Something Really Wild

Take the idea of the ear in Blue Velvet. The story begins when Jeffrey finds a human ear lying in the grass--horrible and fascinating in its detachment from an unknown body--and the camera literally enters into the ear. At the film's end, when Jeffrey has solved his dark mystery, the camera emerges back out of an ear. But this ear is attached to a body-- Jeffrey's. In the terms of dream logic, then, the whole intervening drama has taken place inside Jeffrey's head, and it is Jeffrey's unconscious problem--one having to do with a breakdown between reality (the body) and perception (the ear)--that has been resolved.

Lynch does not, of course, deal openly with abstract notions like these. He proceeds from dream images toward ideas, and he leaves those ideas up to you. Wild at Heart has a terrific example of this. In a scene that resembles the kind of nightmare in which the awful event (you killed someone, you're lost, whatever) has already happened, Sailor and Lula come upon a car accident minutes after it occurs. There's shattered glass, blood, dead bodies. And then a beautiful girl (Sherilyn Fenn) walks distractedly toward them out of the night, with blood oozing into her hair. She says nothing about the accident; she doesn't seem to notice the blood. What she's worried about is how angry her mother's going to be with her because she lost her purse. You'll have to see Wild at Heart to appreciate what a frightening, perfect microcosm of Lula's inner situation this scene is. It's the vision of a real dreamer.

Big Feelings

"Movies are an incredible thing," Lynch says. "Because it's possible to say very abstract things with this medium and to give people feelings that are really thrilling and, you know, big feelings. It can be so magical. I'm always looking for the right kind of story to allow certain things that I think film can do to happen. That's one of the reasons I love Wild at Heart. It's got some kind of strange cinema going on in it. It feels different, it's a different way of telling a story."

Lynch was having no luck with his own scripts when friend and producer Monty Montgomery turned him on to Barry Gifford's then-unpublished novel about two modern hayseed lovers on the run from an angry, pos¬sessive mom. ("Monty wanted to direct the story and he wanted me to read it to see what I thought. And I said well, what if I like it, what then? And he said, well then you can direct it. Which is kinda cool. I said I was just joking. But then I read it," Lynch laughs.) Gifford's characters were full-tilt originals, simultaneously down to earth and out to lunch in a way Lynch fell for right off--he says he mentally cast Laura Dern and Nicolas Cage on first reading. But beyond Lula and Sailor, the novel's situation appealed to him: "It's a love story where people start off being in love, which is kind of unusual. In a wild modern world, it's an indication of how it's cool to be in love. And Lula and Sailor have the perfect take on sex in the middle of a solid relationship. They are, like, so innocent and yet completely wild at the same time. It's like looking into the Garden of Eden before things went bad."

Of course, just how the Garden of Eden goes bad is the point at which Wild at Heart moves on into Lynch territory. The book is structured as an inspired dialogue of affection and irrelevance between Lula and Sailor on the road, with added monologue from the detective on their trail. Lynch set the film up with a backstory of evil, violence, and mystery that lends it, for all its gum-chewing, funky charm, an epic nightmare quality. He begins by showing us the murder Sailor committed (for which he's now on parole|; he has a good man viciously assassinated; and he includes an absolutely surreal subtext drawn from The Wizard of Oz.

Most important, Lynch gave Wild at Heart his signature psychosexual kick. He transformed Lula's mother, Marietta (played by Laura Dern's real mother, Diane Ladd), into a character who parallels Dennis Hopper's Frank Booth in Blue Velvet--Marietta Fortune's obsession with separating Lula from Sailor goes well beyond the parameters of a caring Mom. In part, Wild at Heart plays as a kind of Pink Velvet, a counterpart to Jeffrey's discoveries in Lumberton. It's the feminine side of the great, horrible adventure of facing one's sexual nature and winning liberation from the parents inside one's head. In Blue Velvet, Jeffrey cries at the memory of violent sex with mystery woman Dorothy. In Wild at Heart, Lula cries after allowing herself to be seduced by the violent Bobby Peru (Willem Dafoe).

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