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
Music by	Angelo Badalamenti
Cinematography	Peter Deming
Editing by	Mary Sweeney
Studio	Ciby 2000 Asymmetrical Productions
Distributed by	October Films
Release date(s)	January 25, 1997 (1997-01-25)
Running time	135 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$15 million
Box office	$3,675,201

Lost Highway is a 1997 American psychological thriller film with elements of neo-noir. Written and directed by David Lynch, the film stars Bill Pullman, Patricia Arquette, Balthazar Getty and Robert Loggia. Lynch co-wrote the screenplay with Barry Gifford, whose novel served as the basis for Lynch's Wild at Heart (1990). The film features the last film appearances of Richard Pryor, Jack Nance, and Robert Blake.

Lynch conceived Lost Highway after the critical and commercial disappointment 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, the film has developed a cult following.

In 2003 the film was adapted into an opera.

Plot

Fred Madison (Bill Pullman), a Los Angeles saxophonist, receives a message from an unknown man on the intercom of the front door of his house saying, "Dick Laurent is dead." When he looks out his window the streets outside his house are empty and faint police sirens are heard in the distance.

Fred then plays his saxophone at a nightclub that night, but his wife Renee (Patricia Arquette) does not join him. Fred calls his house during a break, but she does not answer. Arriving home later, Fred sees Renee asleep in bed and when he later asks her where she was, she tells him that she never left the house all evening. One night, after the two have sex, Fred sees Renee's face as that of a pale old man. The next morning, there is a mysterious package that arrives on the front doorstep containing a videotape of their home. As the days pass, more tapes arrive, showing the interior of their house and even shots of them in bed sleeping. Fred and Renee call the police, but the two detectives Al and Ed (John Roselius and Louis Eppolito) say that there's nothing they can do about it but agree to keep in touch.

That evening, Fred and Renee go out to a party held by Andy (Michael Massee), a band manager friend of Renee. There, Fred meets a Mystery Man (Robert Blake), wearing all black clothing who looks like the face Fred had seen on Renee some nights before, and he tells Fred that he is at his house right now. Fred phones his house and the voice of the Mystery Man answers while he's standing right in front of Fred. Fred walks away and asks Andy who the Mystery Man is and is told that he is a friend of Dick Laurent. Back home the next morning, another tape arrives and Fred watches it alone. To his horror it contains images of him killing Renee. He is then arrested for her murder. Tried, found guilty and sentenced to death, Fred is locked away on death row. Shortly after arriving, Fred is plagued by frequent headaches and is perplexed by strange visions of the Mystery Man, a burning cabin in the desert and a strange man driving down a dark highway.

One morning, during a routine check of the cells, the prison guards are shocked to find that the man in Fred's cell is not Fred. The man is discovered to be Pete Dayton (Balthazar Getty), a young auto mechanic. Since Pete has committed no crime, he is released into the care of his parents Bill and Candace (Gary Busey and Lucy Butler), a former motorcycle gang couple, and taken home to their house in Van Nuys; at the same time, Pete is being followed by two detectives named Hank and Lou (Carl Sundstrom and John Soiari) to find out why and how Pete ended up in Fred Madison's cell. Pete goes out that evening with his friends and his girlfriend Sheila (Natasha Gregson Wagner). The next day, Pete returns to work at the garage, where he is welcomed back by the owner Arnie (Richard Pryor) and veteran mechanic Phil (Jack Nance). Pete is called on by Mr. Eddy (Robert Loggia), a charming but hot-tempered gangster, to fix his Mercedes 6.9. Mr. Eddy takes Pete for a drive where Pete witnesses him wave a tailgater on, then ram into the tailgater's car, after which Mr. Eddy and his two cohorts attack and beat up the driver. Pete goes out that evening with Sheila, who questions him on his moody behavior; they have a brief fight, but end the night by having sex.

The next day, Mr. Eddy returns with his beautiful mistress, Alice Wakefield (Arquette in a dual role), and his Cadillac for Pete to repair. At the end of Pete's shift, Alice returns to the garage and invites him out for dinner. Soon, Pete and Alice begin a secret liaison, meeting at run-down motels every night. Alice begins to fear that Mr. Eddy suspects her and Pete of seeing each other and gets Pete to agree to a plan to steal money from her friend Andy so they can leave town. After being confronted by his worried parents and receiving a threatening visit from Mr. Eddy and his associates at the garage, Pete enters Andy's house through a door left unlocked by Alice and, while searching the house, discovers a projector playing a porn film featuring her. Pete ambushes Andy and accidentally kills him, and he and Alice escape with the money. Arriving at a cabin in the desert, Alice reveals to Pete that Mr. Eddy is actually a porn producer named Dick Laurent and he forced her to do the films. Alice then seduces Pete and says, "You'll never have me."

Pete suddenly transforms back into Fred Madison, who searches the desert cabin and meets the Mystery Man again with a video camera and tells Fred that Alice is actually Renee, and that if she said her name is Alice, then she is lying. Fred drives to the Lost Highway Hotel, where Mr. Eddy and Renee are having sex, and waits for Renee to exit the motel. After Renee leaves, Fred breaks into Mr. Eddy's room, grabs him and takes him away in his Mercedes to the desert, where Fred beats him up. The Mystery Man suddenly appears with a portable TV and shows Mr. Eddy that Fred knows he and Renee have been having an affair. 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 Mercedes. In the final scene, Fred drives to his old house, buzzes the intercom and says "Dick Laurent is dead" — the message that he received earlier. The two detectives, Al and Ed, appear when they see Fred standing at the front door of his old house. Seeing the two detectives moving in to arrest him, Fred runs back to his car and drives off with the detectives in close pursuit. As it gets dark, Fred speeds down the highway pursued by the police in the midst of another transformation.

Cast

• Bill Pullman as Fred Madison
• Patricia Arquette as Renee Madison/Alice Wakefield
• Balthazar Getty as Pete Dayton
• Robert Loggia as Mr. Eddy/Dick Laurent
• Robert Blake as The Mystery Man
• Gary Busey as Bill Dayton, Pete's father
• Lucy Butler as Candace Dayton, Pete's mother
• Michael Massee as Andy
• Richard Pryor as Arnie
• Natasha Gregson Wagner as Sheila
• John Roselius as Al
• Louis Eppolito as Ed
• Jack Nance as Phil
• Scott Coffey as Teddy
• Al Garrett as Carl
• Giovanni Ribisi as Steve "V"
• Henry Rollins as Guard Henry
• Mink Stole as Forewoman (voice only)
• Marilyn Manson and Twiggy Ramirez as Porn stars

Blake, who portrayed The Mystery Man in the film, was responsible for the look and style of his character. One day, he decided to cut his hair short, part it in the middle and apply Kabuki white make-up on his face. He then put on a black outfit and approached Lynch, who loved what he had done. 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 as what would eventually become Mr. Eddy's road rage scene. Loggia, years later, received a phone call from Lynch requesting his performance for this film.

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. 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. 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." 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. 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." 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." Gifford describes the Mystery Man as "a product of Fred's imagination" and is "the first visible manifestation of Fred's madness."

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. 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."

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. 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. The interior shots of the "Lost Highway Hotel" were filmed at the Amargosa Hotel in Death Valley, which is believed to be haunted.

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.

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.

Music

Main article: Lost Highway (soundtrack)

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. 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. Reznor agreed and Lynch traveled to New Orleans, where the musician was living, and together they created music that accompanied the scenes where Fred and Renee watch the mysterious video tapes, a brand new song called "The Perfect Drug", and "Driver Down", featured at the end of the film. Reznor also produced and assembled the soundtrack album.

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.

Interpretation and allusions

The storyline is similar to Ambrose Bierce's story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge", in which a prisoner is hanged, while imagining escaping and traveling home.

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".

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 panning the film for its hard-to-follow plot. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 59% of 41 film critics have given the film a positive review, with a rating average of 6.1 out of 10.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.

Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert gave the film "two thumbs down" — though Lynch used this to his advantage by claiming it was "two good reasons to go and see Lost Highway." This 'two thumbs down' was used in newspaper ads.

However, the film also received critical acclaim, with the Dallas Observer claiming it to be better than both Wild at Heart (1990) and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992): "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."

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

Home media

The film made its official American DVD debut on March 25, 2008 through Universal Studios' Focus Features label. The film is presented in anamorphic widescreen in the proper 2.35:1 ratio with Dolby Digital 5.1 audio.

See also

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

References

Notes

• 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

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