drive, she said

mulholland drive was always a sort of creepy place when i was growing up.

i could bike or drive on over to it and wend my way through the curves which cut through the l.a. desert hillsides. on my side of town, the road started in "that" los angeles suburbia which was projected at 24 frames per second as spielberg movies about white, middle class families interacting with the supernatural or alien. this definitely didn't help my pre-pubescent fantasy-fueled paranoia. it still doesn't.

mulholland drive's claim to fame was that it was where roman polanski parked his limo as he seduced a 13 year old girl. he was put on trial and convicted, but then fled the country in 1977, as far as i understand, he still hasn't returned. despite the fact that it's creepy he was trying to seduce the 13 year old, it's even creepier to know that his pregnant wife was murdered by charles manson in 1969. director of chinatown, rosemary's baby and the magic christian as well as some 30 odd other movies, polanski has certainly added to the freakiness of mulholland drive.

the further up i would drive, the more tumbleweeds i'd pass. every now and then, the rare wild animal would peer at me from the side of the road or slither across the dirt. rattlesnakes, coyotes, lizards and other... animals. nobody ever thinks about the animals when they think of los angeles.

the rich flee to the hills.

you can see this happen on mulholland drive. the higher you go, the stale, stagnant architecture of suburbia eventually thins itself out and eventually, the houses begin to disappear behind long driveways and gates. the rich hide in their individually designed compounds, with pools, hot tubs and all the amenities your average movie star needs. if you drive up far enough, you can almost believe that there is no such thing as smog.

i don't know what i can say about david lynch's mulholland drive that you wouldn't already know or that you would want to know. i don't want to give anything away about the plot, but on the other hand, i don't think it would make any more sense to you if i did say anything. i guess all i really want to tell you is that it's everything that you would expect out of a david lynch movie: sex, death and surreality.

go see it, tell me what you think happened.

Embarcardero Theater
R - 2 hrs 26 mins
12:10am, 1:00pm, 3:20, 4:30, 6:45, 8:00, 9:50

<10.25.01>

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