An accident is a terrible event … Notice the location of the accident. Well this seems to be a very obvious question and so a very obvious answer: On the way to 6980 Mulholland Drive, at Adam Kesher's house. But let's just think about it:

Is it the only accident shown in the movie? I don't think so, yeah the car accident is the first one, but when the hitman goes for Ed's book, doesn't he commit a lot of accidents such as shooting the fat lady, and shooting the vacuum? Can anyone tell where is happening this?

The third accident happens at Winkie's when Betty the waitress break a cup of coffee or a dish, this is very clear, but what is it relevance?

Just think about it.

Where does Ed's 'accident' happen? There's a sign on the building that says "Office Space for rent." Cynthia tells Adam to come down to the office, "you've got to fix this." Not too sure where to go from there.

Nice observation about the waitress's 'accident.' Hadn't thought of that. Joe's there for that one too.

voraxine wrote:An accident is a terrible event … Notice the location of the accident. Well this seems to be a very obvious question and so a very obvious answer: On the way to 6980 Mulholland Drive, at Adam Kesher's house. But let's just think about it:

Is it the only accident shown in the movie? I don't think so, yeah the car accident is the first one, but when the hitman goes for Ed's book, doesn't he commit a lot of accidents such as shooting the fat lady, and shooting the vacuum? Can anyone tell where is happening this?

The third accident happens at Winkie's when Betty the waitress break a cup of coffee or a dish, this is very clear, but what is it relevance?

Just think about it.

Lynch's clues rely on our subjective interpretation of the words.

An accident is a terrible event

I always thought that the most terrible event in the film, from Diane's perspective at least, is the dinner party. And that too takes place on Mulholland Dr. So taking David's interpretation of the term 'accident' literally, could it be said that the dinner party is a terrible event? Possibly. Does it fit into our general understanding of what an accident is?

Hm

Perhaps we could take it as clue that the setup of the dinner party is not intentionally put together to crush Diane (as some people have argued), but that Camilla genuinely wants Diane there and is trying to help her through networking with some film people at the party, or just to try to patch things up as friends, or similar ...

The fact that it's the final straw for a distressed and paranoid Diane leading to the chain of events with her committing suicide is a complete accident on Camilla's part. Are we then supposed to connect the car accident with the dinner party. Well, to use a different use of 'car crash', it's not beyond the realms of possibility. Like car crash TV or calling something that is horrible to watch a 'car crash'. In that sense, the dinner party is most definitely a car crash. For Diane.

Nothing massively compelling here, but yeah I definitely agree with you that there are many things we could interpret as 'accidents' in MD. In both a traditional way and more abstract way.

And it's always good to start thinking a little bit more abstractly about things.