I ask him to compare that to the even stranger retrofitting process on "Mulholland Drive": More than a year after finishing the original pilot, he reassembled the cast and shot an additional 45 minutes or so of footage, designed to change the open-ended pilot into a complete work. I tell him I've glanced at a version of the original script that's floating around the Internet; this gave the impression that the first hour and a half or so of the film is pretty much the pilot, with all the new footage at the end.
"No," he says. "That's not right. What is interesting is that the ideas that came in affected the beginning and the middle and the end. What happened was that what had gone before was suddenly seen from a different angle. Many things went out, and a bunch of new things came in, which affected what had gone before, because of the new angle. And then the new footage fit in, at the beginning and the middle and the end. It was like a brand new ballgame, but the ballgame was built on what went before.
"It was great, because, you know, you don't know for sure if you're going to catch these ideas, and there was a period that was sort of filled with anxiety before they came in, because here's this company that's bought the rights and spent a lot of money, and I didn't have the ideas yet."
While he's loosened up a bit in recent years about discussing his work, Lynch has a reputation for refusing to elaborate on intentions or the creative process beyond the evidence on the screen. (The single most emphatic reaction in our conversation came when I asked about rumors he was doing a commentary track for the upcoming DVD release of the first season of "Twin Peaks": ""No! I don't believe in commentaries.")
Nonetheless, I push for more specifics about the different versions of the project -- unsuccessfully. "Let me tell ya, Andy," he said. "First of all, I only go by, you know, what I feel, and when I go see a film I want to know next door to nothing: I just wanna go in and have a pure experience and have it be my own experience. And it doesn't really matter how a film gets to be the way it is in its final form. It's interesting maybe, looking back, or a couple of years down the line. But whatever overlay you put on a film that an audience takes into the theater can putrefy the experience and cause so much trouble.
"The beautiful thing is that in pretty nearly every film, I think, when you're writing, an idea will come that deals with the ending, maybe even before an idea that deals with the middle. So how the ideas come in doesn't really matter. It'd be nice if they came in fully formed, but they don't. But it doesn't make any difference if they finally form together into a story that you love enough to translate to film."
In other words: Back off!
In the phone conversation, I gave it one more shot, asking about a few specific scenes that struck me as, well, too daring in their explicitness to have been conceived for television -- things that I couldn't picture ever being allowed on the Disney-owned ABC.
"Well, I don't know what to say about that, because I don't want to introduce certain thinking into people's minds."
I'm about to give up and move on, when Lynch shows some mercy: "But I would say that there are a lot of different ways to skin a cat. And in television you can imply things; you can do much more than you think. You just have to do it a hair differently. I found out in 'Twin Peaks' that a lot of the restrictions in television led to some very interesting things that were even better. You know: Your mind goes to work to solve a certain problem, and, because of this need, sometimes the solution is pretty interesting.
"Sometimes the restrictions are great. And sometimes no restrictions is great. You know, we each draw a line somewhere, and the line is different within each of us. And there are certain lines you don't cross over."
While "Mulholland Drive" is in no way a retread, the peculiar blend of deep creepiness and offbeat humor is most reminiscent of the tone in "Twin Peaks." (If "Twin Peaks" was "The Hardy Boys Go to Hell," then "Mulholland Drive" is "Nancy Drew in La-La Land.") And Lynch aficionados will recognize, not merely familiar themes and moods, but even specific scenes that invoke the earlier show, as well as "Eraserhead" and "Fire Walk With Me". Most of all, there is a major plot element -- which it would be churlish to mention -- that calls to mind Lynch's 1997 "Lost Highway," one of his best and least commercially successful films, and certainly the strangest since his debut with the utterly singular "Eraserhead."
In "Lost Highway," the protagonist, jazz musician Fred Madison (Bill Pullman), is in jail for the alleged murder of his wife (Patricia Arquette). He has no memory of killing her and claims he's innocent; and we -- being locked to his point of view -- haven't seen the murder either.
Then one morning the guards arrive to find that Fred isn't there -- or, more exactly, that he's turned into (or, in some utterly inexplicable way, been replaced by) someone else entirely -- a young and callow auto mechanic named Pete Dayton (Balthazar Getty). Of course, the authorities have to let him go. He leaves and gets involved with a mobster with a sexy moll, played by ... Patricia Arquette. Then things get weird.
It's an insane concept, one that doesn't vaguely map onto the real world and has very few precedents in cinema, yet -- even more unbelievably -- "Lost Highway" was one of two films that year to use the idea. I ask Lynch if he'd seen Steven Soderbergh's wacky, low-budget "Schizopolis," which came out within a few months of "Lost Highway."
"Yeah! A whole different take on the same thing!" he laughs. I wonder about the coincidence. Was there something in the air ... ?
"It's O.J. Simpson, Andy."
"What?"
"That's what did it," he says. "Think about it: I wasn't really aware of it at the time, but it must have been inspired by, subconsciously anyway, the O.J. Simpson trial. And how O.J. Simpson's mind had to be tricked, so that he could go out and play golf, rather than commit suicide for the deed he did."
I think about asking Lynch if he has a similar key to "Mulholland Drive," but it's become clear that, if he does, he's not revealing it. At least not now.
About the writer
Andy Klein is a Los Angeles film critic.
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