Mulholland Drive with Dawn Borchardt

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
On the dol cast, the questions asked if movies have
women in um, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands?
Or do they have individualism the patriarchy? Zef In best
start changing it with the Bell cast. Um, Hi, I
just wandered into this house and I'm in the shower.

(00:22):
Who am I? Oh my gosh, let me help you.
I'm so nice. I just moved here and I'm going
to be a big star. Cool, just kidding, And that's
the summary of Holland. Yeah, you're not gonna hire a
hit man to murder me, are you know? Okay, I
would never do that. I'm so nice. Look at me.

(00:44):
I'm so nice. I just got off a bus and
everyone believes in me and I'm an amazing actor. Cool.
Let's kiss. I did have this thought. Okay, does this
whole movie pass because okay, spoiler alert. No, we haven't
even told you what the movie were, the podcast or
who we are yet, but I'm going to spoil the
whole movie right now in Mholland Drive. Does the whole

(01:06):
movie pass the Bechdel test? Because it all takes place
inside of one woman's head, and so, in a way,
they're all extensions of one woman's brain, and therefore every
exchange in the entire movie is just a woman talking
to herself and rationalizing the events that have for the
first two hours. I think you could make that argument

(01:27):
and then right, right, because this movie is two and
a half hours long. But I think, yeah, for for
the majority of the movie, it's it's a woman talking
to herself through different conduits, but it's all in the
same person's mind. I don't know if you if you
take that interpretation of the movie, because famously David Lynch
is like, I'm not telling you what my movie is about.

(01:48):
He's like that, He like, look, I'm taking the most
basic one, and I feel fine with that. In that
read though, I think that it's it's a good hack,
and yet we have so much to talk about. Welcome
to the Bechtel Cast. My name is Jamie Loftus, my
name is Caitlin Dronte, and this is our podcast where

(02:10):
we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens, using the
Bechtel test as a jumping off point. But oh no,
I have amnesia and I don't remember what the Bechtel
test is. Jamie, tell me, well, this is all my dreams,
so I have all the information. Great. The Bechtel Test
is a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel,

(02:33):
sometimes called the Bechtel Wallace Test. A lot of permutations
of the test. The one we use is this, we
require that there be two characters with names of a
marginalized gender talking to each other about something other than
a man for more than two lines of dialogue. And
it should be some sort of narratively impactful exchange. Not

(02:55):
really a problem for this movie, so I'm not going
to get much more into it than that. Yeah, and
today's movie, as we said, and as the title of
the episode would indicate, its Mulholland Drive. And it's interesting
because it's we have This has happened, I guess a
couple of times over the years, but we have prepared
for this episode previously for a show we were going

(03:17):
to do in Philadelphia, and then we I forget what happened.
But then we're like, we're not doing that, and I
think we we found a guest that we were like,
you can do whatever movie you want. We were going
to do Mulholland Drive, but you don't have to do that.
If you don't want to, and she was like, yeah,

(03:38):
let's do something else. So that's why we changed it. Okay,
I think, I don't. I mean, this is an amazing story.
No matter what, our listeners are probably really engaged in
this story of scheduling from three years ago. I don't
really remember. I just remember that we ended up. If
this is so boring. Anyways, we're covering the movie now

(03:58):
and we've got an amazing guests, so let's get them
in here. We certainly do. She is the host of
the Real Podcast. She's a contributor to Cinema fem magazine.
It's don Borchart. Welcome. Hi, thank you so much for
having me. Oh, we're so stoked to have you, and

(04:18):
thank you for bringing us. I think this is this
has definitely been a request for the entire time this
show has existed, and we've been putting it off. How
you've been reluctant. I'm happy to be talking about it today.
I'm the guest for you. Well, let's get started there then.
What is your history and connection with the movie Mulholland Drive. Well,

(04:43):
I've seen it a few times over the years, probably
first in college would be my guess. Um, and then
I watched it again in preparation for this podcast, and
I think mainly I just love David Lynchen was a
big fan of Twin Peaks Um, and so I was
excited to choose this film, and you guys sent me

(05:04):
a couple of options. I was like, oh, yeah, I
want to do this one. And a couple of years
ago I went to the Twin Peaks town and so
that's just kind of like further my like nerd um,
I don't know what, I can't remember what the town
is actually called, but where you can see like the
waterfalls and the diner and all that, and like the
area where the sign is, so that's not Maholland Drive.

(05:25):
But yeah, I'm excited to talk about this one today.
Hell yeah we have Okay, this is one of my
favorite episode dynamics we have coming up, because I feel
like this is I'm trying to think of another example
this has happened where we've had a guest who is
very into the director. We've had a Caitlin who is
very not into the director, and then we have Jamie

(05:46):
scrambling around the centrist of the operation. Not in life,
hard left in life, but sometimes on the podcast, I
take a centerstance because Caitlin, what is your history with
mholland Drive? Oh gosh, yes, I have seen it a
number of times. Also for the first time in college,
so it would have been like mid two thousands that

(06:07):
that I saw the first time once again sometime after that,
maybe like you know your early and then uh, probably
three times. I watched this movie so many times to
prep for this recording, because again the movie is famously
difficult to interpret. So he was like, what is this about? Again?

(06:32):
And I kept rewatching it, hoping that I would come
to a better understanding at any point, and that didn't happen.
So generally, Okay, here's a little story time, UM hit
it yesterday. I think I tweeted something, which is mistake
number one. Never good start to a story. I tweeted,

(06:56):
I resent all the years I felt pressure to pretend
that David Lynch is any good. Now I do wish
I had reworded that. I wish I had you fired
to take into the Internet. I did, which is a risk.
It is a risk, but I wish I had said
I resent all the years I felt pressure to pretend
that I like David Lynch's work. Because there's a big

(07:19):
difference between I like something or I don't like something,
and something is good or something is bad. So I
recognize that I agree. However, I will say Twitter is
a website for adults that should know that and and
perhaps um not attack you based on a very simple,

(07:41):
easy to understand the way of like, you know, I agree,
I agree, Okay, Okay. I was like, I don't be
too hard on yourself in this situation because people know that.
But that's not what Twitter. That's just not how people
act on Twitter. Sure, So basically what happened after that
is dozens and dozens of people, uh got into my
mentions and insulted me in various ways because I forgot

(08:07):
something that I should have remembered, which is that and
I wouldn't even this doesn't just apply to David Lynch fans.
I feel like this applies to a lot of things
that have a like cult following status, where some of
the fans sometimes take it personally when you don't like

(08:27):
the thing that they like. So a lot of David
Lynch fans did not like what I had to say,
and they started bullying me online. That's what I've been
dealing with so I've been, you know, just um trying
to ignore all of my Twitter notifications for the past

(08:47):
several hours. Um. So this is all to say that
my and I don't even I don't even dislike all
of David Lynch's work. I find twin Peaks to be
generally enjoy a I like The Elephant Man. Other of
his films not so much. I do deeply, deeply, deeply
hate Erase Your Head. And I also I am not

(09:10):
a fan of Mulholland Drive, but I do think it'll
generate some interesting conversations that we will have soon on
this podcast. Um. But yeah, I generally I have a
tumultuous relationship with David Lynch's work Drama the End, Jamie,

(09:31):
what about you? Uh no real saga or lore to
go with it. I I think, like my my whole
ethostards David Lynch. I don't love Mulholland Drive. I've seen
a couple of times before. It's not my favorite. I
just I find David Lynch to be a very like
I'm glad he exists because I do feel like there

(09:54):
is a dearth of a tours who are just fu
in weirdos. And I think that slowly this is happening
more and more that there was more diversity in uh,
that category of filmmaker of just like Carte blanche weirdos. Um,
he's not a weirdo. That lines up exactly with my interest.

(10:16):
And I do think that there's a lot of interesting
discussion around his work and whiteness and his work as
it pertains to women, because he's just like I'm just
I'm interested in him as a cultural figure. He seems
like a lovely man. Every every interview I've seen with him,
he seems like a sweet old man, right true. Yeah,
And I also have done some of his meditation stuff

(10:38):
and it's pretty fucking good. Uh, But that's not what
we're talking about. We're talking about the movie. I think
that it is like interesting to kind of look at,
especially how it's it's most male oturs that we talk about.
You know. The issue is that they underdeveloped female characters.
They never you know, feel like centering them, They never

(10:59):
feel like really explore boring their motivations, their ideas, where
they're coming from. That isn't David Lynch's problem at all.
But he's still weird with women, where Like it's just
like he seems to in his work that I've seen,
and I have not seen all of it, so take
everything I'm saying with a grain of salt, and I'm
sure everyone's gonna be so fucking mad. Is is that?

(11:22):
I think it's interesting that there's a mail artor who
seems uniquely interested in psychologically torturing female protagonists because he
has women as protagonists all the time, but they are
always under this like extreme mental distress, and this movie
is not an exception to that interest, like Laura's Vontrier like,

(11:48):
oh my god. Yeah. And I have to say, I
haven't seen all of his films, so I'm not like
as intensive a die hard, but I do love him
and I agree with what you're saying, Jamie, Like his
him as a person just seems so likable and goofy,
Like I want him to be like my grandpa. The
documentary that I saw what was what was it on?
There's a documentary about him because he has this whole

(12:12):
and we'll get into this too, I mean, and like
he has this whole ethos of like art life and
that's his whole, like the way he lives his life.
He has his home life, he has his art life
and art life is very important to him, and it
sounds like a lot of his previous spouses have been
shirked and perhaps um mistreated in the interest of art life. Right,

(12:33):
but there was a whole movie made about his view
on art and now it's like very all encompassing for him.
But also, I guess we'll get there. Um. I just
am like, you know, then you know, but truly here
we are and that's okay. That is okay. Um. Should

(12:54):
I do the recap and we'll go from there. Yeah,
good luck the cap and then we'll run it back
and then recap it in order. You know. I guess
what I'll say before you start the recap was I
don't know the exact quote, but I read some quote
from David Lynch that just said, like I don't understand,
like what the problem is. It's a totally cohesive story. Yeah,

(13:17):
I saw that too. I think he trolls, though I
do think that he is like somewhat of a something
of a something of a troll. What the funk am
I talking about? I think he trolls in interview, Like
in interviews, it seems like he has fun being like,
what do you mean this movie makes total sense, like
pinus Yeah, hard, hard to say. Um. Okay, So the

(13:41):
movie opens on a bunch of people swing dancing and
then we see a car driving a windy street. It's
Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles. Whatever heard of it? I've
been my I will say this is this is not
a flattering portrayal of David Lynch fans. My first sten
worst roommate in l A drove me up to Mulholland

(14:03):
Drive on my birthday, two weeks after I moved to
l A. And in spite of the fact that I
told her I've seen Mulholland Drive before, she essentially held
me hostage on Mulholland Drive and recapped the entire movie
to me. Didn't love her, moved out three months later. Yikes.
I had a comedian friend, or like someone who I

(14:25):
was friendly with reply when I told him I wasn't
an enormous fan of David Lynch. He called me stupid
and said I just didn't get it because I wasn't
smart enough. So he's not your friend. Not after that.
Good riddance, right. Okay, So in the backseat of this

(14:45):
car that's driving on Muholland Drive is a woman played
by Laura Harring. The two men in the front seat
stopped the car. They point a gun at her. We
don't really know what's going on, and before we can
find out, two cars full of why old youths, it's
the best way I can describe them, come racing down
the street and crash into the car that Laura Herring

(15:09):
is in. Everyone presumably is killed in this accident, except
for this woman who stumbles away from Muholland Drive to
Sunset Boulevard, which is like roughly two and a half
to three miles by the way, so she stumbles there
on foot. I've stumbled. I've stumbled down further length of
Sunset Boulevard, and it was not as sexy as it

(15:30):
is in the movie. Pretty ugly. That's how I get
from your place to my place. But you're not stumbling. No,
I look so beautiful when I do it. It reminded
me of when I asked directions from this really buff
guy one time to go to Runyon Canyon and he
pointed me in the direction of the very wrong, very

(15:51):
hard path. And I was trying to be like a
cute girl with like an outfit on walking on Runyon
and ended up like with just like leaves and sticks
in my hair and was like sweating profusely and hated
every second of it. I love hiking now, but that
time I was like, no, honestly brave of you to
hike at all. Okay, So she stumbles to the Sunset

(16:14):
Boulevard and sneaks into an apartment. The woman who lives
there she sees leaving town, so she starts squatting in
her apartment. Then we get a scene where a man
at a diner's telling another guy about a nightmare that
he had about a man with a scary face. Then
let me see a scary swamp monster. And you're like,

(16:37):
I know this is a metaphor, but I guess I
just have to wait two and a half hours to
find out what it is for. And I still don't
get it. It's failure. I think it's failure in guilt
and shame. Anyways. Uh. Then we get a quick scene
with a guy whose name is Mr Roke. I think

(16:57):
he's like, the girl is still missing, and this is
presumably about the woman from the car crash. Then we
meet Betty played by Naomi Watts, Naomi Watts is. I
view her performance in Mulholland Drive as her preparing for
her best role, which is the next year in The Ring.
Oh right, I have not seen that movie in such

(17:18):
a long time. We should do it at some point,
only because it's I don't even know if it's good.
I just know that I it's the thing that has
scared me most in my entire life. It was very frightening.
So Naomi Watts has a special place in my heart
for scaring the ship out of me. That movie came
out when the Lord of the Rings movies were coming out,
and I was just like, the one ring is the

(17:39):
only ring I care about. Wow, Well I guess well,
I mean I guess that the Lord of the Rings
ring is a little better because it's like, yeah, absolute
power corrupts absolutely, but you at least get the life
longer than seven days once you haven't money. That's not
enough time. Dolla lived for five years hanging onto the
damn thing. True any way, Okay, So Betty has Betty

(18:05):
has just arrived in l A to try to be
an actor. She's very starry eyed, she's very sweet and bubbly.
She heads to her aunt Ruth's place where she will
be staying, which is the same apartment that the woman
from the beginning went into. So Betty finds the woman
in the shower and assumes that she's a friend of
her aunt Ruth. The woman tells Betty that her name

(18:27):
is Rita after she sees a poster for a Rita
Hayworth movie, and it becomes clear that this woman has
amnesia after being in this car crash and doesn't remember
her actual name. Meanwhile, Adam Kesher played by Justin Thorrea,
is a film director who is so spiky, is soot

(18:52):
it You can tell that you're like, oh, this this guy,
this is a bad sort of guy. Like how spiky
its hair is so fun little anecdote, um, So, David
Lynch always has actors like meet with him for like
a kind of interview rather than audition him. So anyone
he's seriously considering, he'll just sort of meet with and
like get to know a little bit. So when he

(19:14):
met with Justin throw, Justin throwe had just gotten off
of an airplane. It was a long flight. He didn't
get any sleep. He was dressed in all black, he
had untidy hair, and then Lynch was like, oh wow,
this is such a cool look for you. Um, and
then he basically mimicked the clothes and the hairstyle he

(19:34):
saw him in that day in real life and um
put that in the movie. By contrast, Naomi Watts arrived
for her interview wearing jeans and little to no makeup,
also direct off of an airplane, like a long flight
from New York City, and David Lynch asked her to

(19:55):
return the next day quote more glammed up. Look, there
there's a whole I got a whole little section on
how David Lynch treats women that he works with, because
that is so oh my god. I'm just like Naomi Watts.
That's Jesus Christ right justin Thorow's plain clothes. He's like, king, Wow,

(20:23):
I love what you're doing, changing the narrative around clothes
and looking like, oh my god, like put it in
the movie cut print, that's a rap, and we're like, sure, okay.
So Adam Kesher is a film director who some like
producers or some industry people are demanding that he cast

(20:43):
a specific actress in his movie, someone by the name
of Camilla Rhodes. Then we see a scene where a
hit man shoots a few people then steals someone's famous
black book that's full of phone numbers. If you're one ring.
If that will ever come into play at any point
in the movie, it does not. Um, it is a

(21:05):
metaphor for Hollywood. Ever heard of it? For Hollywood gate keeping? Right,
there's anytime I don't know what's happening. I'm like a
metaphor for Hollywood. I just am not famous enough to understand. Right.
Then Betty talks to her aunt Ruth and realizes that

(21:25):
Rita is not a friend of her aunt's. And then
Rita confides to Betty that she doesn't know who she is.
She doesn't remember anything. So then they go through Rita's
purse to try to figure out who she is, but
all they find is several stacks of money and a
peculiar looking kind of triangular blue key. And we're like,

(21:46):
it's a metaphor, but for what I guess I have
five more hours of the movie to find out. Um.
And this doesn't really jog Rita's memory, except that she
does remember Mulholland Drive. Meanwhile, Adam the director goes home
after production has been shut down on his movie and

(22:07):
finds his wife. His wife in bed with another man.
So who is played by come on, wait, who is that?
What Billy ray Cyrus? Are you for real? Oh my god,
the pool boy Billy ray Cyrus. I just guess I
don't know what Billy ray Cyrus looks like. Well clear

(22:29):
like that, Caitlin. I do think this is like another
micro generational thing where it's like I've seen so much
Billy ray Cyrus because if you you had to watch
Hannah Montana, it was the law. Oh he was on
Hannah Montana because he's Miley Cyrus's father. I've actually never
seen that show. Well I I saw. I saw so
much of that show. And he plays Miley Cyrus's father,

(22:53):
pulling from his own experience as Miley Cyrus's father. And
he's not a good act dir He's the worst actor
on the show. It's like, actually funny how bad he is.
Like it's kind of a perfect role in a way
for him because it's so ridiculous, but it's he's terrible.
He's the kind of bad actor where he like, maybe

(23:14):
I'm just giving him too much credit because I have
a nostalgic attachment, but I'm like when Billy ray Cyrus
acts terribly worse than I've ever seen someone perform. It's
a choice. He's making a choice, and he could be
doing a great job. But he's like, well, what if
I did a horrible job? What if I sounded like
I was reading? I love that theory. Yeah. Anyway, Adam

(23:36):
the Director has found his wife in bed with Billy
ray Cyrus, apparently so unbelievable, he ruins his wife's jewelry
and then leaves. Meanwhile, Betty calls the police to see
if there was an accident the night before on Mulholland Drive,
which she's able to confirm there was, and then she

(23:57):
and Rita go to a diner, this same diner where
we saw the scary face earlier, where their server is
named Diane, which activates something in Rita's memory Diane Selwyn,
and she thinks maybe that's her name, so they look
up Diane Selwyn in the phone book and find her
address back in justin throw Land, Um, some dudes are

(24:23):
after Adam the director and he is instructed to meet
with a guy named the Cowboy, who tells him he
needs to cast this specific actress, Camilla Rhodes in the
movie he's making. So then Rita helps Betty prep for
an audition. Then we see Betty do the audition. Then

(24:45):
she is brought to the set of the movie Adam
is directing, where they make eyes at each other and
it seems like you know, sparks are flying, spikes are
jelling right you and tell that he likes her because
it likes call boying. His hair gets even point here.

(25:08):
I also regret saying that um. Then Adam concedes and
casts the woman who he has been pressured to cast.
Then Betty leaves the set and she and Rita go
to the address of Diane Selwyn to investigate. They break
into her apartment and find the dead body of a woman,

(25:30):
presumably Diane Selwyn. Rita freaks out. They get out of there,
and then that night Betty and Rita sleep in the
same bed and start kissing. Rita then wakes up in
the middle of the night and takes Betty to this
place called Club Salencio. They watch a performance and then

(25:52):
suddenly Betty takes a small blue box out of her purse.
It looks like it matches the blue key they found
in Rita's purse. It's another metaphor so they go home
to unlock it, but then Betty seems to disappear, so
Rita just opens the box and then we kind of

(26:12):
like sink into darkness. We see a few images. We
see the woman's dead body again, we see the cowboy again.
Then we see Betty waking up in a bed, the
bed of Diane Selwyn because she seems to be Diane Selwyn.
She has a blue key, but it looks more like

(26:35):
a regular house key. Now we also see Rita is there,
except now Rita is Camilla Rhodes, who again is the
actress that those people made Adam cast in his movie
Betty a k a. Diane And this is gonna be fun.

(26:56):
Rita a k a. Camilla are in a romantic relationship
or recently have been. They seem to be kind of
on the outs, and it seems to be because Adam
the director is directing the movie that they are both
starring in that both Camilla and Diane are in. But
now Camilla has left Diane to be with Adam. We

(27:21):
get a scene where Diane is crying and masturbating. Then
we're like, Okay, I guess this needs to be in
the movie. Then Diane gets a call from Camilla saying
that a car is waiting for her and she needs
to go to an address on mal Holland Drive. And
it's basically the same car ride as the beginning, but

(27:44):
now Naomi Watts is in the backseat instead, but there
was no crash like there was in the beginning. This time,
Diane meets up with Camilla and they go to a
party at Adam's house Holland Drive. Ever heard of it? Um.
Diane seems to be having a bit of a breakdown

(28:05):
throughout this party, which continues on for the rest of
the movie. We smash cut to Diane at the diner
that we've seen before. Um. She's talking to the hit
man and she's paying him to kill Camilla. The guy
with the nightmare about the scary faces. Also there we

(28:26):
see the blue house key again. The scary face person
is outside with the little blue box. Now it's so fun, Kaylee,
and I just took a step outside of the knowing
what you're talking about and being like she does she what?
Are doing a great job to explain? Right, I know,

(28:48):
I'm like, I don't know. Am I leaving things out
that are like super important because they're super metaphorical because
I'm like focusing, I'm trying to make sense of the
narrative stuff. But it's all very like symbolic and cerebral.
We can get and we can get into that sure.
And also we're not here to break down the extremely
specific David Lynch symbols. We're here to talk about the

(29:10):
intersectional aspects of it, so true to Then we cut
to Diane at her home. She's like having a full
breakdown and she pulls out a gun and kills herself
and then she becomes the dead body that Rita and
Betty found and that's where the movie ends more or less.

(29:33):
Let's take a quick break and we will come back
to discuss, and we're back, so okay. Before we start
the discussion, I wanted to check in with everyone and um,

(29:53):
I just want us to all sort of be on
the same page with like the read we're going with.
I'm aware David Lynch fans that there's a lot of
different ways to view the sequence of events in this movie,
and that that is it seems like part of why
this movie is so sticky for people, because it's like
it it defies interpretation in many ways. I think it's
probably easiest for the discussion we're having to go with.

(30:16):
I think the most popular interpretation, which is Diane has
called out a hit on a woman she's in love
with named Camilla, who she had a relationship with out
of jealousy, and the majority of the movie with Betty
and with Rita, is this kind of fantasy she's having
making sense of, you know, rearranging events to make her

(30:40):
the hero or at least innocent in a story where
her lover lived out of guilt that she's experiencing in
her actual life. I'm absolutely fine with that interpretation, especially
because David Lynch, his tagline for this movie is a
love story in the City of Dreams. I was just

(31:01):
gonna say, I would just go as far as just that,
and that the fantasies are happening in some sort of
dream steak, because there's a sort of consistent laying down
sleeping theme throughout the film, and so I feel like
these I didn't watch it with like the intention of
like pinpointing like scenes and the relation to like sleeping

(31:24):
or laying down, but I feel like if you did,
maybe maybe that would provide some insight it like sections.
But for sure I was I mean, I'll say I'll
start by saying something nice about the movie, which is
like it's I do think that it's it is a
really interesting set up for a movie where it's like,

(31:45):
if you don't know how it ends going in, everyone
in the first two hours or our forty five of
the movie are like a stock character of some type,
where it's like Betty is like just got off of
pane and has these big dreams and it's kind of nepotism,
but we don't talk about that, and like, you know,
she's like this aspiring young actress. We have the fem

(32:08):
fatale character in the form of Rita. We have like
kind of these like eccentric older women that appear in
David Lynch's work elsewhere, not in a dream state, but
just you know, flat out, but in this um. I
think it's interesting because because we talked about, you know,
stock characters and trope characters so much on this show,
but in the context of this is the dream of

(32:31):
a failed Hollywood actress, it made a lot of sense
to me, and I thought was like a kind of
a cool creative decision that she's using the language of
movies to reinterpret her own life. So like, in terms
of the first you know, significant chunk of the movie,
I thought that stock characters were used in a more

(32:52):
interesting way. That doesn't mean that they are in problems
with it, obviously, but in a more interesting way. And
then when we flash to the reality, I think that
stock characters are used really not very well and in
a way that there is no excusing because David Lynch
is like, and this is what Hollywood is really like,
and I'm going to kill every queer character, right, especially

(33:13):
because it creates this kind of weird paradox for me,
where again, the first two hours of the of the
movie are these very like kind of one dimensional characters,
these like archetypes that again are being used to a
certain effect based on what we can only imagine is

(33:37):
David Lynch's intention. We don't know because he won't tell us.
But which is fine, I mean whatever, I mean, it's
I think it's like interesting that he's like, oh, here's
my views on Hollywood while also still you know, very
much participating system, right anyways, continuous right, right, So yeah,
he's using, like you said, Jamie, these um kind of

(33:58):
stock characters, approaching them differently and and having a specific
intent for them, which makes sense within the context of
the story. But then the last like thirty minutes, when
you see the real versions of these characters, not like
a dream projection or like a you know, fantasy version,

(34:23):
like an unconscious or subconscious fantasy version of these people.
Since you spend so little time with them, what little
you do see? Like you said, Jamie's like, don't really
like that. And then again, it's just so little development
there that it kind of reminds me of the conversation

(34:43):
we had about Inception, where one of the women in
the movie mal is a projection of Leonardo DiCaprio's subconscious
or whatever. So it's like, how can you even you
know what, if this movie was made ten year later,
you know, Mary and Cotyard would have been punished in
this movie. Poor Mary coty Art. I mean, say what

(35:07):
you will about her, such as she doesn't believe in
the moon Landing, which I just think it's an interesting
fact about her, But they are killing her off in
movies and treating her as like this ghost dead wife
to this day. To this day, she was killed off
in a net just last year. I still haven't seen it. Look,

(35:28):
it's I can't stop thinking about it. I don't know
if it's good or if it's bad. But Marry and Cotyard,
she she has an oscar and yet we're still dead
wife in her it's not nice. But yeah, I I yeah.
The the use of tropes in some part to the
movie I think makes narrative sense, and then um, towards
the end doesn't. I don't know. Yeah, yeah, So character

(35:50):
development wise, it's a really tricky movie to analyze, right
because of that, which is like by design, because it's
like I mean, in the in the Betty Rita dynamic,
you have very much this kind of like this fem
fatale and this a genue like you could you could
paint that as a madonna whore to some extent and

(36:11):
then feel like, oh, okay, I know how I feel
about this. But then when you see the reveal, it's like,
oh no, this is just you know, I don't think
that it's even really reductive or unrealistic to think that
this is how an actor who is not in a
good mental state would try to interpret the world of
any gender of just like because even and I think

(36:32):
people of all genders. In the first part of the movie,
our stock characters, including like the incompetent hit man and
like the detective and totally the psychic woman and just
all of this stuff that is very David Lynchy and
but but contextualizes it in a way that some David
Lynch projects maybe don't but okay, So so in that way,

(36:57):
it's it is hard to to analyze because in some ways,
I mean, it's so interesting because like Laura Elena Harring Harring,
Herring Harring, we don't get to know her character really
at all, because we get to see two different perspectives
of her, Like we don't really see anyone in this

(37:18):
movie even when we flash forward. My interpretation of it
was like, even when we flash forward to Diane's quote
unquote reality, we're still seeing things through her perspective, and
so people are still acting in this very bizarre way
that I find it hard to believe people would actually
be acting, like in like in that reveal towards the

(37:39):
end of the movie, that's like Adam, you know, justin
throws hair gel And and Camilla are going to get married,
and the way that they reveal that information is like
they're like mocking her, which is probably not how that
would have happened, but that's how she perceives it, and
like everything is through Diane's slash Betty's perspective throughout the

(38:03):
entire movie, to the point where it's like kind of
hard to attribute, like, oh, well, Camilla was doing this,
because I think that a lot of and this gets
into a lot of the issues or criticism at least,
are around how queerness is interpreted in this movie. Of
like how Camilla behaves at the end of the movie
is made to seem very antagonistic and to like rub

(38:28):
Diane's face in this new relationship she has with a man.
But as a viewer, I'm like, I'm not even necessarily
sure that that's what the character was doing. That is
how Diane interpreted that behavior because she was hurt that
she was left. But it's like, but you can also
if you interpret that behavior straightforward, then there's a lot

(38:51):
of trophy problems like it's and we've talked about this, Caitlin,
so like it keeps coming up because we keep like,
for some reason, recently, don we've been covering a lot
of movies that have like fem fatale adjacent energy to it,
and this is another like more modern example of that
of and most of the time when fem fatals come

(39:14):
up in more modern movies, there are these bisexual tropes
that come into the mix as a result, which is
I think very much what is being put onto Camilla's
character towards the end of the movie. V Do we

(39:35):
want to get into that? Now? Let's get into it. Well,
I heard you guys talk about it, and I think
it was your a simple favor episode. So I was
when you were talking about that, I instantly started thinking,
thinking how you guys were talking about the it was
like dangerous bisexual character, which isn't something that I had
ever thought about before, but it does apply here. And

(39:57):
then I guess I just wanted to add thinking back
to like thinking about things from Diane or Betty's perspective,
taking it even a little bit of a step further.
I guess I feel like that scene is almost through
like the lens of when you're really high emotions and
remembering something even the way like people are sitting around

(40:18):
the table sort of like and looking at her the
way that you would just remember something when you're really hurt,
and like maybe it doesn't even totally make sense. You're
just like reading off of everyone's emotions instead of like
their actual words or announcement. You're thinking about how someone
you like was like cuddling and kissing and giggling with
someone else instead of like their actual what they're actually saying, right,

(40:41):
And just like, yeah, that was kind of my read
of that whole elevated emotion scene. It's like everything happening
in that scene is happening at Diane, which is not
how the world works. But because like you're saying that
she's at that elevated emotional state, she's really hurt, she
feels betrayed, she's take and off guard because she goes

(41:02):
to that party. It's clear from her perspective, she goes
to that party as still very much a viable romantic
prospect for Camilla, only to find out that Camilla is
engaged and she had no idea Like that betrayal obviously
feels very personal to her, and I feel like that
I didn't even dislike how that was played out in

(41:24):
like the way that scene plays out. It's just I mean, honestly,
it's just hard to talk about David Lynch movies on
the show, specifically because you can never be sure what's happening.
But I didn't want to speak a little bit too.
I think what is kind of clear in the way
that and what's being telegraphed in that storyline. I read

(41:44):
a piece on website called Global Queer Cinema that does
not credit its authors for some reason. So this is
from Global Queer Cinema. But really I thought broke down
the way that bisexuality is portrayed through Camilla's character and
how I believe we are to think that Diane is

(42:05):
a lesbian, that she is only interested in women, and
or at least that's what this piece is using. So
I just wanted to read from that really quick quote,
this is troubling and that the second half of the
story relies on the viewers preconceptions of the tragic lesbian
in order to function. We see Diane as bereft, incapable
of dealing with Camilla's defection to a man. This kind

(42:27):
of quote unquote straightening behavior fulfills the viewers expectations that
the woman who is solely lesbian is someone to be
pitied and ignored, while the bisexual woman is to be
congratulated for quote unquote. Returning to heterosexuality, where we see
the violent suicide of Diane and her rotting corpse. In
the last image we have of Camilla, she is laughing, radiant,

(42:47):
and apparently sexually fulfilled. She is not presented as a
figure to provoke our discussed or scorn end quote, which
I feel like kind of breaks down how and again
this is speaking solely to the back half of the movie,
where I feel like the more insidious queer tropes are
really poking out. But but yeah, especially I mean, as

(43:09):
it pertains to Camilla, she's a bisexual character, and she's
very much portrayed and that way we were talking about
on the simple favorite episode of She's portrayed a like
bisexuality is conflated with being quote unquote like loose and
like I love everybody and I'm not fair, I can't
be faithful to anyone, and ultimately I probably belong with

(43:33):
the opposite. And the fact that we never, I mean,
we barely have bisexual men on screen. It's almost always
the more Camilla storyline that is addressed, because women being
intimate with other women is so eroticized by straight men
on screen, so it's just like there's just a lot
going on. Well, Also, the female relationship seems to play

(43:57):
more on like temptation and they do talk about um,
well Betty doesn't, but they talk about like it being
wrong and like we should stop doing this, and like, yes,
it's because she's with Adam the director, but I also
feel like it's because she's a woman. It's like taboo.
That was Yeah, I totally agree with you. And this

(44:17):
is something that again, this is this has just been
coming up for us so much recently. We discussed this
in our Basic Instinct episode was the idea of and
and again it was disgusting. I just will link to
this article in the description because I found it very
illuminating and helpful from global queer cinema that kind of

(44:38):
unpacks the idea of in these lesbian relationships in movies
of like this era, this fifteen year stretch, you very
often see like the single white female trope coming out
of like I'm in love with you, and being in
love with you if we are both the same gender,
means that I want to wear your in and it's

(45:01):
scary and also murder you eventually and and kill you
like it's it's so intense that it's dangerous and abnormal
and to be avoided, you know, and it's like, oh, sure,
it's eroticized, but it's never going to end well. And
this movie plays on those same tropes. And I never
had like language for like because we were talking about

(45:23):
that in basic instinct of like what is this? This?
This comes up a lot, what the fund is this? Um?
This piece kind of attempts to unpack what the funk
that is? So I just wanted to share this as well.
They use it as a concept called sameness. So the
author says sameness in the sense which Sarah Ahmed uses
in her study refers to a kind of homophobic preconception,

(45:46):
in which quote, the very idea of women desiring women
because of sameness relies on a fantasy that women are
all the same. This portrays a kind of social and
sexual arrogance, as the women who choose each other are
not capable of the kind of challenging diversity to be
experienced in a heterosexual relationship. It also assumes that there

(46:07):
are more differences between men and women than there are
between two women or two men. This association between homosexuality
and sameness is crucial to the pathologizing Someone's got a
master's degree, to the pathologizing of homosexuality as a perversion
that leads the body astray. So I'm curious as to

(46:28):
like what you both think about that and what our
listeners think. But that made sense to me as like
something that a straight male oversimplification would be, as like, well,
women are attracted to women because they're both women, and
all women are the same to me, so they're probably
the same to each other too, Like yeah, I mean,

(46:49):
I definitely got the sense that David Lynch doesn't really
nobody's talking about in terms of representing queer women on
screen and relationship. I mean, definitely, yeah, I I'd have
to This is kind of the first time I'm I've
gotten acquainted with this kind of idea of like sameness

(47:10):
as same here, same sameness. Um, So yeah, I I'd
be interested to examine that more closely. But I mean,
just as far as like the general tropes being put forth,
And I don't even know if some of the choices
that David Lynch is making as far as the queer

(47:33):
characters in this movie are tropes. Maybe they are, but
either way, it's definitely just like choices that are harmful.
We're a marginalized group because like, ultimately both of our
queer female protagonists are brutally killed. Yes, by the end
of the movie. Like again, because like if if you're portrayed,

(47:54):
it's not unheard of in storytelling, for like a scorned
lover to get jealous and vengeful and then murder someone.
You probably see that a lot in hetero relationships, um,
which but it's in the news. It's in the news.
But when you're portraying a particularly underrepresented group in media,

(48:17):
you have to be very careful about the decisions you
make with regard to those characters. So when you have
a character who is a queer woman at the end
of the movie vengefully hiring a hitman to kill her
ex partner for reason, like for what, we don't totally understand.
And I also think there's a conversation to be had

(48:38):
about the way mental health is represented in the movie,
so you know, to suggest, oh, this queer woman is
gonna freaking like have a breakdown and kill is there Ever,
I don't think that there's ever a specific mental illness
attributed to what is happening, right, because that was that's
always like my main like cardinal sin of mental illness trips.

(49:04):
But I do agree with you, like there, yeah, I
mean and just like conflating obsessive behavior with I mean
specifically and again, it's like this comes up in a
lot of movies in relationships with lesbians and bisexual women,
and conflating obsessive and jealous behavior with a lesbian character

(49:26):
and promiscuous and unfaithful behavior with a bisexual character is
something you see in movies all the time, and this movie,
it like takes it to an eleven essentially. Well, my thoughts,
like when you're talking about sameness, my first thought is
literally and like everyone listening, you just have to imagine

(49:48):
I'm just showing boob hands. There's like all these shots
are just like boobs, boops, and it's like comparing like
these are two women and like that's what they're into,
and that's like what I read from those more like
sexual scenes. There's two of them, like one the bat
and won the couch in both realities, and it was
just like very simplified to just like lesbians boobs. I

(50:11):
agree that, like I think David Lynch sex scenes, I
don't love them. But when I was talking about same, sorry,
what what I was more referring to was the wig
and the like yeah, oh yeah, I was gonna talk
that stuff too, so I I don't want to mischaracterize
the piece that's specifically what that piece is talking about
in that moment is like the single white female sequence

(50:34):
I guess in that movie, which you can very much
attribute to like dreamlike behavior, and I know in the
dream analysis of this movie that that choice can be
viewed very differently, but I do think that it's very
valid in this interpretation as well, of like you are
the same as me, and now I am attracted to you,
because it's not until Rita is wearing the wig and

(50:58):
some it doesn't even want to take the wig off
that they're able to have a sexual connection. So I
do think so sorry that that is like what the
context in which that was coming up in it? Yeah, yeah, totally.
I mean that it seems so like I guess, simplified
in a way that you're saying, like I had never
heard that theory before, but in that moment where she's

(51:21):
like wearing that wig, I guess that like intention to
me seemed so obvious that it was like, yeah, that
angel sort of I guess sameness, Yeah, because this didn't
come in the recap, but there's I guess maybe like
halfway through the movie, but after they go into Diane
Selwyn's apartment they find her dead body there. Rita kind

(51:44):
of has a breakdown, and then we see her starting
to like cut her own hair off, and then we
see her now wearing a short blonde wig, which is
pretty close to the same hairstyle that Betty has. Yeah,
I think that they're supposed to be kind of doppel
gangers in that moment, which didn't understand why that was happening,

(52:07):
But okay, I'm glad you didn't because I also, God,
David Lynch gives himself such a huge like margin of
error for most of the movie because you can just
be like, well, dreams, you know, sometimes they just have dreams.
There's truth but no logic. Um. And see, I guess
that's why I like him, because I'm okay to like
go with the flow, right right, just be like I

(52:28):
don't know what's happening, because most of the movie can
just be like, well, dreams are wild sometimes, But in
that moment, yeah, it's it's I just thought that was
interesting because that is something that is presented as not
dream logic in a lot of movies of like My
first relationship with someone of the same gender. Was it

(52:49):
was very you know, obsessive to the point where it
was dangerous. That's a plot point, and basic instinct, that's
a plot point. And single white female like that, it's
just conflated with deviance like horror movie behavior. Um when
it's a relationship that didn't work out, which is statistically

(53:10):
all of them basically, right. Yeah, so that was not handled. Well, uh,
let's take another break and we will come right back.
We're back. The next thing I wanted to discuss is

(53:34):
so there are two sex scenes. The first one, as
far as I'm concerned, presents these two women in a
very male gaze way in a scene that feels like
it was plagiarized directly from a thirteen year old boys
erotic fan fick, where like Betty is like, oh, Rita,

(53:55):
you don't have to sleep on that uncomfortable couch, crawl
into bed with me and get good night's sleep with
me where you'll be so comfortable, and then very soft
Korea and then we just like okay, And then she
comes over and approaches the bed. She takes off her towel,
she's fully nude. She gets into the bed. Rita like

(54:16):
leans in to kiss Betty's forehead. Betty then kisses her
on the lips, she takes off her top. They start
having like a pretty steamy makeout and I'm just like,
who okay. First of all, look, I've had this dream
I went the first time I saw this movie, it
activated something in me where I was like, this is

(54:38):
one of the hottest sex scenes I've ever seen. Let's yeah,
I mean, it can be, it can it can be.
It can be many different things. The male gaze misses
a lot of the times, and then sometimes you're like, oh,
I've had this dream. But yeah, speaking to that, there
was a I mean, there's I'm so much written about

(55:01):
this movie we couldn't possibly read it all. Sorry we're
not readers. But there was a reflection quote from Laura
Elena Horring or Herring years later talking about the direction
of that scene, where she says when David Lynch was
directed the scene, she said it was kind of cute

(55:22):
because she said, quote one time, he went, don't be
afraid to touch each other's breasts. Now, like like even
the description of how he was just like whatever, Like
her truth is her truth. It doesn't sound kind of
cute to me. But like just to give you an
idea of like how male gay is. That scene was
was like a Midwestern guy being like, don't be afraid

(55:46):
to touch each other's breasts now? Like action, no, thank you,
but but yeah, so that's a I don't know, I guess,
like curling away from my microphone. I know. Don you
visibly recall it when I said, and I'll say it
one more time just as the listener to feel hill.
Imagine the next time. Okay, for for those of us

(56:09):
with breasts, um, I mean ordering, you know, just nipples
in general. The next time you're having something done to
your nipple, just think of David Lynch standing inches away
from you saying, don't be afraid to touch each other's
breasts now. I yikes. I have a similar tidbit that
I found after watching an interview with Naomi Watts and

(56:32):
David Lynch are recounting their experience shooting Mulholland Drive. And
this was like a video from it was at least
published in I'm not sure if that's exactly what I
was from, but it was like, definitely there was a
lot that came out from this movie last year because
it was like the anniversary wave of clickbait, etcetera. Totally.

(56:55):
So I think it's a pretty recent thing where Naomi
Watts in the interview was talking about the masturbation scene,
because there's that scene where she's crying and masturbating at
the same time. She's blinking. It mean, she's she's she's jerking,
she's crying, and you're like a visibility. She's talking about

(57:19):
how that scene made her very uncomfortable to shoot, how
she had a stomach ache that day and went had to,
as she puts it, makes several trips to the bathroom
because she was so nervous about shooting this scene. How
it was generally like an unpleasant experience for her. But
the way she's framing it is um interesting, where she's

(57:41):
describing how like, while the cameras were rolling, she was like, David,
I can't do this, I can't do this, and and
then she's like, oh, but the thing with David is
he just keeps pushing you. And she's talking as if
she's describing like, oh, what a good quality for a
director to have to, you know, push me to give
my best performance. But my read of that is he's

(58:04):
not respecting boundaries and insisting that his artistic vision be
carried out even if it makes his performers uncomfortable and
physically ill for a scene that can easily be cut
from the movie, and the movie would doesn't need to
be right, I this is like behavior that is attributed
to oh tour is very often and like whatever, I mean,

(58:29):
the cart blanche of it all means that sometimes you
get a very interesting movie, but it also means that you're,
you know, kind of everyone who's in this movie is
has to act, you know, and bow to the ego
of one person and hope it works out like it's
dictator logic and right, David Lynch doesn't sound like the
worst dictator of them all, But that is like a

(58:52):
funked up thing to like, I'm glad that Naomi Watts
looks back on it and isn't upset, Like whatever her
truth is is totally fine, But that sounds extremely unpleasant
and like not a good not a good yardstick to
be used for how It's also possible that she was
just framing it that way because David Lynch was literally
sitting right next to her. I was going to ask um, like,

(59:14):
did you say they did this interview togegether she talked
about me, and they still work together too, So I
know that there is like some sort of like if
you're still working with someone, you probably don't want to
talk to you about them while you're sitting right next
to them, right, especially if for a woman, and you
could be called that Hollywood power that they're talking about
in the film. That is okay, So that's let's get

(59:36):
into that, because I do back around, right, I do
think that like the Hollywood commentary being made here is
not invalid. You know, there's like a whole you know,
lens of this movie where you can look at it
as like, look how willing Hollywood is to you know,
take very talented and determined and motivated women and pit

(59:56):
them against each other, put them in a couple of movies,
and then to suppose of them like they never existed,
which is something I totally agree with. And I think
it's like, I mean, there's obviously a very very traceable
history with how that works. But contrasted with stories about
how David Lynch treats his own actors who are women,

(01:00:19):
You're just like, well, it just becomes like I always
think of what is it like that onion headline that
it's like the worst person you know just made a
great point where it's like it seems like he he
has actively done this in his career, but also is
making a valid point. But it's like, well, but you're

(01:00:41):
not the person to hear it from. There's a there.
In eighteen there was a piece written on Vice which
is not how I want to begin a sentence ever
um to be clear, but it's about It's kind of
a review of book written about David Lynch that he
participated in that also spoke to a number of people

(01:01:02):
who were in his life. I think that this would
have been the same thing that the documentary offshoot that
I saw was about, but this piece specifically focuses on
how he related to the women in his life professionally
and personally. The writer of this piece is named Hannah Ewens.
Oh my god, Ewens Ewans s mcgarar. That's how you

(01:01:24):
call McGregor and his clones Ewens mcgar I can't say
that man's name. Wow. Okay, So David Lynch, and again
it's like personal life stuff is complicated. But David Lynch
is a filmmaker who is known for He certainly has
a lot of women who are protagonists in his work.

(01:01:47):
But usually if the woman is a lead character in
a David Lynch piece, she is under some sort of
extreme psychic distress. She is often assaulted or brutalize in
some way. She often dies. And so it is like
we were talking about at the beginning of the episode,
women are are very central to his work, but also

(01:02:10):
how are they being treated and how are they being
treated off screen? But there's there's a lot of stuff,
you know, in terms of like women who have been
married to David Lynch, where it just sounds like they've
been very neglected and you know, emotionally not treated very well,
being told you know, basically by David Lynch upfront, like
my life is my work and if you're not okay

(01:02:32):
with that, then this marriage isn't going to work out.
He's been married like five times, so it seems like
statistically it doesn't work out. Whatever I don't that's not
a value judgment. I what I'm saying is the separation
of art life and work life. While it sounds good
in the book sense, what that meant very often for
David Lynch was that his art life involved becoming infatuated

(01:02:57):
with his female stars and having affairs with his female stars,
and so I think it is almost a Galaxy brand
take on cheating on your wife to say, well, that's
art life, so it doesn't count and home life, I'm
your husband. And this seems to be a repeating pattern

(01:03:17):
for him. It's not something that he's been especially taken
to task with, it seems like with most of his
ex wives. Even though this seems like it was a
pattern for him, most of his ex wives were like,
that's just what he was like, and so I divorced him.
But I just do it just is it feels relevant

(01:03:38):
to what we're talking about, And I can't exactly. I mean,
maybe that's an overstep, but I don't really think so.
Because when someone when when a man who really goes
out of his way to include women in his work,
you know, does that I do think it's valid to ask, well,
how does this man treat the women in his own life?
And I mean that's a conversation that's going on very

(01:04:00):
much right now with Josh Weeden. Obviously very very different situations,
but you know, men who are known for centering women
in their work and then being praised for it. You
always got to ask a follow up question there. You
definitely have to examine. Yeah, there's lots to examine. And
David Lynch, I mean, has said multiple times that like,
women in psychic distress are of interest to him, like

(01:04:22):
he says, uh in it's hard to say exactly what
it is about Marilyn Monroe, but the woman in trouble
Thing is a part of it. It's not just a
woman in trouble Thing that pulls you in though, it's
more that some women are really mysterious, which I think
is like how he writes his movies, like he writes
his movies, like he doesn't completely understand women, because I
don't think that he does, you know, Like, and it's like,

(01:04:44):
well then just like co write a movie with a
woman I don't understand. And there's also a very vile
anecdote about Isabella Rosalini, who was in Blue Velvet. There's
a very famous scene in Blue Velvet in which the
Isabella Rossolini character is raped, and Isabella Rosselini and David

(01:05:07):
Lynch were also in a relationship for five years off
of that movie. So make of that way you will.
But in that scene where she's being assaulted in blue velvet.
Isabella Rossolini later told someone in an interview that David
Lynch was laughing throughout the entirety of shooting that scene,

(01:05:27):
and she said, quote, I said, David, what is there
to laugh at? Are we doing something ridiculous? I still
to this day don't know why David was laughing. So
there's just like, no, this is not the kind of
writing queer relationships between women, I think, is what I'm saying. Absolutely,
And then to bring it back to his tendency to

(01:05:50):
brutalize women in his movies, there are a number of
examples in this movie, aside from the two main characters
bringing brutally killed by the end of the movie, although
we don't I mean, at least we don't have to
see the brutal death of Camilla. It's just implied that
she was killed by the hitman. But we but I

(01:06:12):
do think it's like, I think that that's really like
we see the lesbian character die over and over and
see images of her dead body a number of times. Um.
There are other examples, such as the hitman who really
fumbles the first hit that we see him do. Uh,
there's a woman who he accidentally shoots in her butt,

(01:06:34):
I think, and then he drags her around while she's screaming,
and eventually he shoots her again and kills her. They
drag out that poor character's death, and then there was
a part where I was like, I'm glad that she's
the one that like almost gets out. It almost feels
like mean that she doesn't well, because like, so this

(01:06:56):
scene is very totally inconsistent with all the other scenes,
would say, because because it's comedic in a way that
none of the rest of the movie is um And
I think that part of where this movie is trying
to derive comedy from is the treatment of her body
because she is a fat woman, and the movie is,
as far as my read is saying, like, look at

(01:07:19):
this guy dragging around this fat woman as she screams
and you know, pleads for help and stuff like that.
I thought that too. And then we get the Justin
Thorow's characters, his wife, who that character, the Adam the
Director character shoves and roughs up after he finds out

(01:07:41):
that she's been cheating on him, and I think she's
also presented as being very shrewy and irrational, where the
second he walks in on her cheating on him, she
immediately blames him. She's like always yelling and lashing out
at other people. And again it's like hard because it's
like this is, for some reason a dream that Diane
and is having. We don't know why. So it's like

(01:08:03):
this isn't even a person that we're watching, but like
the person presented to us I thought was like really
leaning into some shrew trope. Absolutely, And then that character
they're like these like big bad guys who are after
Adam and they show up at her house after Adam
is left. This woman jumps on this guy and just

(01:08:25):
kind of telling him to leave, and then he pushes
her and then punches her in the face. So there
are a number of pretty tertiary characters who are women
who you're not even sure why they're in the movie
to begin with, because they're not really serving much of
a narrative purpose. And then there seems like they're really

(01:08:46):
only there to be like assaulted and brutalized. It's almost
like early like nine hundreds ideas of like quote unquote
mania and women and them being like uncontrollable, right, like
they're so they yeah, a woman at a heightened emotional
state is inherently irrational and like there's nothing that could

(01:09:09):
have prompted this that would have been reasonable, like a
lot of minor characters in that first large chunk of
the movie who were supposed to in this read the
popular read sorry is Diane's imagination, which I mean, we
could really get into that. I kind of rather not,

(01:09:32):
but but I do think it's interesting that if we're
looking at the Hollywood criticism perspective of like this is
the dream of an actor who either was very talented
or certainly believed that she was very talented, because that
whole scene of her audition, you know, reveals her to

(01:09:52):
be like a very intuitively talented actress. Even in the
in a room full of producers that are creepy and
predator worry and like an acting partner who is actively
hitting on her, she still manages to give this incredible performance. Again,
we're seeing this through her perspective, but I I like,
I thought it was interesting and more effective than other

(01:10:14):
sections of the movie how that stuff was portrayed, because
we're looking at this from Diane's perspective in retrospect, kind
of rationalizing what's happened to her, and it's clear that
like she was a talented actor who wasn't getting the
parts that she wanted and because of various Hollywood bullshit.
I think that a lot of that she blamed on Camilla.

(01:10:37):
And in another way that it's like, oh, this bisexual
woman is using her universal wiles to get what she wants,
like she can't have a real emotional connection because she's
just using sex to get what she wants, which is
another like you know, bullshit construction that revolves around bisexual characters.
I think it's more effective than other characters where especially

(01:10:59):
in that audition and seen that at first, I was like, wow,
this scene is so long, but but there is a
lot going on there where the man who is much
older than her in that scene is taking advantage of
her character. And it's clearly like you know, unwelcome touching,
kissing where it isn't written or warranted, and it's on

(01:11:22):
Betty slash Diane because she is new to this industry
to pretend that isn't happening and give the best performance
she can't anyways, which which is a thing that happens,
and it's like fucked up and not okay, but it
but it was interesting to see that kind of like
cogent ly seen on screen, where you know that Betty
is not comfortable and that she's trying to navigate around

(01:11:45):
all of these aggressions being put towards her and the
fact that through her character's mind, there are other women
in the room with her, and like women who are
attention is drawn to them because in that scene, Betty's
brought into the audition and immediately the first person you
meet is like, here's this amazing casting agent. She's great.

(01:12:07):
You know, she's going to work with you. And here's
her assistant who's a woman as well. And at least
for me, like in situations like that, when you see
two other women in the room, you're sort of like, Okay,
this is a safe situation for me because there are
other you know, there's quote unquote there's allies present. Right.
You don't want to be in a room full of
old guys at any time, never ever, right. But in

(01:12:31):
that scene, those women don't say anything when she's being
and it's also implied that this happened to who we
later learn as Camilla, and and that this is something
that you know, possibly is something that they related with
each other on is like being taken advantage of and
being mistreated by executives of all genders, where it's like

(01:12:55):
the straight guys who are going to try to grope
you in the room and no one's gonna say anything.
And then kind of like the more girl boss archetypes
that we see through that manager character who is like, yeah,
I know this isn't right, but we want money and success,
don't we, So we're not going to say anything. And
so that stuff I thought was like a little more effective. Yeah,

(01:13:17):
although there's a similar scene where the Justin Threw character.
This is towards the end when Rita is now Camilla
and Betty is now Diane and they're on set in
the movie that they're both in together, and Justin Threw
is like directing one of his actors to be like, no,

(01:13:37):
this is how this kiss is going to go. And
then he like gets in the car with Camilla and
he's like, yeah, do it like this. That is not
how directing a movie you should. You don't like get
into the scene with the actor and be like and
this is how you kiss the woman in the scene.
And then because that that kind of blew my mind though,
because it's like David Lynch, who at the time of

(01:14:01):
this movie had a reputation for courting and falling in
love with the stars of his own movies for a
decade and a half, put this commentary in where it's
like the two Spider Man pointing at each other. I'm like,
what's your fucking point. It seems like this is something
that you actively try to do and have maybe even

(01:14:22):
been successful with that you're presenting it as a criticism,
and also I feel like implying that Camilla is an
active participant in that and she's like enjoying, and that
there's no coercion implied. Yeah, I read that. Like, while
the audition scene definitely is very creepy, especially in the
way that the actor acting opposite Betty and the way

(01:14:46):
that the director is like, yeah, do what everyone whatever,
that worked a little more effectively is commentary, or at
least I felt the like creepiness and coercion of it all,
but self aware at least. But then to turn around
and have a very similar thing happen later in the
movie in a way that doesn't seem to provide any commentary,

(01:15:06):
and it is again reflective of David Lynch's own behavior.
I'm like, well, then that kind of nullifies the other things,
like well, don't bring a bisexual woman into the into
the picture, because then all of a sudden it's bad
and it's somehow she is complicit in this evil plan. Like, yeah,

(01:15:26):
that's a great point, and I don't know the fact
that it reflects on being I'm just like, so, what
is the point? What are you saying, David? So one
thing that's interesting about all that is, I guess like
when they released the DVD, it came with a card
of like ten unlocking clues to the film to figure

(01:15:47):
it out, and one of them, number eight is did
talent alone help Camilla? And I feel like that's like
revealing to all of this, like intentionally interesting or not?
Like is that almost like how do you interpret that? Yeah,
like accidentally revealing like oh, I don't actually just cast
my actress is based on their talent alone. Well, because

(01:16:11):
that's another scene that you see that I assumed was commentary,
and I think was to an extent towards the beginning
of the movie, where they're doing the casting for Adams
movie and they don't watch any videos. They just look
at pictures they don't like, and you know, that these
these actresses on the other end, because we see Betty
and Rita and again this is three Diane's perspective, but like,

(01:16:33):
you know, Betty is really preparing for this audition and
gives a great audition, but the only discussion that's had
is pictures. So it's I thought, like again, like that's
more effective for me. But then when you take into account,
like you're saying down like that seems to be what
David Lynch had done in the past, Like it's just

(01:16:55):
so it's I mean, like I guess, I don't mean
there's no like Hart Evans that he's you know, doing
that exact thing. But to see like, I don't know,
the self awareness of it all of Like, yeah, actresses
work obviously really hard to get the parts that they get,
and the reality that this movie is presenting is like
these women can work so hard and it doesn't even

(01:17:17):
matter because it's just a room full of guys doing
some sort of unrelated dick measuring contest and there's a
bunch of pictures and the choice has already kind of
been made before you're even in the room, and so
like it doesn't matter if you're talented, which is clearly
how Diane feels at the end of the movie, and
I think that those messages, like the fact that it's

(01:17:40):
like the reality presented at the end of the movie
is that she is both professional rivals with Camilla and
is in love with her, gets kind of messy with
the commentary the movie is making, because sometimes I feel
like it's trying to make some Hollywood commentary that ends
up being homophobic because they're attributing both of those things
at the same Like, I don't know messy messy well,

(01:18:03):
and I don't even think that, Like, I mean, I
don't know for sure, but I don't even feel like
that's what he was even talking about or whoever wrote
that question on their like clue card, I feel like
they were just talking about like the Cowboy said to
cast her. I don't even know that they like we're
intending for the answer to be all the things that
we just discussed, but I feel like that's the real answer, right.

(01:18:27):
But Yeah, with a movie like this, where there's so
much ambiguity and so much symbolism that's open to so
many different interpretations and all these metaphors that depending on
who you are and how your brain works and what
you notice, you're gonna interpret things differently. So with this

(01:18:47):
type of movie, it's so hard to know what, if anything,
was the intent as far as like social commentary. And
because David Lynch refuses to fill in the gaps, it's like, Okay, well,
I don't think that that's an artistic failure. Part it
just makes our job harder and right, Yeah, so either way,

(01:19:11):
I'm confused by everything in this movie. Um fun fact,
the movie was originally developed and shot as a pilot
for ABC, but ABC watched it and didn't end up
wanting to pick up the pilot. So David Lynch basically
just like wrote and shot and added a few more

(01:19:32):
scenes and turned it into the future film that we
now know and for me not love but I have
seen it, have seen multiple times and been dragged across
the internet. I feel like that's where all those like
random scenes come in or I just have to assume
they do right and maybe they were supposed to pay

(01:19:53):
off in some way later, Like yes, I think that
was like part of what Davidlynch was going for. He's like, yeah,
I'm setting up all these arts that are gonna like
come back later, similar to what happens in twin Peaks,
but they just never really do. I mean that gives
me the smallest bit of peace. I mean, ultimately, I
just like this makes me want to go back and
Rewatch because I hadn't watched it since it came out. Rewatch,

(01:20:16):
that documentary about David Lynch, because this book seems to
reveal that like, basically just like the cost of what
he you know, says is his art centric lifestyle took
on the women in his life, where it sounds like
many of his wives and children were like deceived and
mistreated in the service of his art. And then on

(01:20:37):
the other end of it, the women who were involved
in his art were also mistreated in the interest of
the art. And so it comes up as I don't know,
and I just like, I know that this conversation has
been had around his work, but he is such a
beloved person that it's like and you see him in
interviews and he's so sweet and blah blah blah. But

(01:20:59):
it's like, but this is you know, this is on
paper as having happened, and it it almost feels like
a little as someone trying to like participate in understanding
who this person is. It feels a little gas Lady
media wise, because it's like Naomi Watts is like, yeah,
he may be perform under duress, ha ha, and Elizabeth

(01:21:20):
Rosselini is like, yeah, he was laughing during the most
traumatic scene in the movie. Isn't that interesting because he's
such I feel like there is like that eccentric guy
personality that it lets you get away with a lot
of things that it's like that does actually doesn't sound
like an adorable or appealing quality at all. Like no,
so I mean again, speaking to his personal life, I

(01:21:40):
don't want to bring it to too too into this discussion,
but for someone who focuses on the psychological effects that
life takes on women, it seems like his life has
taken a lot of psychological effects on the women in
his life. And that's not and and so that's UM.
I'm on a journey. It's hard back to the movie

(01:22:01):
originally being UM. But it was originally shot as a
pilot and some reasons that, you know, the people at
ABC said that they didn't want it after all, they
thought there like UM. They didn't like it because of
the non linear storyline. They didn't like it because Anne

(01:22:22):
Miller's character smokes cigarettes, and I guess they didn't want
that on TV. Um dare. Okay, they didn't like it
because the ages of Naomi Watts and Laura Harring, who
they considered to be too old. Oh my god, yet
they're like thirty. And finally, ABC opposed to the close

(01:22:48):
frame shot of dog feces in one scene. Okay, so
that's just that. Now that's prudish put poop on screen.
I don't even remember that POI race in movies. More poop, poop.
Poop is a part of life. There needs to be
more movies where someone's like, I'm so sorry I have

(01:23:10):
to and they leave the scene like the next time.
If you're a writer and you are like, I've had
this problem many times where it's like, oh my gosh,
I need someone to leave this scene, but I can't
figure out how to get them out of here. There's
your answer, and people will see themselves in that character
in that moment to be like, oh my god, guys,
I have to poop so bad, I have to leave

(01:23:31):
and then boom. It does happen in Bridesmaids. Oh that
is true, So it happens. It's happened once in cinematic history,
and happened recently on the show where the She's Got
to have an episode where I was like, I have
to poop, we have to end this episode. Caitlyn was
literally like slouched in her chair and then finally revealed

(01:23:52):
that it was because she had to poop. Man Our
Lives are a movie, there a podcast? Right, does anyone
have anything else they'd like to discuss? I'm good, I
don't think so. Same all right, Well, well, in that case,
this movie very much passes the Backtel test. That's not

(01:24:15):
a problem that this movie has even without your theory
of like, well, they're all projections of the same woman's
mind and they're all talking to each other. Therefore, even
if even without that, women are talking for a good
portion of the movie. And it's not even like I
feel like sometimes there's a hack of like, well, women
are talking. They're still talking about romantic relationships, but it's

(01:24:38):
with other women. But but there's so much disgusted in
this movie between women where sometimes it is about a relationship,
sometimes it is about who am I, Sometimes it's about
you know, it happens between so many characters. We haven't
even really talked that much about Louise, the psychic character
who comes in very distressed. We don't talk about the

(01:24:59):
conversation between Betty and her aunt. There is a conversation
between Betty and this metaphorical character that we didn't have
time to get to that I don't want to talk about,
named Irene. At the beginning of the movie. There's a
ton of conversations between Betty and Rita, and also Diane
and Camilla. Betty and Coco have conversations. Is another character

(01:25:21):
that I didn't have time to bring up. Here's in
both timelines and passes. The metel tests in both timelines
like women are talking plenty. Yeah, that's not the issue,
and that's why we say, you know, it's a it's
a starting point for discussion exactly. Yeah. But an amazing
metric by which flows analyzed movies is of course our
nipple scale, where we rate the movie on a scale

(01:25:45):
of zero to five nipples based on examining it through
an intersectional feminist lens, just between the toxic and harmful
tropes that are perpetuated as far as the queer characters
go violence against women that seems to be played for
laughs several times in the movie. The weird way in

(01:26:07):
which mental health is represented, where the movie is suggesting
if you get dumped you're going to have a complete
breakdown that will lead you to murder. Yeah, usually it
will just lead you to sleeping a lot. Yes, Based
on that, I will give the movie. Um, what do

(01:26:34):
you even give a movie that makes so little narrative sense? Again,
he got you again, he got you again. I'm going
to give it like one. I guess. Yeah, I was
leaning towards like one nipple, just for like, I guess,
good job centering women in your movie when you're a

(01:26:55):
male autour, but also you have the responsibility to do
it well, and as far as I'm concerned, he didn't.
So one nipple And I will wait, what's the part
that I liked? I'll give it to the untouched plate

(01:27:16):
of breakfast food that the guy who has a nightmare
about the person with a scary face leaves at what
was it called Twinkies Diner or Winkies Diner on Sunset Boulevard,
which I don't know if that's a real thing or not,
but maybe it was at the time. It could have been.
Did they go to other real l A food places right,

(01:27:38):
like Pinks hot dogs and stuff. Um, don't even get
me started. I don't even get my stars hot dogs,
I know, but at what cost? Fuck pinks? Anyways, Sorry,
finished your thoughts? Oh so feminist icon plate of breakfast food.
That's who gets my one nipple? Amazing? Um, I'm between

(01:27:59):
a one and at one point five, whoever, whichever of
you Brave Missionaries updates are Wikipedia page. I guess I'll
leave that to you. I'm between a one and one
point five. I can't really decide. Maybe I'll just say
at one point to five. Again, it is like a
very complicated thing where I do feel like there is

(01:28:19):
a necessary given. I mean, you've just even given the
conversation we've had today, I do think that there is
a necessary there's a need to reassess behavior versus intent
in David Lynch's work, because it feels like we've had
and again, it's like every conversation is very individual. But
there's been a lot of Melo tourists who have been
seen to be very pro woman simply for including women

(01:28:42):
with motivations and their work, and then you look at
their personal behavior and think, oh wait a second, maybe
this was actually not the feminist king that I ascribed
to him. I'm not saying that that's exactly what's going
on here because I just don't know enough information, but
just based on this discussion, it seems like this should
be of something that is worth discussing more right, Yeah,

(01:29:04):
I think that this movie is hard because I do
like dedicating an entire movie to a woman processing the
events of her own life and processing her own mistakes,
which on its surface is technically what this movie is,
and taking into account that. You know, there's a lot
of commentary about show business that I thought was pretty valid,

(01:29:28):
and I think that it's supposed to be implied in
the movie that the way that her industry treated her
influenced her own behavior and drove her towards horrific behavior.
Like there are things this movie I think. I think
that this movie has it's heart in the right place
with and then there's things that it very clearly doesn't like.

(01:29:50):
The most generous interpretation is that David Lynch's way out
of his depth and shouldn't be writing about this kind
of stuff without consulting with other people or including other
people as co writers. And I mean that's an otur problem.
We come up against all the time. It's like, if
if you have the ego that it just has to
be you, then write something that you know you're what

(01:30:11):
you're talking about it. Or if you want to expand
outside of yourself, which I think you know, all writers should.
I'm not faulting him for wanting to have women as
his protagonist, but it's like, well, then talk to women,
like that's just how that works. Otherwise you're going to
come up with some weird ship and it's going to
influence people, and then twenty years are going to pass

(01:30:32):
and then we're gonna have to record a podcast about it. Like,
no one wants to be doing this, so just do
it right. Um. Yeah, a lot of bisexual tropes that
we've talked about a lot recently that I think just
hold true and are still just a shitty here. A
lot of tropes about lesbians that are very much the same.
And it's a very white movie. I mean, it's like

(01:30:55):
an like the whole world, the whole expanded universe of
David Lynch is very white, and not in a way
that implies any commentary. It just implies that this is
these are the stories he's interested in telling. So there
it's just it's one, two five. I'm gonna I wanted
to give it to the hot Dog, but I can't

(01:31:17):
because it's from Pinks and and listeners of the Bechtel cast.
Oh just wait till my hot Dog book is on
pre sale. You're not going to hear the end of it.
It's not yet. It comes out next year. But there's
a whole section on Pinks because guess what, they love
the Los Angeles Police Department. They love it so much.
They love cops and they hate street vendors even though

(01:31:38):
they were once a street vendor themselves. Does it make sense, No,
it doesn't. The story of hot Dogs is a story
of class oppression and colonialism and animal abuse. So I
can't give it to the hot Dog. So I'm gonna
give them all to Louise because she was right. Who
is Louise again? She's the psychic who comes to the door.

(01:31:59):
I mean, I don't even know the purpose of that
character was. Even she shows up at the door, she's like,
something's not right, and it's like, well, yeah, obviously, but
that never comes back. So um, I'm gonna give it
to her. Good for her. She was right and some
something wasn't right in that house. She's correct, Don What
about you? Um? Well, I have to say that this

(01:32:21):
conversation has been very enlightening for me, and if you
would have asked me this question at the beginning, I
would have had a different answer than i'll have now. However,
my number of nipples, which is still higher than yours,
but um, I have learned through this conversation more about

(01:32:43):
the female and dressed trope and the perception on queer
women specifically, and that has really tainted, um my number
of nipples. So I do still appreciate the amount of
female characters and the amount that they talk to each other,

(01:33:04):
and that the film is shown through a female perspective,
so not just that there's female characters that men interact with.
So I not confidently would say three nipples, Hell yeah,
who are you going to give them to? So? I
live in Salt Lake City, Utah, and I've been a
really big fan of big hats since I've lived here.

(01:33:28):
So I just have to give it to the cowboy character.
He's weird and mysterious and like my kind of guy,
and he's wearing a big hat. He's a metaphor baby
for what I don't know. I don't care. I kind
of want to give my nipples to the to the
metaphorical swamp lady, I kind of because I'm pretty. I

(01:33:50):
was like, she's a metaphor for like whatever the side
of you you don't want to confront failure, past mistakes.
She's just all all this ship and then she's behind
a diner like like, I know that lady in a way.
You know, for the part of you you don't want
to confront that other men have nightmares about for some

(01:34:12):
which you know probably is true. Yeah. Fair, Well, there
you have it, everybody. M Holland, Drive, Pepe and Poo
poo don. Thank you so much for joining us and
for being here. Thank you. What would you like to
plug and where can people follow you on social media?

(01:34:32):
Tell us about your podcast. Yeah, I have a podcast
interviewing filmmakers. I'm especially interested in talking with female filmmakers
that are making films that really are inspiring broader conversations
and topics. Um So I'll be doing some interviews for
Sundance and slam Dance coming up. So you can check

(01:34:54):
out Poe Real podcast on all whatever podcast platform you're
listening to you right now, and then I'm on Instagram
at for real pod and then I'll also be doing
some writing with Sundayance filmmakers for Cinema Fem magazine. You
can find that online as well, and that's full real

(01:35:14):
f A U x R e E L correct because
there could be multiple spellings. Yeah, I just want the
people to be able to find you, you know, thank you.
The people have to know that. People must know. And
you can follow us at bectel Cast on Twitter and Instagram.

(01:35:35):
You can subscribe to our Matreon at patreon dot com
slash pecktel Cast, where you get too bonus episodes every
month plus access to the nearly one hundred or maybe
even over one episodes on the Matreon exclusively and that

(01:35:56):
is five dollars a month. And then if you want
some merger, she can always go over to t public
dot com slash the battel cost for all of your
merchandizing needs. And with that, um, let's not wake up gang,
because if we do, the elderly couple is going to
attack us and we will have to die so murder

(01:36:17):
each other. So let's just let's just stay asleep. Dreaming
is better, you know, sounds great? Night night night, night,
tonight

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