I fell asleep watching Ballerina (granted it was 1 in the morning). There some interesting things in the deleted scenes, but some I could have done without but ones I liked.....watch out spoiler ahead....

The scene with Lost Girl and The Phantom was very interesting just because and then there is the stuff with the watch in that scene. And the scene with the 4 prostitutes on Hollwood Blvd. was cool too. Gonna watch the rest of 'em before I go to work to day.

"Every day holds a new beginning and every hour holds the promise of an Invitation to Love." 

I am likely to miss the main event

If I stop to cry or complain again.

So I'll just keep a deliberate pace,

Let the damn breeze dry my face.

Gee. I like "More Things That Happened" better than the feature.

One weird thing- I also had this problem with the Best of DL.com- my multi region machine won't play them (no prob viewing anything else.) On the DL.com disc I can get to the menu but can't navigate it. On the IE discs, it shows the Absurda logo then a black screen I can't bypass. What's different about the format of these 3 discs? Having to watch them on my comp.

p.s. Quinoa was great.  I so would love to have a quiet meal with David some evening at his house and listen to him tell stories.  I'd pour wine- or coffee- empty the ashtrays and wash his cookware. (sigh...)

"Every day holds a new beginning and every hour holds the promise of an Invitation to Love." 

Just watched this again last night. As I suspected, the second viewing didn't really give me that much in the way of new ideas of what it's about... I stick by my old theory. I did, however, make more connections, and this time I wasn't confused about what scenes the Phantom and Lost Girl showed up in... However, the second viewing didn't take away much. Some of the big surprises were no longer as effective, of course, and nothing quite matches the experience of that movie in theaters, but I still enjoyed it very, very, much. It's such an amazing film... One of my very favorites. Watching it again I realize what a great effect Lynch's works have had on me... how his films have opened up new paths of thought, and shaped the way I think and who I am. If that's not proof that his films are art, I don't know what is. Also, my fourteen year old brother (who dislikes long movies, and tends to get bored, or fall asleep during them) loved this one, though he thought it could've used some trimming. I agree in theory, but I'm still very sad when it comes to an end. I'm definitely gonna be watching this one many times over. Plan on checking out the special features today...

PS: Just watched the deleted scenes... there were a couple I loved, but for the most part they were merely interesting... I won't be watching most of them again. The Nastassja Kinski monologue on the other hand was incredible; one of the best scenes she's ever filmed, and it was great to see her do something besides sit on a couch. Tied in really well with the rest of the film too, especially in it's reference to the opening, and makes it clear that most if not all the female characters in the film are reflections of the Lost Girl. The other one I loved was the one where Nikki's lying on the floor talking to Devon... that scene is both heartbreaking and intriguing, and Laura Dern is amazing in yet another way. I wish Lynch had followed up on that in some way. The scene with the prostitutes on the street would've been fantastic but it was way too long... we'd gotten the point effectively a third through the scene and it just dragged on interminably. A very sad and hard to watch scene however, though it didn't feel like a part of the movie. Likewise the remainder of the monologue was interesting but didn't mesh with the movie, which explains why it was cut. Basically I liked the reel but thought that it would have made the movie way too slow if these scenes had been included in the orginal cut... Ballerina was awful though, I couldn't sit through the whole thing.

That god damn trailer's more popular than Uncle's Day in a whorehouse!

I'm not sure if this has been expanded upon, but I wanted to throw in my two cents.  Forgive me for not reading the entire thread; I just saw IE for the first time two nights ago (and for the second time last night!) and so I've kept away from here so as not to spoil it for myself.

I definitely see the TP connections.  There's a pink room in which a meeting takes place, lots and lots of red curtains, a piece of jewelry (in this case a watch, in TP a ring) which the gifted/damned person must acquire, the appearance of alter egos or dopplegangers, and just lots of stylistic similarities. 

I also want to agree with those who think this is Lynch's best work.  Honestly, I don't think he's much of a storyteller; I think his mind is too prone to tangents to pull off a lucid plotline.  (This isn't a bad thing, it's just the type of artist he is.)  I'm happy that he chose to go more with mood than with story on this one.  Too often with Lynch's films, I find myself thinking, "Okay, enough attempting to tie up loose ends, let's get surreal here!"  I was engrossed and terrified for almost the entire duration of IE.  (I did start getting a little bored about three-quarters in, with the BBQ scene and all.)

Hello. I just watched IE for the first time last night. I just wish I had seen it in a theater, but the film never came to Brazil, so I had to watch it on my 29-inch TV, which was something both tender and sad. Still, it was one of the best film experiences I´ve ever had.

I keep thinking of Abel Ferrara´s "Mary" in which Juliette Binoche plays Maria Magdalena and actually becomes her. There are many parallels between her character and Laura Dern´s, the most important being Nikki as a sacrificial Angel or Christ-like figure to Lost Girl´s plight who is seen praying and such. Laura Dern´s monologue about the Robins in Blue Velvet takes place in front of a church. The homeless woman who shows the light to Dern before she dies in the movie, she has cardboard wings. It reminded me of Lylia 4-Ever. This doesn´t have anything to do with religion though. Lynch uses religious allegory much like he uses the textures of dead mice to paint. It´s not a symbol he puts there to represent another thing. It´s about the texture, not the mice. It´s about the strive (of religion), not its actualization. Nikki is like Laura Palmer, for Laura dies for us, the audience (drawing from Martha Nochimson) much like Nikki dies for the Lost Girl, who stands for the audience inside the film. It´s all about the power of art and the infinite exchange and mirroing (sp?) between audience and the work of art itself, projection of dreams, identity, etc. The Good Witch comes to offer Sailor comfort. There´s Laura´s angel in the picture, who reapears later. Invitation to Love was supposed to send "hidden messages" and the characters in the soap opera would communicate with the Twin Peaks people, but that was abandoned. The moments when a performance is put together for an aundience in a Lynch film, those are the most important ones (Lady in the Radiador/D. Vallens/Club Silencio/), both for the audience and for the performing man or woman. So, by choosing to speak only about the connection between Dern and the Lost Girl, not the internal connections of each separately, I say Nikki is to the Polish Girl what film is to us (no matter if Lynch aimed it at 17-year-old midwestern girls, for that´s only HIS motivation).

Two other points: the "happy ending" for the Lost Girl is like the happy ending of Blue Velvet, "The Robins have come back". Is it ironic, is it not ironic? That question is hard with Lynch. He would say it´s not ironic I guess. But the Robin IS mechanical and the happy family meeting is goofy and suspect as hell. The Lost Girl´s boy comes from nowhere, and he´s a little creepy, unlike Lula´s and Sailor´s son. Anyway, Lynch changed the ending of WAH and gave it a happy one. But he knows there are strings attached. Same goes for the happy ending of the Lost Girl. I say this because although there are people who were quite moved by the ending, thanks to the beatiful song in great part, I didn´t take it at face value. I thought of the happy ending of Blue Velvet, with Sandy and Jeffrey together, while Dorothy, the performing girl, is reunited with her son, who is probably a mess of a little kid himself, and who maybe saw the evil being born, behind that door, at Ben´s "This is it!" house. Here, the performing girl, Nikki, ends up like Dorothy, but without the kid.
And does she enter the Rabbits apartment in the end, after she kisses the Lost Girl? Are the Rabbits all about the stiffness and constant torture that cultural creations have to endure, and make the audience stand, BEFORE they are set free? After Nikki takes their stage and assumes their "program", she is ready to roll, Mr. DeMille, and this is the first day of the rest of culture´s life. She´s like Norma Desmond, because she´s been through the hardships of eXistenZ – in Cronenberg, Allegra hás religious ressonances tôo. (Like any other good actress, she accepts her “burden” and here she´s like the ultimate methaphisical method actress). Does she die? Michel Chion says what´s most frightening about Lynch´s films is that maybe death is impossible to achieve (Merrick´s mother saying: "Nothing ever dies" after he sees the candy-colored theater play) It´s the exact opposite of what Cronenberg strives for, but which his carachters never achieve. Nikki dies and she doesn´t die. It´s a movie, so her death can never be literal anyway.

There´s a theory somewhere that reads Mulholland Drive as a film about abortion, much like FWWM was about incest. "A hole in her intestine through her vagina wall." Reminds me of the act of vomiting in Six Men Getting Sick. The act of vomiting, and giving birth, is analogous to the narrative process. In WAH, Lula aborts. Maybe that hole and the abortion was caused by the spellbound Doris Side. One time she says she lost her kid, the other sees her (illegitimate) kid comes back. What´s missing in that sentence? Not the uncle, but the father. The same question applies to MD: who is the father of Diane´s/Betty´s baby? Does the baby have a father? Was it a "virginal" birth? Is he like the star child in 2001? The grandmother is also given "birth" but she is aborted as well. And so is Henry´s baby. Still, I don´t know who that kid is in the end, and why he freaked me out so much. Inland Empire is the anti-Minority Report. There are families that come together in the end, and there are people who experience things through other people. But the families are "illegitimate", because in Minority Report the kid is killed but the familiy "makes another one to replace it”. It´s not that simple though,, and Inland Empire shows that. The kid that comes back, he´s a wicked little fella,"FELLA VICTIM", according to Pierre Tremond. And the Polish girl, in order to be saved, watched Nikki suffering like a Christ figure, in order to set her free. Like in Minority Report, the family is reunited, like humanity has been saved by the death of the Christ, but at what cost - for the human figure of “Christ”, who is still tempted himself? "In a town like Inland Empire, no one is innocent". From the comfort of Lost Girl´s hotel room number 47 (which, by the way, offeres the same comfort as MD´s Park Hotel), she watches another person´s suffering and that is what saves her. But maybe Nikki is a projection of Lost Girl, or the other way around. I´m sure she has a good reason to suffer though. I think Inland Empire is Lynch´s genious translation of how movies are made by the audience, as well as by the artist. Still, sometimes the audience doesn´t realise that it takes a soul to make a movie. Someone has to brake the curse, and I think that for Lynch, the curse is History. Always someone is exploited and always people forget and just go on with their very own lives.

Nikki killing the phantom is much like Laura allowing herself to be killed and Diane loosing her baby. Or maybe Nikki is to Lost Girl what Cooper is to Laura, Cooper possesed by Bob and Nikki by the Phantom. The baby returns, but not to Nikki. Killing the curse is the only way to stop History from being anything other than "circular" and to live in a place of eternity, where nothing ever dies, i.e. in the movie screen, in the aura of the cinema´s past, which is preserved for eternity. "It is accomplished". Brian O´Blivion, of Cronenberg´s Videodrome, would be proud. Only Cronenberg goes for the "New Flesh", an existence without the body, which in fact doesn´t exist. That´s why Max Renn died and the credits rolled (although the initial plan was to show the realm of the New Flesh but that was abandoned). Nikki is shown in the Palace, a place of infinite possibilities, created for and by women. But without children. The Sinnermen of the world can only watch in awe. Maybe they´re the ones who are taking care of the children at home, while women go to work saving the world from the curse.

The Doors
Riders on the Storm (sounds appropriate)

Riders on the storm
Riders on the storm
Into this house we're born
Into this world we're thrown
Like a dog without a bone
An actor out alone
Riders on the storm

There's a killer on the road
His brain is squirmin' like a toad
Take a long holiday
Let your children play
If ya give this man a ride
Sweet memory will die
Killer on the road, yeah

Girl ya gotta love your man
Girl ya gotta love your man
Take him by the hand
Make him understand
The world on you depends
Our life will never end
Gotta love your man, yeah

Wow!

Riders on the storm
Riders on the storm
Into this house we're born
Into this world we're thrown
Like a dog without a bone
An actor out alone
Riders on the storm

Riders on the storm
Riders on the storm
Riders on the storm
Riders on the storm
Riders on the storm

His brain is squirmin' like a toad

The pillow where Nikki/Sue lays her head to die, inside the movie, has got toads on it and it is very similar to the Doris Side´s son´s pajamas motifes. John Merrick prepares his pillows to sleep and die, thinking of his lost mother. Sue lays her head to die, thinking of her lost son. Same goes for the robe that Auth Ruth gives to Betty, and which Betty places on Rita so she can feel protected and let her dreams flow. The fabirc of the robe is similar to the on of the Park Hotel´s couch where Adam seeks refuge.

Does this have anything to do with Kubrick´s The Killing?
In The Shinning, the kid´s got a little boy inside his stomach. Notice that Jack Torrence´s descent into madness makes his speech and manners seem all the more bland and denotate rough edges. He becomes a cheap mean drunk, who would probably be interested in the "2 dollar whores", who "drop dead", mentioned in Inland Empire. Claire Niveau, of Cronenberg´s Dead Ringers, is also an actress, and she says she´s not going to be dressed like a 10 dollar hooker. Beverly sees her as a maternal figure, much like Billy Side sees Sue. Of course, Jack Torrence is just looking for a piece of ass. I think the connections with The Shinning go beyond that.

Naked Lunch: america is an Old land. Cursed? "Before the indians." No one is innocent.

 Whereas the exploitation in The Shining started with the indians and finnaly established american culture itself, in Inland Empire it´s women and prostitution, of all kinds, which ends up in cultural production as a whole. The bugs under the grass from Blue Velvet, in Inland Empire that scene is when Sue/Nikki vomits on the sidewalk.

There´s mention of a horse when someone calls the man with glasses, saying it´s in the lake. Also, (Sue´s?) husband is good with animals, including horses. Monkeys too? Or are Monkeys only tamed by women? Is Judy from FWWM the monkey´s trainer? Is the monkey, a primate unable to speak, in constant need of a female "controller", otherwise he´s up to no good. The monkey, like the prize fighting cangaroo, with crap all over the place. It´s got to be toilet trained, which I´m sure the Japanese Girl´s monkey is, and that´s what our mothers teach us.
I think that the Lost Polish Girl is to her husband what Annie is to Cooper. Her husband provides her with a gun, he is the one who rescues her and brings the kid back. He is like Sailor, uneasy about her pregnancy at first, maybe like Lynch and his parenthood. All he can offer is a helping hand to her wife, unlike Nikki, who gets rejected. "It doesn´t matter, it´s something else." So Nikki gets pregnant with Billy Side, or Devon, but she looses the baby. Nikki confronting Doris Side is like Dorothy confronting Sandy, naked, in Blue Velvet. He put this disease in me. The husband goes to the circus to tame the animals, much like Cooper received his ring back, in order to keep masculine will in check, the appetite and the satisfaftion in balance. The Lost Girl/Crying Girl sees a variation of her husband die on screen (the polish husband with a mustach, killed by the phantom), and she looses hope, because she thinks he will save her. The phantom killing her husband is like Bob possessing Cooper. The phantom will now go after her, like CooBob would go after poor Annie.

"I´m afraid" "I´m afraid", says the mocking doppleganger in the streets.
"How´s Annie?" "How´s Annie", says the mocking doppleganger, after emptying the toothpaste (castration/sterile and impotent solipsism). So does Nikki/Sue "empties" her "toothpaste /gun" only here she´s not impotent, she kills the impotent, like Jeffrey did in Blue Velvet. The phantom mocks her by showing her static horrific face, the smiling petrified face, with lipstick (like Marrieta), and with a big fucking smile, and perfectly brushed teeth. There are two ways to use the toothpaste: brush your teeth and look pretty, or getting a gun and firing a bullet. Laura Palmer needs a good toothbrush when she visits Harold, and so does Windom Earle. Killing the impotence is fertility. The seed in FWWM: the corn: fertility, but which can bring pain and sufferying (pregnancy is a bitch). When the dwarf eats the corn: the seeds is in balance, and Laura is happy with her angel. Andy is the only one who´s fertile, and Lucy chooses him as the father, NO MATTER WHO THE REAL FATHER IS. The couple in the end of Inland Empire/in the end of Twin Peaks: Lucy and Andy. Lucy likes to watch soaps, just like the Crying girl does. In Inland Empire: the girl is impotent, and then her husband is. Frank Booth is impotent. Baby wants to fuck - mamma loves you - you put this disease in me. The husband is: the man in the green coat. When Sue grabs the gun, there´s a green fabric in the drawer. Sue gets pregnant, but it´s just a "belly for rent" type of pregnancy, much like Mike and Leland are vessels for other things.
Remember FWWM´s marriage proposal and what consequence it had to Laura in the end, when she takes the ring, even without Cooper´s (misguided) advice.
The watch here is like the ring.
Nikki is not a "FREE AGENT" in the beggining, but she becomes one, big time, in the end.
EYES WIDE SHUT: the woman proves she´s a free agent, but chooser marriage in the end.
Forever?
Don´t say that word. It frightens me.
The fear of death (Cronenberg, et al) Bill Harford knows that, he´s a doctor, life carries on, until it doesn´t.
The Fear of the impossibility of Death (Michel Chion/Elephant Man) Nothing ever dies.
The human being: finite. The Sublime: a recognition of man´s size in the universe. Kubrick´s 2001.
There´s a division (doippleganger): of the boy, between good and evil (black and white version of reliaty, through a kid´s eyes), and of the girl: the free agent girl and the married girl. Laura is a free agent, but there´s a married proposal she considers.
In Cronenberg´s Naked Lunch: Joan Lee is an interzone agent, a spy.
Connections between CRASH and EYES WIDE SHUT: Cronenberg himself accepts those connections.
"When a promise is made here, there´s no turning back"
What do women want?

Therefore,
The husband (when you wake up, there will be someone familiar): he helps provide the gun. In Lost Highway, the mystery man provides the gun to Fred.
The one legged girl:: she killed 3 in the first grade. Whose sister is she? I think she´s the phantom´s sister. The girl is Mike, the phantom is Bob?

The Polish Girl: she´s the one who´s importent, and her husband seeks prostitutes (?) Does he want to procriate? Why does the phantom kills the husband, and the girl - a la Laura Palmer.

Who is the girl in the record player? Is she the Crying Girl?

Remember: the Crying Girl is watching a "tape" being played for her on tv, and it first shows Grace Zabriskie walking towards Nikki´s house. So the whole Nikki part of the story is actually a "tape", it´s all an illusion, it is a tape recording, a la Mulholand Drive, being played for her, and maybe by her. The girl is crying when she realises that. We cry when we realise in the end that Inland Empire is also "just a movie", but that´s good enough to save the Cinema, from it´s curse, and the world. The cinema, after Lynch made FWWM, was never the same. Now, women (or feminine will) are identified with the life-giving forces that pull the strings. Man has to chop the wood, and actually MAKE the work out of the raw material, which is provided by women.
Heaven to Lynch (PAMONA´S PALACE) is not ONLY composed of women, but the men are there for their viewing and touching pleasure. Nikki/Sue offers The Crying Girl what The Lady in the Radiator offered Henry.
Where is Lynch on this? He is the ultimate Free Agent, but that´s only because the preternal "GIRL", whispered the secret in his ear.
Dorothy Vallens, who once was successfull, who once was glamorous but who´s now a sleazy cabaret singer, but with class.
Laura Dern, who tries to apply for a job at the cabaret, better than being a prostitute.
The phantom is Bob, masculine desire unbounded, looking for an entrance to the real world. 

This is it for now.

Inland Empire is the anti-Minority Report. There are families that come together in the end, and there are people who experience things through other people. But the families are "illegitimate", because in Minority Report the kid is killed but the familiy "makes another one to replace it”. It´s not that simple though,, and Inland Empire shows that. The kid that comes back, he´s a wicked little fella,"FELLA VICTIM", according to Pierre Tremond. And the Polish girl, in order to be saved, watched Nikki suffering like a Christ figure, in order to set her free. Like in Minority Report, the family is reunited, like humanity has been saved by the death of the Christ, but at what cost - for the human figure of “Christ”, who is still tempted himself?

The "Temptation" of the Nikki/Actress/Christ like figure is the temptation of being real, when in fact she´s only virtual, a figure of imagination, much like HAL in 2001 is the figure of men´s imagination. Only Nikki is tempted to be free, and real, but she remains trapped. She kisses the crying girl,z and then disapears, like Betty disapears after Rita finds the blue box. But men would not be able to go out on the space odissey without HAL, like the lost girl wouldn´t be saved without the performance Nikki put out for her.
In Alien, the ship is called "mother".

And in Spielberg´s AI, which was originally´s Kubrick, the boy wants to be real too. But the REAL, legitimate son of the couple comes back from the dead (like Nikki after after her death inside the film, and Rita after the car accident, a terrible event, brutal fucking murder. HAL is a murder. Spielberg is a "murder". Does Biology defines what´s legitimate, in terms of the death of our bodies being the death of ourselves? Does Biology defines parenthood? Does Biology, flesh and blood, defines life, or at least, intelligence? Kubrick says no, the computer is alive, the child toy is alive and his feelings are real. The sperm is a "disease" put on women, and mind you, the theme of disease, in Cronenberg, especially in eXistenZ, is prominent, and it´s introduced in the "game-plot", by the "machine" - only here it´s a bio-machine, a meta-flesh game pod, much like the theme of the curse is introduced in Inland Empire so that, once it pops into the concious mind, it can be defeated. You has to know there´s a dark side in order to "tame" it. For Kubrick, man is the disease, after Freud. The "sicko cell" will always appear, and the monkey will take it´s toll. Reminds me of the Rolling Stones in "Monkey Man". Animal Mother, in Full Metal Jacket: "Thank God for the sicko cell". Because for him, thanks to the sicko cell, he can kill at ease. Without a sicko cell, the machine is well oiled. The Man in the Planet is responsible for that machine, but when the sicko cell is intruduced it can´t be stopped. ("adultery", for men, means free agency?). "Me love you long time. Me so horny". The Valley Girls. Ever seem Valley Girl, Nicholas Cage´s first film? The computer doesn´t have a sicko cell, or so it thinks, but it is nonetheless technology, it´s man made (like the man made chicken in Eraserhead), and it´s prone to The Killing. It´s not what technology is doing to us (anti-matrix), it´s actually us doing things to us. Only "god", the monolith, is "perfect", pure intelligence, the unified filed, an ocean of conciousness, the universe, nature itself. The only thing a computer can do, is to sing a love song he heard on the radio, the oldest radio program there is, the one that´s played from a vitrolic record, over and over, rotating, like the earth around the sun, the horse tracks in The Killing, the boy´s hat in Blue Velvet, the fan.

"By extension, the argument can be made that the personalized big Other is precisely what is required for the beginning to begin: for the historical world to arrest its incessant and traumatic recycling of the same moment in time; for ‘us’ to move beyond “this mysterious/monstrous in-between which is no longer the Real of prehuman nature . . . and not yet the horizon of Clearing and what comes forth within it”(Zizek); for us to vacate what Michael Chion has labeled a “forever scene” which is “an evening/[eternity] spent by a group, steeped in endless music and during which a commonplace or stupid remark [humanity] seen through the prism of alcohol, takes on a fascinating . . . value”(Chion); for something actually to occur. Through such a process we can accurately locate where a Lynchean creation begins or move past the moment within which we have been stuck for all of eternity. Of course, through such a process we can never actually locate the opening moments of a Lynchean creation insofar as we will be caught in the unbearable uncomprehensible consequences of freedom, of completeness, of the Now, the world’s Fire Walk having finally reached an egalitarian orgasm. The personalized big Other leads us toward the theoretical foundations of the universe by directly linking us with a nothing that we cannot understand due to its synchronous envelopment of everything. We must personalize the authorial big Other’s symptoms in order to personalize everything else in order to expose its inherent trauma and destroy our links with time and Bob.

The Lynchean symbol depicting these possibilities is found in Blue Velvet. Within Blue Velvet’s narrative Jeffrey Beaumont briefly holds Dorothy’s son’s hat in his hands. His hat includes a cone shape overtop of which hovers a twirling rectangle. In order to personalize the big Other ideally we must reach that idiosyncratic egalitarian traumatic moment where the particles of the Real reconstruct themselves and the rectangle’s spinning is arrested. Basically, we must slowly melt down the rectangle into the cone in order to meld the two and congeal them within emptiness. "


The Smiths: "I was born before I even began"
The Tin Drum (Gunter Grass): "I´ll start before I was born"

I do love you, but there´s one thing we have to do, as soon as possible:
LET´S FUCK! I´LL FUCK ANYTHING THAT MOVES!


Cut to the room above the convenience store.

Six people in a large, barren, filthy room. Cheap plastic storm windows

flap in the cold wind. In the foreground the Man from Another Place (Mike)

and BOB sit at a formica table. Behind them on plastic torn

chairs huddle Mrs. Tremond and her grandson. Two big woodsmen with

full beards sit quietly.

FIRST WOODSMAN (subtitled): We have descended from pure air.

MAN FROM ANOTHER PLACE (subtitled): Going up and down. Intercourse

between the two worlds.

BOB (subtitled): Light of new discoveries.

MRS. TREMOND (subtitled): Why not be composed of materials and

combinations of atoms?

MRS. TREMOND'S GRANDSON (subtitled): This is no accident.

MAN FROM ANOTHER PLACE (subtitled): This is a formica table.

Green is its color.

He touches the table.

FIRST WOODSMAN (subtitled): Our world.

MAN FROM ANOTHER PLACE (subtitled): With chrome. And everything

will proceed cyclically.

SECOND WOODSMAN (subtitled): Boneless.

MIKE [sic] (subtitled): Yes, find the middle place.

Bob begins to scream with anger.

BOB (subtitled): I HAVE THE FURY OF MY OWN MOMENTUM.

TREMOND'S GRANDSON [sic] (subtitled): Fell a victim.

The Man From Another Place raises his hand.

MAN FROM ANOTHER PLACE (subtitled): Fire Walk With Me.

Bob claps his hand and a circle of fire appears in the room.

BOB (subtitled): Fire Walk With Me.

THROUGH THE CIRCLE

We see the RED ROOM.

Bob crawls into the Red Room and Mike [sic] starts to yell and leaps in

after him.

SECOND WOODSMAN (subtitled): Thus time moves on.

Regarding the "little fella", who fell as a victim: Alvin Straight´s grandson who died in the fire because of his negligence, The Crying Girl´s boy, Alvin´s friendly fire victim in the War. When Alvin´s "little fella" is dead, so does his impotence arise. After that, the only thing he can do is search for his blood brother, trying to make things right. And isn´t the giant and the dwarf one and the same? So is Alvin´s little fella and his grandson, fruit of his seed.

That god damn trailer's more popular than Uncle's Day in a whorehouse!

Well, I apologize for "whore-housing" this thread and everything. Some of it I had already posted elsewhere, and it came in handy for the "argument". Please do feel free to skip the whole thing, and maybe simply look at the words scrambled in front of you. Make you wonder at least, that would. This is only the second time I see the film, but I decided to post it still hoping it might ring coincidental bells, which could be effective.

It´s interesting the way Lynch uses metaphors of displacement and abjection in his films. The monkey crapping all over the place, the kangaroo crapping on the courtyard, Wilkins and his dog´s shit, before Sue goes to Billy´s house and meets Doris Side, the floor is full of shit, the barbecue scene with the guy asking for the toilet paper. There are acts of vomiting and crapping all over his films.

"Reversal, or turning a thing into its opposite, is one of the means of representation most favoured by the dream-work and one which is capable of employment in the most diverse directions.  It serves in the first place to give expression to the fulfilment of a wish in reference to some particular element of the dream-thoughts. ‘If only it had been the other way round!’  This is often the best way of expressing the ego’s reaction to a disagreeable fragment of memory."

Freud, Interpretation of Dreams

"Sexual activity, whether perverted or not; . . . defecation; urination; death and the cult of cadavers (above all, insofar as it involves the stinking decomposition of bodies); . . . the laughter of exclusion; sobbing (which in general has death as its object); . . . the identical attitude toward shit, gods, and cadavers; the terror that so often accompanies involuntary defecation; the custom of making women both brilliant and lubricious with makeup, gems, and gleaming jewels; . . . heedless expenditure and certain fanciful uses of money, etc., together [all] present a common character in that the object of the activity . . . is found each time treated as a foreign body. . . .  The notion of the (heterogeneous) foreign body permits one to note the elementary subjective identity between types of excrement . . . and everything that can be seen as sacred, divine, or marvelous: a half-decomposed cadaver fleeing through the night in a luminous shroud can be seen as characteristic of this unity."

Bataille, Visions of Excess

"I give myself to you, but this gift of my person—Oh mystery!—is changed inexplicably into a gift of shit."

Lacan, Seminar XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis

"Dan shudders as he passes the sign with the arrow pointing towards the front of the Winkie’s, its incorporating entrance, because he knows he’s moving, however lugubriously, in the opposite direction (much like the Lost Girl does while she´s climbing the stairs carrying the screwdriver), slowly approaching its horribly excorporating exit, the rectum that will be his grave, to face a radically heterogeneous foreign body, some really scarey shit.11
 Real shit, however, will soon to make its appearance in Mulholland Drive.  When Betty Elms, fresh off the plane, arrives at her Aunt Ruth’s apartment complex, she is guided across the courtyard by Mrs. Lanois (Ann Miller), whom everyone calls Coco.  But the two soon encounter caca, a little arrangement of fresh dog-poop in the courtyard, upon which the camera lingers.  An annoyed Coco yells threats up at the dog-owner’s apartment and tells an embarrassed Betty about a previous tenant’s “prize-fighting kangaroo,” a story that can only evoke the dread image of even larger piles of excrement.  “You wouldn’t believe what that Kangaroo did to this courtyard,” says Coco.  I believe that this conjured image of kangaroo crap serves a transitional purpose, for in fact Betty is about to see a larger pile, only this time the pile is comprised of the soiled and bloody black clothes, purse, and shoes that the dark-haired woman has shed and let fall on the floor in Aunt Ruth’s apartment on her way to a ritually cleansing shower.  Interestingly enough, the camera frames both sets of disagreeable memory-fragments, the dog-turds and the strewn clothes, in a similar fashion, thus suggesting the abject connection between them that we ourselves cannot possibly make until we learn that the dark-haired woman in fact did not escape being wasted but is already waste, is no longer a lubricious and desirable body but well on her way to being a stinking and repulsive corpse.  Visually connected, then, not only to a slew of rotting bodies but a clump of actual excrement, the dark-haired woman is not really sleeping but dead, is not the dream’s sweet clean Rita but really a pretty shitty person named Camilla, is not a beautiful survivor stumbling away from a car-crash in a blackout and a black dress but something more like the “half-decomposed cadaver fleeing through the night in a luminous shroud” that Georges Bataille describes.  
 Bataille uses this last image to characterize a specifically heterological unity, “the elementary subjective identity between types of excrement . . . and everything that can be seen as sacred, divine, or marvelous” (Visions 94).  Lynch depicts a similar unity in the film’s penultimate image-cluster: we see the luminous and marvelous image of a reunited Betty and Rita—innocence and amnesia, purity without danger.  They are laughing and happy, like angels up in lights, hovering above the city of angels, the city of lights.  But this divine image has already been punctuated by the sight of the abject alley-man whose shit-face emerges from fiery miasma like a turd floating in a hellish toilet, and, before that, the cadaverous image of the self-destructed Diane in her darkly smoking bed."
Mind you, the one-legged woman is the first one shown in the final sequence. She´s killed 3 people in the first grade, and the Palace is described by Lynch (in "Lynch 2"), as HER house. She first passes the door, there´s nobody there, and then all of a sudden, Laura Harring is there, along with the Japanese girl and the monkey, et al.

So, the reunion of Lost Girl with the little fella and her husband is superimposed by the image of visitor #1, much like Camilla and Rita´s reunion is superimposed with the image of the bum.

I give myself to you, but this gift of my person—Oh mystery!—is changed inexplicably into a gift of shit.

So, did Nikki/Sue gave herself, and maybe even her own life, to the Lost Girl? But wasn´t she the one who killed The Lost Girl, through the Phantom or whatever? And what does Doris Side´s hypnotism got to do with her being the one who ends up stabbing the one who actually though  she was the one doing the stabbing? Same goes for the Polish Girl with the screwdriver on the stairs. When you think you´re acting your will, enforcing it (like the husband "enforces" his will, or has others to do it for him), that´s when you are betrayed, and it turns against you. That´s why Cooper was possesed.

In the end, Sue is like a Hollywood hero, with a gun in her hand, potent, ready to kill the evil. That´s the Hollwood hero position, Charles Bronson.

We should all watch The Brave One, with Jodie Foster.

And I´m sure Cooper entered the black lodge and though: "Where is my fucking gun?" Too late.

"I´ll send you a love letter. Do you know what a letter is? It´s a bullet from by fucking gun"

Remember Scorsese´s "After Hours". Griffin Dunne´s life starts to spin out of control, someone cuts his hair off, he looses his cool, and finally shouts:
"I´m getting a gun". It is soon after that that he is "womanized", and the John mistakes him for someone looking for action. To get a gun is to invoke man´s powerfull will, the ejaculating gun/penis.

The consequence of that is seen in Videodrome. Max Renn gets his gun, but he ends up with a vagina in his stomach. The horror!

Remember that Nikki is an down-and-outter by the time the film begins, who gets another big break. In the end, she becomes... a TV actress...
Dorothy Vallens, a decadent singer, "offers" herself to both Frank and Jeffrey, but one is like the other. "Take me, I love you, love me".
And who helped Diane get her break in Hollywood? Who is jealous of who? And what the man in the green coat´s got to do with this?
Laura Palmer becomes a hooker, and so does Sue/Polish Girl. In both cases, the consequences are the same.

And this is for you, Laura-was-a-patient-of-mine:

"But a terrible price must be paid for using culture as a shield against nature, the psychotherapists (and, as we'll see, David Lynch) would tell us.
Sigmund Freud, in fact, insisted that repression, or holding it in, was the source of the mighty river of neuroses that flows through human history -- though in Freud's analysis, this repression was related not to our knowledge of the inevitability of death, but to carnal knowledge. The root problems of the people of Twin Peaks tend, sure enough, to be sexual. This very diagnosis is made on the show by the local shrink -- an odd enough duck himself -- the very groovy Dr. Jacoby. And certainly if the human body is something to be both denied (because as an organic entity it is destined to decay) but at the same time has its own pleasures, then it is no wonder that our species is subject to chronic confusion with regard to sex
Lynch believes that the imposition of culturally-created identities can inflict a sort of violence on creatures who, ultimately, do not reduce to the sum total of their own symbols. Think of those saw blades ripping those logs. Now think of a girl named Laura Palmer who -- because she seems to embody what her culture has decided is Ideal Beauty (she's the Homecoming Queen) or Value (she's the girlfriend of the football team captain) or Virtuousness (she's a volunteer with the Meals on Wheels) -- is trapped within cultural expectations, and seeks escape in ways that have tragic consequences. The conversion of our experience into familiar symbols may give human beings a sense of control, but only at the cost of amputating those elements of human reality or individual identity which do not fit into conventional symbols, forms, or "norms".

"Superficially, Laura [Palmer] is the standard of ordinary life," says Martha Nochimson in her book on David Lynch,

... blonde, blue-eyed, and beautiful; she is, theoretically, just as Lynch has described her, "the classic American girl." But her very synchronicity with the portrait of the perfect girl -- daddy's princess -- afflicts her. Her living energies are as alienated as were those of the freak John Merrick [aka The Elephant Man], although for exactly the opposite reason. She is cut off from culture as well as from reality by being the cultural image of desire. Trapped within the stereotype, she lives an alienated life, peering frantically at the world through her desirable shell... (174)

One doesn't have to be a "postmodernist" to believe that clinging too tightly to our symbols, i.e. some cultural means for holding onto personal significance and holding back the night -- work, success, gunning our sports car, consumption of products or media -- can result in our living "inauthentic" lives or consequences much worse. Most of us, if we are honest with ourselves, are all too conscious that burbling somewhere beneath the culturally-constructed mask -- in our dreams -- or nightmares -- is a "Shadow Self," to use the name employed by Deputy Hawk. This Shadow Self, Lynch intuits, emerges from beneath our chosen means of repression, not just in dreams or nightmares, but in life -- in the perpetration of violence which is really one more effort to gain control, to transcend our natural fate.

Let´s move on to a second duality we find on Twin Peaks: that of mystery and its twin, knowledge

By pinning his metaphysical (or, if you prefer, psychological) investigations onto the clothesline of the Laura Palmer murder plot, David Lynch has shrewdly embodied his examination of conventional structures within a conventional structure -- that of the mystery or detective story. This should be a big tip off for those of us trying to crack Twin Peaks to try to "read the clues of the smaller mystery as they become signs of the greater mystery". In other words, it seems reasonable to guess that an artist who distrusts conventions in general will take advantage of this opportunity to make his point by showing us the inadequacies of detective story conventions. And, as it turns out, Lynch's un-conventional approach to the "smaller mystery" on Twin Peaks (the Laura Palmer murder) -- which extends both to the usual modus operandi of the detective story and also to the denoument -- reflects exactly his investigative method and conclusions regarding the "greater mystery" of life.

The conventional route the detective story follows is linear, between the twin peaks of mystery and knowledge, innocence and experience, puzzle and solution. The direction is one-way, starting with problem, ending with sum. When it comes to the "greater mystery," that of human existence itself, however, Lynch has already demonstrated his skepticism with regard to our ability to boil the phenomena of life down to a quantifiable sum or symbol. Some part of the human mystery, he seems to be saying, is unsolveable. The sawmill chops up nature into bites called "culture", but there's always something left over: likewise does "knowledge" have its own Shadow Self.

Various sins against genre orthodoxy by Twin Peaks are cited by critic Angela Hague, who uses as her measuring stick Ronald Knox's 1929 "Ten Commandments of Detective Stories." According to Knox's Second Commandment, notes Hague, "All supernatural and preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course" -- a commandment Twin Peaks, like the X-Files, seems to violate as a matter of course. (And even if somebody can come up with a rational explanation, both shows leave room for a shadow of a doubt, an ambiguity that adds to the effect.) Even more to the present point, however, is Knox's commandment, "No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right". Against the convention of the rationalist "Holmsian" detective who solves crimes using empirical evidence and reason, Twin Peaks introduces a detective who uses both "mind" but also "intuition" -- a detective in whom for the first time the split -- whether cast as "reason vs. intuition", "science vs. supernatural", "head vs. heart", or "mind vs body" -- is healed. We're speaking, of course, of Special Agent Dale Cooper.
In the performance of a lifetime, longtime Lynch stock player Kyle McLaughlin literally embodied the unforgettable Agent Dale Cooper. Unlike the coldly rational -- almost disembodied -- sleuths we are accustomed to, Agent Cooper is in tune with his body. But he understands -- unlike physical nihilists like Agent 007 -- that the body involves a dimension other than the material; and so he is sensitive to clues from that realm as well. There's no doubt about his intellectual acuity; he's the sharpest thinker on the series. And yet the classic Twin Peaks moment remains the shot of Coop's face all lit up with wonder and delight as he enjoys a piece of cherry pie at Norma's Double R Diner, along with a"damned fine" cup of coffee.

It must be emphasized, again, that Agent Cooper's method of crime solving does not spurn the use of reason, the gathering of material evidence and witnesses, the employment of logic. On the contrary. The glory of Lynch's dualistic Twin Peaks is his centering of the series in the "both/and" character of Agent Cooper: Coop listens to reason, yes, and much more carefully than anybody else; but he never lets reason drown out other sources of information. Along with "witnesses" and "evidence" Cooper gives equal respectful attention to "dreams". Cooper's frequent visits to a subconscious "Red Room" represent visionary experiences in a mythic-intuitive realm.

"As in dream, the images [in myth] range from the sublime to the
ridiculous. The mind is not permitted to rest with its normal
evaluations, but is continually insulted and shocked out of the
assurance that now, at last, it has understood. Mythology is
defeated when the mind rests solemnly with its favorite or
traditional images, defending them as though they themselves were
the messages that they communicate. These images are to be regarded
as no more than shadows from the unfathomable reach beyond, where
the eye goeth not, speech goeth not, nor the mind, nor even piety.
Like the trivialities of dream, those of myth are big with
meaning."

-- Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces

But there's one more duality within Twin Peaks of which the reader needs to be aware. I'm probably already late in mentioning that Twin Peaks was not only the creation of David Lynch; the series was co-created and overseen by Lynch and veteran television producer Mark Frost. The duality of "Lynch/Frost Productions" . After the revelation of the killer's identity, Lynch and Frost managed to maintain the mystery through a concentration on the supernatural aspects that had been introduced in TP's second season.2 However, the popularity faded and the teamwork between Frost and Lynch decreased. Frost, who is essentially a writer for television serials, focused on plot developments that are rooted in traditional story-telling, e.g. the Windom Earle revenge plot, while Lynch basically retreated from the project. However, Lynch returned to TP in order to direct the very last episode of the show. Lynch can be considered as the creator of Agent Cooper, the detective in TP.

Mark Frost, not surprisingly, turns out to be a big fan of Sherlock Holmes, and later wrote a novel about Arthur Conan Doyle called The List of the Seven. And during Frost's solo tenure at the helm of Twin Peaks, the contrast of Earle and Cooper fell into essentially a binary opposition -- of sanity versus insanity, reason versus unreason -- which seemed to be at philosophical odds with the original balance already supposedly achieved in Agent Cooper. This tendency toward imbalance in Cooper was heightened during the show's second season when Cooper was given a girlfriend and the story seemed to be arcing itself toward a conventional ending -- "rational masculine detective finds completion in woman."
Let's take the answer to the seemingly simple question, "Who killed Laura Palmer?" Without dropping names, let me just say that, even after the big revelation, there remains a certain ambiguity over the murderer's identity and/or nature. Some viewers feel they were led to conclude that the killer was a supernatural entity who temporarily incarnated a human being -- that Twin Peaks was, after all, in the words of a friend, "just a straight-forward demon-possession story".

In fact, David Lynch was criticized hotly by feminists who were apalled that a series which had seemed so attuned to the nature of violence to women could have been so stupid as to end up providing perpetrators with an excuse to commit more -- not just any, but the lamest one, "the devil made me do it."

On the other hand, I've read Lynch's own words on the subject and find him to be -- surprise -- cagey rather than straight-forward about the identity and/or nature of Laura Palmer's killer. As usual, Lynch seems uncomfortable with meanings imposed by others, and loathe to impose his own. But he does offer hints that the entity in question was not so much a literal being as a metaphorical abstraction -- a symbol for something.
Meanwhile, we should keep in mind that the climactic moment of the Laura Palmer subplot happened while Lynch was on hiatus, with Mark Frost at the helm of the show. Perhaps the revelation of the killer would have been less literal in Lynch's hands. Then again, that "angel" which makes an appearance in the Lynch-directed Twin Peaks "prequel" theatrical film, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (which we don't need to talk much about here) seems literal enough -- or at least, conventional enough.

Nevertheless, Martha Nochimson reads that image, too, as a symbol -- in this case for the vague realm of "wholeness" that the cockeyed optimist Lynch always seems to keep trying to point us toward, something beyond all social constructions.

From what we know of how Lynch makes movies (very similar to how Cooper investigates crimes), we can't rule out the possibility that even David Lynch doesn't know exactly what the point is he is trying to make.

the supernatural spirit BOB, the epitome of the evil in the woods and a diffuse 'return of the repressed' who will finally take control over the weakened Cooper's soul
All of the new detective's positive experiences with the other sphere are now turned into the opposite. Cooper's contact with the supernatural does not take place within the confines of an openminded subconscious, but in a state of fear. We will find that Cooper has transformed into a character that, similar to the superficial Windom Earle, combines elements of the Gothic protagonist and the traditional detective.

Cooper's emotional weakness will enable the evil entity BOB to turn Cooper into his own doppelganger. The double, functions as another central Gothic element in TP. Upon being possessed by the evil spirit BOB, Cooper will lose his character traits as a detective completely. The fatal consequences for the middle class 'Soap Opera' world of TP will finally have to be considered."

This all reminds me of Gaspar Noe´s Irreversible, an Alice in Wonderland adaptation, which is also the abject journey of a pregnant woman. From the point of view of the man, Irreversible is the journey that leads from eating to defecating (hence the name of the club where the brutal fucking murder takes place, which I think is... I forgot the name of the club in the film. Can someone remind me? I think it´s the name of a parasite. (Reminds me of Cronenberg´s Shivers, AKA The Parasite Murders, which, of all things, are fecal-like in appearance.

Also, in Irreversible, there´s a "2001 - A Space Odyssey" poster in the couple´s bedroom.

Thanks for the info, Booth.

 From the dugpa board:

Sorry to be so honest, but your postings are far too vague and there are too many mistakes and worst of all you mix your own thoughts with someone else´s throughout:
"I was bored (not born) before I even began."
(The Smiths)
Why introduce Scorsese as someone whose films all deal with history and then switch on to After Hours which clearly isn´t?
I doubt Nochimson and Chion have really anything revealing to say about Lynch.

Ok, you´re right about The Smiths. I need an editor, yes. Rough edges abound. You made me feel like Michael Moore/Howard Hughes here: "produce your sources or face the consequences." 
And I think After Hours can be read, script-wise, as a film about being locked in a post-modernistic nightmare, hence the historylessness. He gets a flyer for a "conceptual-art" party, but at first he can´t come in, the guard at the door being the guard from Kafka´s The Trial. And the man with glasses above the cinema-store (nightclub) from INLAND EMPIRE certainly has a Kafkaesque feel to him, as well as all the Rabbits themselves. Remember that Jack Rabbit IS the Man with Glasses. The Rabbits programme is also an allusion to The Metamorphosis, which has some pretty mundane scenes of ordinary life and so does Rabbits (ironing clothes, coming home from work). It´s a Threesome inside that apartment, it´s the Dead Zone of indefinition, but which contains within itself the possibility of change (That is The Dead Zone in Cronenberg´s film - the part of the visions which he can´t see, because they refer to the part of the future that he can change). Therefore, by being a three-angle relationship, for the Rabbits, but also for the main players in Inland Empire itself, there´s a indefinition which produces anxiety, a sort of a limbo from which they´re waiting to get out, or be set free. Of course, the end of Metamorphosis (which Lynch was going to adapt) is a sort of happy ending, but in the same way Blue Velvet´s got a happy ending. Lynch says Blue Velvet is about finding there´s a dark side, and once you find that out, you have to live with it. That´s The Metamorphosis for you, in a nutshell. Although Lynch doesn´t separate visually The Black Lodge from The White Lodge from the Waiting Room, in Inland Empire he does. The end credits sequence certainly takes place inside the White Lodge. And maybe Room 47 is the waiting room. But how does Nikki/Sue, after she enters room 47, end up in the PAMONA´S PALACE (Lodge/Palace)? Is there a confusion of past and present? Why does she seem so lonely inside room 47? It´s as if the Crying Girl´s family being reunited echoes Jeffrey´s and Sandy´s families, but then there´s Dorothy, alone with her child. Only here Sue is alone in room 47, having given birth to the Lost Girl´s child, and, unable to raise her kid, she gives him away. The Rabbits dissapear (and Naomi Watt´s rabbit is named SUZIE, standing for Laura Dern/SUSAN (in the Rabbits series, Jack asks her once: "Suzie, where you blonde?", whereas Laura Harring is JANE, whose name doesn´t have a correlation in the film, but Laura Harring does appear in the end. He could have called Naomi Watts too, but that would be a paradox you see?

And in Scorsese History, history and the past coming back to fruition are themes in the forefront, sometimes in an explicit way: ItalianAmerican, American Boy, Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Color of Money, etc. If saying that in a sort of unglued way sounds too vague, all it takes is to continue the argument. And today is Tuesday. We all have to work you see? Otherwise it would be just a "What´s this day-of-rest shit!" situation.

And if you´re complaining about vagueness, how about the extract from the FWWM script that I posted above? You can´t get more vague than that. So maybe the vagueness is appropriate.

But how does Nikki/Sue, after she enters room 47, end up in the PAMONA´S PALACE (Lodge/Palace)? Is there a confusion of past and present? Why does she seem so lonely inside room 47?

I think it goes like this:

In the beggining of the film, Crying Girl is watching the TV. Rabbits is showing and she sees Visitor #1 entering Nikki´s house. In the end of the film, after Sue enters room 47, she takes the stage, i.e. she starts her "performance", which is nothing more than the rest of the movie that came before. But to whom she´s performing? I think she kisses the Crying Girl at one given point in time, and then she enters room 47 at another point in time, even if one scene comes immediatelly after the other. She goes from a glossy movie hollywood actress to a sitcom actress, à la Woopi Goldberg, who, by the way, had a sitcom in which she played a hotel concierge. And she doesn´t say anything in room 47, but the audience STILL laughs at her. Could she be the one in the Threesome who ended up alone and childless, the husband having made his choice (if it´s up to the husband, that is)? She is to Crying Girl what Camilla Rhodes is to Diane Sewyn (they kiss), and one kills the other, but they are redeemed, albeit in a quasi-sinister way. It is Sue/Dern´s doppleganger who enters Room 47, for everyone to see. Room 47 is the "real world", because it´s a TV show for the viewing public (but the "real world", as I posted above, is a malange of cultural appearances and constructs that come in handy, a convenience store/marketplace. It´s Twin Peaks, the town, it´s Lumbertown, the surface. It´s like reality TV, unlike what Frank Costello/Jack Nicholson says: "Don´t laugh! This ain´t reality TV". Her doppleganger is like Cooper´s who is taken by BOB, and that´s the one that goes out in the real world for everyone to see. The other part of the doppleganger, the Good Dale, and the Good Sue, is in the White Lodge/Pamona´s Palace. And Nastassia Kinski is Laura Dern´s Doppleganger. She´s the only one who doesn´t smile in Pamona´s Palace, aside from the Japanese girl with the monkey, but she can´t smile afterall, she´s in charge of keeping the smiling monkey (like the one from FWWM), in check, otherwise he´s going to crap all over the place; and Kinski´s a little odd and sinister, even in the most apoteotic and carnivalized scene in the film. And she´s dressed like Laura Dern. Therefore: Kinski doesn´t smile/Japanese Girl doesn´t smile. Laura Dern smiles/Monkey smiles. Japanese girl helps prevent the monkey from crapping on the pristine Pamona Palace´s floor (remember, there´s crap on that floor when Sue goes visit Billy and Doris Side). What is Kinski (who is always looking at Dern in the scene) in charge of preventing Dern from doing then? Not crapping, but maybe going over the top? Maybe thinking that this too is the ultimate reality? Maybe keeping her dreams in check, because there´s never a TOTAL redemption, just as there´s never a TOTAL damnation.

And why did Lynch choose Kinski? Well, I dare to say that Polanski´s "Tess" is a different version of Inland Empire. Do you think the case can be made?
Bottom line: "On High in Blue Tomorrows" is a ramake of "47". "Inland Empire" could be a remake of "Tess".
So remember, Ms. Dern, Ms. Kinski could have played your part just as well as you did, and the fact is she already did. So don´t you go on thinking you´re "discovering america" again, because then you would be busting doors that are already opened. Remember The Shining: don´t build your hotel above indian burial ground.

From Naked Lunch: "America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil, before the settlers, before the Indians. The evil is there waiting."

Tess was Sharon Tate´s favorite book. Sharon Tate was killed when she was pregnant. Sharon Tate was an actress. Let´s all make a toast to Sharon Tate.
Cheers