Blue Velvet

After Dune failed, David Lynch took a reduced fee from Dino De Laurentiis for final cut; at six million dollars it was the smallest title on the slate, and he worked almost unsupervised. One clause came with it: the film had to run two hours. His first assembly ran about four hours, so the 120 minutes you watch is a contract term as much as a choice. About 51 minutes turned up in a Seattle warehouse and reached the twenty-fifth anniversary Blu-ray in 2011, including a different college opening for Jeffrey. Frank Booth was written with Michael Ironside in mind; Harry Dean Stanton and Steven Berkoff turned it down over the violence, while Dennis Hopper seized it, saying he had to play Frank because he was Frank. Helen Mirren passed on Dorothy; Isabella Rossellini took it and her agency dropped her after test screenings. Shooting ran through autumn 1985 in Wilmington; when townspeople brought picnic baskets to watch the street scenes, police stopped open-air work. Lynch was nominated for the directing Oscar and lost to Oliver Stone for Platoon. A good fit if you accept an edit spending most of its 120 minutes sustaining discomfort, not solving the mystery. Not for anyone unwilling to sit through what two actors refused on content grounds: sustained humiliation and sexual violence.