Someone remind me why I’d want to read the shooting script of a film I have seen more times than any other film. Why? I saw it on the shelf next to another book and grabbed it on a whim. I finished but the law of diminishing returns was definitely in effect.

Takeaways / Fissures:

1)
I remember there was some buzz around the publication of this script because of a revealing (at least by Lynch standards) interview with David Lynch serving as front matter. At the time, everyone just wanted to know “what the f**k happened?!” Well, the interview and script don’t explicate the plot much more than the final film, but there is definitely an implication in the descriptive passages that Fred and Pete are the same person. Though how / why this can be, the time loop, and the doubling of Renee / Alice are never explained. What Lynch didn’t shoot makes sense but the film still suffers from the pacing issues typical of his work. You love it or you hate it. The one element Lynch did add that was not present in the script is the backwards exploding cabin. An image that, in an oeuvre of unforgettable images, is unforgettable and thematically relevant to the narrative.

2)
Years ago, I watched a grainy VHS copy of this film over and over again in a darkened basement room on a 13” CRT television. Then I saw it in a theatre with a proper sound system. I knew then, God loved me.. I think this is the sort of revelation people were expecting from the script.

3)
After a period of voracious cinephilia in my teens, I let the pedal off the gas a bit and was pleasantly surprised by the whimsy of Big Fish. The next film I saw was Mulholland Drive. I realized Big Fish (which in my head was floating around in the “an example of what a good studio movie could be” pond) was nothing but a capitalist pop tart made by a lazy, cowardly child -- a coloring book for idiots filled with saccharine clichés. Every instance of Mulholland Drive was an intentional gesture, every word of dialogue a pregnant shroom, equal parts fascination and annoyance, horror and wonderment. All this from a film that was basically a more user friendly rehash of Lost Highway.* Mulholland Drive helped me remember what cinema could be. Lost Highway tought me that lesson in the first place.

4)
All this praise for a Mr. D. Lynch who is basically a teenage pervert caught in his own power fantasy loop. A “great artist” who can’t even end his own self-destructive, persona-defining addictions to caffeine, nicotine, and voyeuristically debasing women on camera while spouting a spiritual get-out-of-jail-free card made available by a pay-for-play guru. He seems kind of stuck. He makes the same movie and over. His only creative growth being forced upon him by external, objective technological shifts; namely, analog to digital. And while this fatuous pervert eats his own aesthetic poop, his inversion directly proportional to his influence, we forget that Lost Highway was co-written by novelist, poet, and cultural historian Barry Gifford.

5)
Poet Barry Gifford co-wrote Lost Highway.

6)
I realize now the reason I didn’t first understand Lost Highway was because I was completely ignorant of its theme of male sexual insecurity. The first act of the movie, all those scenes between Fred and Renee, those were blank to me. I watched this movie over and over trying to figure out the stupid, obvious body switch parlour trick, and never understood that it was about Fred being jealous of Renee. How could I be so ignorant? How could I understand so little about (other peoples’) sexuality? How could I understand so little about (other) men? Now, I realize I am just not a jealous person. What my partners do with their bodies is their business. God bless America. But then, then I was just ignorant. It was like watching Casablanca and not knowing Rick and Ilsa are supposed to get together. It just didn’t make sense.

7)
I realize now.

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*They are same movie except one features a lesbian relationship and the other a straight one. “The other a straight one” is great phrase. The fake tit lesbian relationship gone haywire in MD is actually far more palatable to patriarchy than the straight jazz cat wife mutilation in LH because in MD the women are crazy or pretending to be a lesbians until a man high in the symbolic order comes along; while in LH the actual consequences of domestic violence, gun fetishization and pornography production are full frontal. In short, men come off looking real bad in LH; therefore, it is not tolerable. ( )