Mulholland Drive

David Lynch’s 2001 film began as a television accident. The pilot was shot for ABC over six weeks in February 1999 and ran ninety minutes. The network objected to the nonlinear story, to Laura Harring and Naomi Watts being too old, to Ann Miller’s character smoking, and to a close shot of dog mess. StudioCanal bought the pilot and paid for it to become a feature. Most of the new material was shot in October 2000, more than a year and a half later, and that work supplies the Rita and Betty relationship and everything after the blue box. The question was filmed in 1999 and the answer in 2000. Lynch cast both leads from photographs and a half hour meeting each, having not seen their earlier work. At Cannes he shared the directing prize with Joel Coen. He refused chapter stops on the disc, on the grounds that a film is a continuum, and later admitted in the Criterion booklet that the distributor pressured him into writing the ten clues on the DVD insert. Worth your time if you can read the man recounting a dream at Winkie’s and the espresso spitting producer getting full scenes and then never returning as pilot residue rather than a flaw. Not for a viewer who needs every clue to fit a lock.