"Harry, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen. Could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot, black coffee. Like this."  -Dale Cooper

Piggie pile on Booth!

lol     

"Harry, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen. Could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot, black coffee. Like this."  -Dale Cooper

lol    

"Harry, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen. Could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot, black coffee. Like this."  -Dale Cooper

"Harry, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen. Could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot, black coffee. Like this."  -Dale Cooper

 But Booth doesn't exist

Yeah, give the book a shot.  I started a thread about it somewhere here.

It's, like, inverse solipsism.

Or did I just blow your mind?

To understand the films you have to read between the films. For instance, between watching Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire I read some Philip k Dick.

Yes?

"Harry, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen. Could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot, black coffee. Like this."  -Dale Cooper

You shouldn't ask questions like that...it might make you look silly.

"Harry, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen. Could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot, black coffee. Like this."  -Dale Cooper

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

"Gimme a donut!" (Coop)

I was just kidding. Of course you don't look between the films. BWAHAHAHA. But that is the sort of thing Lynch would love to hear. In a TM sense. 

Ask him.

 IMO the most important is in "Lynch on Lynch". In there, the interviewer asks about the confusion between the inside and the outside, like the Red Room being in the forest, raining in the room when Leland dies... and Lynch replies (from memory) : "I never said that before, but this inside/outside thing is, in my opinion, what cinema and life in general is all about". And the interviewer doesn't ask him anything about that, go figure.

 My opinion : pretty much all his "mystery films" are about the confusion between the inside and the outside, between the inner world of the character and what happens outside him.

 Is Henry's baby a real monster and the X total freaks, or do we simply see an average American family and a normal baby from the eyes of Henry, who is flat out presented as a schizoid loner (I mean, the pencils in his pocket and his hair style, and just the way he behaves) who believes there's a world behind the radiator ?

 If Fred Madison is a schizophrenic who killed his wife simply because she didn't go to the club that night and read a bit instead and didn't hear/reply to the phone, then how can he REALLY change into another person and escape prison that way ? Shouldn't schizophrenia (the Mystery Man ? Lynch said it was an abstraction, like BOB) stay inside his mind and not have relevance in reality ?

 Does BOB really exist, or is he a character Leland and Laura made up ("it wasn't me, I swear !!! I didn't kill anybody !", "that's not him - no, that's not him") to make the situation bearable ? Why does the film hints that it's both ?

 In fact, pretty much all his "mystery films" are about the confusion between the inside and the outside. The line is blurred to the extreme, and the thread will be torn. I think it's the key to what Lynch is about : usually when a character makes up something in his mind, the director is very careful to tell the audience what is "really" going on - or to trick them with a big reveal in the end (like, say, Fight Club) where everything is explained. Not Lynch. With Lynch, the inside invades the outside. I think he's the only director who ever did this.

 The "mystery film" where this inside/outside mechanics is the most clear and obvious is Mulholland Drive : first the inside, what Diane wished reality was, then the second part, the sad "real" reality. And in the end, the sinister irony of the ENORMOUS difference laughs at her and pushes her to kill herself with a grin on its face.

That's a risky but very acceptable interpretation. I say risky because once you put everything into this kind of persective, there will always be people arguing that something in the movies must be the true reality. But I disagree.

I mean, we absolutely don't know what really happens in the real world, because each of the films you quoted (including Inland Empire) takes place in the protagonist's mind.

You gave voice, with this last post, to a a little thought I always had in my head watching  Lynch's movies. And it's not random that Inland Empire's italian adapted subtitle can be translated in "The empire of the mind". It all sums up Lynch's filmography.

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

"Gimme a donut!" (Coop)

 I wouldn't say exactly they "take place in the protagonist's mind", as in, in opposition to an outside world out of the protagonist's mind, because to Lynch there is no such thing. "We live inside a dream".

 I think Lynch's approach to film is that there no such thing as an outside world. Everything you live, you see, etc. is from yourself, therefore everything is subjective, somehow. And therefore, everything is permitted. Even the "objective" point of view in Lynch's film belong to the same logic. Say, "Wild at Heart" which doesn't really have issues with insanity/hallucinations etc. obeys to the same process : the outside world works like the main character works.

 Again, if you don't consider the line between inside and outside being totally out of control and you consider some kind if outside reality to really exist, then you can't "explain" Lost Highway. Or Madison simply makes up things while in his cell, which isn't interesting at all and never hinted at.

 Lynch is anti-scientific in that way.

 Expressionism isn't the same thing, it's not tied to the main character point of view in the same way, it's rather tied to the author's point of view.

 With Lynch, it's like the main character affects, from his main point of view, the way reality works.