David Lynch Questions

[drterror666]

1. Why did Lynch cut some of the lesbian stuff from Mulholland Drive?

2. Why did Lynch decide to digitise out the shot to the head in Wild At Heart?

Can anyone enlighten me?

[hellochas]

The head shot was removed from the US 'R' rated cut at the behest of the MPAA.

From Wiki:

Early test screenings for Wild at Heart did not go well with the strong violence in some scenes being too much. At the first test screening, eighty people walked out during a graphic torture scene involving Johnnie Farragut.[13] Lynch decided not to cut anything from the film and at the second screening one hundred people walked out during this scene. Lynch remembers, "By then, I knew the scene was killing the film. So I cut it to the degree that it was powerful but didn't send people running from the theatre".[13] In retrospect, the filmmaker said, "But that was part of what Wild at Heart was about: really insane and sick and twisted stuff going on".[8]

David Lynch accepting the Palme d'Or at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival with Isabella Rossellini, Diane Ladd, Anthony Quinn, Laura Dern, Nicolas Cage and Willem Dafoe.
The film was completed one day before it debuted at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival in the 2,400-seat Grand Auditorium. After the screening, it received "wild cheering" from the audience.[18] When Jury President Bernardo Bertolucci announced Wild at Heart as the Palme d'Or winner at the awards ceremony,[3] the boos almost drowned out the cheers with film critic Roger Ebert leading the vocal detractors.[18][19] Barry Gifford remembers that there was a prevailing mood that the media was hoping Lynch would fail. "All kinds of journalists were trying to cause controversy and have me say something like ‘This is nothing like the book’ or ‘He ruined my book.’ I think everybody from Time magazine to What’s On In London was disappointed when I said ‘This is fantastic. This is wonderful. It’s like a big, dark, musical comedy’".[8] The MPAA told Lynch that the version of Wild at Heart screened at Cannes would receive an X rating in North America unless cuts were made, as the NC-17 was not in effect in 1990, at the time of the film's release.[18] The director was contractually obligated to deliver an R-rated film.[18] He made one change in the scene where a character shoots his own head off with a shotgun. Gun smoke was added to tone down the blood and hide the removal of the character's head from his body. Foreign prints were not affected.[18] The Region 1 DVD from MGM contains this altered take of the shotgun scene.

[hellochas]

1. Why did Lynch cut some of the lesbian stuff from Mulholland Drive?

I think these scenes were just darkened weren't they?

[drterror666]

He made one change in the scene where a character shoots his own head off with a shotgun. Gun smoke was added to tone down the blood and hide the removal of the character's head from his body. Foreign prints were not affected.[18] The Region 1 DVD from MGM contains this altered take of the shotgun scene.

From what I've read, the latest DVD's all contain the altered headshot. I have the original video, so I know what the scene is like. Damn the MPAA, they're worse than the BBFC at times! When I researched, it looks like the original Universal DVD, not the new SE version, contains the original headshot, but the picture isn't as good as the SE version.

Hmm, which one to get?

[drterror666]

I think these scenes were just darkened weren't they?

I'm not sure. I thought I read somewhere that Lynch thought the love scenes, especially one in particular, were too raunchy and he cut the particularly offending one out, never to be seen again. Of course, this could be my memory mixing things up.

Anyone else got any ideas?

[TheRoadWarrior]

The lesbian scenes are in my dvd, possibly darkened, but if I hadn't read that fact here I'd just say that the scenes are consistent, tonally, with the rest of the film. But all that aside, I'm wondering now which 'version' I have on dvd.

I'm aware Lynch didn't allow the master scenes to be separated in the dvd because he felt like that would shed light on his own interpretation of the film.

It doesn't help much if you wish to forward to this or that quickly...