I Just Have a Few Notes

I got home late from Osaka last night and didn't feel like watching a movie. In the morning I watched the second episode of Robert Blake's YouTube series. Recorded within the last couple years, the episodes are just him at home going through boxes of old photos. So far he's talked almost exclusively about his roles as a child. Apparently he didn't think too much of Lost Highway at that point in his life, something seemingly confirmed by David Lynch in this interview:

Although, this interview from the time of the film's release shows him being more positive about it--and also somewhat derisive of his body of work previous to it:

I guess people change. Which is a pretty good summary of Lost Highway, actually.

I didn't realise Lost Highway, in 1997, was Blake's last movie. I wonder why. His arrest didn't happen until 2002.

Speaking of performers with strong personalities, lately I've been reading about how Jenna Ortega rewrote a lot of her own dialogue on Wednesday.

“There was times on that set where I even became almost unprofessional in a sense, where I just started changing lines … I would have to sit down with the writers, and they would be like, ‘Wait, what happened to the scene?’ And I would have to go through and explain why I couldn’t do certain things."

Ortega went on to give specific examples, quoting stereotypical “teenage” dialogue that clashed with Wednesday’s dark, brooding persona.

“Everything that she does, everything that I had to play, did not make sense for her character at all,” Ortega said. “Her being in a love triangle made no sense. There was a line about like, this dress that she has to wear for a school dance and she said, ‘Oh, my God, I love it. Ugh, I can’t believe I said that. I literally hate myself.’ And I had to go, ‘No, there’s no way.’”

Ortega even mentioned choreographing her own dance, the most iconic scene from the show, after discovering that Wednesday was originally meant to inspire a flash-mob, stating: “why would [Wednesday] be okay with that?”

Ortega implied that she had completely reshaped her character to give Wednesday more of an arc, saying, “I grew very, very protective of her, but you can’t lead a story and have no emotional arc because then it’s boring and nobody likes you.”

I don't agree that arcs are essential to creating good characters or stories but, for the most part, it sounds like she was definitely a better writer than the show's credited scribes. The fact that Tim Burton has just cast her in Beetlejuice 2 suggests it wasn't Burton she was clashing with, either, and that Burton had a relatively small creative role for a director on Wednesday. If they do another season, I hope they get better writers. Maybe they should just have Jenna Ortega do the writing.

Speaking of publicised rewrites, I've been amused by this ongoing story about Dave Filoni's supposed involvement in the filming of the Vader hallway scene at the end of Rogue One. Freddie Prinze Jr., star of Filoni's Rebels, recently claimed the Rogue One scene was 100% conceived and executed by Filoni even though Filoni himself claimed in an earlier interview that he'd never filmed any live action before his work on The Mandalorian. Then, finally, Gary Whitta, one of the original writers on Rogue One, said the scene was filmed by the film's original director, Gareth Edwards. It wasn't even part of the reshoots by the second unit director.

Which sounds a lot more plausible to me. I remember when Filoni imitated the sequence in the final episode of Rebels where it made absolutely no sense.

I bet at some point Filoni, or one of Filoni's people, told Freddie Prinze that story about Filoni making the scene for Rogue One, just like Filoni has successfully convinced people he created Ahsoka Tano. The guy's career is taking credit for things at this point. Meanwhile, what has he done since George Lucas sold Star Wars that wasn't running off fumes from Lucas and Jon Favreau? I suspect the upcoming Ahsoka Tano series will be the make or break point. When that show ends up sucking, everyone's going to stop buying into his PR except his most virulent stans. And that'll be yet another headache Disney can't afford.

I'm reminded again how Bob Dolman complained about Disney execs tampering in the writers room on the Willow series. And the stories going around about how the ending to the latest Ant-Man movie was changed to its current lame incarnation. And I'm reminded of the Disney Dark Ages of the 1970s and early 1980s, when a lack of a strong creative vision and too many unimaginative cooks in the kitchen nearly sunk the studio. And here we go again.

Highway Found

Twenty-five years later, and I finally have an excellent copy of Lost Highway. Yes, my copy of the new Criterion edition arrived in the mail and it's gorgeous.

The release comes with a 4k edition and a regular blu-ray, both approved by director David Lynch. After years of having only a muddy DVD release, I'm overjoyed to have one of the best films by my favourite living filmmaker in my hands. And it lived up to my expectations.

David Lynch directs the best sex scenes in the history of cinema. No other director I can think of quite manages the balance between maintaining a perspective and refraining from becoming dispassionate. They're beautiful scenes and integral to them is the physical beauty of Patricia Arquette and Natasha Gregson Wagner but the point of them never for a moment feels like pure titillation. You're enamoured with Alice and Sheila because Pete/Fred is. Renee is the distant puzzle right in front of you because that's how she is to Fred.

Alice is the Madeleine and Renee is the Judy, to compare Lost Highway to Vertigo. It's another great film that asks how much one's affection for another has to do with one's private conceptions of the other. Hear the horror in Fred's line, "It wasn't you. It looked like you. But it wasn't." It's something I've been thinking about a lot lately, and seems a relevant topic in Japan, where I gather many couples marry without getting to know each other very well, something that led to the epidemic of "Corona divorces" after married couples were finally forced to spent time alone together. It's a central theme in Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Pete's love scene with Alice in the desert, covered by the harsh headlights of a car, is so beautiful. Maybe the impossible beauty of a dream. Pete may never truly have Alice, but we all may now have a decent copy of Lost Highway.

Twitter Sonnet #1639

The final fight would prove the stalwart three.
About the men there grew a clamour great.
A horde of limbs escaped the devil tree.
Of shaded air the monster rashly ate.
Discreetly burned, the number changed the air.
The soldiers sat and shared a sugar cake.
Possessed of grim resolve the tellers share.
The knife was never hid for kindness' sake.
Our Twitter's come a waiting room for heads.
The checks were blue before the money came.
The checkered shirt defined the blues and reds.
The rugby grids were cold and all the same.
The desert light creates a promised land.
But then the promise fell as scattered sand.

A Highway Unnavigable

It turns out Lost Highway is available on Netflix in Poland. I found this out a few days ago when I watched a left-wing YouTuber called Maggie Mae Fish's comparative analysis of Lost Highway with The Shining. As the title of the video, "MYTH OF THE AUTEUR", suggests, Fish uses the two films to attempt to demonstrate the illegitimacy or immorality of auteur theory. Like many people who criticise auteur theory, she either doesn't understand it or pretends not to understand it. Certainly her analysis relies on very selective pieces of evidence. This is a problem I find common to reviewers with political bias, left or right. Ironically, it's not unlike Fred Madison's own selective memory, his preference to remember things his own way to create a palatable narrative.

Oddly, Mae argues that Lost Highway is a superior film to The Shining because Lynch is less true to auteur theory than Kubrick. I suspect this would be quite a surprise to Lynch considering how vocal he's been about the necessity of film directors having final cut. Some of Mae's evidence is directly contradictory, as when she criticises Kubrick for not directing his actors and praises Lynch for allowing actors to make creative contributions. Surely, Kubrick is doing just that by not directing his actors? Also, Lynch is known for not directing his actors, too. Harry Goaz talks about having to do the same take dozens of times in a behind the scenes feature on Twin Peaks season three while Lynch wouldn't directly tell him what it was he was looking for.

Underlying Mae's argument is the implication that to be an auteur you must be responsible for every creative decision in a film. Which is silly because no proponent of auteur theory argues that auteurs never use separate screenwriters. Alfred Hitchcock, one of the very principle directors cited in the days when the concept of the auteur was formulating, was known for not directing some of his actors and for being generally hands off in productions later in his career. He didn't compose the scores and he didn't design the costumes. He had some input on these things but not always. Yet his films do represent his consistent creative signature because he was ultimately in charge of choosing his collaborators.

Mae argues that both Lost Highway and The Shining are about a misogynist and that Lost Highway is the better film because the misogynist is less sympathetic. I would dispute three points there--I don't think Jack Torrance is more sympathetic than Fred Madison, I don't think the presence of a sympathetic misogynist degrades a film, and I don't think there's any evidence that Fred Madison's a misogynist.

We don't even know for sure--he doesn't even know for sure--that he killed Renee. A guy doesn't need to be a misogynist to be a murderer and we never see Fred or Pete make any statements, direct or oblique, applying any general opinion of women. The best I think you could argue is that Pete cheats on Sheila with Alice after Fred was angry at Renee for cheating on him. That's hypocrisy that may imply a double standard. Or maybe it just means Fred/Pete tends not to think things through. We do have evidence of that.

In any case, Mae's obvious love for David Lynch is endearing, anyway. I'm grateful for her VPN ad that tipped me off about the film being on Netflix Poland.

Like most of Lynch's films, I think Lost Highway benefits from not having a single valid interpretation. I watched it on Friday and enjoyed soaking up its atmosphere in a quiet, dark room. I'll give you my interpretation, in case you're wondering.

I think Robert Blake's Mystery Man is an agent from the Black Lodge. Fred Madison is sort of like Cooper's doppelganger--a denizen of the Black Lodge who left and didn't return at his appointed time. The Mystery Man is a demon who feeds on jealousy and violence and he was attracted to Fred because of this. He was surprised to find that Fred was also a denizen of the Black Lodge, a shapeshifter who long ago forgot his original name and shape. I came to this conclusion after the scene where the Mystery Man points a camera at Fred and asks, "What the fuck is your name?!" It suggests the Mystery Man doesn't know and he really wants to find out--he also seems slightly surprised and infuriated that it's an issue. But the two of them are birds of a feather, after all, because they collaborate in killing Mr. Eddie. I think the Mystery Man had an assignment to kill Mr. Eddie in retaliation for the killing of the porn star played by Marilyn Manson. I think Manson's character may either have been from the Black Lodge or someone important to the people of the Lodge. I don't think Fred consciously understands any of this.

Anyway, that's my current interpretation. Mostly I think it's a film that works brilliantly on an emotional level and that its lack of clear logic is evocative of the irrationality of the human mind. You can string together the beads in so many meaningful ways because the underlying currents of emotion are meaningful in ways beyond words.

Aguas de Marco

To-day I'm leaving California, driving cross country to Tennessee. Of all things, it put me in the mood to watch Lost Highway last night. I thought I might watch something more upbeat but instinct kept urging me back to the tragic tale of Fred Madison. I was also watching Bergman yesterday so maybe I just wanted calm, cool, contemplative film.

I was going to leave yesterday but there was flooding and thunderstorms in Arizona so I thought I may as well wait one more day. Though I'm likely to have to deal with bad weather of one kind or another at some point, at least it's sunny from here to El Paso for one day.

I will keep up blog entries as much as I can but if you don't hear from me it's because I couldn't find a Starbucks, library, or motel with wi-fi.

Twitter Sonnet #1337

Retracted light became the living torch.
Empowered lead became the power source.
A thousand rags were stacked beneath the porch.
Escaping men confound the guarding horse.
A silent whistle stalks the amber room.
A finger files pictures red to green.
In writhing crowds the brains retook the tombs.
Excited hordes exchange the holy bean.
A ghostly face returns to Andy's bash.
Another tape appears upon the step.
The lizard's sax was bright and weirdly rash.
In broken time the yellow lines were steady kept.
The changing current foists on desert damp.
The wind presaged a metal moving camp.