I will now tell you here and now that I didn’t/don’t fully comprehend all of Mulholland Drive.  By the same token, I don’t actually think we’re completely meant to, regardless of David Lynch’s 10 clues to unlocking his film.  Mulholland Drive starts the same way Crash begins: with a car crash, this one on, you guessed it, Mulholland Drive.  Instead of using incident as an excuse to launch into a carelessly simple story about race and class, David Lynch intentionally channels Sunset Boulevard and uses the accident to launch into a deceptively simple story about a girl (Rita) who has amnesia after this accident and meets an aspiring actress (Betty) hoping to make it Hollywood.  In (a)typical girl-meets-girl fashion, the two permit their relationship to go from friends to more-than-friends (aw, we all should be so lucky) and have very hot sex.  Neither have much angst or self-loathing as a result, and the movie carries on with the primary storyline of exploration and identity, as if gay relationships occur naturally, are completely normal, and so well represented in popular culture that not much needed to be said other than the fact that these two are now in love.  We all can dream, right?

In fact, dreams are the point of Mulholland Drive, both as a narrative trope (until you sit down and piece together the labrynth of clues and red herrings to figure out what part of the movie is dreamt and what part actually occurred in “real” life, you’re pretty much as lost as Link without a flashlight looking for Zelda in a cave), and as a larger commentary about Hollywood, dreams, and realities.  I sometimes forget that those of us born and raised around southern California have entirely different relationships to Los Angeles than those who embrace the symbolism of the city as a gateway to their dreams of fame and stardom.  For us, we see the yellow signs directing the crew to their parking lots, we’re used to road closures in the middle of downtown in the middle of the day due to filming (grrrr…), we’ve become (somewhat) accustomed to randomly walking past A, B, and C celebrities.  We work here, in and out of the industry; we live here; we eat here.

For Hollywood hopefuls like Betty in the film, though, Los Angeles is a ticket.  A ticket past the gridlock on the freeway jungle that connects the next Meryl Streep from one hopeful, excited audition to another.  Hope of discovery is at every corner, at every bite at Pink’s – and when the dream is reduced to disappointing reality, and brings down with it the things that made up part of the identity of aspiration, it’s soul crushing.  Los Angeles, once the playground of the hopeful, becomes an elephant’s graveyard for the hopeless.  This city’s urban sprawl already can be excruciatingly isolating; when it is gutted of its symbolism, it’s devastating.  Sunset Boulevard is where the action is, but Mulholland Drive is the desolate perch from where many, many would-be actors and actresses see their dreams cut. It’s a trite message, but I think because we’re seeing the events of the movie unfold through the eyes of Betty’s subconscious, it’s that much more powerful.

In the end, Betty has enormously unrealized dreams, doesn’t become a big Hollywood star, and the heteronormative structure of Hollywood reasserts itself when Rita discovers she could get much, much further in her life if she sleeps with men.  Just like, incidentally, the many, many girls in this city who decide being gay is great until being straight-with-a-background-in-gay is even better (no, I’m not bitter at all).  The end of the dream is the end of the film, and it’s so, so sad.  Oh, Los Angeles.  You giveth and you taketh away.

(If you already didn’t overanalyze Mulholland Drive when you first saw it, go back and play like its 2001 and have fun perusing this website dedicated to unraveling the movie, from the blue key to the other blue key, here.  And Matt Mason had his own take of the film a few years ago here.).

As for the film itself, I understood more the second time around.  “Mulholland Drive” simply cannot be viewed only once (unless you are in the category of unfortunate people who don’t like David Lynch films, in which case once is probably too much).  But then I did some research, and found out some really interesting things.  Since I rented and do not own the dvd, I did not know that Lynch inserted ten clues to watching the movie inside the back cover of the dvd box.
  I would encourage anyone who is about to watch the movie, whether for the first time or not, to check out Lynch’s clues beforehand.  But, for dvd renters with no access to the box, be warned that every link to the clues that I found online also contains people’s interpretations of the answers, which you should skip until after you concoct your own.

After reading Lynch’s clues and different interpretations of them, I have come to my own satisfying conclusions about what happened in the movie, when it happened, and what was represented.  I really like this video of Lynch explaining (or not explaining, in typically Lynch fashion) to an English teacher who says she didn’t understand the film, “you do know, you do know for yourself, and what you know is valid.”

But beyond the satisfying task of interpreting “Mulholland Drive” lie the film’s lessons about the mythical and real “Hollywood.”  Certainly, these themes are not new, having been explored in many previous films about the movie business, such as “Sunset Boulevard,” “Barton Fink,” and “The Player.” We know them by heart: Hollywood is where naive dreams come crashing against cynical reality, often represented by the loss of innocence of the starlet or the screenwriter fresh off the bus from Kansas, etc.  But I believe that living in the Los Angeles area, where many people work in or with the film industry and all of us know people who do, gives us a different lens through which to view “Mulholland Drive” and other films about Hollywood, and thus another level of satisfaction.

For me, watching a David Lynch movie is like Hollywood itself: it both attracts and repels, sometimes simultaneously.  But at least in the case of Lynch, the attraction always wins out.

By the time R.E.M.’s tenth studio album, New Adventures in Hi-Fi, was released in 1996, I’d been living in L.A. for a couple of years. At the time, I thought the album was just okay. I was still pretty stuck on their first four albums and didn’t love the newer songs as much. As is often the case, the work has grown on me and I like many of the tracks a lot, especially “Electrolite,” which is to my ears, sort of a love song.

One of the fun things to do with first-time visitors to L.A. is take a ride on Mulholland. Our guests are often from fairly flat areas of the East coast and the twisty drive with its incredible views of Hollywood and The Valley is a treat, both during the day and at night. I particularly like looking down on the Hollywood Bowl, the 101 freeway, Hollywood, and on to the  downtown skyline.

If you ever want to fly
Mulholland Drive, up in the sky
Stand on a cliff and look down there
Don’t be scared, you are alive, you are alive

Michael Stipe, the band’s lead singer and lyricist of “Electrolite,” wrote an essay about the song in which he said:

“Mulholland represents to me the iconic ‘from on high’ vantage point looking down at L.A. and the valley at night when the lights are all sparkling and the city looks, like it does from a plane, like a blanket of fine lights all shimmering and solid.”

Stipe mentions that the song is a farewell to the 20th century and the ideals of “the city built on dreams and fantasy.” I see the song as somewhat critical of the superficial beauty and values that often prevail in Los Angeles. At the same time, I hear a fondness for the place where he lived for a couple of years in the ’90s.

I really love “Electrolite.” I’ve enjoyed it live in the three live shows I’ve seen since its release. Music tends to really move me and this is one of the pieces that gets me teary-eyed during and R.E.M. concert (or in a performance posted to the web). Enjoy:

Check out more of the “Songs About Los Angeles” series here.

*Photo overlooking Hollywood from Mulholland Drive taken with my cell phone.