marksman wrote:In the first long dream, there are so many possible representations of Camilla/Aunt Ruth/Rita that I have lost count. But in this dream, the dreamer, Diane, has only 2 representations of herself: Firstly Herb and then Betty. When she dreams that she is Betty, she is making an idealized version of herself, in which she tries (successfully at first), to eliminate her problems and weaknesses and to be a better, nicer person. However, there is one thing that this "nice" Betty cannot face. And that is reliving the trauma of what happened at the clubhouse. This has led to a phobia of the number19, which she cannot even look at, without remembering what had happened to her and Dan at the "Nineteenth Hole". The death of Dan, in the swimming pool. was particularly hard for her to take. These were the scenes that Diane has been having in her nightmares. The only way that she can get a goodnight's sleep, and face up to the recurring dream, is to take on the strong personality of some one else. For this she seems to have chosen someone from her past. It could be the man who counselled her after the abuse scandal had finished, and helped her to rebuild her life. This man is Herb. When she is Herb, she has the strength to go round the back of Winkies and to go up to the number 19, and relive the events of Dan's drowning and then continue with an (initially) more pleasant dream, as Betty.
Diane is a regular in Winkies, and she is obviously regarded as quite mad by the staff. You can see this from the interaction between Joe and the waitress, later in the film. This is chiefly because Diane appears to have an imaginary friend, who she talks to and buys meals. This is actually the memory of Dan, who she can't let go of, even though she is in love with the imprisoned Camilla, who played a part in Dan's death. The waitress looks like she finds it a bit strange that anyone would want to sit down for a coffee with Diane, at all.
Now Diane is going to pay Joe a fee to spring Camilla from the jail, where he works, (note the long key chain attached to his waist in he 2 previous (dream) scenes). And she is desperate to do this, but at the same time, she is knowingly betraying the memory of Dan. This is why we now see Dan standing at the counter. I know it is very subtle, but I think that Dan has a look of disapproval and concern on his face and that Diane has traces of guilt on hers, but it might just be that she doesn't look quite as positive when she looks at (imaginary Dan) as she does when she talks to Joe.

what the bloody hell...

Dan at nineteenth hole?

So, how many drivers does a buggy have?

Some sound reasoning there but the riddle depends on where you live. I'm been an avid golfer for years and years. No one I know would ever call a golf cart a golf buggy. If you do a search on google news, "buggy" is used but it is a British term used by Britain and some of its historical colonies. If in the U.S. I asked for golf buggy, they would look at me like I had three heads.

Nevertheless, it does make for an interesting riddle. Now, if you agree that an effective riddle does not end with an answer of 'it depends' - and with the caveat that you are sharing the riddle with a golfer who uses the term "buggy" what then is the answer to the riddle?

It seems as though Adam should have answered the 'driver' question with a question. "What kind of buggy?"

It reminds me of that scene in Wild at heart where Jack Nance talks about his dog. He tells everyone he has a dog that barks. He then reminds everyone that they have imagined his dog without him telling everyone what type of dog he has.

A trick statement.

I also believe that the 'good' and 'bad' statements are yet another trick Cowboy plays on Adam. And he didn't get it. He failed.

marksman wrote:In light of this new evidence, I now believe that Dan was sexually assaulted.

Wait wait wait. I thought that you already believed that he'd been sexually assaulted as a child, possibly by Adam with a golf club *shudder*, before he drowned in the pool and then came back as an apparation to Diane many years later. Or something like that.



marksman, a word of advice which you are naturally free to take on board or otherwise as you please. But this comes from a good place.

You seem to be attempting to stitch together a patchwork quilt of ideas and theories and thoughts here. What I mean by that is that you appear to be taking bits and pieces that you read here and there, together with your own original ideas and trying in vain to find a way that they can work together; ideas together that come from different approaches and minds and views on the film.

That can be a difficult thing to do.

What you will find with MD is that you will come across ideas, connections, references that don't necessarily want to be worked into a grand unifying theory. They're quite happy to sit outside all of that, thank you very much. You'll drive yourself mad if you try to work every cool idea that you come across or come up with into whatever personal theory you are developing.

And further, whilst some things might work in the context of a broader theory they may only work through knowledge outside of the film. Case in point being that surely David didn't expect every single person who has seen the film to understand the Beatrice Cenci connection (the smoking gun for many abuse theorists). It's only through online discussions that elements of the subtext such as that have gained a wider audience.

There are undoubtedly allusions to sexual abuse in the film. But I genuinely don't believe that you need to pick those things up in your first couple of viewings to get a grasp on what the hell is going on in MD.

This is getting longer than I intended, so let's get to the point of your implication there.

So, was Dan abused?

Well, if Diane is projecting elements of herself onto the dream characters and you believe that Diane was a victim of abuse, then possibly some of that lingers in Dan's character. Certainly the similarities between the names Dan/Diane is no coincidence. But really all we know about Dan is that he was standing by the cash register as Diane was meeting with Joe in Winkie's. Now. We can speculate on Diane's frame of mind at that point, and how her looking at Dan (a stranger to her as far as we can tell) connects with Dan looking at Herb and there most definitely other 'Easter Eggs" to find in both (well, all 3) Winkie's scenes, but I don't think we learn things hidden in the periphary there that are at the heart of the story.

If we're going to start believing that those audio effects after Dan sees the Bum are genuinely intended to sound like submerging in water, I think that as part of Diane's dream we need to ask questions about what it might mean to Diane.

But if you're going to argue that Dan falling backwards into Herb and his groin coming close/into contact with his rear as some kind of evidence of abuse, then you're batting on a very sticky wicket (to use another sporting metaphor that those Stateside are unlikely to understand). I could produce single frames from this film that would have you twisted for days looking for deeper meaning. Be wary of taking 0.04 of a second from the film and building whole ideas around it. I'm not saying that you can't or shouldn't or mustn't, but just think about the numbers of times you've been caught in a photo in a strange position or pulling a strange face that you had no idea you were doing.

I need to stop here. Too many words. But I hope you understand where I'm coming from and I hope I've avoided coming across as condescending. Don't be frightened to think a bit more critically, and equally don't take it personally if others apply a bit of criticism to some of your ideas that may invite it.

I missed the joke. My bad.

Don't think it changes much that I said though. First bit at least.

marksman,

Your responses seem like just a long-winded way of saying 'blu, I'm not listening to you because I'm at peace with my own ideas.'

My response is that unless you are brutally self-critical to your own theories, they won't advance. Your theories (as posted) are devoid of that as there is no self-assessment that 'the problems seemingly with my theories' are ... 'brought forward.'

Where do you cover?

- The idea of Bob Brooker shooting a 71 in golf involves a number after the scene with Bob Brooker is over? That the only thing tying Bob with golf is golfers sometimes wear argyle sweaters? That the only reason that becomes part of your theory is that it's a reasonable golf score?

- That a theory based on a tragedy in a swimming pool depends on ignoring that the pool is shown to show that the pool man is not where he should be - but instead is shown because something terrible happened in a pool because ... you said so.

- That the 19 on the wall could as easily be a 79 on the wall (or not a number at all) and the 6 right above it is ignored because it's inconvenient to your theory.

I'm not going on and on because you seem to be stating that you don't have an 'open mind.'

But, please don't make it out that your opinions are not welcomed here. There is a looooooooonnnnnnng history of sexual abuse theories going back to the very beginning of forum discussions. Have you read them on the LoMD site? That said, if we don't push and prod each other's ideas, we are just here being cheerleaders and we do not advance. Worse, we become disingenuous and that helps no one. You may not like the critique of others like blu and myself, but as he said, it comes from a good place.

marksman wrote:I know already that you still don't get it. (my version, that is. Yours will work for you, I guess) But thank you for reading.
There's not much point me posting any more. because my views are not going to change, and if anyone wants some ideas to help with their own theories, mine are on here.

For someone so new to MD to become kind of entrenched in their position so early (my views are not going to change) seems a shame. I've lost count of the number of times that I've changed my mind or had my mind changed about something, and have always found that the more possibilities you consider within the film, the more you get from it.

That's my experience of my own and others' progression with it anyway.

And the thing is, I don't really have a 'version', so to speak. I believe generally that the popular/classical interpretation of 200g of Diane's dream, 75g of Diane's flashbacks with a tablespoon of reality mixed in, season, and put on a low heat in the oven for 2 and a half hours is the right framework in which to explore the film, but beyond that I'm open to pretty much anything.

Maybe we score differently on the Myers-Briggs or something and so would generally approach things in a different way, so I can understand why you might want to lockdown certain plot elements and that's cool, man. Different people have different goals when exploring MD and other films.

And cheers for the i/v transcript.

It seems that Mr. Marksman has edited the content out of most of his posts. It's a shame that he felt moved to do that. Some job too, editing 100 or so posts. I don't know what to say about it really other than to reiterate that all views are welcome here, but in a public arena such as this we must be aware that all ideas are likely to be scrutinised. That's the nature of the beast.

I will say one thing; if marksman ever wants to dive back in he'll be welcome back.

Hmmm. I wish he hadn't done that. He had some great ideas. :(

I hope you come back, Marksman!

Vicster, its very kind of you to say that.
But I deleted all my posts because they were upsetting some people on this forum. The last thing that they need is someone to come along with a "solution", as it would spoil everything. If David Lynch announced exactly what he meant in Mulholland Drive, there would be despair on here and other forums, because the mystery would have vanished, along with the purpose of the forum. So he has had enough sense to keep quiet.
Have you noticed how ideas are never really followed through on here? There seems to be a subconscious desire to move on to something else without taking any idea to its conclusion. An example of this is was the discovery that Dan is Herb's "imaginary friend". This subject has now been conveniently dropped, using the justification that Herb just got fed up with his "friend" and killed him off. Remember that the idea of the imaginary friend was initially well received, until it threatened the classical explanation (which has a lot of flaws, but is popular because the inconsistencies in it maintain the mystery).
I know that you, like me, can see that this film is really an abstract painting which is open to personal interpretation. And that finding what is true, for yourself, in this film, is what is really important. But that is not what keeps this forum a happy place. What the forum needs is threads that are non threatening, simply because they go nowhere. And what right have I to upset the apple cart?
So I haven't changed my mind: I won't post any more ideas and I won't restore the threads that I have deleted.
But I must say a big thank you for all the terrific ideas that you came up with. The funnier and weirder they were, the better they were!

As the person that came up with 'Dan is Herb's imaginary friend' idea - I don't know how my idea fits into a broader theory so I don't expect it from others either. I'm mulling some things over and maybe others are too. Maybe not. Is it a dream, if so whose? If it's a form of reality what form of reality is it when someone may be delusional? As Vicster noted, if Dan represents a conscious or subconscious form of Herb's making, what might that suggest? What if it's Dan's dream where Herb leads the dream? Or it just Lynch having some fun? So many ideas and paths to follow and consider. That's a long way of saying that I'm cool with it. As the dialogue in Pulp Fiction, what does Fonzie say? "Be cool.''

Wishing you the best Marksman!

But I must say a big thank you for all the terrific ideas that you came up with. The funnier and weirder they were, the better they were!

Why thank you, dahling! Lol!