Siku, I see what you're saying about the couch, but remember, it's a dream. I think in the dream Diane/Betty would rather effectively ignore the smaller room, since it is in fact the room Diane is in, and she's been miserable (in real life). Since Rita represents not just Camilla, but some component of Diane's psyche as well (such as maybe her subconcious), she only considers the couch.

Agreed Havenhurst is a dream-place, a dream-place with one bedroom. It can't "really" have two rooms (i.e. be misrepresented in the dream) because it doesn't have a "real" existance outside of the dream.

Sierra Bonita exists in the dream AND the real world but I don't recall a second bedroom in either. Can you point to the shots or events that suggest a second bedroom at SB?

Siku wrote:
As a timeline how about this:

1) LL lives at 12
2) Diane moves in with her
3) they split up
4) Diane moves into 17, taking 'her' stuff with her in boxes. But as can happen in a split her stuff and LL's stuff have got mixed up
5) Diane is too depressed to unpack/move in properly
6) LL tries to get HER stuff back from Diane
7) in the dream LL just lies (Diane is writing their relationship out of the dream, creating Rita as an amalgum of LL and Camilla)

By Gads! I think it works! (Now shoot me down )

Damn! This doesn't really explain why D Selwyn is listed at 12 and DeRosa at 17.

(Although it does suggest the Lamp Lady isn't DeRosa)

How about

1) Diane moves into 12, and writes a little sign on the wall so all the casting agents can find her.
2) To her surprise Diane finds LL in the shower of 12
3) LL is amnesiac and doesn't remember where she lives. On the plus side she's a hotty and romance ensues.
3) They set about discovering LL's identity, it turns out she's DeRosa and lives at no. 17 - wow!
4) 17's nicer so they bed down there
5) They split and Diane kicks her out (It's not easy for me!)
6) LL has no where to go but back to 12
7) Angry at being evicted from her own flat but too scared to confront Diane LL calls the cops (those two detectives came by again)
8) The cops prove too useless to uproot Diane, and finally LL snaps. Dressing up as her mother and accompanied by Blonde Camilla (dressed as her mother's gay best friend) she breaks into 17 and brutally machine guns a sleeping Diane
9) Arriving just too late the Cowboy comes to 17 to offer Diane the lead in the Sylvia North story. To his suprise finds her dead body riddled with bullet holes
10) ...you're now in the process of recasting your lead actress.

Seriously, we know they didn't live together initially (the labels by the buzzers) and we know they don't live togther now, but they've switched. So logically (and I'm assuming it wasn't a straight/simultaneous switch here) either Diane moved in to 17 AND THEN DeRosa moved out OR DeRosa moved in to 12 AND THEN Diane moved out (less likely given the action takes place at 17). So assuming it's the former:

1) Diane moves into 12
2) She falls into a relationship with DeRosa at 17
3) She starts spending all her time at 17
4) They split and Diane throws DeRosa out of 17 (it's not easy for me!)
5) DeRosa moves back to 12, where she boxes up Diane's stuff and takes it to 17, boxes up (most of) her stuff and takes it to 12
6) Diane sit's and stews

"Can you point to the shots or events that suggest a second bedroom at SB?"

I think Havenhurst duplicates Sierra Bonita as far as number of bedrooms in each apartment, they are just fancier at Havenhurst. But notice that when Diane wakes up at SB near the end, she's in a room where there's a window on the same wall as her headboard. The master (Havenhurst shots) is larger, with a large window parallel to the length of the bed (i.e., at 90 degrees to the all the headboard is on.) But there's still the room on the left end of the 'tee' at Havenhurst, the room Betty starts to approach but then turns away from when she first arrives at Havenhurst. One cue is the single light switch on the hallway wall. The master has a fancier switch aparatus.

I tried to upload a bmp image file of the small bedroom entrance, but it won't let me. Also converted it to jpg but still wouldn't let me upload it.

I think the clue "where is Aunt Ruth?" has something to do with all of this.

Not kept up with the entire flow of this thread (sorry), but regarding a 2nd bedroom at SB, check out the floorplans that woodlouse and Bob put together a little while ago that can be found on the main site here:

http://mulholland-drive.net/studies/sie ... ta_map.htm

Thanks for the info. I have a couple problems with it (surprise!), for example, I think the red lampshade is not in the apartment but instead in a sleazy downtown hotel or rooming house that Diane works out of as a call girl. Remember when the hairy-armed man called? The way he dialed the number indicated he was in the same building as Diane, i.e., as if it were a room number. Of course, this is all assuming he was in fact calling Diane, and you also have to take into account that it's probably a dream, so may not be a completely accurate depiction of reality.

My basic assumption about Sierra Bonita is that the bedrooms are in pretty much the same place with respect to each other as at Havenhurst. When Diane 'sees' her own dead body in the dream, it seems she's at Sierra Bonita.

Thanks for the link Blu. I'm not sure how accurate it is - I'd need to watch those bit again. Form memory thuogh this map of Havenhurst looks pretty good to me:

http://www.mulholland-drive.net/studies ... st_map.htm

I agree the redlampshade could well be at the Park Lane hotel. Or in no 12 with the lamp lady - it's hard to be sure because that shot is so cryptic.

Yeah, I have myself speculated that the red lamp shade is at some other location than SB and Park Hotel seems like the strongest alternative possibility. I think woodlouse was just working through what may or may not be possible given the particular information we are given/shown about the SB apartment.

Interesting to note that (taking a straight interpretation of the dream story) when Rita and Betty ring the number they find in the phone book for Diane Selwyn we hear Diane's voice on the same answer machine message that we hear later in the film. One can only assume (in the dream) that's located at #12 Sierra Bonita, the location guarded by the lamp lady, since it seems unlikely that the phone book has been re-published since any such swap occurred.

Further, perhaps the reason that the lamp lady has to go back to answer the phone is so that the machine message doesn't click on and the girls hear it, thus giving the game away about the hokey swap story and them realising that she is lying.

So perhaps we have 2 clues that the lamp lady is lying and that the swap is made up:

1. Diane's answer machine is still in apartment 12.
2. Lynch credits the lamp lady as someone other than DeRosa, as the apartment board would suggest if a swap had occurred between her and Diane.

So if she's lying about the swap in the dream, why would we believe it happened in 'real life'?

Are you sure that the phone book specifies no 12? I seem to remember it gives the address, but not the apartment number. Can't find a clip online now and will have to wait till I get home.

Brilliant line of thought, though, Blu. I can't tell if it's quite right but a number of things occur to me:


1) If the lamp lady isn't DeRosa then maybe DeRosa is Camilla's psuedonym to avoid paps and fans. Or, Rhodes is a stage name based on her real name. That would make sense in that, after the first hit fails (due to the car crash), maybe the gangsters have gone to DeRosa's appartment to try again, this time killing Ms Rhodes live in lesbian lover, D Selwyn (all still in the dream remember).

2) Could be that the lamp lady is working with the gangsters - as you say, 'guarding' D Selwyn's apartment. She seems to want to keep an eye on the prying Betty & Rita... AND to stop them getting into D Selwyn's apartment.

3) Couldn't the phone and answer machine have been moved to 17 during the switch (in dream or real life)? And couldn't the phone book give the right number, but the wrong address (assuming you're right and it specifies apt 12).

4) Having said all of the above, it seems that, if you're right, it's unlikely LL would send them snoop around apartment that she know's contains a body.

The phone book doesn't specify apartment 12, IIRC, no.

But *if* Diane is listed at living in #12 on the apartment listings then it would only seem to make sense to me that the number listed for her in the phone book is for apartment 12. So that would mean that when they ring the number and Diane's answer machine is on the end of it, that answer machine is located in the apartment where we meet the lamp lady.

We could concoct more complicated scenarios like Diane has somehow taken the number (and phone/machine) with her to #17, or that the book has been published since the swap, but that seems less likely to me, particularly when the apartment listings haven't even been changed and that the most common explanation for the swap is that Diane is 'hiding out'.

If the lamp lady is aware of a body in #17 and she hasn't informed the authorities, that would imply that she doesn't want anybody to find it and so there would appear to be little chance that she would send the girls to snoop around. I agree with you on that. That suggests she doesn't know the body is there, however she might be aware that there has been little activity at #17 for some time and the girls are unlikely to get an answer to the door. Or that she has been told to direct anyone looking for Diane to #17 for some reason.

Why the lies? I can't answer. I haven't thought about all this in a while, and it's one of the things for which I've never really been able to come up with (and never heard) a satisfactory explanation. I always seem to end up chasing my tail.

Perhaps we're not intended to take it so literally.

About half a year ago I posted a long detailed post on the IMDB board in an attempt to answer the same questions you guys have. I am not telling that my interpretation provides all the answers, but for me it is plausible enough, which means I leave the issues at rest maybe for the next 10 years or so???

Here is the link: Diane's true story.

enjoy,

cheers,

Xav

Thanks Xav, this is going to take a little time to untwist..

BTW does anyone know if the corpse was reshot for the film, i.e. is the corpse the same in the pilot?

[reads... thinks... reads... thinks...]

Quite brilliant. The appartment thing explained and with only a few (crucial) changes to the classical theory. We still have an affair, a murder, a hit, a nosey neighbour...

Blu this has got to go on the main site, presume that's ok Xav?

This has literally brought tears to my eyes... I'm at work and people keep asking me if I'm ok!

I'm just blown away that after 10 years this really seems to be tying everything up... It's like I'm in this dream world (you can imagine how I feel!).

I'm not saying it's foolproof, I have a few questions forming, but seriously guys you've GOT to read this. I urge everyone to put our communal thinking cap on. Let's shake this thing up and see if we can break it.

Thanks for your efforts Xav

Xav... First of all, anyone who quotes Leonard Cohen is going to get me reading. Secondly, as Diane (after being visited by Louise Bonner) so eloquently put it: "Whoa." One of the sub-themes bugs me (so I'll be reading it again) but all in all, GOOD JOB!!!