Misunderstanding Lynch: Wild at Heart, Part 2
Willem Dafoe has never been scarier. That's saying a lot.
Note: At this point in the narrative I gave up on trying to remember everyone’s names. There’s a lot going on here. I believe Mr. Lynch would forgive me. If it distresses you, feel free to send me actual character’s names/actors and I’ll update accordingly.
Joining Mr. Hat is a stunning blonde woman, Perdita (Isabella Rosselini). She is dressed in a black dress. On one foot she wears a high heel. On the other she wears a badass black platform boot. She holds a cane.
There’s a man dressed like every serial killer from the seventies who stands way too close to her.
In the back of the fancy dinner party, a burst of flames erupts from the mouth of a fire-eater.
Zoom in on painted green waves. The camera pans up. A blue glittering dress appears. There's a woman on the stage, holding a microphone and swaying to the band behind her. She sings ‘I Fell For You Baby Like A Bomb.’
Lula and Sailor chill out at a bar while Sailor tells a story about sticking his hand between a girl’s legs. He starts to describe sex with this woman. Lula is into it. They go back to the motel for more sex.
Zoom in on the flame as Sailor lights another cigarette.
Fade to the dark highway. The image plays over Sailor and Lula having more sex. Flashes of neon light overlay their bodies.
They have a lot of sex.
From a lot of different angles.
Fade to Lula and Sailor in an elevator at what appears to be a casino. He takes her hand and places it over his heart. It’s very sweet.
Fade back to Sailor and Lula arranging flowers and baking bread.
I’m kidding they’re having another post-coital chat.
Lula rests a lit candle on Sailor’s chest. Sailor says there are ‘more than a few bad ideas going around out there.’
Sometimes Sailor is very wise. Accidentally.
Cut to Marietta. She’s got a neon pink ribbon tied in a bow in her air. She’s still in front of the mirror. There’s pink lipstick smeared all over the lower portion of her face. Dramatic music plays in the background.
Cut back to Lula and Sailor, being comparatively normal. The contrast is wickedly funny.
Lula tells a story about bad ideas: Her cousin Dell (Crispin Hellion Glover) was obsessed with Christmas. He’d ‘scream and holler’ when he was told it wasn’t Christmas. Dell said aliens were coming to ruin Christmas and could control the weather.
Crispin Hellion Glover is his actual, legal name.
Cut to Dell on the floor of a wood paneled home. There’s a black rubber glove surrounded by tape measures to create a square. Dell screams, using a wooden stick to try and reach the glove. Lightning flashes.
This is the best description you’re going to get at this point.
Dell would stay up all night making sandwiches. Cut to Dell in the kitchen in the middle of the night, objectively making sandwiches.
He’s chopped up a lot of bread into very small pieces.
Lula has a loose definition of a ‘sandwich.’ At best you could make the little finger sandwiches that caused so much strife in This is Spinal Tap.
When Dell’s mother comes into the darkened kitchen, night mask on her face, he screams ‘I’m making my lunch.’
Personally, I’d leave him to it. It’s a big knife. You can get more bread.
They found cockroaches in Dell’s underwear. Oh, and he stuck one up his butt.
Why was no one helping this poor guy?
Dell disappeared. That’s the end of the story.
I’m going to believe Dell ended up in Twin Peaks.
Cut to a nature show featuring hyenas ripping an animal to pieces. Johnnie lies on a hotel bed smoking a cigarette. He barks at the TV. I rewound to make sure.
Her hands stained pink with what a lot of what I imagine is very expensive lipstick, Marietta calls Johnnie in a state. Her whole face is painted pink. Marietta tells Johnnie she’s done something real bad, but she’s coming to New Orleans to tell him in person. She swears she won’t tell him over the phone.
The fact that he doesn’t have a full-blown panic attack upon hearing this is proof Johnnie doesn’t have anxiety. Johnnie insists he’s on Sailor and Lula’s trail and needs to leave immediately. Marietta makes him swear to stay at the hotel and wait for her. After they hang up, Marietta runs to the bathroom and is violently ill.
Johnnie finds a mint on his pillow.
On the television, vultures feast on the carcasses left by the hyenas.
Marietta sits on the floor covered in lipstick and vomit. Camera pans to her bare legs and black shoes.
Lula dances in the black convertible as Sailor drives. She wears a red dress and smokes a cigarette. The wind blows around her like she’s in an eighties hair video. An old man at a gas station bops along to the music. Blows her a kiss when they leave. It’s a wonderfully beautiful, joyous scene in the midst of blood and violence.
Lula drives so Sailor can rest in the back. The drive down a desert highway in the sun. Lula fucks around with the radio.
Lula hears a news story about a man accused of having sex with a corpse, then another story about crocodiles eating human corpses.
Upset, Lula pulls over and jumps out of the car. She demands Sailor change the radio to music. As he flips through the channels you can hear words like ‘rape’ and ‘mutilated,’ before Sailor finds a killer punk rock station.
Lula and Sailor thrash to punk rock on the side of the road. It’s unhinged and one of the most beautiful scenes in the whole movie. They stand on the sun-drenched desert, posed like it’s the cover of a cheesy romance,
Marietta and Johnnie at a very fancy restaurant. Marietta is wearing a normal amount of lipstick in the place you would normally expect to see lipstick on a person.
Marietta begs to hit the road right after dinner. Johnnie demands to know what the situation is. He asks if Santos is involved. Marietta swears up and down that he isn’t,
Marietta is very trustworthy.
Johnnie and Marietta talk about ‘Uncle Pooch,’ the man who raped Lula as a kid and introduced Santos to Marietta and someone named Clyde.
We don’t talk about Clyde.
Johnnie is so in love. Marietta has this man’s dick wrapped around her finger.
That was uncalled for. I apologize.
An old woman dances in and out of a spotlight as the band plays on.
Lula and Sailor are somehow still driving. It’s night. Sailor tells Lula that before they were together he knew her father.
They do not spend enough time discussing this point.
Can we go back to the father thing?
Sailor explains how he ended up driving for Santos, which led to Sailor sitting outside Lula’s house when it burst into flames.
Flashback to Lula running through the smoking house, coughing and looking for her father.
Sailor could be a little apologetic about keeping this information from his girlfriend. She puts up with the Elvis impersonation. It’s only fair.
Lula watches the side of the road from the passenger’s side. Her mother appears as a specter of the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz, then vanishes.
David Lynch fucking loved The Wizard of Oz.
The Wicked Witch is scary enough without being involved in this story.
Lula’s upset. She should be more upset. That was fucked up.
Cut to the headlights speeding down a dark highway. Predecessor to Lost Highway.
Johnnie and Marietta end up at a fancy hotel. Johnnie is very excited for some romantic shenanigans, even though Marietta got him his own room.
Johnnie walks into his darkened room. Someone jumps out dressed in all black and attacks him.
Lula and Sailor see the dark road spotted with items of clothing.
They pull over and see a car’s headlights. There’s been a bad accident. A man lies dead in front of the car, his body illuminated.
A young woman slick with blood from a head wound anxiously asks where her cards, bobby pin, and wallet are. She worries her mother will be mad at her for losing them. She runs into the desert to look, and to find Robert.
I’m going to assume Robert’s the dead guy.
The woman keeps scratching at the bloody patch in her scalp as she searches, saying she feels something sticky in her hair. She scratches and tries to pull it out.
This is the single most upsetting moment in what may be Lynch’s most upsetting movie.
The girl collapses, coughs blood, and dies.
‘Get my lipstick. It’s in my purse.’ These lines have no right to be so sad.
Lula is hysterical, and demands to know why this girl had to die in front of them. I assure you, Lula, it was not intentional.
The two run back to their car and take off down the highway.
Marietta is at the hotel freaking out that she can’t find Johnnie. She refuses to call the police, which is how you know she’s telling the truth and not doing anything illegal at all.
A concierge runs to Marietta with a letter he apparently forgot to give her.
The note says Johnnie’s gone fishing and buffalo hunting. Marietta assumes Johnnie has freaked out and run off.
Santos appears and Marietta screams his name. Literally. Shrieks it.
Why are so many of the people working at this hotel so old and tiny?
Marietta begs Santos to tell her what happened to Johnnie.
Santos refers to himself in third person, which is always the sign of a normal person. He swears he didn’t do anything to Johnnie. Either someone else attacked Johnnie, or Santos’ mother never sent him to therapy.
Cut to Juana making out with a dude named Reggie. Reggie wears a black robe. It’s all very dramatic.
Johnnie has tape on his mouth sealed with a bright lipstick kiss. He kneels between two men. One holds a sword. The other has a gun.
Apparently they are buffalo hunting.
Juana starts counting. It’s incredibly stressful.
Reggie takes the tape off Johnnie’s mouth. Reggie shows him Santos’ ring. Johnnie worries about Marietta, which is sweet if unnecessary.
Juana touches Johnnie’s face. One of the men behind him cocks a gun. The two leave Johnnie alone with Reggie and Juana.
Johnnie watches Juana as she writhes around for unclear reasons. His face is soaked with fat beads of sweat.
Cut to the mouth of the gun. Reggie holds the gun to the back of Johnnie’s head.
Juana counts down to one and shouts ‘Fuck me now, Reggie!’
The gun fires.
Cut to Lula and Sailor in the car.
Going forward, unless I specifically say Lula and NC are not in a car, just assume they are in the car.
I love to drive, but even I’d need a break that didn’t involve finding dead and dying people.
They arrive in Big Tuna, Texas.
There’s have a metal fish sign with the words ‘fuck you’ spray painted on it.
Lula has some thoughts about this leg of their journey.
Johnnie pulls up to the small flat house from earlier, without Lula.
A jarring burst of horror sting music does not scare the shit out of me.
Perdita answers the door.
Sailor straight up asks Perdita if anyone has a contract out on him. Very smooth.
‘You are one big, stupid asshole.’ Perdita is amazing. I want a movie about her.
Perdita says Santos and Marietta killed Lula’s father.
Flashback to the bathroom scene where a drunk Marietta threatens Sailor. ‘You’re gonna burn,’ she hisses, as flames flash across the screen.
Sailor repeats he didn’t see anything.
Perdita: I did.
Flashback to Santos dousing a dead or unconscious Clyde in lighter fluid in the family home.
Marietta stands beside him in a striking pair of red and black high heels. I have decided the shoes are a metaphor.
Close up on the match being lit.
Santos and Marietta kiss. Marietta cackles like the Wicked Witch again, and Clyde who is unfortunately not dead runs through the house on fire.
Cut back to present. Perdita and Sailor have a history. Even though Perdita is too cool for him. Maybe she was blinded by the jacket.
Perdita claims she doesn’t know about any contracts on Sailor. She poses in the doorway in a shot out of Bergman or Truffaut.
Sailor returns to a dumpy motel, where Lula has been asleep.
Sailor told her he was getting gas. So he can lie. But only well enough to convince Lula. I suspect this is not very difficult.
Lula tells Sailor she threw up, which in the world of movies means she’s pregnant. Possibly dying. She puked on the floor of the hotel room, which sounds like a miserable experience.
Cut to bugs crawling over the vomit in a very Blue Velvet way.
This is why you clean up vomit.
Lula asks if they can rest a few days, blaming her upset stomach on driving.
She worries that seeing the girl die jinxed them. Sailor doesn’t answer. For a moment Marietta as the Wicked Witch flashes across the screen.
Sailor gives Lula a candy necklace. It’s very sweet.
I don’t know if the pun was intended.
Lula and Sailor are at what looks like a little gathering from all the visitors of the motel. One of them, Bob, reads out loud from the newspaper. The story is about the crash Lula and Sailor came across the other night.
Upon hearing the names of the victims, a neighbor flips out and starts calling Bob a ‘fucking asshole’ who ‘deserved to die.’
Dude he hadn’t even finished reading the news article.
Nobody really reacts to this tantrum.
‘They’re making a pornographic movie, Texas style.’ Please don’t make me google this. I’m begging you. There are enough horrors.
The other guests bring over an old, confused looking man they call a ‘genius.’ The man is confused, and clutches a white towel. He rambles about a dog, and mentions Toto from The Wizard of Oz.
Then the confused guy starts barking. I like dogs a lot but this dude barking stresses me out.
Three extremely fat topless women run through the trailer park with magnificent hair and sexy garters.
A cowboy and a serial killer walk by.
Willem Dafoe shows up with a pencil thin mustache. His name is Bobby. He looks like an evil Gomez Addams.
Everyone loves Bobby Peru, apparently.
Bobby was in the Marines.
When Lula tells Bobby she’s 20, the smile he gives her is so predatory you wish she’d hit him in the face and run.
The locals discuss awful things from the Marines and the war.
Wait what the fuck is up with Bobby Peru’s teeth?
‘One eyed Jack’s yearning to go peeing in a seafood store’ is brilliant. You are a grown man and a former Marine. Amazing. I love it. No notes.
This one’s a three parter, kids. Stay tuned to learn why this is Willem Dafoe’s scariest role of all time.
//cj//