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Mulholland Dr.

The project was initially intended to be a two-hour pilot for an ABC television series, with ABC hoping to repeat the success of Lynch's . When Lynch finally gave them the finished pilot, ABC requested numerous cuts for the sake of time and content. Although Lynch made the requested cuts, the network was not happy with the resulting piece and declined further involvement.

Lynch kept control of the footage he had already shot, and with the help of Canal Plus, a French distributor, finished the pilot and reworked it as a film.

premiered at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, to much praise. Lynch was co-awarded the Best Director prize at the festival (sharing it with Joel Coen for ). It was named Best Picture by the New York Film Critics Circle, and even more notably was given an enthusiastic thumbs-up by critic Roger Ebert, who had previously expressed mixed feelings about Lynch's work. Lynch was also nominated for a Best Directing Oscar for the third time (though director Ron Howard won out). Nevertheless, the film had little commercial success, grossing just over $7 million at the American box office and a further $13 million globally.

However, the film has gained cult status since its release, with many interpretations floating on the Internet about the film's meaning and symbolism. Lynch, as usual for his works, has not given any explanations about the film's "true meaning". The US and UK DVD release does contain 10 clues from the director on the inner sleeve, but this has only promoted further speculation about the mysteries of the film.

While driving down Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles, California late at night, a dark-haired woman (played by Laura Elena Harring) has a car accident and afterwards suffers amnesia. She wanders down the hill into L.A., and sleeps in a vacant apartment. The next day, Betty Elms (played by Naomi Watts), a young (and cloyingly perky) aspiring actress who has just moved to Hollywood from Deep River, Ontario, moves in and finds her. The dark haired woman decides to call herself "Rita" (from a movie poster advertising Rita Hayworth in ). Together, the two of them try to piece together exactly who she is and what happened that night.

Other strange things, at first seemingly unrelated, are happening as well. A man tells a friend about a recurring nightmare, only to have it come true; a film director Adam Kesher (played by Justin Theroux) finds his latest project (and later, his life) being turned upside down by shadowy mobsters, who force him to hire an unknown girl named "Camilla" to play a lead role in his new film; and an incompetent hit man steals a "black book".

The plot developments become more and more bizarre, until finally the film leaves these storylines behind altogether and shifts gears entirely. After a sexual encounter between Betty and Rita, who then attend a strange and eerie performance in a mysterious midnight theatre, an entirely new reality suddenly emerges. As Roger Ebert comments, "...characters start to fracture and recombine like flesh caught in a kaleidoscope." Now Watts plays a failed actress Diane Selwyn trapped in an unhappy life. Her one time girlfriend Camilla, now played by Harring, has abandoned her to pursue a life of riches and glamour by marrying a successful director, the very same Adam Kesher. In anger and desperation, Diane hires a hit man to kill her. At the end of the film, the tormented Diane kills herself as well.

Lynch has maintained his refusal to comment on the film's "meaning" or symbolism, leading to much discussion and multiple interpretations. However, the most common interpretation which has been offered is based on a Freudian wish-fulfillment interpretation. For references to accounts of this interpretation, see Classical Interpretation, Salon.com essay, Modern Word Analysis, (warning: each contains spoilers)

According to Freudian theory, in dreams we try to fulfill our wishes and desires that we are unable to fulfill in real, waking life. Furthermore, bits and pieces of information from the waking life are taken, in a disorganized manner, to construct such a dream reality.

Under the Freudian interpretation, the first part of the film is a dream of the real Diane Selwyn, who in her dream has cast herself as the innocent and hopeful 'Betty Elms' and reconstructed her life, history, and persona into something like a Hollywood movie. This includes her ultimate "seduction" by the dark allure and hollow promises of stardom by Hollywood — a metaphoric seduction that is turned into a physical one in her dream. The second half of the film is then the bleak reality of Diane's actual life, a life where so many wishes and desires, both personal and professional, have fallen tragically short.

The film contains structural and conceptual similarities to other films, including "The director and cast at Cannes, 2001 (l-r Naomi Watts, David Lynch, Laura Harring, Justin Theroux)"

The US and UK DVD release of the film contains 10 clues from the director on the inner sleeve:

Pay particular attention to the beginning of the film: at least two clues are revealed before the credits.Can you hear the title of the film that Adam Kesher is auditioning actresses for? Is it mentioned again?Mulholland Drive is an actual road that twists its way through the Hollywood Hills outside of Los Angeles. It also appeared in Lynch's film Camilla", the dark-haired womanMulholland Dr. is a former Miss USA and star of Aaron Spelling's ill-fated daytime soap-opera . Coincidentally, the actress who plays the blonde starlet "Camilla Rhodes" in the dream (Melissa George) and the actress who plays the audition singer, Carol, (Elizabeth Lackey aka Lisa Lackey) both had roles in the Australian soap-opera Latina singer Rebekah Del Rio plays herself at a nightclub, "lip-synching" an a cappella version of "Llorando," Roy Orbison's song "Crying" in Spanish translation (much as Dean Stockwell lip-synchs Orbison's "In Dreams" in Lynch's earlier film , has a small but odd role as Mr. Roque, a film studio executive. In order to make the diminutive actor appear normal-sized, Lynch outfitted him with a complete prosthetic Lynch's longtime music composer and collaborator Angelo Badalamenti appears as a mobster with very exacting taste in espresso, which may be a joking reference to the Agent Cooper's coffee obsession in The DVD release of the film proved controversial when Lynch edited it to remove the full-frontal nudity of actress Laura Harring, allegedly at her request, leading to accusations of censorship against the director (and a proliferation of unaltered versions of the scene on the Internet). The decision to release the movie without chapter stops also annoyed fans.Lost on Mulholland Dr., comprehensive analysis and resource centre based on the Rotten Tomatoes discussions (above)