This is the girl.

Girish's reminder that Inland Empire's debut is right around the corner had me reaching for my copy of Lynch on Lynch over the weekend. (Oof, that was some wonky syntax. Deal with me. It's Monday.)

I'd forgotten that in his intro to the book's section on Mulholland Drive, editor Chris Rodley touches briefly on the film's meaning and just what exactly is going on, but is much more interested in why Lynch made it. Anyone familiar with the Twin Peaks backstory knows that Lynch and his co-creator Mark Frost spent years struggling with a Marilyn Monroe biopic before scrapping it and deciding to develope a murder-mystery soap opera. Here Rodley connects that aborted project with Drive:

At one time he agreed to direct a film, to be written by his Twin Peaks partner Mark Frost, based on Anthony Summers' book Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe. It never happened: "I loved the idea of this woman being in trouble," Lynch says, "but I didn't know if I liked it being a real story."
Marilyn was, of course, found dead in suspicious circumstances--lying on her bed in a semi-foetal position. She was supposed to have had mob connections. Hers was an unhappy childhood, and apparently she feared being genetically prone to insanity. She once noted that--as a Gemini--she was "Jekyll and Hyde. Two in one." She was even diagnosed as being a "borderline personality." "Borderlines" are emotionally unstable, excessively impulsive and dependent on external approval. They crave applause and become extremely depressed when rejected by others. Marilyn's lifelong friend, the poet Norman Rosten, is quoted at the beginning of Goddes: "Hollywood, the dream factory, has created a dream girl. Could she awaken to reality? And what was the reality? Was there a life for the girl outside the dream?"

This is the girl--probably, possibly, maybe.

Pretty perfect, huh?