David Hughes - The Complete Lynch

Contents

For Stevie

IN 1997, WHEN David Lynch, who had directed the film version of my novel Wild at Heart, and also had directed my two plays, Tricks and Blackout, for a television production entitled Hotel Room, came to me and asked me to write with him the screenplay for a new film, I could hardly say no. After all, Wild at Heart had won the Palme DOr at the Cannes Film Festival and propelled the book onto bestseller lists all over the world. Besides, we were good friends by now. The problem was that I was busily engaged writing a novel and was scheduled to leave for Spain in two weeks. How could we get a screenplay done right now, as Dave asked. In fact, he insisted. So I put aside the novel manuscript and agreed to work hard for two weeks and see what we came up with. If it seemed to be working after my return from Spain, if we both felt good about the project, then we would continue and work straight through until we had it finished.

David had optioned for film my novel Night People, and we had talked for a year or more about how that could be done, but nothing happened. (He told me his daughter, Jennifer, wanted to play the role of one of the two lesbian serial killers.) He fell in love with a couple of sentences in the book in particular, one of which was when one woman says to another, Were just a couple of Apaches ridin wild on the lost highway. What did it mean? he wanted to know. What was the deeper meaning of the phrase lost highway? He had an idea for a story. What if one day a person woke up and he was another person? An entirely different person from the person he had been the day before. OK, I said, thats Kafka, The Metamorphosis. But we did not want this person to turn into an insect. So thats what we had to start with: a title, Lost Highway; a sentence from close to the end of the book Night People (You and me, mister, we can really out-ugly the sumbitches, cant we?); the notion of irrefutable change; and a vision Dave had about someone receiving videotapes of his life from an unknown source, something he had thought of following the wrap of the shooting of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. Now all we had to do was make a coherent story out of this.

A few years ago, when David, the producer Monty Montgomery, my friend Vinnie Deserio and I were sitting around talking about another story, Dave, in an effort to explain to me an effect he was after, said, You know that feeling you get when youve just gotten back from the dry cleaners a pair of slacks, dacron slacks, and you reach your hand in a pocket and you feel those fuzzy sandwiches with your fingers? Well, thats the feeling Im looking for. I just nodded and replied, Okay, Dave, I know exactly what you mean.

I kept this incident in mind while he and I sat across from one another and puzzled out the scenario for Lost Highway, which I like to call Orpheus and Eurydice Meet Double Indemnity. We made it work at least for each other and I love the result, fuzzy sandwiches and all. That being said, its important to understand that David and I work similarly, very hard, long hours, with time out only for coffee in Daves case, lots of coffee. Working with Dave is, for me, a great treat, because I know that as the director hes going to add an extra dimension to whatever we come up with on the page. Visually, it will take one giant step beyond. This gives me the confidence to let everything loose, a great privilege for a writer.

Both Lynch and I believe that films are, or should be, as dreams. When you enter the movie theatre the real world is shut out. Now you are in the thrall of the filmmakers, you must surrender and allow the films images to wash over you, to drown in them for two hours or so. And David is relentless in his use of imagery. Lost Highway, like Blue Velvet or Eraserhead, especially, is filled with unforgettable images. And we are set in a place, a city, a landscape, that is neither here nor there, a timeless form, presented within a non-linear structure a Mbius strip, curling back and under, running parallel to itself before again becoming connected, only theres a kind of coda but thats how it goes with psychogenic fugues. Figure it out for yourself, youll feel better later; and if you dont figure it out, youll feel even better, trust us. Trust is what its all about with filmmakers like David Lynch, one of the very, very few true visionaries in the history of cinema. I once asked David, who is a painter, why he decided to make movies, and he told me (echoing many others, including Elia Kazan who said, The camera is such a beautiful instrument. It paints with motion), Because I wanted to see my paintings move.

Vinnie Deserio once said that the reason Dave and I work so well together is that he takes the ordinary and makes it seem extraordinary, and I take the extraordinary and make it seem ordinary. Maybe so; it sounds good, anyway. But there are no easy explanations for what occurs in Lost Highway or Eraserhead, nor should there be. When you go on a journey with David Lynch its a trip youve never been on before and may never want to take again but its unforgettable. Time to fasten your seat belt, as Bette Davis so memorably instructed (words by Joseph Mankiewicz) in All About Eve, because there is no speed limit on the lost highway.

San Francisco, August 2000

Barry Gifford wrote the novel Wild at Heart upon which David Lynchs film is based; two plays directed by Lynch in the HBO programme Hotel Room; and he co-wrote the screenplay of Lost Highway. His novel Perdita Durango was made into a feature film by the director Alex de la Iglesia, with whom Gifford also co-wrote the screenplay. Giffords most recent book is Wyoming, a novel.

HI, IS THAT David? booms the voice from the other end of the phone. The connection is so clear, and the voice so loud and familiar, for a sleep-befuddled moment I think it must be Gordon Cole. Then I remember: its a little after 9.30, Prague time, and my interview with David Lynch is due to start in five hours time. It must be Lynch calling to confirm, and here I am standing in my hotel room half-naked, trying to sign the room service bill with one hand, and rub sleep out of my eyes with the other. WE COULD DO THE INTERVIEW NOW, IF YOU WANT! the booming voice continues. BUT WE HAVE TO DO IT IN THE BAR! CAUSE IM A SMOKER, SEE?

Something tells me meeting Lynch will live up to my expectations.

My only regret about my earlier volume, The Complete Kubrick, was that I did not get to meet the subject of the book, who passed away before the project was even pitched. Setting out to write this follow-up, I was not about to let the same thing happen twice. A one-to-one interview with Lynch was, I felt, fundamental to the book, despite the fact that it would be broken up and scattered throughout, so that each chapter and boy, there were a lot of them this time would contain a few fresh quotes from Lynch himself. What I didnt realise was how fundamental the interview would be to everything about the book. Meeting Lynch allowed me to see first-hand the unique way in which his mind works, and led me to create new boundaries for the areas covered by the book: not to over-analyse, or rationalise, or demystify those many projects of his whose power lies in subjective interpretation. After all, as David himself told me, you cant get the complete Lynch.