During the scene in which joe shoots ed in his office, his bloody hair points to the right of the frame, towards the Pizza poster, at first, the poster (the pizza) doesn't have any blood stains on it, but when joe comes back, a remarkable blood stain appear on the pizza.




this is a huge continuity error, so big i can only assume it's there for us to notice. the director goes a long way to point out to us (the viewers) to look on the pizza and notice the continuity error (kinda like kubrick), when joe goes to the room next door, where he accidentally shot a lady, there is a pizza dominos and number written on the chalkboard (to the left of the frame),



also, joe's strangling grip on her changes between scene cuts, the vacuum cleaner guy is moving as he if he is still alive when joe puts him on the floor next to the lady. the vacuum itself, apparently, has an endless electric chord.

these are big continuity errors that are bluntly shown to us.
is it to hint the viewers that this scene is a dream? assuming that the whole first couple of hours of the film are dream sequences, this is overstating it.

the continuity editing of the scene in ed's office is as messed up as joe's performance as a hitman, he winds up shooting three people making a lot of noise and leaving a lot of trace.

the director wants us to understand there is an italian theme in ed's office, the red carpet with the green and white file cabinets on the left of the frame ressemble the italian flag, along with the pizza poster and the fact that this scene is an "italian hit" style scene.
the Castigliane brothers are italian, are they connected to ed's misfortune in any way? ("this is no longer your film"). on the cabinet that joe is leaning on has a sticker with "Castigliane" printed on it, and the scene starts when ed is seemingly telling joe about the accident in mulholland drive in a funny angle.



"The Castiglioni Brothers" is a 1937 Italian comedy film according to wikipedia, couldn't find much details about the plot besides that it about italian cinema stardom vs talents.

"real Italian Pizza" is a 12 min experimental ethnographic film by David Rimmer from the early 70's,
apparently this movie shows cuts from the same unmoving camera, looking from above over a pizza stand, as if looking from a house window above and voyeuring the people and occurrences surrounding the pizza stand.
here's a review on it -

“Taken between September 1970 and May 1971, with the unmoving camera apparently bolted to the window ledge, this film, a ten-minute eternity, chronicles what takes place within view of the lens. The backdrop is a typical New York pizza stand, the actors are selected New Yorkers who happened to be there during the half year, the plot is the somewhat sinister aimlessness of life itself.” – Donald Ritchie, Museum of Modern Art, NY.

ed's office has a big window with a telescope on a tripod, this represents the unmoving camera looking down the street. the stove and pizza represent the pizza stand. it is as if ed is david rimmer shooting the film. the room next to his office, the one with the hurt lady is full off boxes, food cans, and a lot of junk (including a national geographic issue), the place looks like a props/setting room of a film production. combine that with the pizza and stove, Real Italian Pizza is blantly referenced in this scene.

the History of the World (in phone numbers)

Ed's Black book.
what does it mean?
here are some thoughts:

right after Ed says it, Joe shoots Ed in the head, then he shoots at the wall and accidently hurts a lady in a room next door. her door has a picture of the world, phone numbers written on a blackboard, on her desk there's a National Geographic issue (which has a logo of the world also), the whole room is full of boxes with stickers of the world. the company is called Health+Plus Enzymes - natural cell stabilizers

this whole scene is a mess of continuity and logic, at first we see the office building, Ed's office is the top right one, we know that because he has a fire exit. yet his office only has one window and joe goes a long corridor with no other doors till he gets to the women's room, what are all the other windows are for? did Joe's bullet went through 4-5 rooms or just one wall? and if so how come it's so far apart?
the exterior shot of the building doesn't match the interior part of the scene.

it's as if the accidental shot of the woman is an accidental shot in the movie. as if this scene was not planned, similarly to Joe who didn't plan to kill three people and leave so much mess.
we know that there's a major change of plans regarding a film after the castigliani bros meeting, Mr.Roque shot down the production.

History of the world is the memory we have.
what we know and remember about the world is the history of the world that we hold in our mind.

this scene is about memory loss, a hitman and an accident with uninvolved people getting killed. it's a representation of the limo accident on mulholland drive.

the human body releases enzymes when it is hurt, during a heart attack or other injuries.
E'd office scene is a representation of the dreamer acknowledging it is hurt in the head (Ed) and lost his memory (phone book). the women's room is a huge archive, boxes filled with content, pictures and views of the world (National Geographic), it's the memory bank of the dreamer, the woman itself is probably a representation of the dreamer who sees herself as an overweight person. that's why there are bundles of electrical cords in Ed and the woman's office, it's a metaphor of the neuronal activity in the human brain, that uses electrical pulses to stimulate and activate itself. the electric was shut down when joe shot the vacuum machine.
Ed's office with the corridor, the connected rooms, the maintenance guy.. are all representation of the dreamer's brain. maybe the whole building is.

i'm not an expert on Freud's personality theory, but it could be probably interpreted through the freudian structure - the woman, Ed and the vacuum guy are the Id, Ego and Superego of the dreamer.

I'd love to say that's a bit of a stretch, but it actually does make sense. haha

these are big continuity errors that are bluntly shown to us. is it to hint the viewers that this scene is a dream? assuming that the whole first couple of hours of the film are dream sequences, this is overstating it.

I think the whole movie is a dream, with the possible exception of the opening dance scene, after which the image blurs. When the focus is restored, we hear heavy breathing. We can't see who it is, but we can tell that someone is going to bed. That's our obvious clue that what we'll see next is a dream.

https://ulozto.net/file/2Ct0bWZkRZrr/mu ... dr-bed-mp4

I think the dream continues all the way to the end of the film, until we see a lady with blue hair, who says 'silencio'.



As I see it, it's a series of dreams that are nested within one another. While we are seeing the homicide in the office, Rita is sleeping in Aunt Ruth's apartment. Therefore, the assassination is actually Rita's dream. In other words, someone is dreaming about Rita, who is in turn is having her own dreams. In her dream about the office building, Rita is reliving the accident she had on Mulholland Dr., in which several people died. Only from her point of view, it looks like a homicide. And, from a broader perspective, both dreams represent Freud's primal scene.

The primal scene is the day when junior walks into the bedroom and sees mommy & daddy having sex. Junior does not know what they're doing. From his point of view, it looks like daddy is assaulting mommy. The psychological shock is so traumatic that junior represses the event. As an adult, he has no recollection of any such occurrence, but the memory persists in his subconscious, and he relives it when he dreams. Except, because of what Freud called 'dreamwork', the images have been dramatically altered so that the event is almost completely unrecognizable.

In the office murder scene, the clueless look on the janitor's face, not to mention his small size, makes him an obvious candidate for junior. The gun is a classic Freudian metaphor for a penis. The assassin is obviously daddy, and the woman he's 'dancing' with in hallway is mommy. But, that still leaves me pondering why the assassin shot some other guy and stole a book of phone numbers. The guy he shot did mention a 'fucking car accident'; an obvious allusion to the accident on Mulholland Dr, where a white car smashes into a black limo.



This is a metaphor for yin & yang.



You can have yin-yang opposition in almost any imaginable way. Conscious vs subconscious, life & death, Heaven & Hell, odd & even, etc. The white side of the symbol is Yang, and it represents male. Yin is black, and it represents female. Therefore, a white car smashing into a black one could be a metaphor for sex. Notice that the cars twirl around like the 'dance' we see the assassin do with the fat woman in the office hallway.

https://ulozto.net/file/K3gzqALtLXg3/collision-mp4

interesting stuff :)

allright.. let's assume this whole movie is a dream with characters dreaming in it, series of nested dreams (like "inception").

who is the original source dreamer?
does he/she looks like one of the characters in the movie?

here's a theory -

what if this movie is someone's dream, and in the middle of his dream he's having fatal heart attack?

clues for that:

• dan suffers a heart attack and dies behind Winkie's
• the office of the lady next to Ed's office belongs to a company called Health+Plus Enzymes - the human body releases enzymes when having a heart attack

Here's a wild theory:
during first act of the movie, Adam Kesher, a movie director, seems to be the only character that behave in a manner that acknowledges that something is wrong with reality. from the meeting with the Castigliani bros till he caves and says "this is the girl" on the set.
Adam talks about six actresses wanting to be in his movie.
Rita Hayworth, Judy Garland, Dolores del Río are bluntly referenced in this movie (Ann miller was a friend to Hayworth).

the most obvious connection to these actresses is Orson Wells.
Orson Wells died in a heart attack.
his wife, Paola Mori, died in a car accident about a year after his death

could this movie be Orson Wells's last dream before he died?



Orson Welles wiki

..Orson Wells's last television appearance was on the television show Moonlighting. He recorded an introduction to an episode entitled "The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice", which was partially filmed in black and white. The episode aired five days after his death and was dedicated to his memory.

I take it you noticed the heavy breathing. A heart attack would itself be another metaphor, like in the Godfather, where the old mafioso dies of a 'broken heart'. Or, some old movie where the 'big boss man' has one last wish before he dies, and he wants to get such and such a girl.

As for Orson Wells, well there is a lot of cigarette smoking going on. Betty/Diane doesn't smoke, but Adam and Camilla/Rita do. As for the actresses, the only reference that is obvious is to me is Rita Hayworth. I've heard that there is a connection to an older movie, Sunset Blvd, starring Gloria Swanson. But, obviously, you know more about this stuff than I do. How do you figure 6 actresses all connected to Orson Wells?

we dont see Betty/Diane smoke but there's an ashtray full of cigarette buds next to the phone when she answers Camila's call.

there's an obvious reference to Wizard of Oz -
Winkies were the little residents of western Oz, when Dan falls to the ground and die behind Winkie's diner, there's a graffiti with the word West and a branch that looks like a broomstick


this refers to the scene when Dorothy's house lands on the wicked witch of the east and kills her.
there's another use of broomstick in a scene in MD - when Adam goes out from the meeting with the Castiglianis, just before he smashes their limo, there's a guy across the street that smokes with a broomstick next to him, and when adam rushes back to his car both are gone.



Betty's entrance reminds Dorothy a lot, very naive-like, she travels in a yellow taxi (yellow brick road) to her aunt's house.

regarding broken hearts, in Wizard of Oz, the fortune teller uses his crystal ball to make Dorothy believe that Aunt Em may be dying of a broken heart.

Sunset Blvd with Gloria Swanson is definitely connected.
Sylvia (1965) - a film in which Carroll Baker plays a girl called sylvia west who lives a double life, obvious reference to "the sylvia north story" that Adam directs.
the brunette singing "Sixteen Reasons Why I love you" is named Carol and she is definitely among the six.

Ann Miller, who plays Coco, was a hollywood star from the 50's, she got into it through dancing, she was known for being the fastest tap dancer in the world, it's ironic that when Diane tells Coco that she won a dance contest and hope to use it to get into movies, coco gives her a merciful look. Rita Hayworth got into movies also by dancing btw.
dancing is a big theme in MD.

the connection of Orson Wells is still a theory in check. he was married/romantically involved with Hayworth, Garland and Del Río, that's why his name came up.
Wells died of a heart attack at night after appearing in a merv griffin show. i saw that episode - Wells was mocked and ridiculed by a woman who wrote a dirty biography on him (he never met her).
a few hours later and he dies of a heart attack. could it be that this woman-writer made wells face up to his failures and die? as you mentioned it, looking at yourself and suffer the undeniable truth of failure could shock a person into ego-death and physical death. the same way that dan faced the bum behind wincky's, the same way that Rita was blinded by truth just before the car crash.

we dont see Betty/Diane smoke but there's an ashtray full of cigarette buds next to the phone when she answers Camila's call.

Curious, isn't it?

https://ulozto.net/file/MI5kJ6yfZEHj/mu ... lamp-2-mp4

We hear "Hello, it's me. Leave a message." This links us to the telephone call Betty and Rita made earlier to Diane Selwyn's apartment. But, didn't we just see Diane wearing shorts when the phone rang? How cum she's wearing a black dress when she answers it? Is she dressed for a funeral?

Given that Diane is masturbating, we can understand why Camilla asks if Diane is 'cumming'. And, from the way Camilla says 'gooood', it's easy to see that this is a sexual fantasy, but we still don't know what the red lamp and the cigarettes have to do with any of it. Camilla says "The car is right outside your HOUSE", but Sierra Bonita is an apartment complex. I can't find the lamp anywhere in Diane's apartment, or in Aunt Ruth's for that matter. Yet, we see the same lamp, phone & ashtray near the beginning of the film.

https://ulozto.net/file/NvfK6X9WNm1m/mu ... lamp-1-mp4

We begin with Rita sleeping under the kitchen table in Aunt Ruth's apartment, suggesting that the next sequence is one of her dreams. After a series of phone calls, starting with Mr. Roque, the same phone rings 3x, but nobody answers. Immediately afterwards, as if to fulfill Rita's wish, Betty arrives at the airport. So, we began with Rita wishing for Betty, but as the film progresses the two girls seem to have traded places.

Winkies were the little residents of western Oz

All this time I was thinking of the word 'wink'.



I also thought it was a reference to REM (rapid eye movement), a reference to dreaming.

there's a lot o point of view switching in this movie.
when Rita falls asleep in the bushes in front of Havenhurst complex, she wakes up to see the redhead lady (presumably aunt Ruth) putting her language in the car, the point of view is from the bushes looking out, as in Rita's POV, yet, when Rita rushes inside the complex, the camera goes back again to a POV from the bushes even though Rita's not there. the camera shot should have moved because no character holds this view.
the next cut, the camera shot is toward the entrance of the kitchen (looking at electrical switches), yet again as if the POV is of someone watching from beneath the kitchen table (Rita).
also, Diane Selwyn's Neighbour who switched apt with her.
the electrical switches next to the director in Betty's audition and all the electrical switches and cords in Ed's office

Sylvia (1965) - a film in which Carroll Baker plays a girl called sylvia west who lives a double life, obvious reference to "the sylvia north story" that Adam directs.

Who directed that movie, Adam or Bob Brooker?

https://ulozto.net/file/AEblmGSl4Dvy/mu ... rhodes-mp4
https://ulozto.net/file/rrxBYqiCUpac/mu ... -north-mp4

At the dinner party, they talk about Adam's marital problems, but I don't believe they make any mention of him being a movie director. Notice, that there's a man and a woman that we cannot see, who speak Spanish.

Woman "Yo nunca fui a Casablanca con Luigi" (I never went to Casablanca with Luigi)
Man "Qué lástima" (That's a shame)
Adam "¡Qué va!" (Not really)

I'm wondering if one or both of the unseen characters is the dreamer. I'm thinking, the dreamer may be someone we cannot see, but it might be possible for us to hear him/her. I don't know if Orson Wells spoke Spanish, but anybody can be anybody they want in a dream. A guy can dream he's a woman and vice versa.

There are numerous connections to other scenes in the movie. The blurred image at the beginning of the clip reminds me of the bedroom scene that we see at the beginning of the movie. It also reminds me of Winkie's. Remember Dan telling Herb about his dream? Well, now Diane is telling Coco about hers. Notice the similarity between the names Dan and Diane. And notice the stoic expressions on the faces of both Herb and Coco.

You won't see it in this clip, but towards the end of the scene you'll hear dishes crashing, and we'll be magically transported back to Winkie's. The sound of the dishes might be a connection to the crash on Mulholland Dr. near the beginning of the film.

the connection of Orson Wells is still a theory in check. he was married/romantically involved with Hayworth, Garland and Del Río, that's why his name came up.

Who is Del Río? Are you talking about Rebekah del Rio, the woman who sings Llorando in Club Silencio? What relation does she have to Orson Welles?

ok, so during first act of the movie (Betty and Rita), bob brooker directs the movie that Betty audition to and Adam directs Sylvia North Story (SNS).
after Diane selwyn wakes up, during the dinner party we learn that it was Brooker who directed SNS.

Adam not being a director is a big revelation. i totally let that slip my mind.

could this mean that Adam Kesher is a mobster in Selwyn's reality? the espresso man is in the dinner party.
could it be that Adam is a mobster that forced the studio/director to cast Camila?
this actually makes sense.

the Del rio connection is by name, he was romantically involved with a known actress Dolores del Río.
Wells knew many languages, he traveled to europe when he was young and worked and shot films all over the globe, including south america, spain - he actually lived in spain for a long time, he was a bull fighter for a few years.
he also shot in china - "The lady from Shanghai" which he and Hayworth, his wife, played together.
btw
when Betty arrives in LAX, the whole sequence in which she crosses the terminal, goes down the escalators and outside the airport, all the extras are seen twice with different placement of the frame (kinda refers to jitterbug dance where everybody switches partners, locations and outfits) one of those extras is a middle aged asian lady, i have a strong suspicion that she is The Lady from Shanghai

https://ulozto.net/file/NvfK6X9WNm1m/mu ... lamp-1-mp4

"We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone."

Ok, at the moment I've got 2 actresses that were clearly shown in the film and also clearly connected to Orson.

1) Rita Hayworth, his former wife. At one time he made her cut her hair and dye it blond, which we see Rita do in Mulholland Dr.
2) Dolores del Río, a prominent Mexican actress and a former flame (1939-1943).

You mention Gloria Swanson, Caroll Baker, and Ann Miller, all of whom are alluded to in Mulholland Dr. But, what connection do these women have to Orson Welles?


Other incidental facts that connect Orson Welles to Mulholland Drive:

1) Orson Welles was a magician. (Club Silencio)
2) He played the piano as a child. (The ashtray on Diane Selwyn's coffee table)
3) In spite of being critically acclaimed and highly awarded, Orson Welles never had a box office hit during his lifetime. (Diane's struggles as an actress even when experts recognized her talent).
4) He had mob connections. (Mr. Roque and the Castigliani brothers)

Wells'es biography is very remarkable, he's a mega culture Icon, he mastered cinema, theatre, Radio - The War of the Worlds was a radio skit about an invasion from Mars that caused panic. He narrated a lot of stuff, his voice was probably his most known trait.
played the piano, spoke many languages
the magician is a great add to this theory. matter of fact - Marlene Dietrich was a very close friend of him, she was famously blond, he directed and played with her in a few films and... she was his assistant magician, they had a magic act where he cuts her in two, they performed for soldiers in WW2. in Well'es masterpiece "Touch of Evil" she plays a black haired spanish speaking mexican/gypsy, the movie portrays a lot of wells'es life and his relationship with Dietrich.

there's a small reference to Dietrich, when betty and Rita Rehearse for Betty's audition, Rita compliments Betty and Betty replies mimicking Dietrich's accent smoking a cigarette (another cigarete!!) "thank you darlin"