The second in a series of Lynch film reviews now that the group is done reviewing the Twin Peaks series episode by episode:

Direct Download:
http://traffic.libsyn.com/twinpeakspodcast/Episode_38_-_Mulholland_Drive.mp3


Find other episodes of the podcast (including an interview with Mark Frost) in these locations:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-twin-peaks-podcast/id432749455
http://twinpeakspodcast.libsyn.com/
http://twinpeakspodcast.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/groups/twinpeakspodcast/

I've been listening to all their Twin Peaks podcasts, and the Blue Velvet review and I think these guys do one hell of a podcast.

But i think it's important to give a fair warning going into this. They, well, there's no other way to describe it: they basically read through the theories on the theory page of the website laughing at the people who write those theories.

You have to be able to see past that before you can enjoy this podcast. But if you can see past that, I can say for certain, go listen to this podcast when you get the chance. Even for some of us who have seen the movie more than 10 times, it's a fresh pair of eyes.

Yeah we get a really bad write up.

Their review is basically "there's no point reviewing/talking about/thinking about this movie because it doesn't make sense".

Great insight guys.

I understand their conundrum. A podcast about theories would be dry and boring. Anyone who's actually gotten to a point where they notice things like the owls on Mr. Roque's tie has to be insufferable to the rest of the world. That is not lost on me.

I can write what I think on a blog but I know damn well the audience for such things is a very tiny subset of the movie going public, and even then my own particular theory is a very tiny subset of that very tiny subset.

But in the end, whether we read too much into it, prone to undue extrapolation, or what have you, we're all just talking about the same thing. A movie and what we see in it. Or don't see in it.

I would add one other thing. I don't think they ever mentioned Mulholland Drive recently being put on the Sight and Sound top 50 of all time list. Number 28. Not bad for a movie that means nothing. But back to the conundrum, if you start talking about what it means, then you become the very tiny subset.

and then i say with big emotion


this ie's.

Thanks for the clarification Kevin!

Yeah, I knew we would take some flack for this one from people who really love this movie.

But you guys have got to admit, it really looks to be how Brad was saying it is in the episode. Mulholland Drive was a pilot that had some extra footage filmed in order to make it all work as a cohesive story in whatever way it could. It's exactly like the European Twin Peaks pilot, except in that case Lynch didn't try as hard to make it be a cohesive story.

I don't think there was as much forethought given to the story as you guys may be hoping. I could be wrong, but that's certainly how it appeared to us.

I still enjoyed the movie, just didn't love it.

-Matt

The "realist" approach to where the footage comes from is what drove me away a few years ago;

The impact of the experience of watching the movie is what keeps me in its orbit.

I have a half-developed idea about, "Why are we here, talking about this movie?", where there's several motivators why people might still be in the thrall of the images collected on this tape...I'd basically come up with 3 non-mutually-exclusive categories (each, of course, with a mascot-prop/scene from the movie):

1) the (blue) Puzzle Box (theorizing and countertheorizing, seeing how pieces interlink)

2) the History of the World, Containing Phone Numbers (trying to find the "true" meaning, in some provable way)

3) Electrocuted by Blue Lights in the Club Silencio (basic visceral response to the experience of watching it)

I'd say these days I am 80% Blue Lights, 15% Puzzle Box, 5% History of the World....back in the day I was trying to be 20% History of the World, and that seems like a dead-end if taken to an extreme:

if you want to look at things outside the movie to explain why it is what it is, the ultimate it was an episode in the can which was going nowhere without something to stretch it to feature length.

but these days I'm thinking of the process more ..openmindedly? Sacred-cow-ly? Either way -- what was there may have been the beginning of something else, but it had enough power and dangled enough plot threads, tentacles and plugs that, when re-wired into its current configuration, it completes new circuits.

Too much navel gazing? Certainly possible. I'm just glad I was able to watch Dan see that face again, outside of a dream.

There's one very telling moment in the podcast when one of the contributors says if you think about the movie you "fall into the trap" [of a futile attempt to understand MD].

Yes, Lynch is "trapping you" into thinking about his movie - the Fiend!!

It's just intellectual cowardice.

Matt - are you too scared of looking stupid to put your neck on the line and comment on the film? Or are you worried that the emperor's wearing no clothes, terrified of being 'taken in'?

It's a trap!

Although it doesn't directly relate to the fact that MD was originally a TV pilot, I do realize there's a conundrum involved in analyzing the movie the way we do here. It's not that I think Lynch must unquestionably have hugely changed the intended plot for the film from the way the TV series would have developed (maybe he didn't; maybe he knew from the beginning that these various characters would eventually be revealed as aspects of one woman's psyche or what have you).

It's that there's realistically no way that anyone -- not even David Lynch -- would deliberately make a movie so opaque that it requires this much in-depth discussion, analysis, and theorizing to understand. It reminds me somewhat of the theorizing that surrounded LOST when that was still on the air. Some of the theories would be so intricate, so focused on details in the scenes, that they became... what's the best word? Not "unbelievable" (because in many cases, all the things they claimed were on the screen really were on the screen, and there's no way to prove or disprove intent, short of the producers coming right out and confirming or denying something). But let's say "impractical." It was simply impractical to believe -- not that the creators might have put it there (they could have put any number of things there that they thought reflected the themes of the story) -- but that the creators could realistically have expected the viewers to catch them.

And I do think sometimes we're guilty here of reading too much into the minutiae of MD. Not because it's implausible Lynch could have placed it there, but because it's implausible that he could have expected anyone to find it there. And if he couldn't expect the viewer to find it, then it can't be crucial to understanding the film. Such obscure details might add to one's understanding of MD, but understanding MD couldn't realistically rely on them.

A good example of this is in the Alan Shaw essay, where he talks about the significance of the bong that's supposedly on Aunt Ruth's shelves next to a magnifying glass. Frankly, I couldn't definitely identify it even after knowing I should look for it, where I should look for it, when I should look for it, and why I should look for it. And even then, I could tell there was some object there, but I wouldn't say it's clear it's a bong by any stretch of the imagination. So to me, there's no way that seeing the "bong" (if bong it be) can be crucial to understanding the movie, because there's no way Lynch could just assume everyone (or anyone) would catch that.

And honestly, this even applies to things like the Beatrice Cenci painting. Although a famous work, it's not like John Q. Moviegoer is just going to recognize it as a portrait of a young Italian noblewoman who was sexually abused. So while Lynch might might have intended to have Diane (or Betty, or Aunt Ruth, or someone) have been the victim of sexual abuse (and I think it's fairly clear he did), I'd argue that either other, more obvious indications have to be in the movie, or catching that subtext isn't vital to understanding the plot.

And I think that's probably true. A lot of what we talk about here isn't about the "basic" meaning of MD's story. It's about finding and considering the intent of myriad possible "Easter eggs" Lynch placed in the film, pondering which ones he might have intended, which we might be imagining, which are intentionally significant, which only have the significance we give them, etc.

Interesting that this topic should arise now, because just yesterday I started a re-watch of MD, with an eye toward trying to view it without thinking about all the various theories I've read, and just going for an "Occam's Razor" interpretation: Based solely on what an attentive and thoughtful viewer sees and hears in the film in one viewing (or at most two), how would they likely decipher the plot? I'll probably post some thoughts about this experiment when it's done and time allows...

Siku wrote:There's one very telling moment in the podcast when one of the contributors says if you think about the movie you "fall into the trap" [of a futile attempt to understand MD].

Yes, Lynch is "trapping you" into thinking about his movie - the Fiend!!

It's just intellectual cowardice.

Matt - are you too scared of looking stupid to put your neck on the line and comment on the film? Or are you worried that the emperor's wearing no clothes, terrified of being 'taken in'?

It's a trap!

I'm not too scared to comment on the film I don't think. It's just I can't see why anyone would assume there is more to it than the classical interpretation of guilt ridden dream followed by the real world.

I used to hate in English class in school when the teacher would make us read a short story or something and then ask us, "Now what did the author MEAN here?" I always used to want to retort, "Why don't you ask him and stop putting words in his mouth."

I've seen many times when an artist of some kind is told about an interpretation of their work and they say, "What? That's not what I meant at all." It's not always as deep as you want to make it out to be.

I dunno, maybe Mulholland Drive is the deepest thing Lynch ever made. But to me, after seeing what was done with the Twin Peaks European pilot/TV movie it looks like the exact same situation, where he just tacked something on to make it work however he could. He just did a better job this time.

-Matt

Matt

If you don't want to talk about the film that's fine, but then why do a review?

It's a mistake to allow your knowledge of (a) the author and/or (b) the creative process involved to colour your critical assessment of a work of art. You have to engage with the TEXT and start from there. It ultimately doesn't matter what Lynch intended, although that's interesting. Yes it's a fortuitous accident that the pilot had to be warped into a film, so what? Sometimes great things come from random events - ask John Cage.

You seem happy to engage up to the point of "dream...real". On my first viewing I didn't even get that much. Then later, I did, then I got something else, then something else and so on, a journey that just keeps giving. Because wherever you look in this work you find it's just littered with allusions to other films, other lynch films, classical myth, real events, dreams, etc, etc. It's staggereing how much is in there. Maybe it's not deep, but it is incredibly RICH.

I apologies as, re-reading it, my previous post was a little harsh. I enjoyed the podcast and thanks for taking the time to do it. I just feel it's a little dismissive of the vast amount of work that's gone into unearthing all this information to come along and say the internet nerds are fooling themselves, none of this stuff is really there.

I mean, take the Cowboy. You could say he's just a surreal smokescreen to create a bit of atmosphere. But you were happy to study the waking portion of the film till you found an explanation - Diane dreamed Betty and now she's waking up. But with the Cowboy you (I'm guessing) don't want to try and understand. To engage. Why not? Why take one mystery seriously (Why did Betty's name change?) but not another (Who the hell's that Cowboy?).

Can I make a comparison. In the landmark study of Stonehenge published in the 60s as 'Stonehenge Decoded' they used a computer (!) to compare thousand of celestial events with the patterns in the structure. As everyone knows now, they found that solar and lunar events coincide with the stones in such a way that it can be used to predict eclipses. This methodology was heavily criticsed at the time because, well, Neolithic culture didn't have computers did they? It only works based on the assumption that they were as smart as us. And anything we know about Stonehenge, it's creators would have known too.

I just feel it's fruitless to examine the cowboy and other such things (like the Winkies scene) because they are so obviously ideas that had a direction for where they would have gone, but they were cut off before that vision could be realized in a series.

We're not playing with a full palette. All there is is the first stroke on the canvas and I'm not even sure that Lynch knew what the final painting would look like.

That's how it feels to me anyways. I'm not going to begrudge you guys your hobby of diving into this film headlong, but to me it feels like whatever you come up with is completely of your own imagination and likely has nothing to do with what the original intention was.

But I still feel like we gave a solid review even if we only looked at the top, most obvious layer of the film. In the end we all said we at least liked it, some of us loved it. Maybe it was over hyped for me personally.

Twin Peaks Podcast wrote:I just feel it's fruitless to examine the cowboy and other such things (like the Winkies scene) because they are so obviously ideas that had a direction for where they would have gone, but they were cut off before that vision could be realized in a series.

We're not playing with a full palette. All there is is the first stroke on the canvas and I'm not even sure that Lynch knew what the final painting would look like.

But you don't know that he didn't, either. And at a minimum, he knew why he (for example) put The Cowboy in the pilot. Whatever his significance might have eventually turned out to be, he was at least significant enough to include in the first place, which means Lynch intended to go somewhere with his character.

So to me, it logically follows that whatever intentions he might have had for the Cowboy's future development in the series, he could have (not necessarily did, but could have) found a way to work the essentials of that development into the feature film. I think we do DL a disservice to assume that he didn't have a subtext in mind for the aborted series, and therefore couldn't have fulfilled that subtext in feature film form.

Twin Peaks Podcast wrote:But you guys have got to admit, it really looks to be how Brad was saying it is in the episode. Mulholland Drive was a pilot that had some extra footage filmed in order to make it all work as a cohesive story in whatever way it could. It's exactly like the European Twin Peaks pilot, except in that case Lynch didn't try as hard to make it be a cohesive story.

I need to listen to the podcast and will do when I get time. I'll comment more substantively then.

BUT ... what you seem to describe here as being the weak part of MD is essentially what I consider the strongest and most fascinating part. The structure, the duality, the echoes and mini-puzzles between the two parts of the film is precisely why it is so compelling to me. Extraordinarily so given the failed-pilot-to-feature-film nature of what MD is.

Twin Peaks Podcast wrote:I just feel it's fruitless to examine the cowboy and other such things (like the Winkies scene) because they are so obviously ideas that had a direction for where they would have gone, but they were cut off before that vision could be realized in a series.

Ironically this mentality is down to seeing the film as a puzzle to solve. But hang on, this is a FAKE puzzle! There's no solution!! And you feel cheated - you don't want to play with the fake puzzle. That's why the obsession with WHAT LYNCH INTENDED.

You have to look at the film as WHAT IT IS rather than WHAT WE THINK IT WAS MEANT TO BE, otherwise you'll never see the film as we see it.

Which is fine, BTW

But, really, you should try it because there's so much to see!

The only other thing to add to this, as it's a point of clarification (not a theory), is that the ending of Mulholland Drive was not tacked on like the ending of the European version of TWIN PEAKS.

The entire movie was reworked, re-written, re-edited, re-mixed to include different music, some dialog removed, some added, all over the place to make the movie work as a whole.

The Twin Peaks Podcasts are super cool! I'm pretty sure WILD AT HEART is next. Less of tendency for fans to theorize about it, ergo less of a chance of upsetting their apple cart during the podcast. Agent Cooper says: