"I think this movie is about a dream," opines actress Laura Elana
Harring of Mulholland Drive. "The question is whose
dream?"
Clearly that of visionary writer/director
David Lynch, the twisted and brazenly original mind behind Blue
Velvet, Wild at Heart, and Twin Peaks. But Harring is
more specifically referring to the pair of characters played by herself
and Naomi Watts, whom share a surprising, steamy lesbian affair during
the film.
Harring plays a raven-haired beauty stricken
with amnesia when an execution -- hers -- goes wrong thanks to an
automobile collision. Completely disoriented, stumbling through
Hollywood, she ends up in a vacated apartment, where she's soon joined
by amicable actress wannabe Betty (Watts). Adopting the name Rita (which
she appropriates from a movie poster), this mysterious woman and Betty
become fast friends, the latter determined to help figure out her past
-- and why she's carrying a bag of loot and a bizarre blue key.
As Rita's identity unravels, and their
friendship grows more intimate, so do a number of threatening scenarios
for the gals and other folk, including a hot young director (Justin
Teroux) in search of a lead actress. Add numerous horrific, humorous set
pieces, supporting characters (including a mulleted Billy Ray Cyrus),
and sudden drops down the rabbit's hole and you have a Lynchian
classic.
Mulholland Drive
was originally
conceived in 1999 as Lynch's return to television series land, a reunion
he was looking forward to because of the medium's deep, open-ended
storytelling. And like he did with Twin Peaks, Lynch could mix
the eerie and bizarre with darkly humorous on a weekly basis.
Unfortunately, ABC rejected Mulholland's $8 million dollar,
two-hour pilot once produced. Supposedly, executives found it too slowly
paced and violent.
Happily, destiny intervened after a number of false re-starts. A
pair of Pierres stepped in with French financing, Lynch reconceived his
work as a feature film, added 18 pages worth of fiercely guarded,
top-secret material, and again contacted the anxious Harring, who
describes Mulholland's two-year journey from planned TV series to
theatrical feature as a "roller coaster ride."
"David said 'you call Naomi and tell her this
is the last time, it's really going to be made into a movie,'" Harring
recalls. "And [when I did] Naomi said, 'If it doesn't come true this
time I just can't deal with it emotionally any more!'"
Both actresses soon convened at the
director's house where he reassured them Mulholland Drive would
finally see the light of day -- with a few modifications.
"David held out his hands and said,
'Mulholland Drive is going to be an international feature film,
girls -- and there's going to be nudity,'" Harring adds,
laughing.
Indeed, Mulholland Drive contains some
deliciously sexy moments between Rita and Betty, whose lives may or may
not have been previously romantically entwined depending on how one
interprets Lynch's Alice in Wonderland-esque twists to the
narrative.
"If you see it a couple of times, which you
have to, you get it," Harring insists. "There's a linear story there. In
fact, I've already gotten two or three."
Harring was born in Mexico, moved to Texas at
10, and attended boarding school in Switzerland. Fascinated with
precious stones since childhood, this aspiring gemologist's life took an
artistic detour when she was spotted during a beauty pageant,
subsequently landing a role opposite the late Raul Julia in The
Alamo: Thirteen Days to Glory. Appearances in Little Nicky,
Exit to Eden, and the not-quite-critically-acclaimed TV movie
The Elian Gonzalez Story followed.
"I remember a lot of the critics
were expecting cheesy," she admits of the latter project, "and the only
problem with that movie was that it wasn't cheesy enough."
The opportunity to work with Lynch -- whose
The Elephant Man "opened my heart more than anything else" -- was
met with enthusiasm, Harring says. And her impression of the edgy, often
absurdist auteur, whom on the set of Blue Velvet once picked up a
gory prosthetic ear and started yelling "Hello!" into it?
"To me he's the most normal person," she
affirms. "More normal than normal. But when he starts talking and says
'I'll be ding-danged!' you think he's making it up. He's not! He's
trapped in a different era. I believe he still thinks we're in the
50s."
Harring says that Lynch used a "lot of
metaphors and similes" whilst directing her. "Coming out of the car
accident, he said 'walk like a broken doll,'" she recalls. "I would
pretend I was hurt, but he wanted a broken doll."
As for his technique while directing the love
scenes, "it was kind of cute," Harring confesses with a grin. "One time
he went, 'Don't be afraid to touch each other's breasts now.' Other than
that he kept it rolling, he wasn't very technical."
Harring deems Rita a mixture of light and
dark, and she smilingly admits to identifying with more of the latter
quality. "Playing a bad girl is always so much fun," she chirps.
As for playing a lesbian, Harring insists she
actually doesn't regard either Rita or Betty as Sapphic sisters.
"The love scene just happened in my eyes,"
she opines. "Rita's very grateful for the help Betty's given [her] so
I'm saying goodbye and goodnight to her, thank you, from the bottom of
my heart, I kiss her and then there's just an energy that takes us
[over]. Of course I have amnesia so I don't know if I've done it before,
but I don't think we're really lesbians." An acknowledged heterosexual
in real life, Harring nonetheless acknowledges having experienced
intimate brushes with female friends, and therefore could relate to her
not-necessarily-de-facto-dyke character's sexually bonding with
Watts'.
"I know that feeling of intensive love," she
affirms. "I did have one girlfriend, she was much older than I was,
really beautiful. One time she got very, very drunk, and whispered in my
ear, in Spanish, 'I'm going to teach you a little decadence.' She said
it real close; she kind of slobbered on my ear. I went 'omigod, is she
making a pass at me?' It [didn't become] sexual, but I'm sure that when
you're best friends with someone it can."
Of course, being able to experience the other
sides of life is one reason Harring enjoys her current thespian
occupation. "I can live all of this," she glows. "You can play meanies,
explore these sides of yourself, and you get paid for it. Normally you
[endure] consequences [for your actions], but in movie making you
don't."
From Watermark
<
BACK