Lost Highway (film)

Lost Highway
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	David Lynch
Produced by	Mary Sweeney Tom Sternberg Deepak Nayar
Written by	David Lynch Barry Gifford
Starring	Bill Pullman Patricia Arquette Balthazar Getty Robert Blake Natasha Gregson Wagner Gary Busey Robert Loggia
Music by	Angelo Badalamenti
Cinematography	Peter Deming
Edited by	Mary Sweeney
Production company	Ciby 2000 Asymmetrical Productions
Distributed by	October Films
Release dates	February 21, 1997 (1997-02-21)
Running time	134 minutes[1]
Country	France United States
Language	English
Budget	$15 million
Box office	$3.7 million (North America)[2]

Lost Highway is a 1997 French-American neo-noir-horror^[3][4]-mystery^[5] film written and directed by David Lynch. It stars Bill Pullman as a man convicted of murdering his wife (Patricia Arquette), after which he inexplicably morphs into a young mechanic and begins leading a new life. The movie, which has noir elements, features the last film appearances of Robert Blake, Jack Nance, and Richard Pryor; it is also notable for featuring the acting debut of Marilyn Manson.

Lynch co-wrote the screenplay with Barry Gifford, whose novel served as the basis for Lynch's film Wild at Heart (1990). Lynch conceived Lost Highway after the critical and box office failure of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992), a film adaptation and follow-up to the widely successful cult television series Twin Peaks.

Despite receiving mixed reviews upon release, Lost Highway has developed a cult following and is greatly admired by some critics.^[6] In 2003, the film was adapted as an opera.

Plot

Fred Madison (Bill Pullman), a Los Angeles saxophonist, receives a message on the intercom of his house from an unknown man, who says: "Dick Laurent is dead". During a break at a show one night, Fred calls his home but Renée (Patricia Arquette), his wife, does not answer any of the home's ringing telephones. Arriving home later, Fred finds her sleeping in their bed. The next morning, Renée finds a VHS tape on their porch which contains a videotape of their house. After having sex one night, Fred sees Renée's face as that of a pale old man, then tells Renée of a dream he had about someone resembling her being attacked. As the days pass, more tapes arrive showing the interior of their house and even shots of the pair asleep in bed. Fred and Renée call the police but the detectives they send over offer no assistance.

Fred and Renée then attend a party being thrown by Andy (Michael Massee), Renée's friend. At the party, the pale old man Fred dreamed about approaches Fred, claiming to have met him before. The man then says he is at Fred's house at that very moment and even somehow answers the house phone when Fred calls it. Fred asks Andy who the man is, and Andy replies: he is a friend of Dick Laurent's. Fred, terrified and confused, leaves the party and heads home with Renée. The next morning, another tape arrives and Fred watches it alone. To his horror, it shows him hovering over Renée's dismembered body. He is arrested for her murder, tried, found guilty and sentenced to death. Shortly after arriving at death row, Fred is plagued by frequent headaches and strange visions of the Mystery Man, a burning cabin in the desert and a strange man driving down a dark highway.

During a routine cell check, the prison guard is shocked to find that the man in Fred's cell is now Pete Dayton (Balthazar Getty), a young auto mechanic. Since Pete has committed no crime, he is released into the care of his parents, who take him home. Pete is then followed by two detectives who are trying to find out more about him. The next day, Pete returns to work at the garage where he is soon called on by gangster Mr. Eddy (Robert Loggia), to fix his car. Mr. Eddy takes Pete for a drive, on which Pete witnesses Mr. Eddy chase and beat down a tailgater. The next day, Mr. Eddy returns to the garage with his mistress, Alice Wakefield (also played by Arquette) and his Cadillac for Pete to repair. Later, Alice returns to the garage alone and invites Pete out for dinner. Soon, Pete and Alice begin a secret liaison, meeting each other at run-down motels every night. Alice soon begins to fear that Mr. Eddy is privy to their affair and concocts a scheme to rob her friend Andy and leave town. Alice then reveals to Pete that Mr. Eddy is actually an amateur porn producer named Dick Laurent.

At home, Pete gets a phone call from Mr. Eddy and the Mystery Man (which eerily mirrors Fred and the Mystery Man's earlier conversation), which distresses Pete so much that he decides to go along with Alice's plan to escape. Alice tells Pete what he must do to carry out her plan to rob Andy but Andy puts up unexpected resistance and ends up dead, accidentally impaling himself on the edge of his glass coffee table. Pete notices a photograph showing Alice and Renée together, with Alice claiming that the blonde woman in the photo is her. Later, when police are at the house investigating Andy's death, the same photo shows only Renée with Andy and Mr. Eddy; Alice is inexplicably missing from the shot.

Pete and Alice arrive at an empty cabin in the desert, the same one Fred had envisioned. The two start having sex but during the act Alice gets up, walks up the stairs to the cabin and disappears inside. Pete suddenly transforms back into Fred Madison. Upon searching the desert cabin, he meets the Mystery Man who begins filming and chasing Fred with a hand-held video camera, revealing himself to be the same man responsible for the videotapes earlier in the film. Fred escapes and drives to the Lost Highway Hotel, where he finds Mr. Eddy and Renée having sex. After Renée leaves, Fred kidnaps Mr. Eddy, beats him and slits his throat. The Mystery Man then shoots Mr. Eddy dead and whispers something to Fred. The Mystery Man disappears and Fred drives off in Mr. Eddy's car. Fred drives to his old house, buzzes the intercom and says: "Dick Laurent is dead". When the two detectives then drive up to the house, Fred runs back to his car and drives off with the detectives in pursuit. As it gets dark, Fred is shown speeding down the highway pursued by the police. Fred suddenly begins convulsing and screaming, before the familiar image of the highway at night is seen.

Cast

Blake, who portrayed The Mystery Man in the film, was responsible for the look and style of his character.^[7] One day, he decided to cut his hair short, part it in the middle, and apply white Kabuki make-up on his face. He then put on a black outfit and approached Lynch, who loved what he had done.^[7]

Years earlier, Loggia had expressed interest in playing the role of Frank Booth in Blue Velvet (1986). He showed up for an audition, unaware that Dennis Hopper had already been cast, and proceeded to wait for three hours, growing increasingly agitated. Upon seeing Lynch and learning of Hopper's casting, Loggia launched into a profanity-laden rant, which remained in Lynch's head for years and would eventually become Mr. Eddy's road rage scene. Loggia, years later, received a phone call from Lynch requesting his performance for this film.

Lost Highway incorporates the last film performances of Blake, Jack Nance, and Richard Pryor.

Production

Development

Lynch came across the phrase "lost highway" in Barry Gifford's Night People and mentioned to the writer how much he loved it as a title for a film.^[8] Lynch suggested that they write a screenplay together. Gifford agreed and they began to brainstorm. Both men had their own different ideas of what the film should be and they ended up rejecting each other's and also their own.^[8] On the last night of shooting Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, Lynch was driving home and thought of the first third of Lost Highway all the way up to "the fist hitting Fred in the police station – to suddenly being in another place and not knowing how he got there or what is wrong."^[8] He told Gifford and they began writing the screenplay. The two men realized early on that a transformation had to occur and another story developed which would have several links to the first story but also differ.^[9] While they were writing the script, Lynch came up with an idea of a man and woman at a party and while they are there another, younger man is introduced who is "out of place, doesn't know anybody there, comes with a younger girl who knows a lot of the people. The girl is actually drawing him into a strange thing, but he doesn't know it. And he starts talking to this young guy who says strange things to him, similar to what The Mystery Man says to Fred Madison."^[8] Lynch recalls that the character, "came out of a feeling of a man who, whether real or not, gave the impression that he was supernatural."^[10] Gifford describes the Mystery Man as "a product of Fred's imagination" and is "the first visible manifestation of Fred's madness."^[7]

According to Lynch, the opening scene of the film where Fred Madison hears the words "Dick Laurent is dead" over his intercom really happened to him at his home.^[8] During filming, Deborah Wuliger, the unit publicist, came upon the idea of a psychogenic fugue which Lynch and Gifford subsequently incorporated into the film. Lynch recalls, "The person suffering from it creates in their mind a completely new identity, new friends, new home, new everything—they forget their past identity."^[11]

Filming

Lost Highway was shot in approximately 84 days; from November 29, 1995, until February 22, 1996, funded with a moderately large budget of $15 million from the French production company StudioCanal.^[12] A vast majority of the film was shot in locations throughout California, in Los Angeles, with the desert scenes being filmed in Nevada. Lynch owns the property used for Fred and Renee's mansion, and designed it himself, along with most of the furniture.^[8] The interior shots of the "Lost Highway Hotel" were filmed at the Amargosa Hotel in Death Valley, which is believed to be haunted.^[8][13]

The first cut of the film ran just over two-and-a-half hours. After a screening with 50 people, Lynch cut out 25 minutes of footage, including a scene portraying Renee/Alice's autopsy.^[8]

Lynch would later link the film to the O. J. Simpson murder case: a jealous man's state of mind who has indeed committed, and then denies, murder, even to himself.^[14]

Music

The film's score was composed by Angelo Badalamenti, with additional music by Barry Adamson.

For years, Trent Reznor had tried to contact Lynch to see if he would be interested in directing a video for his band, Nine Inch Nails, but had no success.^[15] After his work on the Natural Born Killers soundtrack, Reznor received a call asking if he would be interested in doing the same thing for Lost Highway. Reznor talked to Lynch on the phone and the filmmaker asked if he would also be interested in composing original music for the film.^[15] When Reznor agreed, Lynch traveled to New Orleans, where the musician was living, and together they created music that accompanied the scenes in which Fred and Renee watch the mysterious video tapes, a brand new song called "The Perfect Drug," and "Driver Down," a song featured at the end of the film. Reznor also produced and assembled the soundtrack album.^[15]

Lynch chose two songs by the German band Rammstein; "Heirate Mich" and "Rammstein." The band based the video for the latter song on this film. The majority of the video is made with clips from Lost Highway.

David Bowie's song "I'm Deranged" was played during the intro and the end credits, in different edit versions, and appears on the soundtrack.

Interpretation and allusions

Philosopher Slavoj Žižek interprets the film's bipartite structure as exploiting "the opposition of two horrors: the phantasmatic horror of the nightmarish noir universe of perverse sex, betrayal, and murder, and the (perhaps much more unsettling) despair of our drab, alienated daily life of impotence and distrust."^[16]

Reception

Lost Highway premiered on February 27, 1997 in the United States on a limited theatrical release. The film received mixed reviews, with many critics criticizing the film for its hard-to-follow plot. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 60% based on reviews from 42 critics, with an average rating of 6.1 out of 10.^[17] Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, gives the film a score of 52 based on 21 reviews.^[18]

Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert gave the film "two thumbs down" – though Lynch used this to his advantage by claiming it was "two more great reasons to see Lost Highway." This 'two thumbs down' was used in newspaper ads.^[19]

Andy Klein of the Dallas Observer considered it superior to Lynch's two previous films: "His most thoroughly surreal work since Eraserhead, this two-hour-plus fever dream is more of one piece than Fire Walk with Me and less desperate and jokey than Wild at Heart."^[20]

The film was nominated for the Grand Prix of the Belgian Syndicate of Cinema Critics.

Home media

In 2003, the film was released on DVD in Canada, through Seville Pictures, in a pan & scan format and featuring a lackluster print lifted from VHS. On March 25, 2008, it was released on DVD in the United States, through Universal Studios' Focus Features label, and presented in anamorphic widescreen in the proper 2.35:1 ratio with Dolby Digital 5.1 audio; it was also released on laserdisc in its proper aspect ratio of 2.35:1 (letterboxed). The film has been released on DVD in Australia numerous times: first by Shock Records in 2001, followed by mk2 in 2007, and again by Madman Entertainment on February 8, 2012.

See also

• Detour (1945 film)
• List of films featuring surveillance
• Lost Highway (opera), a 2003 adaptation by Olga Neuwirth and Elfriede Jelinek

References

Further reading

• Žižek, Slavoj (2000). The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime, on David Lynch's Lost Highway. University of Washington Press. ISBN 0-295-97925-9. 

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Lost Highway (film)

• Lost Highway at the Internet Movie Database
• Lost Highway at Box Office Mojo
• Lost Highway at Rotten Tomatoes
• Lost Highway at Metacritic