David Lynch on the Road Again

The TWIN PEAKS creator and all around unique filmmaker is back with the TV pilot turned feature film, MULHOLLAND DRIVE

By Anthony C. Ferrante     October 17, 2001

In 1990, the world was enthralled with an original new television show called TWIN PEAKS that was co-created by offbeat filmmaker David Lynch (ERASERHEAD, DUNE, BLUE VELVET) and which introduced the mystery of "Who Killed Laura Palmer." Of course, Lynch might have inadvertently stumbled upon that generation's "Who Shot J.R."-esque stumper, but for the filmmaker, he was just doing what he does best sustaining a mystery for as long as an audience could withstand it.

And did he know who killed Laura Palmer? "No, we honestly didn't have a clue," says Lynch.

Of course, Lynch's resistance to tidy up the Palmer mystery cost the series its audience and initial edge as backwards-talking midgets, a mysterious "ethereal killer" named Bob and a cryptic narrative tarnished the show's reputation. However, despite the two-season legacy (season one will be making the DVD rounds courtesy of Artisan Entertainment this December), it didn't deter Lynch from hitting the airwaves again.

Two years ago ABC approached him about

doing another series and he bit. He came up with the title MULHOLLAND DRIVE and the rest flowed stream-of-consciousness style from there.

"I like the idea of a continuing story," admits Lynch. "That's why this started out this way. Sometimes you feel something is so beautiful you want to stay there longer. I liked the idea of being led by ideas and to be able to act, react and feel the thing as it starts evolving. It doesn't evolve all at once. You're in it and just as in the dark as anybody else, then suddenly the ideas start coming and you know where the next step is."

The story was to be a mystery set in Los Angeles revolving around a perky young actress named Betty (Naomi Watts) and the amnesiac femme fatale Rita (Laura Elena Harring) who she tries to help discover her past.

However what was once considered groundbreaking in 1990 by having Lynch being at the helm of a network series was apparently a little too dangerous in 1999. Lynch wrote and directed the pilot but it was passed on and sat in limbo.

"It wasn't about Hollywood or Los Angeles, but it touched on parts of the business and parts of the city," explains Lynch. "Just like any story, you go and there's a lot of locations and buildings and houses you don't go into. You pass by them. So the ideas tell you where to go and what to do when you get there, but you stay true to the ideas."

With MULHOLLAND DRIVE still haunting Lynch,

foreign financing through Canal Plus came to the rescue, bought the pilot from ABC and allowed him the opportunity to transform the open-ended series pilot into a finite movie.

"The biggest dilemma is having this whole thing open ended and now you have to make a feature with a closed end," says Lynch. "It's like a nightmare if you didn't luck out and get those ideas to make it happen and those ideas were not there when Canal Plus spent millions of dollars to get this thing made into a feature. I wasn't so panicked, but I didn't know when and if those ideas were going to come. It's frightening to see someone putting money on the line and you don't have ideas. Then one night they came in from 6:30 to 7:00."

Currently rolling out across the country in limited release this week and wider in the coming month, the end result of the original pilot and newly shot footage of MULHOLLAND FALLS is a hybrid of Lynch's best work on TWIN PEAKS and a lot of the darker edges of FIRE WALK WITH ME and LOST HIGHWAY. In fact, you would hardly know this was a TV series seeing it up on the big screen - which is exactly what Lynch wanted.

"I always see TV as movies except they're shown on TV," explains Lynch. "And most movies are shown on TV anyway. Eventually everything ends up on the little screen with bad sound. Nothing else is different except there is a knowledge that it will be broken up so you owe it to yourself to think in those terms of that a little bit."

Lynch is tight-lipped about revealing what was shot for the pilot and what was shot to fill in the gaps, but it is obvious some of the later stuff (including lesbians, sordid sex and one of the most graphic and tragic female masturbation scenes ever filmed) were likely latter additions.

At the heart of the picture though is

the three primary leads who bring a strikingly fresh sensibility to the proceedings. Both Watts and Harring are stars in waiting with their good looks and considerable range while the quirky Justin Theroux is a blast to watch as a spoiled director plotting to get his way on his current feature despite investors telling him otherwise.

"Since we knew this was going to television, we needed to get people who could sign on for a long ride but we also wanted the right person for the role," says Lynch. "Since this was going to television that excluded Harrison Ford and Julia Roberts, but there is a wealth of talent just waiting so eventually you're meeting people and you get a feeling. From talking to someone and looking into your ideas, you get a feeling. You pass through those and then it's real simple, but you just go on a feel."

While Lynch says he's had horrible test screenings in the past (with BLUE VELVET being his worst testing of all), he says surprisingly MULHOLLAND DRIVE had very favorable results.

"The studio was surprised because the focus group wouldn't go away afterwards," says Lynch. "They kept talking and talking. There is a fun element to MULHOLLAND DRIVE and they discovered other people felt it. Basically it was a very positive experience."

In many ways Lynch feels the test screening process is dangerous for many filmmakers when mandates are imposed by the studios after the fact, but he says this could be remedied if directors were given final cut on their movies.

"You don't ever want to take

a bad idea and you don't ever want to throw out a good idea," says Lynch. "If you don't have final cut, then the studio is telling you this or change that. Naturally you'll have a tendency to fight them because they're f**king around with your film. If you give a director final cut, then the rightness can be discovered on their own. It is the director's film. For something to hold together, it has to be that way all throughout the process. It's critical. They can give people suggestions. I remember United Artists used to say 'We always give our directors final cut, then they'll listen to us, because then they have the right to say no.' If you have a lot of people [telling you what to do], the [director] turns off and it's a mess. So I think for me, I can learn something from sitting with people. That's all it takes."

Since Lynch does make challenging, often brutally violent movies, he says that the events that took place on September 11 with the terrorist attacks will have a lasting effect, but for art to work he feels you need to follow your muse. If it's informed by a different climate, then so be it, as long as you're true to yourself.

"There are no rules in painting or filming really," says Lynch. "It's always your own interior rules. It's got to be in freedom to create something. At the same time, you might fall in love with different ideas depending on what's happening with the world. I think this collective subconscious is always changing and everyone is always feeding into it. It colors what happens in all walks of life a little bit I think. So when the world events change so drastically, it would take a while to see what will change with ideas you fall in love with."