derekfnord wrote:I do think it's likely that the film version of Mulholland Drive probably does go generally down the same road (pun intended) as DL intended the TV series to go down. Certainly, he would have to re-work how certain elements would be introduced and resolved in just 2.5 hours rather than a (potentially) open-ended series. But it just seems logical to me that he'd find a different way to reach the same destination, rather than invent a wholly new destination, and try to retro-fit the existing material to fit it...

If we can believe Lynch ... that's not the way it went down. Lynch has shared that he "didn't have the ideas" as to how to turn the pilot into a feature film. Obviously, that rules out "going down the same road" as that would be the first thing that occurred to him. Lynch said that a breakthrough came during one of his meditation sessions. Hopefully, there may be a source on the LoMD website ... but I don't know. Either way, he wrote about this in his book "Catching The Big Fish."

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4:41 into the video.

"[…] Since this started out to be a television pilot which doesn't have an ending, an ending had to come somehow. And I didn't have any ideas for this ending. And one night, I sat down in a chair, and I closed my eyes, and ideas came. It's all ideas. So, the ideas came, and then I knew what it was. Now, these ideas that came, weren't just for the ending. They were for the beginning and the middle and the end, a whole shifting. Then we went back and shot for several more weeks to finish the film that needed an ending because it was not a TV show anymore. But ideas came one night, from 6:30 to 7:00, then they came."

Personally, it wouldn't surprise me if dreams were to play a part somehow in the MD TV series, but to the extent of the feature? I doubt it, but we'll never know.

Just by looking at the movie, one would probably conclude that making the havenhurst part of the movie was the idea that came to Lynch, the idea and ideas that he says came to him in the interviews. But if I'm following the Pilot Movie "study" correctly, what I see is that the scenes shot for the feature do not begin with Diane waking up, but begin with Betty and Rita sleeping together. So the idea that primarily came to him was simply this: "Diane is in love with Camilla."

And because we've seen Lynch create Deer Meadow in relationship to Twin Peaks, and we've seen Pete and Alice in relation to Fred and Renee, it stands to reason a dual reality would have existed in a MULHOLLAND DRIVE series too at some point either framed as a dream or what have you, who knows.

ctyankee wrote:Perhaps it's just a bit of language confusion, but you've misunderstood Watts. She is using "come alive" in the slang sense of a dead project 'coming alive.'

I don't think so ctyankee. She says, "There's been so many times, throughout that year and a half [since the pilot of MD was rejected] where it's been almost there, and then erupted and fallen apart or it was gonna take on some other dynamic, and, y'know, be it a feature or a TV series, but come alive in the second season".

If she was referring to the project being resurrected as a TV show it wouldn't have "come alive" in the second season. It would have "come alive" for season 1, epidode 2, no?

However, if it was to "take on some other dynamic... come alive in the second season", then SOMETHING was going to change at the start of season 2?

So... what was the change at the start of season 2 going to be?

derekfnord wrote:Whether Watts actually let something slip or not, I do think it's likely that the film version of Mulholland Drive probably does go generally down the same road (pun intended) as DL intended the TV series to go down.

Indeed derekfnord I completely agree. But how can you ask whether she let something slip? Is it not clear to you guys? Am I seeing something that isn't there - an example of confirmation bias?

Film Syncs wrote:If we can believe Lynch ... that's not the way it went down. Lynch has shared that he "didn't have the ideas" as to how to turn the pilot into a feature film. Obviously, that rules out "going down the same road" as that would be the first thing that occurred to him.

When lynch says he "didn't have the ideas", he means ALL the ideas. There are a lot more ideas in this film than just 'Hey, let's skip straight to the dream bit and wrap it up in 20 mins!', so yes, a lot more was created.

He obviously had SOME of the ideas because there are things that were pre-determined - for example it's set in LA, Betty want's to be an actress, all the obvious stuff. There's no reason the dream nature of the pilot couldn't be one of these pre-determined elements. That still leaves a LOT for lynch to work out and balance off in making the movie from the pilot.

Siku wrote:

Film Syncs wrote:If we can believe Lynch ... that's not the way it went down. Lynch has shared that he "didn't have the ideas" as to how to turn the pilot into a feature film. Obviously, that rules out "going down the same road" as that would be the first thing that occurred to him.

When lynch says he "didn't have the ideas", he means ALL the ideas. There are a lot more ideas in this film than just 'Hey, let's skip straight to the dream bit and wrap it up in 20 mins!', so yes, a lot more was created.

My response to derekfnord was to simply address his assessment that, logically, DL was "going down the same road" he always meant to eventually go with the TV series, nothing more.

Filmsyncs, I'm agreeing with you on this. Lynch's previous use of duality in movies makes it pretty clear to me that there always would have been, at some point, a Diane version of Betty. Even if Lynch made a TV series and it took him 5 seasons to get there, he always would have revealed that Betty was a half and he would have showed us the other half.

Siku wrote:When lynch says he "didn't have the ideas", he means ALL the ideas. There are a lot more ideas in this film than just 'Hey, let's skip straight to the dream bit and wrap it up in 20 mins!', so yes, a lot more was created.

He obviously had SOME of the ideas because there are things that were pre-determined - for example it's set in LA, Betty want's to be an actress, all the obvious stuff. There's no reason the dream nature of the pilot couldn't be one of these pre-determined elements. That still leaves a LOT for lynch to work out and balance off in making the movie from the pilot.

Hopefully you meant that the new material is *largely* a reality bit rather than a "dream bit" ... otherwise you have quite a different view of MD than most. As you mention the "dream nature" of the pilot, I'll assume that you mistyped that. Either way, I'll adopt the classic interpretation and that's the easiest for broad discussion purposes.

I don't discount any ideas per se .... but, yeah ... I think the big ideas were to create Diane and Camilla to contrast with their dream personas and to use the Camilla/Diane interactions and film set scenes to share Diane's sad reality in comparison to Camilla and to use a cast party to efficiently (and economically) pull it together. As Lynch accepts that MD can be discussed as three acts, let's do so for the purposes of discussion.

So, Act One contains two new scenes ... the Jitterbug/Entering the dream/pillow scene and Herb and Dan/Bum at Winkies. Edited out is the cop scenes and Wilkins' scenes which were going nowhere post-TV series and a reduction of Mr. Roque.

Act Two contains two new scenes ... the Betty/Rita Love Scene and Betty/Rita return to Havenhurst/Blue Cube/cowboy visit weirdness. Also added is Louise Bonner, but I don't know whether this is new material or simply something lying around. Otherwise, things stay pretty much as to the Pilot. Betty playing detective ... check. Cowboy scene ... check. Sierra Bonita apartments ... check. Winkies scene ...check. Adam/wife scenes ... check. Hair changing scene ... check. The taxi ride + Club Silencio was already filmed in 1999 so that isn't new, just added on.

Act Three starts with Diane waking up and the beginning of her Hollywood reality. AFAIK, all significant scenes are new through the end. So, here is the heavy lifting.

I think both new scenes in Act One are substantial and substantially important. The new scenes in Act Two? The first just takes the film from PG to R with a girl-on-girl love scene and increases Lynch's audience dramatically. The other scene is more substantial as it is a clever and interesting transitional scene from Club Silencio to Havenhurst and dream to reality.

Your mileage may vary.

Film Synchs, yes that's a good point that Lynch's Eureka moment suggests major new ideas were introduced for the movie - but was the it's-all-a-dream reveal one of them?

ctyankee, yes of course I meant "skip to the dream reveal moment", apologies for the poor communication! I'm still unclear though, do you think the idea of Diane waking up was present in the concept of the pilot? Or are you keeping your cards close to your chest?

Siku wrote:I'm still unclear though, do you think the idea of Diane waking up was present in the concept of the pilot? Or are you keeping your cards close to your chest?

Mine is strictly an opinion, nothing more. Either option is possible but I strongly doubt that Naomi playing Diane waking up was considered as a story line for the pilot. I think it's on much firmer ground that they were going to play out the amnesia bit ... with the whole ... who is searching for Rita? ... who is Rita? ... why is she hiding? ... what's with the money stuff? ... with Betty as the 'aw shucks' gullible Nancy Drew in the story (along with romantic and Hollywood acting arcs as well). My thinking is that if they go down that mystery route only to have it turn out all to be a dream ... Lynch would have been lynched by the fans and rightfully so.

Lynch on Lynch (Revised Edition), page 275-6

the blend between knowing what will happen next and making it up as you go along is always there, although "they made it up as they went along" often comes across as an epithet these days like the writer has no idea what he's doing.

Most of us here are most inclined that Lynch knows what he's doing, and ALSO makes things up as he goes along because that's fun too. How to reconcile those two things, who knows? That's the artistic process. Suffice to say, Lynch is NOT just a monkey throwing poop around. At least I hope not considering all the time I spend thinking about his movies.

Ok, that out of the way, I wanted to add to this thread that having Naomi wake up as Diane in the pilot or even the first or second season of the hypothetical Mulholland Drive TV show would have seriously spiraled such a TV show to it's conclusion. It's like finding out who killed Laura Palmer and Lynch will tell you that after that was revealed he lost interest in TWIN PEAKS. So had there been a Mulholland Drive TV show we probably would have seen Naomi only as Betty (at least until such a TV show was forced to conclude on some level).

But with all that said, just to re-iterate what I was saying above about dualities in Lynch's work, let's not forget that Rena Riffel's Laney was in the pilot, and Lynch was probably going to explore the bad Betty duality with the Laney character throughout the show.

kmkmiller wrote:Most of us here are most inclined that Lynch knows what he's doing, and ALSO makes things up as he goes along because that's fun too. How to reconcile those two things, who knows? That's the artistic process. Suffice to say, Lynch is NOT just a monkey throwing poop around. At least I hope not considering all the time I spend thinking about his movies.

Well by his own admission he was making INLAND EMPIRE up as he went along, writing scripts on the day of shooting, filming without scripts at all, having no idea how one sequence fits with the next. And I know we have differing opinions on that film, but the fact that he made that film on the hoof really shows, to me.

I think that the extract from the book is quite clear. He didn't really know where MD the show was going to go after the pilot. Sure he might have had some basic ideas for characters, but I doubt he would or could have planned as far ahead as the second season.

But then the quote from Naomi is really quite odd in that respect, and I don't have an explanation for her referencing a second season when she's talking about the time when the project was dead in the water, so why would they be thinking about a second season, when the first one has not even been greenlit. Odd.

Well by his own admission he was making INLAND EMPIRE up as he went along, writing scripts on the day of shooting, filming without scripts at all, having no idea how one sequence fits with the next. And I know we have differing opinions on that film, but the fact that he made that film on the hoof really shows, to me.

well now if i respond to that, that's taking this thread further off topic. Let's leave Inland Empire out of this and just note that if David Lynch is just tossing poop around like a monkey then the most accurate theory on Theories page at m-d.net is this theory... http://vine.rottentomatoes.com/vine/showthread.php?threadid=154103... and everyone else was just wasting their time. Like I said, it would just be too disheartening to think that so I choose not to.

I know where you're going with Naomi's quote, but I just can't imagine a TV show pulling that off without a sci-fi explanation. I mean you have people waking up as someone else in FRINGE, but they spend a lot of time adding pseudo-science and exposition to it. And that kind of exposition just isn't Lynch's style.

All very interesting but I still don't buy it. Lynch is too cryptic to conclude from that book extract what WAS and WHAT wasn't known at a given time. I mean, just because he didn't know exactly where it was going doesn't make it IMPOSSIBLE that the waking from a dream idea wasn't there at the start. It's the single biggest aspect of MD, the structural play through which every story and character is explored.

As in Jacobs Ladder, a Vietam war movie in which [spoiler]h[/spoiler] I can well imagine the writer coming up with the conceopt BEFORE having any characters, story or setting. And didn't the psychogenic fugue concept in LH kick start that story?

As to Naomi's comment, here's another interpretation (and yes I'm disagreeing with myself here). Maybe the option of a film version came up, inspiring Lynch with the Dream idea, as we've always known, BUT, at the same time, the possibility of MD being made as a TV series was still on the cards. Hence, "throughout that year and a half ... it was gonna take on some other dynamic, and, y'know, be it a feature OR a TV series, but come alive in the second season".

The comparison with the premise of Twin Peaks - an unthinkable murder and the subsequent revealing of the victim's secret life and murky relationships with all the other characters - is interesting. Revealing the killer took the mystery away, but revealing the dream just adds more mystery, so I don't see it undermining the show in the way revealing Laura's killer did.

Siku wrote:All very interesting but I still don't buy it. Lynch is too cryptic to conclude from that book extract what WAS and WHAT wasn't known at a given time. I mean, just because he didn't know exactly where it was going doesn't make it IMPOSSIBLE that the waking from a dream idea wasn't there at the start. It's the single biggest aspect of MD, the structural play through which every story and character is explored.

There is a good book, I'd suggest for those inclined. It may have been suggested to me by another poster, but I forget who. It's the "The Invisible Gorilla - How Our Intuitions Deceive Us." The authors discuss that humans decide how things our based on their preconceived ideas and notions and then come up with the facts to support it .... rather than analyze the facts and come up with their ideas. We all do it ... some more than others.

If you want to go down the path of believing that the dream structure was there from the start and you have nothing to base it on other than it's not "IMPOSSIBLE" for that to be the case ... I'd ask whether you aren't just doing what the Invisible Gorilla book suggests ... building a case to support something because you want it to be true.

Personally, I don't see why it matters to you one way or the other. Does it matter whether an idea comes to the director at the first hour or the 11th? It's the final product that truly matters to me.