02 February, 2007

Going Underground: Mulholland Drive TV Pilot (1)

While many folks are familiar with David Lynch's 2001 opus Mulholland Drive, few people are aware that it started life as a television project. It was to be Lynch's foray back into TV after the failure of On the Air. Lynch made a pitch to ABC in August 1997 and the network commissioned a 2-hour pilot episode. Shooting began in February and a 125-minute cut was delivered to ABC who rejected it the following month. The network found it to be too slow and confusing so Lynch scaled it back to 94 minutes. ABC found this version too violent in light of the Columbine shootings and rejected the show for the fall '99 season. Lynch went back and shot an ending for European television as he did with Twin Peaks. Then in early 2000, the French company Studio Canal Plus convinced Lynch to turn it into a feature. Studio Canal bought the pilot from ABC and another $7 million to transform the pilot into the 147-minute feature length film with which most people are familiar.

Earlier this month I acquired a copy of the 94-minute version of the pilot and I sat down one night and watched it. This viewing was followed by one of the film. My notes are copious and only fairly legible. For some goofy reason my copy of the pilot will not play in my computer and so I feared that this entry would never happen because I couldn't get screenscrapes. However, I found what you see here on a page up at DavisDVD that is no longer there. It is rather lucky because the reviewer there has a better copy of the pilot than mine. While the reviewer and I picked up on most of the same stuff, he or she noticed some things that I didn't and vice versa. Once the DavisDVD site is updated once again with their take on the pilot and you can read it, you'll notice that my contributions here have to do with the soundtrack and editing. I want to also mention that I'm assuming readers are familiar with the film.

The differences between the pilot and the film are noticeable from the start. The film begins with a jitterbug dance sequence followed by one showing a bed with red sheets with the camera closing in on a pillow and fading to black. Both of these scenes are absent from the pilot and were filmed in 2000. At this point the two versions converge with title sequences but there are some minor differences. Firstly, the titles in the pilot fade in in the middle of the screen and then move upwards as if they were street signs being passed.



The film, having to squeeze more titles in, features additional footage of LA whereas the pilot sticks to shots of the car driving through the night.

The car crash scene in the pilot features a couple different shots and omits one of the kids racing. In the film, the man in the passenger seat says, "Stop here" and we cut to the kids racing. However, in the pilot, the car stops and Rita is told to get out of the car before we see the kids. The additional shots are of Rita locking the door and of her assailant looking in at her through the window.



At this point the cars crash.

Next a dazed Rita makes her way from the scene of the accident to Franklin Street where a police car with lights flashing passes her. The car's sirens are heard in the pilot but not in the film. Also present here is a brief burst of what sounds like a dramatic score from a 1950s movie. After Rita falls asleep underneath a bush, we cut back to the accident. The dialogue between Detectives McKnight and Domgaard is a bit longer here than in the film with mention of the blind corner and someone who witness the kids drag racing. The POV shot of McKnight looking at the ground before turning his gaze upwards to the city is also a tad longer here.



The above shot comes next in the pilot but is missing from the film and it shifts time in the story to the next day when Rita steals into Aunt Ruth's apartment. At this point in the film we get the scene at Winkie's Diner with Herb, Dan, and the freaky bum out back in the alley. This scene is absent from the pilot although it was shot for it. I'm not sure if it was included in the original 2+ hour version or not but I suspect that it was.

The pilot then cuts to some establishing shots of LAX that are not in the film.



The speaker intones: "Attention travelers, you are not required to give money to solicitors. This airport does not sponsor their activities. Thank you." This scene unfolds in both the pilot and film pretty much the same except that the film has the scene of the old couple in the back of the limo, which wasn't shot until 2000. Between the Winkie's Diner scene and Betty at the airport in the film, we see Rita sleeping, Mr. Roque calling someone and saying, "The girl is still missing", and the chain of phone calls which ends with a shot of a phone sitting next to a red lamp. This scene appears later in the pilot and slightly altered.

Going back to the pilot, another shot of the Hollywood sign follows the LAX scene and we follow Betty as she arrives at her aunt's apartment complex and meets Coco. There is an extra shot of the dog feces here that ABC felt was inappropriate and it never returned in the film. As Betty wanders around the apartment, there is some music playing that I describe as "sparkly" in my notes. This is omitted from the film as is a shot of her touching the furniture.



After Betty discovers Rita, the pilot then cuts to the scene with Joe and Ed in Ed's office which comes much later in the film. The dialogue here is truncated with the small talk about times being tough omitted. Present here but missing from the film is a short sequence with the fat woman that Joe has accidentally shot yelling "Get away!" forcing Joe to wrestle her onto the floor again.



Next comes the boardroom scene. We see Adam arriving whereas we don't in the film. There is some extra dialogue present here between Adam and his manager too. Luigi curses the espresso in Italian instead of saying, "Shit" as in the film. Plus the shots of Mr. Roque watching the proceedings is absent here.



Also note that the photo of Camilla Rhode is different.



We get to see the Castigliane brothers leave in the pilot and there is more of Adam to be had with him yelling about how his picture will be locked away in a vault so no one can touch it. He leaves and then proceeds to bash the Castigliane brothers' limo with his golf club. The limo-bashing scene is visually the same in both versions but the pilot includes some jarring orchestral hits on the soundtrack.

The pilot then cuts back to Betty and Rita at the apartment. Betty is lying on a couch talking to her aunt about Rita. A Steadicam shot leads us to the bedroom where Rita wakes up clutching her head. Betty comes in and comforts her. They then rifle through Rita's purse and find lots of cash and the blue key.

The scene fades to black. Time for commercials.

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