To me Mulholland drive is a top 3 DL favorite. The mood, the "hero's" mind functioning, the score and artful enchanting filming, the cast come to mind.

I have not seen IE yet and I have no drive to do so. Based on reviews and the changes DL had gone thru up to making IE cause me some trepidation regarding the most current DL project and it's complicated if understandable story. Now Laura Dern was appropriate in Blue Velvet, but she is generally not a box office draw for me. I am waiting for DL's next.

MD- great

IE   absent

I hope somebody will think of that scene like I think of it. I mean, it was intentionally not meant to be funny. That is not funny. Really, Lynch for me has never been plain funny. He's darkly funny, if there is humor (well, let's cut Twin Peaks out of the equation since it's a series), it's peculiar and often dark. I'd say that scene is desperate and grotesque. I mean, you can laugh as far as Adam enters the bedroom and finds the pool guy with a hard on under the sheets with the wife and they act like the most normal thing has happened. But since they start to go nuts with the jewelry box, the pink paint and the punching and kicking, well I wouldn't say THAT is funny... Actually, it's pretty desperate.

"Did they scoff the whole damn Smörgåsbord?" (Audrey) 

"Gimme a donut!" (Coop)

maybe my humor is on the darker side(as i found the gene scene funny, heartwarming AND disturbing
(im no acky breakyheart lover, but in 2001 when MD was released, i must say i was charmed by billy ray/gene, not just because it was wonderful to see him doing something pretty much out of character for a one hit wonder country singer from the early 90s but also because he made his character, who had five or so lines and a bit of action, stand out and be quite memorable, for me at least))(apologies again for my rambling parentheses) because i dont see desperate and funny as being mutually exclusive. i cant remember who said it, but theres a quote that says something to the effect of humor is someone else getting hurt. basically its just degrees of that which determine how bleak the humor can be(for example, the stealing the black book sequence is much darker, yet is almost offputtingly lightened by the shooters reactions while he kills three people(OH MAN!;UMMM...). i can empathize with those who feel those scenes, and in general, most of lynch's attempts at comedy, can be abrasive, but i feel that his black humor fits quite well in relation to the rest of his work. 

as far as the dicotomy between the pilot version and the film version, i dont think its so clean cut what was shot for what. i believe theres a script of the original pilot around, at least ive seen it, andbeyond just the parts that were cut(such as almost all of robert forester's part), it differs quite a bit from the first two hrs. of MD. so i would assume that when lynch got the studio canal financing, he not only did the end(starting at the haircutting scene and the tout paris book(a detail that always makes me smile)) but also added or reshot scenes for what was originally the pilot, changing what needed to be changed. so imo, MD is not just pilot+last half hour shot a year later, but a film crafted so that it all seems of one piece, and, sorry franny_cky, but is immaculately self-contained.

which brings me to my last point, are there really that few of of us that both enjoy watching IE as well as all the interpetations it has? ive been meaning to start a new IE thread but worldly matters have kept me from having the time to put certain ideas in words. but i like that about IE! and even more, once you are past all the details that go right over your head on first, second, maybe even third viewing, and you at least have come to a personal conculsion about what is actually happening in the film and in your watching of it(id also like to say that i am starting to think that IE is a film that is aware of itself as a film, and therefore self-reflexive, that the actors are actors and know it, not just in OHIBT but in IE, and the movie exists more in the relationship of the senses and consciousness of the viewer(meaning us) with the film than just in the film proper) that IE actually has a strong plot line, story arc, complex characters(some more than others of course), and what i think is lynch's most positive and joyous ending to date. i cant help but love and be fascinated by it. and i dare to say, tho i may have personal favorites of lynch due to being exposed to his films at an early age and growing up with new films of his as they came out, im just going to put this out there, i think IE is his best work to date. and quite self-contained.  thoughts?

I can't relate to any of that. I find MD endlessly fascinating.

Now, if you replaced the words "Mulholland Drive" with "Inland Empire" then  we'd see eye to eye.

im confused, i dont think i made a single disparaging remark about MD. i love that film and am facinated by it as well. do you disagree with my billy ray endorsement or about the black humor? or were you referencing the negative comments i quoted?
either way im endlessly fascinated by IE as well, its just a different kind of film. which is the least of my expectations for a new one from lynch.