“Creative Differences” by Tad Friend (The New Yorker, August 29, 1999)

I find this old article (from 1999) about Lynch and his usual whimsical search for making his perfect artwork (Twin Peaks first, then Mulholland Drive) very telling: mind you, it was written BEFORE the actual production was finalised, meaning that the author of the piece hadn’t seen it and the only thing he knew was that (unsuccessful) attempt to make it as TV series for ABC. Quite fascinating. (Apologies for over-quoting, but it’s worth it)

In January 4th [1999—E.T.], Lynch turned in a ninety-two-page pilot script to ABC. Like much of his work, “Mulholland Drive” was conceived as an oddball film noir, opening with some gruesome deaths and then introducing an ensemble of desirable women and baffled or misshapen men. Lynch had kept many of these strange men to himself at the pitch meeting, because, he says, Krantz worried that “getting into them would blow the deal.” The most important, in the completed script, was an edgy young director named Adam, who is forced by a pair of mobsters to cast a particular actress in his new movie. (Adam appears to be a stand-in for Lynch, who is known to fear creative interference of any form. When Lynch was living with Isabella Rossellini, he refused to allow cooked food in the house, lest the smell contaminate his work.) Adam smashes up the mobsters’ limo with a 7-iron, then hops into his silver Porsche and drives home to find his wife in bed with the pool man. He pours hot-pink paint in her jewelry box, gets cuffed around by the pool man, and must eventually take counsel from an oracular cowboy.

Meanwhile, Betty auditions for another film and gets so deeply into character that she gropes the sleazy actor reading with her. As Betty and Rita seek Rita’s true identity, they stumble across a decomposing corpse. Also, a hit man named Joe accidentally shoots a fat woman through a wall. And two pals, Dan and Herb, meet for breakfast at Denny’s to discuss Dan’s recurrent nightmare of being frightened by a man who lives behind that same Denny’s. They poke around in back, and a black-faced bum jumps out, literally frightening Dan to death.

The day after receiving the script, Jamie Tarses and Stu Bloomberg, who is co-chairman of ABC Entertainment Television Group, called Tony Krantz to green-light production. “They were giddy with excitement,” Krantz recalls. Steve Tao said, “It’s one of the fastest scripts I’ve ever read—we could _see_em> it.” ABC would eventually order pilots for seven dramatic series for the fall season, and the network expected to find room on its schedule for three or four. “Mulholland Drive” looked to be a shoo-in.

But the executives did wonder how the seemingly unconnected scenes and characters would be tied together. Lynch’s scripts, dense with dream images, don’t gather up loose ends and sweep to a close; instead, they jump around and then break off, as if jarred by an alarm clock. Although this strangeness was a selling point, it was also a cause for concern. “There’s a very fine balance between intriguing people and confusing people,” Steve Tao said. And so, two weeks after ordering the pilot episode, Bloomberg and Tarses summoned about twenty people from the network, Imagine, and Lynch’s production company to meet in ABC’s conference room. ©