This one was inspired by my spoiler-heavy defense of HALLOWEEN II and some colleagues’ response to my response. Here’s a portion of it:
I could just listen to Zombie’s commentary, but I’m not sure I want to. Because if I like and appreciate a movie in a particular way, do I really want the director telling me I am flat-out wrong? Especially a director like Rob Zombie, who has generally shown little patience for introspection?…
On the other end of the scale, you have someone like Quentin Tarantino who, while willing to talk incessantly, is determined to keep some things up for grabs. Any time he’s asked what’s in the briefcase in PULP FICTION, or what the title of RESERVOIR DOGS actually means, his general answer has been some variation on, “Whatever you think the right answer is, that’s it.”
Then there’s David Lynch, who draws directly from his subconscious, and in some cases probably could not tell you what his intended meaning is even if he wanted to – but it’s clear he doesn’t want to. Lynch doesn’t do commentaries, and even though there is a long interview with him on the ERASERHEAD disc, little to none of it deals with the actual content and story of the film.
But Lynch also has given us one of the perfect examples of perception versus intent in MULHOLLAND DRIVE, a movie that topped many critics’ best-of-decade lists. MULHOLLAND DRIVE was intended as a TV pilot, designed to pay off over the course of at least one season. When that didn’t happen, Lynch added an additional half-hour or so of ultra-weird and definitely unsafe-for-network-TV material to the pilot to finish it off as a movie. Anyone knowing anything about the process by which the movie came to be would have to concede that it was not originally intended to have the “ending” (one hates to say “third act” in a movie so probably out-of-sequence) that it did.
Go read the whole thing. It’s good stuff, I promise.
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