Mulholland Drive (2001) film notes for SAM Films

 

Adam Kesher (Justin Theroux) pours pink house paint into his wife’s jewelery box when he finds her in bed with another man. The three of them get in a fight. Adam’s black clothing is stained with pink hand prints. At a party Adam spins it for laughs, “So, I got the pool and she got the pool man.” Adam walks through Mulholland Drive (2001) wearing the kind of shades you can’t pick up in a LensCrafters in the Midwest. Adam swings a golf club in and out of his meetings with important Hollywood producers and the important men who help them produce. These men are shadow men; they work their magic with their influence and power. At first, Adam isn’t afraid of them. He is the director on a new picture. He is called “Mr. Kesher.” Adam thinks he ought to call the shots, like who should be cast as the lead. He won’t listen to their threats. They squeeze him; he loses his job, his bank account, his house. Adam is at the end of their rope. All the while, he is unsure of who “they” are. He gets a call to go see a man called the Cowboy. Adam drives down a dark road, parks his flashy two seater, and walks into an empty horse arena. A light flickers on. The Cowboy (Monty Montgomery) steps out of the shadows, a red bandanna round his neck. He tells Adam, “I want you to go back to work tomorrow. Audition many girls for the part. When you see the girl that was shown to you earlier today, you will say, ‘this is the girl.’ The rest of the cast can stay. That’s up to you. But, the lead girl is not up to you. You will see me one more time if you do good. You will see me two more times if you do bad.” 

Doing good in Hollywood means doing what you are told. Adam picks the girl he is meant to pick. At the LA airport Betty (Naomi Watts) rides down an escalator, all smiles without a trace of the disappointment or bitterness that will come later. Betty arrives in Hollywood after her Aunt Ruth (Maya Bond) leaves on vacation. Betty thinks she has her aunt’s apartment to herself. She finds a woman there taking a shower, a woman who’s just survived a car accident and can’t remember her name. The woman calls herself Rita after seeing the poster for the film Gilda (1941) hanging on Aunt Ruth’s wall, Rita Hayworth, her hand holding a lit cigarette and her hair thrown to the side like she’s willing to listen. Rita (Laura Elena Herring) stumbled down the Hollywood Hills to Sunset Blvd where she found Aunt Ruth’s empty apartment. She slept under the kitchen table, woke up, and took a shower. This is where Betty comes in, fresh from Ontario, her pink sweater riddled in rhinestones. As they sit on Aunt Ruth’s bed, Rita opens her black purse. Inside are stacks of cash and a blue key. Rita and Betty figure if they can find the meaning of both they will find out who Rita really is. Rita’s face is painted like an actress in the theatre for the people in the nosebleed seats to be able to see her dark lips and bright blue lids. The mystery of Rita is like a film noir to Betty who is all pluck and can-do like Grable. Rita helps Betty rehearse a scene for her first audition. Betty gets the part. 

All dreams lead to Hollywood. Mulholland Drive is full of dreamers. Not everyone dreams nice. One man in a diner dreams of being in the very diner he is sitting in as he recounts his dream. Something waits for the dreamer behind the building. The man in the diner can feel it. Feelings are the important part of any dream. The Cowboy appears; he wakes Betty from her dream which is the first half of the film, “Hey pretty girl, time to wake up.” It feels like Mulholland Drive is Betty’s dream. It could also be someone else’s dream, like the waitress at the diner, “Diane” on her name tag, as she takes Betty’s order. Mulholland Drive could be Diane giving Betty a backstory. Betty sits in a booth dishevelled, anxious and angry. The man across from her, blonde and seemingly nonplussed, could be her agent. 

Betty tells Rita as she unpacks her suitcase, “I just came here from Deep River, Ontario, and now I’m in this dream place. You can imagine how I feel.” You can’t imagine being in Oklahoma or Minnesota, they are not places to dream about unless you’ve been there before. The language of the American imagination is Hollywood’s language. We close our eyes and dream of palm trees at night in blue light and a mysterious woman in a black dress and black heels running down the street having just survived a car crash on Mulholland Drive. The blue key turns out to be a symbol of a job done, like the passing of cash between hands. Betty’s dream gone sour, she’s woken up. 

Betty is the girl with stars in her eyes. “Ten bucks says you’re Betty,” Coco (Ann Miller) says from behind a screen door. Coco is the concierge at Aunt Ruth’s bungalow complex. “Just call me Coco. Everyone else does,” she tells Betty. Coco wears pearls like braids to her waist. Coco like the Cowboy appears again after Betty wakes up. So does Rita; now her name is Camilla Rhodes, the same name as the actress Adam Kesher was strongarmed into casting. When Betty wakes up her name is Diane.