I remember being blown away by some of the references that others had seen in MD to other works when I first started looking into it. The RT forums had great posts on the visual references to Wizard Of Oz and Le Mepris amongst others. I see here that there are threads on City Limits references amongst others.

I think it would be good to have a dedicated thread for references but please remove if not suitable.

Donald Cammell - Wild Side (1995)
Cammell co-directed Performance with Nicolas Roeg("How many driver's does a buggy have?"). Performance is a unique and classic film with many thematic links to MD;

• Fame and celebrity
  Identity
  playing roles
  etc

Cammell made very few films after Performance and complained of studio interference in the few he did make. His last film, Wild Side was taken away from him by the studio at the editing stage and a very different film was made in the final edit. Cammell shot himself shortly afterwards citing the studio interference in his work as the reason. His wife said he lived for 45 minutes after shooting himself in the head and sat in front of a mirror so that he could watch himself die.

They maybe tenuos links but I'm sure that Lynch knows Cammell's life and work.

I haven't seen Wild Side but it seems to have some thematic links to MD and stars Joan Chen and Anne Heche. It's famous for a steamy love scene between the two actresses and Heche plays two characters in the film.

Beatrice Cenci
The link to the painting in Aunt Ruth's apartment was made long ago - I love the detail that the subject of the painting may not even be Beatrice Cenci! I recently checked IMDB and Italian gore-master Lucio Fulci made a bio-pic of Cenci and some of the reviews mention the film's use of jarring and confusing flashbacks where no indication is given to the audience that the time-frame has shifted.

Just a couple I can think of for now and not exactly ground-breaking but fun to hunt for nonetheless.

somethingbad wrote:Donald Cammell - Wild Side (1995)[/b]
Cammell co-directed Performance with Nicolas Roeg("How many driver's does a buggy have?"). Performance is a unique and classic film with many thematic links to MD;

I'm not sure I understand your quote ... are you saying that the film Performance has the line "how many driver's does a buggy have" in it? Or simply that he didn't have final cut to his films much like the vast majority of filmmakers but in Cammell's case it led to a tragic end?

ctyankee wrote:

somethingbad wrote:Donald Cammell - Wild Side (1995)[/b]
Cammell co-directed Performance with Nicolas Roeg("How many driver's does a buggy have?"). Performance is a unique and classic film with many thematic links to MD;

I'm not sure I understand your quote ... are you saying that the film Performance has the line "how many driver's does a buggy have" in it? Or simply that he didn't have final cut to his films much like the vast majority of filmmakers but in Cammell's case it led to a tragic end?

I was being a bit flippant with the MD quote there and there's nothing like it in Performance - Cammell's most famous film is his first as director, Performance(1970). Quite unusually that film had two directors - Cammell and Nicolas Roeg were co-directors and there's quite a debate as to how that worked on the set.

On a side note; Nicolas Roeg has made many films that seem related to Lynch's work - Don't Look Now, Track 29, The Man Who Fell To Earth, etc.

somethingbad wrote:I think it would be good to have a dedicated thread for references but please remove if not suitable.

I think it's a good idea, so thanks for kicking it off.

If something significant and worthy of more discussion is found, then that shouldn't stop people from making a new thread, and equally if discussion on a particular point takes off within this thread I can always split the posts off into a separate thread.

Cheers.

I also dig Performance and all the early Roeg stuff. I agree that Performance exists in some similar worlds to MD.

Hamlet - William Shakespeare

"Good night sweet Betty." - "Good night sweet prince."

I'd seen the quote linked before but the penny's just dropped with me for a resonance with MD - forgive me if I'm late to the table with this one but Eng Lit revision just kicked in!

The character of Hamlet stages a play within the play where the actors will re-enact a scene very similar to the killiing of Hamlet's own father. His uncle murdered his father to take the crown. As big H says, "The play's the thing wherein we'll catch the conscience of the king."

Seems very Lynch :-) Imagine Rita saying it to the corpse as was the case in Hamlet!

Man Ray

Man Ray was an artist involved with the Dada and Surrealist movements. He made a film titled "Ruth Roses and Revolver". David Lynch used the title for a documentary he presented on some surrealist filmmakers who have had an influence on his films. The documentary was made for BBC in 1987 and a scratchy VHS version can be found on the internet.

Man Ray was involved with a Hans Richter film, "Dreams That Money Can Buy" where a female character dies in bed after a phone falls to the floor and her bed is engulfed in "mysterious" smoke.

The Wikipedia page on Man Ray has the attached painting - very MD!

From Wikipedia on "Dreams That Money Can Buy" - This isn't the part directed by Man Ray but the I can see an influence on Lynch, including the red curtains.

"Joe "finds a dream" for Mr A based on these interests. In the dream ("Desire") leaves fall to the ground beside a red curtain. A woman in white reclines in a red-curtained four-poster bed. A small golden ball rises and falls from her mouth as she breathes. She swallows the ball, smiles and falls asleep. Bars appear by her bed, and a man watches from behind them as she dreams of nightingales with calves' hooves. It appears the man is part of her dream, and telephones her to ask in voiceover for details. She tells him in voiceover "they talked about love and pleasure". Her telephone falls to the floor and excludes a misty smoke, which envelops her bed."

A Clockwork Orange, courtesy of ctyankee many moons ago - the discussion on ACO in one of the other threads reminded me of this. Some newer folk may not have seen it, so worth a repost.

somethingbad wrote:Man Ray

Man Ray was an artist involved with the Dada and Surrealist movements. He made a film titled "Ruth Roses and Revolver". David Lynch used the title for a documentary he presented on some surrealist filmmakers who have had an influence on his films. The documentary was made for BBC in 1987 and a scratchy VHS version can be found on the internet.

Man Ray was involved with a Hans Richter film, "Dreams That Money Can Buy" where a female character dies in bed after a phone falls to the floor and her bed is engulfed in "mysterious" smoke.

The Wikipedia page on Man Ray has the attached painting - very MD!

Sorry, I only just read this post properly. My bad.

These appear to be quote valid connections. Thanks for the info. Love the Bird of Paradise. Really nice. I found a copy of the documentary. Need to pull my finger out and actually watch now.

There is an MD moment towards the end of "Ghost in the Shell" (1995). The scene in question is possibly an homage to Persona, although this kind of face overlaying could as well be an original idea of the makers. Anyhow, the way it plays out makes you recall the bedroom scene in MD.


The set-up: A blonde woman and a brunette cyborg are lying side by side, waiting to me merged into one and there's talk about seeing reflections of oneself.

The curious case of The Limey has been discussed before. Curious because it appears that the MD pilot was shot at a similar time to The Limey yet there are clear connections between the 2 films. It's difficult to tell exactly if one is referencing the other or that Lynch and Soderbergh compared notes and decided to reference each other or something along those lines. There's a page on the main site looking at the connections here:

MD vs The Limey

I watched it again last night and just have a couple of minor things to add. The backstory to The Limey involves a girl (Melissa George) who has travelled to LA to try to make it as a film star. Her father (Terence Stamp) makes the following comment about her to one of the other characters.



What's interesting is that this line does not appear in the screenplay that I found online and makes it even more likely that the line was inserted as a connection to Betty in MD, and that the 'farm' line as far as The Limey is concerned is used metaphorically.

Other thing is that the villain goes on the run to a place called the Big Sur in California. 'Sur' being one of the strange slogans graffiti'd on the wall behind Winkies and previously connected to the Wicked Witch writing 'surrender' in the sky to Dorothy.



Just two minor observations. There was another bit of dialogue that connected to MD too, but I can't find it now. Will come back if I find it.

Edited to add that 'Big Sur' is the title of a Jack Kerouac book, amongst other things:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Sur_(disambiguation)

I remembered the other Lynch reference in The Limey. To The Straight Story. This is from a transcript from The Limey (not the script floating around online).

I was coming back from a motorcycle
classic in Sturgis, South Dakota,

on my motorcycle.
On U.S. Highway .

Just outside Spotted Horse,

I ran into a deer.
I had no chance.

Even though the highway people
had mowed the sides,

they couldn't mow
around the culverts,

and the doe jumped right
in front of the bike.

I had a chance to say one word,
"Fuck!", and then I hit it.

I know this: If a bullet
has my name on it,

I won't be calling for my mother.

But the only reason
I'm alive and telling this story,

is because of the big FL front end
and that solid tire on my Fat Boy.

>>I remembered the other Lynch reference in The Limey. To The Straight Story.
Nice find

blu wrote:What's interesting is that this line does not appear in the screenplay that I found online

Nerd status approved!

Devastated woman in bed, green blanket - MDesque scene in House of Sand and Fog (2003) …



… and Magnolia (1999)



MD (2001)

Nice touch to have Laura Harring wear a blonde wig in Derailed (2002)