty and an old couple getting off the plane in L.A. (The old couple might represent the judges that picked Diane to win the Jitterbug contest which in turn made her want to become an actress, which in turn, brought her to L.A.). Betty, in a pink sweater, travels to 1612 Havenhurst Ave where her Aunt Ruth lives (although in Diane's real life, Aunt Ruth is dead, she dreams that Aunt Ruth is still alive to help her get acting jobs).
Betty meets the manager/landlord of the apartments, Coco Lenoix (In Diane's real life, this was Adam's mom from the dinner party). Betty discovers Camilla/Rita in the shower of her Aunts apartment. Camilla/Rita gets out of the shower and puts on a red towel. When Diane asks what her name is, Camilla/Rita doesn't know. So she sees a poster of the film GILDA starring Rita Hayworth and chooses Rita to be her name. Betty even tells Rita "I just came here from Deep River Ontario, and now I'm in this dream place" (Yup, Diane is surely dreaming this. That was a big clue). As Rita rests, Betty covers her with a red and black robe.

DREAM-B10) At a conference table, Two powerful business men called the Castigliane Brothers tell the Director, Adam, to re-cast the lead actress role with a woman named Camilla Rhodes as they show him a picture of her (dreaming Diane is putting the real Camilla's name to the woman that kissed Camilla at the dinner party). They demand, "This is the girl"! Adam doesn't want to cast her. He doesn't even know her. A weird looking guy in a wheelchair (not in the room with them) listens in via a speaker. The older Castigliane brother orders an espresso. He taste's it and hates it (remember, Diane saw this guy at the party after she looked at HER espresso). Adam says he's not gonna cast this girl from the photo in his film. The Castigliane brothers threaten, "it's no longer your film"! Outside, Adam smashes the Castigliane brothers' Limo and takes off in his own car.

DREAM-A11) Betty discovers that Rita has amnesia from the accident and that Rita doesn't even know her Aunt Ruth (this is dreaming Diane's way of wishing that Camilla could've been dependant on her in real life). Betty suggests they look in Rita's purse for her I.D. to find out Rita's real name. They open the purse to discover a lot of money and a blue key (the money is showing up in this dream because of the cash Diane gave to the hitman to kill Camilla, and, the blue key represents the real blue key that the hitman hid behind the dumpster at Winkies when Camilla was dead: service for payment). Remember, Diane went to bed knowing she had the blue key...which means Camilla is dead. You'll see).

DREAM-B11) Mr Roque (the weird guy in wheelchair), has production on Adam's film shut down.

DREAM-A12) Rita remembers she was on Mulholland Drive. Betty wants to help Rita find out about the accident & Rita's real name.

DREAM-B12) On Adam's cellular phone in his car, Adam's secretary, Cynthia, tells him that production is down on his movie. Cynthia says, "You better get down here Adam". Adam says, "No." Cynthia says, "Meet me at the office, we gotta do something". Adam reply's, "I'm going home". Cynthia says, "Adam, this isn't like you". Of course not, its Diane's dream.

DREAM-A13) Betty and Rita hide the purse with the money and blue key in a Hat-Box in Aunt Ruth's closet. They go to the payphone outside of Winkies Diner next to the "Entrance" sign (that payphone and that "entrance" sign show up twice in Diane's dream) to call the LAPD and inquire about an accident on Mulholland Drive. Inside Winkies (in the same booth where real life Diane and the hitman made their deal), a waitress with the nametag: DIANE, serves coffee to Betty and Rita. Betty and Rita see this nametag and Rita suddenly thinks her own name may be Diane. Rita thinks her real name might be Diane Selwyn.

DREAM-B13) Adam comes home to find his wife in bed with the pool guy. She has been cheating on him. He tries to damage his wife's jewerly, but the pool guy kicks his ass. Adam leaves after they tell him to get out of his own house. Remember, real life Diane heard Adam say "So I got the pool, and she got the pool-guy", so, she dreamt it her own way.

DREAM-C9) Diane dreaming that the Mid-aged man, Dan, and his therapist/friend are in Winkies (in the same booth that Diane and Hitman were). Dan talks about HIS horrible dream...the bad-thing/man behind the dumpster and the horrible feeling he gets in his dream when his therapist/friend pays at the register. The friend goes to the register to pay (just as Diane saw the Dan do). They go outside (the camera pans to the outside payphone & "entrance" sign) to check out what's behind the dumpster. There's a dirty faced monster behind there. Dan faints. (Remember, Diane paid the hitman and the hitman showed her a blue key in that Winkies booth while Dan looked from the register. Well, this is Diane being paranoid that Dan knows something dirty went down having to do with a blue key.

DREAM-A14) Back at Aunt Ruth's, Betty and Diane look up D. Selwyn's phone number and address in the phonebook. D. Selwyn lives in apt#12 Sierra Bonita. Betty and Rita call the number. Betty says, "It's strange to be calling yourself". Rita says, "Maybe its not me". They hear D. Selwin's answering machine say, "Hello it's me, leave a message". Rita says, "That's not my voice, but I know her". Betty and Rita wonder if that voice is a friend/roommate.

DREAM-B14) A big guy comes looking for Adam at his house. Adam's wife and the pool guy she's sleeping with tell him to get out. The big guy punches them both. Adam is not there.

DREAM-A15) Betty and Rita want to go to #12 Sierra Bonita to find out anything about this Diane Selwyn. Rita seems afraid of something. Next, A witch-like-woman named Louis Bonner comes to the front door and says, "Someone is in trouble"! Betty says, "I'm Ruth's Neice. My name is Betty". The witch-like-woman reply's, "No it's not, that's not what she said. Something's wrong"!
Coco appears at the front door with a fax audition from Ruth for Betty.

DREAM-B15) At Cookie's Motel, Cookie, a Latino man, tells Adam his credit cards arent any good. He has no credit. Adam speaks with his secretary, Cynthia, on the phone who tells him to meet The Cowboy.

DREAM-B16) Adam meets The Cowboy. The Cowboy tells him to re-cast and choose the girl from the picture. The Cowboy tells Adam, "you'll see me one more time if you do good. Two more times if you do bad"

DREAM-A16) Betty rehearses her lines with Rita (Betty is wearing a pink robe. Rita is wearing another black and red robe). Betty leaves for audition. Coco stops her out front and tells her she talked to Ruth and that Ruth doesnt know anybody named Rita. Betty tells Coco not to worry, but Coco smells trouble.
Next Betty auditions for this move and does great. Then the casting agent (Mini) takes Betty across the studio to the set/auditions of a bigger, better movie, called The Sylvia North Story, directed by Adam. When Betty walks in, Adam and Betty stare at each other. The girl named Camilla Rhodes is up next to audition, and when she does, Adam does as he was told to and says, "this is the girl" (that's the same thing Diane said to the hitman in Winkies when showing him the real Camilla's photo-resume). Betty watches but turns around and leaves in a hurry because she said she had to be somewhere. She promised a friend.

DREAM-A17) Betty (grey jacket) and Rita (red shirt black sleeves) go to #12 Sierra Bonita. On the way, Rita is obviously very afraid. They find out from the woman at #12 that Diane Selwyn moved/swapped apartments with her and now Diane Selwyn lives at #17 Sierra Bonita. Rita now knows she's not Diane Selwyn, so they go over to #17 and climb in the window when no one answers the door. Inside, they discover the body of Diane Selwyn dead on the bed. Betty is very calm, but, Rita runs out and is a hysterical mess.

DREAM-A18) Rita runs to Ruth's to change her appearance. Betty helps by giving her a blonde wig. At bedtime, Betty tells Rita she can sleep in the bed with her. Rita climbs, naked, into bed with Betty and thanks her for everything. They make love. Betty asks, "have you ever done this"? Rita says, "I don't know. Have you"? Betty answers, "I want to with you. I'm in love with you". They continue to make love.
Sometime during the night while sleeping, Betty wakes up to Rita saying, "Silencio" over and over. They go to Club Silencio (Betty in red shirt, Rita in blonde wig and black shirt).

DREAM-A19) At Club Silencio, the Host says, "This is all an illusion" (and a bunch of other lines in Spanish like "No hay banda" ["there is no band"]. Betty shakes to the sound of thunder coming from the speakers. There's a woman with BLUE-hair alone in the balcony. This blue-haired lady is mysterious, just like the blue key and the blue box Betty's about to find in her purse. (Those are the only "blue" things in this movie). A Latino man (Cookie) introduces Rebecca Del Rio to sing "llorando" ("crying" by Roy Orbison, in Spanish). Betty and Rita start crying. Rebecca falls down dead but the singing continues (this is foreshadowing -or- a warning to the dreaming Diane's self; the song is called "crying" and then the singer, Rebecca, seemingly "dies" on stage. Even Diane in real life has been crying. Is she gonna die, too? Yup). Betty finds a blue-box in her purse. They go back to Aunt Ruth's. Rita grabs the Hat-Box out of the closet with the purse containing the money and blue key hidden in it. When she turns around, Betty is gone. Disappeared. Rita speaks in Spanish and says, "Donde estas"? ("Where are you"?) Rita puts the blue key in the blue-box and it opens. Then we're sucked in via first-person mode and the blue-box drops to the floor. Now Aunt Ruth walks into the room. Rita has disappeared, too. There's no sign of a box or purse on the floor either.

DREAM-C10) Cut to the scary, dirty faced monster (bum) behind the dumpster holding a blue-box. When he drops the blue box, it releases the old couple, although very tiny, who are laughing as they exit the blue box. They are walking out. Where is the tiny old couple going? (Remember, this s a dream. But later, when Diane wakes up, she'll imagine that they were coming to get her. You'll see).
So, the dirty faced monster behind the dumpster at Winkies represents the "Killer Inside Diane", the dirty deed Diane had paid for, and, he's behind the Winkies dumpster because that's probably where she found the hitman's blue key letting her know the job was done (Camilla was killed). And Diane dreams that the mid-aged man/Dan must think the blue key goes to something dirty or horrible. Of course: a blue-box being held by a dirty bum.

DREAM-A20) Then we're shown the real Diane sleeping in her bed at #17 Sierra Bonita in the same position as the dead D. Selwyn that Betty and Rita found.. We see the Cowboy open her door and say, "Hey pretty girl, time to wake up" (this is Diane's mind trying to wake her up) Then we're shown the dead D. Selwyn in the bed with the grey nightgown for a brief second...(this is dreaming Diane's mind reminding her that she may end up like this if she cant get a hold of herself)...

END OF DIANE DREAMING/back to her real life

21) Diane wakes up to knocking at the door and puts on a white robe over her grey nightgown. Her female neighbor (or maybe another ex-girlfriend) from apt #12 is at the door (Diane doesn't look pleased to see her). As the girl takes back her dishes and piano ashtray from Diane's coffee table, we see a blue key (yup, Diane went to sleep knowing that Camilla was murdered). Moments later, Diane, losing her mind for a brief moment over near her sink, frantically visualizes Camilla is back and next to her (wishful thinking). Diane is losing it. Near the sink, Diane finishes making her coffee and walks towards her couch and we're shown a flashback (see real-life scene 4).

22) Diane, (wearing her white robe over the grey nightgown) is depressed, sitting on her couch looking at the blue key on her coffee table. The piano ashtray is gone. She hears a knock at the door again. Diane doesn't get it (she's probably paranoid that the FBI knows what she had done, which is why in her dream the girls kept hiding from the "agents"). The knocking continues, but, then, Diane imagines the old couple, now very, very tiny, crawling in under Diane's door, laughing (remember, she dreamt that they were tiny and crawled out of the blue box). Next, they're actual size and still laughing hysterically at Diane. She is losing it!! Diane is trying to back away from them while screaming and crying, but the old couple keep coming at her. Diane backs up into her bedroom, grabs the gun out of her nightstand, and shoots herself in the head. END OF MOVIE.

The tiny old couple represents that damn little Jitterbug contest, which they were the judges of, that changed Diane's life...for the worse. If it wasn't for that Jitterbug Contest, Diane never would've met those old judges. If she never won the Jitterbug Contest, she never would've came to L.A. to act. If she never came to L.A. to act, she never would've met Camilla. If she never met Camilla, she wouldn't have fell in love with her. If Diane never fell in love with Camilla, she never would've been hurt when she got dumped. If she didn't get dumped, she wouldn't have hired a hitman to kill Camilla.....you get it now?

If you have a question or comment, feel free to email me at: ftoad@optonline.net