January 24, 2021

Mitch and I watched Mulholland Drive last night. (Alexa calls it "Mulholland Doctor.") Afterwards, I went to the internet for theories on what happened. Maybe I shouldn't have because it immediately started casting my viewing experience in a different light. So, I'm going to get down my own version of What Could Be Happening while I'm somewhat close to it. 

If I were to have come up with the idea for Mulholland Dr., it would have started with a question of formalism. Could you have a movie where halfway through two of the actors started playing different characters? Interesting question. I think it happens in plays, right? Where a small cast will play multiple parts in a production. Then I'd go about trying to make it work. 

In order to get people ready for a character switch, you could cast a bunch of similar-looking actors. So that throughout the audience is already asking - Wait, is that Naomi Watts? When it is Naomi Watts playing a different role it won't seem out of the blue at all. Because of the doppelgängers, we're already primed for it. 

Plus, we know from the beginning that Rita is a different person from the one she's inhabiting. She just doesn't remember who she is. We're waiting for her to pick up another identity as soon as the previous reality of her life is made known. How to make sense of one actress playing two characters? Make the first character someone who doesn't remember who she's supposed to be. 

From there you reach for the story. And Lynch is a Hollywood director, so he didn't have to reach very far to get -- an actor new to Hollywood and newly in love, an actor ground up by Hollywood and burned by love, her lovers the same but different: a successful starlet and the woman she'd be after a head injury, although of course these two show up in opposite order. Why play her backwards? Because the first woman is a question and the second is a possible answer. The mystery of the woman's identity drives the whole first half. 

And from there maybe you get to the first half being a dream. My point is that I don't think the dream idea came first. Or at least if I wrote this movie it wouldn't have for me. The most interesting question/experiment is the role shift, so we start there. And the intention: Let's see what happens if....