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Trivia / Mulholland Dr.

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  • Acting in the Dark: Lynch left his cast in the dark about the meaning of the plot and their roles in it.
  • Acting for Two: Geno Silva appears as both Cookie, the hotel receptionist, and the Club Silencio MC.
    • Also, most of the rest of the cast of the movie.
  • All-Star Cast: Starring Naomi Watts, Laura Elena Harring, Justin Theroux, and Mark Pellegrino with supporting roles filled out by Robert Forster, Lee Grant, Dan Hedaya, James Karen, Ann Miller, Marcus Graham, Rita Taggart, Chad Everett, and Billy Ray Cyrus.
  • Auteur License: Lynch was given more-or-less complete free rein to make the film however he saw fit, first under ABC while it was still a television pilot, than under StudioCanal while it was being completed in its current iteration.
  • Channel Hop: The film was originally shot for the ABC network and financed by Touchstone Pictures and Imagine Entertainment. After ABC passed on it, director David Lynch decided to rework it and got French production company StudioCanal to buy the film and finance the shooting of new footage. Universal ended up releasing the film as part of their relationship with StudioCanal (both companies were owned by French conglomerate Vivendi at the time).
  • Creator Thumbprint: There are a few subtle references to Lynch's earlier film Blue Velvet.
    • In Blue Velvet, Dorothy lives in an apartment building called the Deep River building. In Mulholland Dr., Betty is from Deep River, Ontario.
    • In Blue Velvet, Ben lip-syncs Roy Orbison's "In Dreams". In Mulhollad Dr., Rebekah Del Rio lip-syncs a recording of herself singing a Spanish translation of Roy Orbison's "Crying".
  • Deleted Scenes: Around half-an-hour of footage was trimmed by Lynch and editor Mary Sweeney to shorten the runtime:
    • An additional scene of the Police Detectives, here discussing the previous night's limo crash in a police station.
    • An extended conversation between Joe and Billy at the hot dog stand, where Joe presses for more information about the missing woman and the hot dogs being served.
    • A scene of one of Castigliane's goons, Kenny, arriving at Adam's house and questioning his gardner as to his presence.
    • A scene of Betty arriving on the studio lot and meeting Martha Johnson outside the producer's office and Wally coming out the front door to meet her and take her inside.
    • An extended introduction to Mr. Roque, following Vincent Darby as he travels into a large office building to request an appointment with his receptionist.
    • During the scene where Mr. Roque relays the message 'the girl is still missing' to various unseen associates, when the unseen man with the hairy arm on the yellow telephone rings his contact, the original scene was not of a telephone under a lamp with a red shade, but a white speaker phone on a bright blue table and a woman's hand (Camila Rhodes?) answering it, but cutting away before she says anything.
    • An extended scene of Adam meeting with the executives, with him first arriving holding a iron golf club demanding why he has been called away from the golf course to this meeting and Ray giving him a vague explanation to the movie he's filming. The scene ends with the Castigliane brothers leaving first and Adam yelling at the executives over them rigging the casting of the lead actress and about the film being kept locked up in the studio safe.
    • A bit scene where after the bruiser Kenny knocks unconscious Adam's wife and the pool man, he walks around Adam's house and sees Adam's wife's jewelry in the kitchen sink which is overflowing with water. Kenny then is shown breaking all of Adam's golf clubs as payback for trashing the limo and then leaves telling the gangsters in the back of the limo that Adam's not home.
    • There is another scene introducing Wilkins, who lives in a studio loft above Betty Elms's apartment where Adam phones him just before his meeting with the Cowboy and telling Wilkins about finding his wife in bed with the pool man, and asks Wilkins if he could come over to stay for a while since he has no money. Wilkins agrees, and after hanging up, he yells at his dog crouched in a corner about relieving himself all over the place.
  • Edited for Syndication: Lynch himself recut Betty and Rita's sex scene on the film's home video release, adding a blur effect to the latter's crotch because he disapproved of nude pictures of Laura Harring being distributed on the Internet.
  • Enforced Method Acting: A mild example in Bonnie Aarons' case — she worked out the strange, almost lovestruck expression she would have on her face with Lynch beforehand, but she was actually looking at him "all dreamy-eyed" because she found him so handsome, and had difficulty replicating it on camera. The take used in the film is one where he agreed to stick his head out so she'd see his face and smile.
  • Executive Meddling: The movie was intended as a television pilot, which would have ended about when Rita cuts and dyes her hair. The networks balked and so Lynch re-worked it into a movie.
  • Fake Nationality: Briton Naomi Watts and Aussie Melissa George as the Canadian Betty Elms ( and later as the Canadian Diane Selwyn) and the American Camilla Rhodes, respectively.
  • In Memoriam: The movie is dedicated to Jennifer Syme, who worked as an assistant to director David Lynch at the time. Syme died in a car crash in April 2001, before the movie was released.
  • Life Imitates Art: Shortly after the filming wrapped, Naomi Watts actually lost her health insurance and faced eviction from her apartment. She was ready to quit acting and leave Los Angeles, but her close friend, Nicole Kidman, talked her into staying until after this film was released.
  • Meta Casting: Much like her characters, Naomi Watts was struggling before being cast in this film.
  • Mid-Development Medium Shift: It was originally going to be a TV series.
  • Old Shame: The original television pilot for David Lynch. His opinion of this version isn't as fond as his opinion of the film itself, finding the film's focus on the Betty/Rita and Diane/Camilla romances to be much more compelling than the increasingly complicated plot he had originally envisioned. It's no wonder why this version is hard to find.
  • Star-Making Role: For Naomi Watts. Before this movie, she'd been struggling in small roles and forgettable rom-coms. The most successful project she'd been involved in was probably Babe: Pig in the City, on which she'd done some voice work (as "Additional Voices"). Then David Lynch cast her as the idealistic Betty and the desperate Diane, and no matter what else reviewers thought of the film, she was universally praised.
  • Throw It In!: Lynch included Richard Green's (The Magician) prep - that first moment of him standing there for a couple of seconds was shot before the actor knew they were rolling. Richard Green said he was surprised to see it when the movie premiered.
  • What Could Have Been:
    • Along with the film originally being intended as a pilot, Disney was supposed to release it (under their Touchstone Pictures label). However, they didn't like the final cut and ended up dropping it. Universal and Studio Canal ended up releasing it together. In a 2014 interview, Sherilyn Fenn mentioned that the idea for the TV pilot originated as a spin-off film for Audrey Horne.
    • Additional information relating to the TV pilot reveals that the main plot wasn't going to be a dream, the Winkies bum may have had a larger role, Adam Kesher would have become a neighbor to Betty and all the mysteries surrounding Rita and her conspirators would give way to further mysteries.
    • The "Winkie's" diner was originally scripted to be a "Denny's" (a real-life diner chain), but was changed likely due to licensing issues.

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