We\u2019re at the end of another week here at BCB After Dark: the coolest club for night owls, early risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. So glad you could join us before we go dark until Monday. Wherever you\u2019re from, you\u2019re welcome here. The dress code is casual. We\u2019ve still got a few tables available. Bring your own beverage.<\/p>\n
BCB After Dark is the place for you to talk baseball, music, movies, or anything else you need to get off your chest, as long as it is within the rules of the site. The late-nighters are encouraged to get the party started, but everyone else is invited to join in as you wake up the next morning and into the afternoon.<\/p>\n
Last night I asked you how worried were you about Jameson Taillon\u2019s poor Spring Training<\/a>. You are all quite worried as 29 percent of put your worry level at \u201c4\u201d and another 26 put it at \u201c5\u201d, the highest level possible. Personally, I think you\u2019re all a little too worried. Although I do think a reasonable amount of worry is wise. I generally don\u2019t vote in my own polls, but I\u2019d probably be a \u201c3\u201d although closer to \u201c2\u201d than \u201c4.\u201d<\/p>\n Here\u2019s where we listen to jazz and talk movies. You\u2019re free to skip ahead if you want. I won\u2019t judge you.<\/p>\n Tonight we\u2019re having a 1975 performance from Rahsaan Roland Kirk as we watch him play two saxophones at the same time. He\u2019s joined by bassist Stanley Clarke, pianist McCoy Tyner and drummer Lenny White.<\/p>\n Tonight I\u2019m continuing to count down my thoughts on the top ten movies in the 2022 BFI Sight & Sound critics poll of the greatest films of all time.<\/a> I knew that today\u2019s film, which is number eight, was going to be a problem for me because it\u2019s one that I hold near and dear. I fear that I can\u2019t speak to it objectively. But I tried my best and I hope you appreciate the film and what I wrote about it as much as I do. But if you don\u2019t, that\u2019s OK too.<\/p>\n 8. Mulholland Drive (2001). Directed by David Lynch. Starring Naomi Watts, Laura Harring and Justin Theroux.<\/p>\n If Hollywood is the Land of Dreams, Mulholland Drive is the film of those dreams, or those nightmares. Maybe literally. Mulholland Drive is director David Lynch\u2019s masterpiece. It\u2019s been called \u201cVertigo on Valium\u201d and \u201cRaymond Chandler does Alice in Wonderland.\u201c If that sounds appealing to you, you\u2019ll love it. But if you\u2019re put off by Lynch\u2019s off-kilter approach to filmmaking, you\u2019ll probably hate it.<\/p>\n Mulholland Drive started as just a title for a never-made spinoff of Lynch\u2019s Twin Peaks television program that would have starred Sherilyn Fenn as Audrey Horne. A few years later, Lynch pitched a different project with the same title as a TV pilot to ABC. A young ingenue arrives in Los Angeles full of dreams of becoming a star. She meets up with a beautiful amnesiac with a bag full of cash and some gangsters looking for her. ABC commissioned the pilot on the basis of that pitch.<\/p>\n ABC hated the resulting pilot and unceremoniously rejected it. Lynch thought he was done with the project until a French producer asked if Lynch could save it as a feature film. While Lynch never revealed what was in the pilot and what footage he shot two years later, it\u2019s pretty clear that he tacked on an ending that completely overturned what we thought we knew about the rest of the movie. Or did it?<\/p>\n There\u2019s no way that I can tell you what Mulholland Drive is about because its a surrealist piece of filmmaking that is about both nothing and everything. Lynch never explained his films because he thought that was your job. Lynch\u2019s approach was something like a jigsaw puzzle. He gave you all the pieces but no instructions on how to put it together. The clues are there if you want to look, but there\u2019s no right answer. Everyone is expected to come up with their own interpretation. He loved nothing better than for someone to come up to him and give their thoughts on his work. He would listen and say something like \u201cThat\u2019s interesting. I\u2019m glad you got that out of it. That\u2019s not what I was thinking, but it\u2019s great.\u201d Conversely, he hated it when someone tried to definitively say something symbolized \u201cx\u201d and then tried to get Lynch to agree or disagree with that theory.<\/p>\n Mulholland Drive is about Betty Elms (Watts), a young woman from Ontario with big dreams of being a star in Hollywood. She\u2019s staying at her aunt\u2019s house while her aunt is working at a film shoot up in Canada. She meets up with Rita (Harring), who lost her memory in a car accident on Mulholland Drive. Betty finds Rita hiding in her aunt\u2019s apartment with no memory and a bag full of money and a blue key. She can\u2019t remember her name, but goes by \u201cRita\u201d from a movie poster of Gilda in the apartment with Rita Hayworth on it. Then there is Adam Kesher (Theroux), an obnoxious film director who is about to have the worst day of his life because he crossed the mobsters backing his current film.<\/p>\n Or maybe it isn\u2019t. Maybe that\u2019s all a dream. Maybe Betty is actually Diane Selwyn, a failed actress with substance abuse problems and Rita is Camilla Rhodes, a highly-successful Hollywood star. On the other hand, perhaps Diane and Camilla are the dream. Or the nightmare.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also possible that, like in Sunset Boulevard, all of it is a tale of Hollywood told from beyond the grave and that Betty\/Diane has been dead all along. (Lynch denied thinking of Sunset Boulevard during the making of Mulholland Drive, but he did admit it may have influenced him subconsciously. If you\u2019re a Twin Peaks fan, you know the character Lynch played was named Gordon Cole, which was also the name of a minor character in Sunset Boulevard.)<\/p>\n There are also several characters and stories that are introduced and dropped. One assumes these are leftover fragments of the pilot, but with Lynch, you can never be sure. In any case, Lynch left them in because he found them interesting even if they don\u2019t \u201cmean\u201d anything. Or maybe they do. Again, that\u2019s up to you. Lynch did say that one scene was influenced by his belief that one of the booths at the Denny\u2019s restaurant by his house was Satanic. If you\u2019ve seen the movie, you know the scene.<\/p>\n So if Mulholland Drive is about everything and nothing, why is it so good? For one, it has drama, humor, love, hate, music, horror and mystery. All of this is shot with Lynch\u2019s eye for both beauty and the absurd. It\u2019s one of the great films about Hollywood. The scene in Club Silencio is pure movie magic, with Rebecca Del Rio signing a Spanish-language version of Roy Orbison\u2019s \u201cCrying.\u201d Or is she singing it? Cinema is the art of illusion, and nowhere does Lynch drive that home better than in that scene.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re the type of movie goer who saw 2001: A Space Odyssey and asked \u201cwhat the hell was that about?\u201d, you\u2019re going to hate Mulholland Drive because Mulholland Drive makes 2001 look like an Indiana Jones movie in the straightforwardness of its plot. But if you love Lynch\u2019s off-kilter look and combination of humor, mystery, music and horror and don\u2019t worry yourself about what it\u2019s all supposed to \u201cmean,\u201d this is the film for you.<\/p>\n Would I put it in my top ten? This is a tricky question because if you asked me to list my favorite ten films, Mulholland Drive would certainly make the list. But if somehow I was given a real vote in the BFI Sight & Sound critics poll, I\u2019m not sure if I\u2019d vote for it. I feel that to be one of the greatest ten films of all time, a movie should be both personal and universal. Mulholland Drive is definitely personal, but I\u2019m not sure it\u2019s universal. I suppose the fact that other critics ranked it as the eighth-best film of all time speaks for its timeless qualities, but there seem to be a lot of Lynch fans in that poll. They voted Twin Peaks: the Return as the 152nd greatest movie of all time and it\u2019s not even a movie! It\u2019s a television show, for Pete\u2019s sake!<\/p>\n So would I vote for Mulholland Drive as one of the ten greatest films of all time? That\u2019s a tossup, but I\u2019d have reservations either way I voted. I certainly want to.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the trailer for the restoration of Mulholland Drive.<\/p>\n Welcome back to everyone who skips the music and movies.<\/p>\n Al wrote an article earlier this week about the new rules that they are trying out in the minor leagues this year.<\/a> So tonight we\u2019re going to ask how you feel about them?<\/p>\n