meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
Michael and Us

PREVIEW - #561 - Mulholland Drive, Part 1

Michael and Us

Luke Savage and Will Sloan

Tv & Film

4.6668 Ratings

🗓️ 25 September 2024

⏱️ 6 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Hollywood produces dreams on an industrial scale, but it also feeds our own dreams back to us. And no movie has ever understood Hollywood better than David Lynch's MULHOLLAND DRIVE (2001). In the first of a two-part discussion, we dissect David Lynch's masterpiece. PLUS: The hallmarks of bad conservative, left-wing, and liberal writing, as seen through the lens of one Mr. Jordan Peterson. PATREON-EXCLUSIVE EPISODE - https://www.patreon.com/posts/112719438

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

there's so much I already have to say about these first few scenes. What the film appears to be doing

0:04.8

at the beginning, I mean, it's true that we are introduced to Betty first, although, you know,

0:08.9

when you first see this movie, you don't even really understand what the jitterbug competition is.

0:14.4

It's sort of... Well, I remember seeing it for the first time in high school and thinking,

0:17.7

oh, there goes Lynch again. It doesn't really scan. You have to be told later what it is,

0:22.1

because, of course, it's referred to by Betty later. But so when the film begins in earnest,

0:27.0

it feels like Rita is the surrogate character. You know, it feels like we're inhabiting Rita's

0:32.5

perspective, although, you know, interestingly, everything about Rita is left blank to us. In the way that it might be, I suppose, at the beginning of a classical Hollywood noir, you know, it creates a lot of suspense.

0:44.4

We don't know why she's in the limo.

0:46.4

We don't know who she is.

0:47.3

We don't even know her name initially.

0:49.1

She doesn't know her name.

0:50.7

She doesn't remember anything.

0:52.6

We don't know the motivations of the men who try to force

0:55.8

her out of the car at gunpoint. So there's a mixture of the extremely conventional, you know,

1:00.3

lynch drawing on classical Hollywood noir stuff, but then it's deployed in a very unconventional

1:04.9

way because I don't know if you agree with this, but it seems to me, Rita, just like all of the

1:10.4

other characters in the first,

1:12.4

maybe two-thirds of the movie, are really extensions of Betty's character. They're kind of

1:17.1

phantasmatic projections of Betty slash Diane will come on to who Diane is in a bit. So the

1:23.5

film is very disorienting in this way. There are a number of characters were introduced to. Adam

1:28.7

Kesher, played by Justin Theroux, we see a number of scenes that appear to be from his perspective.

...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Luke Savage and Will Sloan, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Luke Savage and Will Sloan and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.