Wild at Heart

By 1990, David Lynch was at the peak of his popularity and enjoying the most productive period of his career. His television show Twin Peaks had captivated American audiences and he was directing a number of commercials and performance art pieces (Industrial Symphony No. 1). This all culminated with Wild at Heart (1990), an adaptation of Barry Gifford’s novel, which went on to win the coveted Palme d’Or at that year’s Cannes Film Festival. It also helped establish Lynch as America’s premiere cinematic surrealist. At its core, the film is a touching love story between two people whose love for each other remains constant despite all of the obstacles that life throws at them, including an overly-protective mother, a dentally-challenged psychopath, and a grizzled rocket scientist. This film is, oddly enough, Lynch at his most romantic, a rock ‘n’ roll opera with vibrant, fiery imagery.

Sailor Ripley (Nicolas Cage) and Lula Pace Fortune (Laura Dern) are young lovers on the run from her crazed and over-protective mother, Marietta (Diane Ladd). Sailor has jumped parole after serving time for manslaughter and takes off with Lula for sunny California. This doesn’t sit too well with Lula’s mom who sends her boyfriend, private investigator Johnny Farragut (Harry Dean Stanton), and, unbeknownst to him, her lover, ruthless gangster Marcellos Santos (J.E. Freeman) on the trail of the young lovers.

As he would do with the opening scene in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992), Lynch kicks things off with a shockingly brutal act of violence that establishes a confrontational tone – this is a violent world where Sailor is prepared to kill a man with his bare hands in order to protect the woman he loves. The first image is the striking of a match followed by images of flames announcing the color scheme that would be prevalent throughout the film. This is continued in the love scenes between Sailor and Lula that are bathed in red, yellow and orange – all representing their burning love for each other. During the course of the film there are countless shots of cigarettes being lit, matches being struck, an exploding car, and a house on fire. This film is vibrantly alive and energized more than anything Lynch had done before or has done since.

In the summer of 1989, Lynch had finished up the pilot for Twin Peaks and tried to rescue two of his projects – Ronnie Rocket and One Saliva Bubble – that were owned by Dino de Laurentiis when his company went bankrupt. Independent production company Propaganda Films commissioned Lynch to develop an updated noir screenplay based on a 1940s crime novel while a filmmaking friend of his by the name of Monty Montgomery optioned Barry Gifford’s book, Wild at Heart: The Story of Sailor and Lula in pre-published galley form. Montgomery gave him Gifford’s book and asked Lynch if he would executive produce a film adaptation that he would direct. Lynch remembers telling him, “That’s great Monty, but what if I read it and fall in love with it and want to do it myself?” And this is exactly what happened as Lynch recalls, “It was just exactly the right thing at the right time. The book and the violence in America merged in my mind and many different things happened.” Lynch was drawn to what he saw as “a really modern romance in a violent world – a picture about finding love in hell.” He was also attracted to “a certain amount of fear in the picture, as well as things to dream about. So it seems truthful in some way.”

Once Lynch got the okay from Propaganda to switch projects, he wrote a draft in a week. Within four months, he began filming with a budget of $10 million. Lynch did not like the ending in Gifford’s book where Sailor and Lula split up for good. For Lynch, “it honestly didn’t seem real, considering the way they felt about each other. It didn’t seem one bit real! It had a certain coolness, but I couldn’t see it.” Samuel Goldwyn, who ended up distributing the film, read an early draft of the screenplay and didn’t like Gifford’s ending either so Lynch changed it. 

However, the director was worried that this change made the film too commercial, “much more commercial to make a happy ending yet, if I had not changed it, so that people wouldn’t say I was trying to be commercial, I would have been untrue to what the material was saying.”

When Lynch read Gifford's novel, he immediately wanted Nicolas Cage to play Sailor and Laura Dern to play Lula. The actor said that he was "always attracted to those passionate, almost unbridled romantic characters, and Sailor had that more than any other role I'd played.” In Dern’s case, this was the first opportunity she had "to play not only a very sexual person, but also someone who also was, in her own way, incredibly comfortable with herself.” During rehearsals, Lynch talked about Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe with Cage and Dern. Around this time, Lynch bought a copy of Elvis' Golden Hits and, after listening to it, called Cage and told him that he had to sing two songs, "Love Me" and "Love Me Tender." The actor, a big Elvis fan, agreed and recorded each song so that he could lip-sync to them on the set.

Before filming started, Lynch suggested that Dern and Cage go on a weekend road trip to Las Vegas in order to bond. Dern remembers, “We agreed that Sailor and Lula needed to be one person, one character, and we would each share it. I got the sexual, wild, Marilyn, gum-chewing fantasy, female side; Nick’s got the snakeskin, Elvis, raw, combustible, masculine side.” 

Lynch’s two leads are also on the same page in this respect, especially Cage who affects an Elvis Presley-like drawl and sings two songs made famous by the King. Sailor, like many of the characters in this film, is larger than life with his snakeskin jacket credo, his unorthodox style of dancing (involving martial arts kicks and punches) and his habit of singing Elvis songs to Lula in public. There is a show-stopping moment where he instructs Powermad, a speed metal band, to back him on a note perfect rendition of “Love Me” while the women in the audience scream in adoration in surreal slow motion like something out of a dream. Cage plays Sailor as an instantly iconic figure, where pointing an accusing finger at Marietta is akin to a declaration of war.

Dern plays Lula to gum-chewing perfection, delivering a completely uninhibited performance as Lula. She exudes a captivating sensuality in the way she carries herself and makes a line like, “You got me hotter’n Georgia asphalt,” sound like an enticing come-on. Lula is a young woman full of energy and vitality as is evident in the scene where she and Sailor dance to the music of Powermad. There is genuine chemistry and heat between her and Cage — rather appropriate for a film dominated by images of fire. However, as the film progresses and the tone becomes darker, Lula’s optimism is chipped away and this culminates in a terrifying scene where Bobby Peru (Willem Dafoe) verbally rapes her in a way that echoes a similar scene in Blue Velvet (1986).

Amidst all of this madness and brutality is a touching tenderness between Sailor and Lula, like the way he softly kisses her after a passionate bout of sex, or a moment where he places her hand over his heart without a word. Nothing needs to be said between them because they understand each other intimately. As she tells him at one point, “You mark me the deepest.” And Lynch takes the time to show a series of conversations between Sailor and Lula where they talk about their respective childhoods (“I didn’t have much parental guidance.” Sailor tells her, not surprisingly.), their dreams, random thoughts, and past relationships. This allows us to get to know and care about them while also taking the occasional breather from all of the weirdness that Lynch throws our way.

Diane Ladd is fantastic as the wicked witch cum mother-from-hell, gleefully chewing up the scenery as evident even in the way she vigorously drinks from her martini glass and the way she delivers threats to Sailor with venomous gusto. Also prevalent is Lynch’s trademark fascination with the dark underbelly of America as personified by the character of Bobby Peru, one of Lynch’s most disturbing psychopaths (right behind Blue Velvet’s Frank Booth). With his horrible teeth and all-black attire (to match his pitch black heart), Peru sets his sights on Sailor and Lula with the intention of killing the former and seducing the latter.

Lynch juxtaposes this darkness with his trademark absurdist humor in the guise of the various oddballs Sailor and Lula meet along the way, like the man at a bar (Freddie Jones) who talks about “pigeon-spread diseases” in a goofy, high-pitched, sped-up voice. Or, Lula’s wildly eccentric cousin, Jingle Dell (Crispin Glover in a memorably bizarre cameo), who believes aliens are after him, enjoys placing cockroaches in his underwear and exhibits odd, nocturnal behavior (“I’m making my lunch!”). There is also a memorable scene that introduces Bobby Peru and his friends, including Lynch regular, Jack Nance in a scene-stealing role as Boozy Spool, a dazed and confused rocket scientist who may have been sampling his own rocket fuel. He delivers a brilliantly surreal monologue that is amongst some of the best moments in any Lynch film and reminiscent of the joyride interlude at Ben’s in Blue Velvet.

Wild at Heart also features stunning cinematography by Frederick Elmes (who also worked with Lynch on Eraserhead and Blue Velvet). In particular, there is a scene where Lula and Sailor pull over to the side of the road as she is upset and disgusted with all of the terrible news that she’s heard on the radio. He finds Powermad on a station and they get out of the car and dance before embracing passionately. Lynch cuts to a long shot and pans away to a gorgeous shot of a sunset that captures the poetic beauty of this moment perfectly.

Wild at Heart is a film rich in emotion and feeling as everything is heightened to an operatic level. Surreal is an adjective always used to describe Lynch but he is also a very romantic filmmaker. There is the Douglas Sirkian melodrama of Blue Velvet, the emotional journey Alvin Straight takes in order to reconnect with his brother in The Straight Story (1999), and the town of Twin Peaks dealing with the grief over the death of Laura Palmer. Perhaps the most emotional scene in Wild at Heart is when Sailor and Lula drive along a deserted stretch of highway late and night and while an instrumental version of “Wicked Game” by Chris Isaak plays on the soundtrack, he tells her about how he knew her dead father. The reaction she gives is so heartbreaking, like a daughter who realizes that her father isn’t perfect.

Sailor, in some ways, is a father figure to her. He makes her feel protected and she even comments on how some of his physical features resemble her father’s. This scene represents the first seed of doubt in their relationship. It is the first step off the yellow brick road and this is reinforced by Lula’s nightmarish vision of her mother as the Wicked Witch. And then they come across a horrible car accident and find one person still alive – a woman (Sherilyn Fenn) walking around in shock from a head wound. She eventually dies in Sailor and Lula’s arms. It is a tragic moment accentuated beautifully by Angelo Badalamenti’s moving score. This scene is a crucial turning point in the film as it descends into much darker territory as Sailor and Lula make a series of bad decisions, most notably getting involved with Bobby Peru.

Lynch loved The Wizard of Oz and put a lot of references to it in his own film. Boozy Spool talks about his dog, comparing it to Dorothy’s pooch Toto; Marietta’s picture disappears at the end of the film just like the Wicked Witch; there’s Lula’s vision of her mother as the Wicked Witch of the East; Sailor has a vision of the Good Witch (Sheryl Lee) at the end of the film, who convinces him not give up on love; and Lula clicking the heels of her shoes together after the terrifying encounter with Bobby Peru.

Early test screenings for the film did not go well with the intense violence in some scenes being too much. Lynch estimated that between 100-120 people walked out. The scene in question was the torture and killing of Johnny Farragut. “I didn’t think I’d pushed it to the point where people would turn on the picture. But, looking back, I think it was pretty close. But that was part of what Wild at Heart was about: really insane and sick and twisted stuff going on.” Lynch decided not to edit anything from the film and at the second screening another one hundred people walked out during the same scene. Lynch remembers, "By then, I knew the scene was killing the film. So I cut it to the degree that it was powerful but didn´t send people running from the theatre."

The film was completed one day before its premiere at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival. Its first screening was in the 2,400-seat Grand Auditorium and afterwards it received "wild cheering" from the audience. Barry Gifford remembers that there was a prevailing mood among the media that hoped Lynch would fail. “All kinds of journalists were trying to cause controversy and have me say something like ‘This is nothing like the book’ or ‘He ruined my book.’ I think everybody from Time magazine to What’s On In London was disappointed when I said ‘This is fantastic. This is wonderful. It’s like a big, dark, musical comedy.’” When Jury President Bernardo Bertolucci announced Wild at Heart as the Palme d’Or winner at the awards ceremony, the boos almost drowned out the cheers with film critic Roger Ebert leading the vocal detractors

To say that Wild at Heart did not receive kind notices from critics is an understatement to say the least. Not surprisingly, leading the charge was Roger Ebert who wrote, "He is a good director, yes. If he ever goes ahead and makes a film about what's really on his mind, instead of hiding behind sophomoric humor and the cop-out of 'parody,' he may realize the early promise of his Eraserhead. But he likes the box office prizes that go along with his pop satires, so he makes dishonest movies like this one.” USA Today gave the film one-and-a-half stars out of four and said, "This attempt at a one-up also trumpets its weirdness, but this time the agenda seems forced." Time magazine’s Richard Combs wrote, “The result is a pile-up, of innocence, of evil, even of actual road accidents, without a context to give significance to the casualties or survivors.” Sight and Sound magazine’s Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote, "Perhaps the major problem is that despite Cage and Dern's best efforts, Lynch is ultimately interested only in iconography, not characters at all. When it comes to images of evil, corruption, derangement, raw passion and mutilation (roughly in that order), Wild at Heart is a veritable cornucopia."

However, Rolling Stone magazine’s Peter Travers wrote, "Starting with the outrageous and building from there, he ignites a slight love-on-the-run novel, creating a bonfire of a movie that confirms his reputation as the most exciting and innovative filmmaker of his generation." In her review for the Village Voice, Georgia Brown wrote that the film was “wispy and amorphous ... but it’s also formally beguiling and, in places, brilliant.”

Wild at Heart perfectly illustrates Lynch’s love-hate relationship with America. The film is filled with beautifully shot iconography of Americana, like big convertible automobiles from the ‘50s and rock ‘n’ roll music from the period. Sailor and Lula are loving (albeit tweaked) homages to Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe. It is also something of an underrated film that is often ignored in favor of Lynch’s more well-known work, like Blue Velvet or Mulholland Drive (2001). One can see the film’s influence in a film like True Romance (1993), with its Elvis-obsessed protagonist and his gum-chewing white trash girlfriend as they are pursued by psychotic gangsters, or Natural Born Killers (1994) with its white trash lovers on the run, or U-Turn (1997) with its town full of eccentric weirdos. But no one can pull this stuff off quite like Lynch and his film is a true original that deserves to be re-discovered and re-evaluated.

SOURCES

Hoffman, Jan. “Wild Child.” Village Voice. August 21, 1990.

Ridley, Chris. Lynch on Lynch. Faber & Faber. 1997.

Woods, Paul A. Weirdsville USA: The Obsessive Universe of David Lynch. Plexus. 1997.

Woodward, Richard B. “Wild at Heart … Weird on Top.” Empire. July 1990.

Blue Velvet

By 1984, director David Lynch was on top of the world. He had received critical acclaim and eight Academy Award nominations for The Elephant Man in 1980 and was on the verge of releasing his next film, Dune (1984), an adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic science fiction novel. Many speculated on how this young auteur would be able to translate such a complex text to film. Dino De Laurentiis, who poured over $50 million into the project, was hoping that it would become the next Star Wars (1977). If anyone could pull it off, it was the man who brought us that cult classic, Eraserhead in 1977. Dune promptly flopped. Critics despised it and crowds stayed away in droves. To his credit, it was not all Lynch's fault. Studio executives moved in, took away final cut privileges from Lynch, and tried to condense over four hours of footage into a barely watchable two-hour film. The result was an unorganized, if not visually stunning motion picture that seemed like the highlights of Herbert’s book.

Drained from such a harrowing ordeal and frustrated over the whole mess, Lynch took some time off to develop a more personal project that he had been working on while filming Dune. Surprisingly, De Laurentiis decided to give Lynch another chance, but only with the stipulation that he take a cut in his salary and work with a reduced budget of only $6 million. In return, the young director could have total artistic freedom and control over the final cut. Lynch surprised everyone with his hauntingly beautiful ode to small-town America, Blue Velvet (1986).

"In a way, this is still a fantasy film. It's like a dream of strange desires wrapped inside a mystery story. It's what could happen if you ran out of fantasy."
-- David Lynch

The brilliance of this film is apparent right from the opening montage that begins with the image of blood red roses in front of a stark white picket fence and continues with a fireman waving from his truck, to a crossing guard motioning children across a street. Everything is heightened in color and slowed down to an almost surreal level which invokes the feeling of being trapped, as one critic observed, in a "nightmarish image of small-town life in America." Lynch reinforces these romantic images of 1950's Americana with Bobby Vinton's classic version of "Blue Velvet" playing on the soundtrack. By using colors and music to create a dreamy, nostalgic mood, Lynch draws us into his strange world.

Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) has returned home from college after his father suffers a stroke. While walking home from the hospital one day, he finds a severed ear lying in a field. The ear, for Lynch was like "finding a ticket to another world you know, it would change your life." The ear draws Jeffrey into a mysterious world of intrigue and dangerous characters. There is Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini), an exotic looking singer who is involved in a bizarre, sadomasochistic relationship with local psycho, Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), a man of truly frightening proportions. To aid Jeffrey in his adventure, he enlists the help of Sandy Williams (Laura Dern), the beautiful girl next door, whose father just happens to be the detective in charge of investigating the severed ear. As the film progresses, Jeffrey is torn between the dark, seductive world of Dorothy and the safe, wholesome world that Sandy represents. The mystery culminates when these two worlds inevitably collide.

Blue Velvet's origins ultimately lie in Lynch's childhood a period of his life spent deep in the forests of Spokane, Washington. For Lynch, there was a definite "autobiographical level to the movie. Kyle is dressed like me. My father was a research scientist for the Department of Agriculture in Washington. We were in the woods all the time. I'd sorta had enough of the woods by the time I left, but still, lumber and lumberjacks, all this kinda thing, that's America to me like the picket fences and the roses in the opening shot. It's so burned in, that image, and it makes me feel so happy." Clearly this fascination with wood translates over into the film with not only the name of the town Lumberton, but also a scene where a truck transporting huge logs goes by the camera to gorgeous shots of tree-lined streets that all contain echoes of Lynch's childhood memories. The director would delve even deeper into the forests of his childhood with Twin Peaks which also contained numerous references to wood and trees.

If Lynch's childhood memories inspired the setting of Blue Velvet, the actual story of the film originated from three ideas that crystallized in the filmmaker's mind over a period of time. Ideas for Blue Velvet had begun to form in Lynch's head as early as 1973 but at that time he "only had a feeling and a title." After finishing The Elephant Man, he met producer Richard Roth over coffee. Roth had read and enjoyed Lynch's Ronnie Rocket script but did not think it was something he wanted to produce. He asked Lynch if the filmmaker had any other scripts but the director only had ideas. "I told him I had always wanted to sneak into a girl's room to watch her into the night and that, maybe, at one point or another, I would see something that would be the clue to a murder mystery. Roth loved the idea and asked me to write a treatment. I went home and thought of the ear in the field." The idea of sneaking into a girl's room survived the many drafts and changes to appear in a scene where Jeffrey sneaks into Dorothy's apartment one night. However, Lynch took the idea one step further and Jeffrey evolves from being more than just a voyeur to an actual participant in the very mystery that he is fascinated by.

The image of a severed, human ear lying in a field has since become one of the most striking visuals of the film. "I don't know why it had to be an ear. Except it needed to be an opening of a part of the body a hole into something else...The ear sits on the head and goes right into the mind so it felt perfect," Lynch remarked in an interview. For the filmmaker, the severed ear was the perfect way to draw Jeffrey into a secret world that lies at the heart of Blue Velvet.

The third idea that came to Lynch was Bobby Vinton's classic rendition of the song "Blue Velvet" and "the mood that came with that song a mood, a time, and things that were of that time." This song proved to be such a favorite with Lynch that he not only has Vinton's version in the film but Dorothy also sings it during one of her performances at the Slow Club. The song continues the blue velvet motif that appears throughout the film from the curtain or robe of velvet in the opening credits to the piece of material that Frank carries with him. There is something unsettling, yet also beautiful about the texture of velvet that Lynch's film uses quite effectively.

Once these three ideas came to Lynch, he and Roth pitched it at Warner Brothers who showed interest in the project. So, Lynch spent two years writing two drafts which, by his own admission, "were horrible!" The problem with them was that "there was maybe all the unpleasantness in the film but nothing else. A lot was not there. And so it went away for a while." After his experiences with Dune, Lynch returned to Blue Velvet and much to his surprise, "all the right ideas came to me right away, as if they had been on my mind all that time." He wrote two more drafts before he was satisfied with the script. Conditions at this point were ideal for Lynch's film: he had cut a deal with De Laurentiis that gave him complete artistic freedom and final cut privileges. Blue Velvet was also the smallest film on the De Laurentiis' roster and so Lynch was left alone for the most part. "After Dune I was down so far that anything was up! So it was just a euphoria. And when you work with that kind of feeling, you can take chances. You can experiment."

Blue Velvet clearly demonstrates Lynch as an artist at the top of his form. This is due in large part to the exceptional crew he assembled for this film. Long time collaborator, Alan Splet (who had worked with Lynch ever since Eraserhead) contributed the complex sound scheme that ingeniously complements Lynch's images. This is evident in the unsettling "moaning hallways" of Dorothy Vallens' apartment building that seem almost organic in nature due in large part to Splet's disturbing soundscape. Splet also shines in the film's surrealistic montages where sound and image are distorted to a nightmarish level.

Frederick Elmes' lush cinematography is also a crucial element to the unique look that permeates Lynch's films. As film critic Pauline Kael observed in her review of the film, Elmes' photography gives Blue Velvet "a comparable tactility; real streets look like paintings you could touch." This look is Lynch's trademark style and harkens back to his other fascination: painting. Lynch's background lies in the fine art of painting and as a result Blue Velvet contains scenes that have a still life quality to them. In contrast, Elmes' technique evokes classical Hollywood cinema in the way scenes are lit and staged and yet they effortlessly slip into surrealism with the aid of Lynch's often absurd situations. The perfect example of this blend is the famous "joyride" sequence where Frank takes an unwilling Jeffrey and Dorothy to Ben's (Dean Stockwell), a place where obese women sit passively while Ben, complete with Kabuki white make-up and "suave" demeanor, lip-synchs to Roy Orbison's "In Dreams." In this scene, Elmes combines film noir lighting with a dark color scheme that enhances and establishes the eerie, dream-like mood synonymous to all of Lynch's films.

Lynch got the idea to use “In Dreams” while he was rehearsing scenes from the film with Kyle MacLachlan and Isabella Rossellini in New York City. Lynch heard Roy Orbison's "Crying" while on a cab ride through the city. He had originally planned to use Orbison's "Crying" for the scene at Ben's with Dennis Hopper singing along with it – not Dean Stockwell. Lynch bought a Greatest Hits album of Orbison's and after hearing "In Dreams" decided to use that song instead.

Hopper kept putting off memorizing the song and so Lynch got Dean Stockwell (who had been good friends with Dennis Hopper from way back) to help Hopper work out the song and memorize the lyrics. On the day they shot the scene Hopper still hadn't memorized the song. Lynch remembers that, "we were rehearsing and Dean said, 'I'll stand here and kind of help Dennis if he needs it.' So we started playing the music and both Dennis and Dean began to sing 'In Dreams.' All of a sudden Dennis stops singing and looks at Dean – who's continuing to sing. Dennis is solidly in character and he is moved by Dean's (Ben's) singing. There was the scene in front of me. It was so perfect."

This bit of improvisation also led to another memorable moment – the "microphone" that Ben uses when he sings "In Dreams." Originally, Stockwell was going to use "a small candle-style table lamp," but when he rehearsed the scene, Lynch remembers that, "he picked up a work light that was hanging on a nail on the wall. He turned it on and flipped the long cord like a microphone cord and obviously it couldn't have been more perfect."

Blue Velvet also marked the first time Lynch worked with composer Angelo Badalamenti who provides a seductively lavish score. To complement Elmes' classical Hollywood look, Badalamenti's score mimics the melodramatic soundtracks of Douglas Sirk's films with its dramatic swells during intense moments and calm lulls with romantic interludes. Blue Velvet would mark the beginning of a long-lasting partnership with Badalamenti who has since composed the music for every subsequent project that Lynch has done.

The film's excellent ensemble cast is another area that the film excels in. Lynch has a real knack for reviving the careers of seasoned actors and Blue Velvet is no exception. Who could forget Dennis Hopper's memorable role as the helium-inhaling, demented criminal, Frank Booth? You never know what is going to happen when Hopper appears on screen and it is this unpredictability that really separates Frank from other screen villains. However, Lynch was not sure he wanted Hopper to play the role (future Lynch film psycho Robert Loggia auditioned for the role). Lynch remembers, "Dennis Hopper's name had come up in meetings before, but as soon as it did, it was shot down because of his reputation. Not because he wasn't right, but because his reputation was so strong that it was just out of the question. And that was sad, because he had been off everything for over a year and a half and no one really knew that. So his manager told me that Dennis was totally different and that we could phone the producers whom he had just worked with to check.” In fact, Hopper was so set on this role that Lynch remembers getting a call from the actor who said, "I have to play Frank because I am Frank." Well that almost blew the deal right there. But he was truly great to work with." It is interesting to note the effect that this role has had on Hopper's career whose villainous roles have been patterned after his classic turn in Blue Velvet.

Lynch also revived the career of Dean Stockwell who appears in a scene stealing cameo as Ben, Frank's "suave" partner in crime. The "joyride" scene where Frank and company visit Ben is a classic moment where Stockwell's effeminate character and Hopper's macho psycho meet. The two veteran actors clearly enjoy their characters and it shows in their performances as they play their roles to the hilt. "I loved that role, but I knew going in that it was going to be a risk because it was so strange a film and everybody in it automatically got caught up in the strangeness." Stockwell remembers. The result is a truly unsettling, yet somewhat humorous scene as we are never sure what is going to happen next due to Hopper and Stockwell's unpredictable behavior. This uncertainty only heightens the terror of the scene as we wonder if Jeffrey will live to see its conclusion.

Lynch not only has the ability to resurrect the careers of veteran actors, but discover new talent as well. Fresh from his role in Dune, Kyle MacLachlan is a dead ringer for the director, adding an interesting autobiographical twist to the film. MacLachlan expertly captures the inner turmoil that Jeffrey struggles with throughout the film and manages to hold his own against such great actors as Dennis Hopper. This role would cement the young actor's place as a Lynch regular, most notably appearing as the beloved Special Agent Dale Cooper in the Twin Peaks show and feature film. Laura Dern also turns in an excellent performance in what could have been a one-dimensional girlfriend role. Dern's performance has a depth that suggests, much like all the other characters, that she harbors some deep, dark secret, kept in check by her all-American purity. She is the perfect contrast to Isabella Rossellini's mysterious, femme fatale character.

Lynch admits that, at the time, he "didn't even know Isabella Rossellini was an actress. I just happened to meet her in a restaurant in New York and we discussed the movie. I told her I was casting it, not even realizing she was an actress. Then a week later I was looking at a copy of Screen World and I found a picture of her from a film she did with the Taviani brothers, and I said. "Good night! She's an actress!" So I got a script to her that afternoon, and she loved it instantly. She felt that she knew Dorothy and that she knew the part. So, because of her attitude and because I felt she was right in every way, it happened."

The film was supposed to have a limited release, playing predominantly in film festivals all over the world. However, after several successful screenings in Europe, De Laurentiis told Lynch that "maybe a wider audience will like this film." And so, a sneak preview was organized in the United States, at a theater that was supposed to be showing Top Gun (1986). It did not go well. In retrospect, Lynch thought that this screening was "actually a good thing because he (De Laurentiis) didn't have high expectations after that. So whatever came was frosting on the cake. And it was one of his most successful films that year."

It has been more than 20 years since Blue Velvet shocked and divided audiences with its peculiar vision of America. Many critics loved the film, some declaring it one of the best films of the 1980's. Almost the same number hated it. For every Pauline Kael who gave it a favorable review, there was a Rex Reed who thought it to be "one of the sickest films ever made." Critic John Simon even went so far as claiming the film to be pornography which, as he put it, "pretends to be art, and is taken for it by most critics, has dishonesty and stupidity as well as grossness on its conscience." Yet for such vehemence, Blue Velvet has endured. Its legacy is widespread. Many articles and essays have been written about Lynch's film since its release in an attempt to unlock many of the film's mysteries and symbols that are buried throughout. Its look and mood has influenced many films since. One only has to look at Lynch’s own career with Twin Peaks, a tamer, televised version of Blue Velvet, to see that the auteur has had a difficult time surpassing this watershed film, but in recent years he’s come very close with films like Mulholland Drive (2001). He proved with Blue Velvet that just when everyone had him pegged, he released a film that established him as a director with real talent and the ability to create a world with fascinating characters that eerily mirrors our own.

SOURCES

Atkinson, Michael. Blue Velvet. British Film Institute. 1997.

Borden, Lizzie. "The World According to Lynch." The Village Voice. September 23, 1986.

Bouzereau, Laurent. "An Interview with David Lynch." Cineaste. 1987.

Chute, David. "Out to Lynch." Film Comment. October 1986.

Drazin, Charles. Blue Velvet. Bloomsbury Publishing. 2001.

Robertson, Nan. "The All-American Guy Behind Blue Velvet." The New York Times. October 11, 1986.

Rodley, Chris. Lynch on Lynch. Faber and Faber. 2005. 

A Perfect World

In 1993, Clint Eastwood was enjoying a resurgence in popularity. His revisionist western Unforgiven (1992) won three Academy Awards and he received critical and commercial acclaim for his performance in the action-thriller, In the Line of Fire (1993). When he was approached with the screenplay for A Perfect World (1993), he was still making Line of Fire and doing promotion for the Academy Award nominations for Unforgiven. As a result, Eastwood anticipated only directing A Perfect World. However, when Kevin Costner came on board, he felt that Eastwood would be perfect for a smaller role in the film. Eastwood agreed because it wouldn’t require him to spend a lot of time in front of the camera.

A Perfect World is essentially a road movie set in Texas, 1963, three weeks before the John F. Kennedy assassination (an event that subtly hangs over the film with ominous foreshadowing) that recalls a simpler, even more innocent time. Thematically there is much more going on as the film wrestles with father/son relationships, child abuse and religion. The film begins with two convicts making a daring escape from prison only to take refuge in the neighboring suburbs. Terry Pugh (Keith Szarabajka) is the more amoral one as he wants to kill the driver of the vehicle they commandeer to leave the prison. He then later tries to rape a woman whose house he breaks into. The other convict, Butch Hayes (Kevin Costner), steps in before things go too far with Pugh and the woman. Butch even convinces her little boy, Phillip (T.J. Lowther), to give him the handgun that was dropped during the ensuing scuffle.

This is a crucial moment because it establishes early on the instant bond between Butch and Phillip. Despite the circumstances, there is something about Butch that Phillip intrinsically trusts. What this is will become more apparent later on in the film. When a neighbor intervenes unexpectedly, Butch and Pugh kidnap Phillip and take off in a stolen car. Texas Ranger Red Garnett (Clint Eastwood) is called in to track down and bring in the fugitives. However, the Governor (Dennis Letts) assigns him a criminologist by the name of Sally Gerber (Laura Dern). He immediately resents her intellectual approach to the situation as opposed to her being a woman which would have been the norm at the time. He tells her, “This is not a penal escape situation, this happens to be a manhunt. And no talking around in circles is gonna fix all that.” Eastwood immediately establishes an antagonistic relationship between Red and Sally which parallels the antagonistic relationship between Butch and Pugh. In no time at all, both conflicts will be resolved – one amicably, the other violently.

Like many of Eastwood’s characters, Red works on instinct and common sense. He resents authority figures and bureaucracy. He likes to be left alone and do things his own way. He sees Sally as an annoyance and a possible obstacle in his path. However, she clears the air pretty quickly, letting him know that she’s no pushover when she tells him, “But the one thing I won’t do is be your straight man so you can play hero to a bunch of morons who think you’re some kind of hillbilly Sherlock Holmes.” These lines deflate Eastwood’s traditional stoic lawman façade and Red even offers a compromise of sorts. He encourages Sally to speak up and even though he might not agree with her theories, he’s willing to listen. A Perfect World proceeds to cut back and forth between Butch and Phillip’s developing friendship and the partnership between Red and Sally with the two storylines dovetailing finally at the film’s conclusion.

One of the hallmarks of Eastwood’s directorial efforts is an emphasis on character and the relationships that are created between them. This film is no different with John Lee Hancock’s superbly written screenplay. He would go on to adapt Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil for the film of the same name that Eastwood also directed in 1997. Sadly, they haven’t teamed up since but these two efforts are proof that they were a good match for each other. Hancock’s screenplay is filled with clever dialogue, like when Butch tells Phillip his theory about how a car is a time machine. Everything behind them is the past, everything in front is the future and inside the car is the present. “We’re time traveling through Texas,” Butch proudly proclaims. And in a way that’s what the film is doing – taking us back to a time that doesn’t exist anymore, to a time before President Kennedy was killed and when people were more hopeful and optimistic. His assassination (and that of other key figures of the 1960s) changed all that and we watch these events transpiring with the knowledge of how radically history will change in a few short months.

Hancock’s screenplay should also be noted for how well it develops the relationship between Butch and Phillip. Early on, Butch puts his trust in the boy by leaving him and Pugh in the car with the gun while he goes into a store for supplies. Pugh is able to get the drop on Phillip and take the gun away from him only to find out that there are no bullets in it. Butch assumed that this would happen and did not want to see Phillip get hurt. He may be a convict but he is not as heartless as Pugh. In turn, Phillip trusts Butch and stays with him even when he has the option, on a couple of occasions, to escape. Butch makes Phillip feel important and needed. Once they are on the road, having ditched Pugh, Butch refers to the boy as the navigator of the car. Later on, he asks Phillip to scout a car that he is interested in stealing. Butch doesn’t make Phillip feel like a passive observer but encourages him to become involved in their adventures.

Another significant factor in their friendship is Phillip’s lack of a father figure – something that Butch can also relate to and this provides common ground between them. Butch also speaks honestly to the boy. In one scene, when Phillip says that his mother told him his father would return, Butch replies that she lied and that he is never coming back. He doesn’t come out and say it but we sense that Butch knows this from his own personal experience. He also broadens the boy’s horizons by allowing him to experience things that his Jehovah’s Witness practicing mother would never condone, like drinking soda or wearing a Halloween costume and going trick or treating.

The relationship between these two characters works so well not just because of the excellent script but also because of the strong performances from Costner and T.J. Lowther. On the surface, Butch seems like one of Costner’s cocky, cool characters that he is often known for (i.e. Fandango, Silverado or Bull Durham), yet underneath lurks a dark, dangerous streak that surfaces when he sees a child being abused (the sure sign that Butch was probably abused when he was a child as well). Eastwood never lets us forget that Butch is a criminal. Costner is able to balance this element of danger with his trademark charm, like when he helps Pugh differentiate between a fact and a threat in a scene that is slightly threatening because violence is involved but is also funny as well because of the absurd tone. If Costner had any doubts about his character going into this film, Eastwood assured him that movie stars like Humphrey Bogart and James Cagney weren’t afraid to play convicts and “have a bad side,” the director said, “and I had Kevin play a much harder edge than he has played.”

Lowther matches Costner’s performance with his superb take on a shy, young boy who develops a strong bond with his captor. He has such an expressive face which he uses to great effect during emotional scenes, like the internal conflict that becomes apparent when Phillip is given the chance to escape or stay with Butch. He has been cut off from everything and everyone he knows. He has little choice but to stay with the convict. Lowther doesn’t have too much dialogue but he is able to convey so much with a look and with his expressive eyes. He is more than capable of holding his own with Costner and their scenes together are well-played as we see their friendship develop over time. Eastwood was never interested in playing the sympathy angle with this friendship. He said, “You can’t have him treat the kid as if he’s paternal. I didn’t want it to come off like he’s cuddling the kid.” Above all, the director did not want the boy to “become precious. I wanted an un-Disneyesque kid.”

The script also provides motivation for Red’s personal interest in this case. We learn that the lawman put Butch in juvenile hall when he was young in an attempt to save him from his abusive father but it turned him into a career criminal. Red even paid off a judge so that Butch would stay in longer and so he feels guilty and responsible for what happened to him. Even though he never comes out and says it, one feels that Red wants to be the person to find Butch and try set things right. This backstory also explains the convict’s hatred for any kind of child abuse (Pugh hitting Phillip or a mother physically scolding her two children) and this manifests itself in a particularly strong way towards the end of the film when he and Phillip take refuge in a poor family’s house in what is surely the darkest scene in the film. After witnessing the father repeatedly abusing his little boy, Butch hits and threatens the father, his own rage threatening to boil over. A scene that started off warm and inviting turns into one that is uncomfortable and filled with tension as Phillip sees just how dangerous Butch can be. He ties up the entire family and we see how this affects Phillip as he observes the fear in the eyes of the mother and her child as Butch threatens the father repeatedly.

Phillip stops Butch before anything fatal happens to the family but the question lingers, was he going to kill them or just tie them up so that they couldn’t get away? Regardless, Phillip shoots Butch and runs away, setting the stage for the film’s climatic showdown between Red and Butch. Even here, Eastwood defies our expectations by drawing out the stand-off. The relationship between Butch and the boy continue to play out as he apologizes for shooting him. They have one last emotional conversation and because we have gotten to know these characters, we care about what happens to them. Their final moments are very touching, even moving. Costner and Eastwood finally have a scene together and this is what we’ve been waiting for the entire film. Not much is said between them and this is because we already know their motivations, Eastwood has been building to this moment. Visually, A Perfect World begins and ends the same with a slow motion shot of Butch lying in a field with money floating around him in the wind but by the film’s conclusion we know how and why he got there.

These sequences feel like something out of a dream and coupled with the leisurely pace probably didn’t endear it to mainstream audiences who were expecting another crowd-pleasing popcorn movie like In the Line of Fire. Critical reaction was mixed. In his review for Newsweek, David Ansen wrote, “When John Lee Hancock’s script tries to get heavy and psychological on us, it just won’t wash – the movie is a pipe dream or it’s nothing.” Janet Maslin, in her review for the New York Times, praised Costner’s performance as “absolutely riveting, a marvel of guarded, watchful character revealed through sly understatement and precise details.” In his review for the Boston Globe, Jay Carr praised Lowther’s performance “of few words, most of the important stuff being conveyed by glances ranging from shy to mischievous.” Hal Hinson, in his review for the Washington Post, felt that the film’s protracted showdown between Costner and Eastwood was a “non-event. Yet almost despite itself, the scene works.” Finally, USA Today gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four and criticized Costner’s performance: “He’s never quite believable, but he is tolerable in a role that demands a star presence.”

A Perfect World is closer to Unforgiven thematically as both films explore how the sins of the past affect the present with Eastwood playing tortured characters that try to fix old mistakes that had life-altering consequences but end up resolving things violently. In the case of Unforgiven, Eastwood’s character takes an active part in this resolution but with A Perfect World events spiral out of his control. This film is one of his most underrated efforts to date with its almost lyrical approach making it ripe for rediscovery by another generation of filmgoers receptive to an Eastwood film with complex relationships and a tragic conclusion reminiscent of more recent efforts like Mystic River (2003) and Million Dollar Baby (2004).

SOURCES

Carr, Jay. “The Flint of Clint.” The Herald. December 7, 1993.

Wuntch, Philip. “Dirty Harry Mellows with Age.” Ottawa Citizen. November 24, 1993.