“This is the girl.”
I knew that “Baby Girl” owed a fair amount of debt to writer/director, David Lynch’s MULHOLLAND DRIVE, but after rewatching it last night, I now realize that I may have to give Lynch a cowriting credit. Weird how I hadn’t quite noticed it before.
Over the course of the next several blog entries (not this one per se), I’ll be discussing that actual plot of “Baby Girl.” That will most certainly be a big help for outsiders who are completely in the dark as to what this project is really all about. For now, I’m going to make the unconventional move to discuss the work that I was somewhat subconsciously ripping off.
First off, I want to discuss the notion of “ripping off.” This is tricky since I’m terrified that this blog will serve up enough ideas to those who would like to procure their own introductory storyline. It’s tough to put your eggs in one basket (however temporary you think the one basket will be) and then see it snatched up and launched by someone else.
I’m doing this blog project under the guidance of Amber: mentor, guru and the force who is most actively championing this project. This online copyright thing is a slippery legal slope that we are both learning (with my curve being much more steep than hers). Be that as it may, I do want to protect “Baby Girl”, “She Is Risen” and “Cub.” This is a tricky, personal story and I want to make sure that this version of it (because it isn’t nor could it be the most original story ever told) arrives fully formed with my final stamp of authorship.
Now, there is a paraphrased quote from Robert Altman that I’d like to share. It’s from the commentary he recorded for the Criterion dvd release of his film, THREE WOMEN (which would also be an apt title for the “Baby Girl” trilogy). He talks about how he approached Paul Thomas Anderson (the writer and director of BOOGIE NIGHTS, MAGNOLIA, PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE and THERE WILL BE BLOOD) and told him how much he enjoyed MAGNOLIA. Anderson’s response, according to Altman was that he (Anderson) had just been ripping him (Altman) off. This apparently took the elder filmmaker by surprise since he didn’t recognize his own work in Anderson’s film. Altman then goes on to explain that the techniques and shots that filmmakers like P. T. Anderson take from his films were in fact “ripped off” from films that Altman was inspired by in his youth. Altman concludes that there really is no such thing as ripping off, especially if you’re taking inspiration (or even direct quotation) from someone else’s work and making it your own.
This is a relief since “Baby Girl” and her sequels have pretty direct quotations from sources that I’ve loved (perhaps a little too much) while still mixing like paint with influences which are incontrovertibly based on my own life (perhaps a little too much).
I should mention that I’m about to discuss major plot *SPOILERS* for MULHOLLAND DRIVE. If you’ve never seen the film and think you someday will, you should probably not read this until you do.
Otherwise:
David Lynch’s MULHOLLAND DRIVE is the story of Diane Selwyn, a naive Canadian girl who moves to Hollywood when the opportunity is pretty much handed to her. Her aunt has died and Diane moves into the older woman’s Hollywood home with a bit of money that also seems to have been inherited. It’s an arrangement that she arrived at through random luck rather than as a result of talent or effort.
Diane’s story is intentionally murky, but it seems to play out like this: As an aspiring actress, she doesn’t make much headway. She does, however, fall into the arms of a gorgeous goddess of a woman named Camille Rhodes. Diane ends up finding her Hollywood dreams fulfilled in the arms of this unlikely woman. And through the ecstasy of hot sex, Diane falls in crazy love a little too quickly.
I have no idea what Naomi Watts pulled from to play the role of Diane, but her expressions of sexuality, crazy eyed obsession and strung out despair are alarmingly convincing. Lynch even comments on her ability during an audition scene in which we see Watts, sharing an intimate moment with a quintessential “older man” (her father’s best friend, don’t ya know) transcend the script to show us desire and rage that seems all too real.
You could debate the nature (or even the existence) of love, but in MULHOLLAND DRIVE, Diane’s obsession with Camille is certainly not healthy (or shared by Camille). And the minute that she finds mutual affection in the arms of a successful filmmaker, Camille drops Diane like the bad habit that she is.
Diane’s downward spiral is largely implied, but the gist of it seems to be this. She takes on the sickly, agitated demeanor of someone who is abusing hard drugs (which Lynch seems to represent by showing us seemingly endless cups of coffee) and is allowing her jealousy to tear her apart.
The climax of MULHOLLAND DRIVE (to me anyway) is a dinner party sequence which seems to begin with a tense, lonely car ride (or it could begin with that scene of sad, desperate and pathetic masturbation) and ends with an incomplete engagement announcement. This is not only Naomi Watts’ finest hour as an actress, but also Lynch’s most devastating sequence as a filmmaker and a storyteller. It is front loaded with a walk up a secret path “short cut” in which Diane, walking hand in hand with Camille seems to be ascending Mt. Olympus led by a goddess. It is here that Watts makes me believe that Diane, damaged and pathetic as she is, has truly fallen in love. It’s also the truest moment of happiness that we see the character experience (and I have to confess that it makes me tear up a little).
After that, however, when Diane realizes that Camille is lost to her as a lover, Watts shows us a quiet, slow-motion train wreck of a meltdown that is heartbreakingly convincing. Diane Selwyn is not a likable character or a good person, but Lynch works magic when he invites us to sympathize with her.
I think I was always alarmed at just how much I did identify with Diane when I saw this movie (FIVE TIMES!!!) back in 2001. It was just after 9/11 and Lynch’s journey into despair, jealousy and mortality was just the poison I was craving. I remember driving out to DuPont Circle in D.C. to catch this film a week before it opened in Baltimore. It was sold out so I had to hang around for a few hours to catch the next showing. In a neighboring auditorium, however, was a quirkily titled art flick called DONNIE DARKO and we’ll be talking a lot more about that in a future blog entry.
And not to spoil the ending (or the beginning?), but Diane makes a deal with a seedy dude which, while never specified, seems quite clearly to be a request to have Camille killed. When she receives evidence that the deed is done, her guilt eats her alive and she ends up putting a gun in her mouth and pulling the trigger…
…which may take us back to the beginning of the film in which we see an alternate dream version of Diane and Camille’s relationship unfold as, well, as a rejected television pilot for ABC.
It’s a well-known fact that MULHOLLAND DRIVE began life as an attempt for David Lynch to launch a new t.v. series for ABC as an attempt to reboot the appeal of his surprise (and short-lived) smash success with TWIN PEAKS (another artistic and pop culture milestone that will likely be discussed on this board). The t.v. show aspect of MULHOLLAND DRIVE is likable and quirky without having any kind of focus or point. It just meanders around looking for something to be about, occasionally focusing on the unlikely friendship between Naomi Watts’ naive innocent from Cananda and Laura Harring’s noirish brunette amnesiac. ABC understandably rejected this pilot. As textured and addictive as it is, there’s no sense that it held any promise as a long-running television series. Lynch seemed to be enjoying himself, but there was no hook like the question of who killed Laura Palmer. Thus, there was very little mystery or suspense to pull a mass number of casual viewers back for a second episode let alone an entire season.
With the understanding and any Lynch product is likely some kind of masterpiece waiting to be polished and packaged, French distributor CIBY 2000 bought up the rights to the pilot and gave Lynch the money to shoot re-edit the existing material and shoot new footage to give the pilot a definitive cinematic ending.
What Lynch seems to have done is take a fun, cute, tease of a pilot and distill it down to the grittiest subtext. It’s hard to deny the coy sapphic undertones to the television show with the perky Watts clearly flirting with and crushing on her smoldering lady friend. The new third act shot for the cinematic version wipes all of the pieces off of the game board, flings the board to the ground and shows us what really seemed to be going on underneath the retro cutesiness.
And for those familiar with Lynch’s past work, consider it like this: If the first 100 minutes of MULHOLLAND DRIVE are like the entire run of the TWIN PEAKS television series, then the final 40 minutes are the equivalent of the stark and brutal cinematic prequel, TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME in which the sexuality and suffering of the characters is delt with in blunt, plain fashion as opposed to the sneaky implications of the t.v. show.
So, why are you reading about MULHOLLAND DRIVE in a blog about “Baby Girl?”
Well, it was impossible for me to re-experience MULHOLLAND DRIVE last night and not acknowledge that I was seeing the precedent for my conflict play out in front of me. “Baby Girl” (specifically, the first of the three stories in this series) is indeed about a young woman who behaves in an unstable and erratic way once she is dumped by her (short-term) lady love. And much like Diane Selwyn, our antiheroine makes a very bad decision for which she ends up enduring the tortures of the damned in the sequel, “She Is Risen.”
I have no qualms about showing my co-conspirators on this project the inspirations for my storyline. It’s been easy to define the proper heroine and a little bit less easy to define her lycanthropic lover boy. But the antagonistic protagonist has been a little more tricky to define. I’ve used characters from GINGER SNAPS, THE CRAFT and CAT PEOPLE to try and make my point.
But when watching Naomi Watts squirm in the back of a limo on the way to her rendezvous on Mulholland Dr., I had an epiphany that I could no longer deny:
“This is the girl.”
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