#David Lynch Doesn’t Know What’s Happening in Justin Theroux’s Mulholland Drive Scenes Either

Eagle Scout, weather forecaster, coffee entrepreneur, musician, painter, oh, and a singularly unique filmmaker whose work has landed his last namesake (Lynchian) recently into to the Oxford English Dictionary, David Lynch has discombobulated audiences for decades with his dream-like, disjointed films that magically melt the mundane with mystery and menace. Recently, Justin Theroux discussed his collaborations with Lynch, Mullholland Drive and Inland Empire, and allows us to all heave a sigh of relief; even the creator himself wants to “find out” what the films are all about.

Justin Theroux recently discussed his Mullholland Drive role of sky-rocketing movie director Adam Kesher vying for a new project, who is about to discover he’s being cuckolded, by virtue of ‘pool boy’ Billy Ray Cyrus. Theroux hits the set with myriad questions for Lynch of tone, motivation, his character “Well, why am I there? Who’s the cowboy? What’s going on? What reality are we in?” Theroux says he was shocked to see Lynch clear the entire set calling out, “Wait a minute, everyone’s got to get out of here. Me and Justin need to talk.”

After a series of questions set to him by Theroux, he had these clarifications for him. “You know, I don’t know, buddy. But let’s find out.” Also making things crystal clear with the answers of “I don’t know.” Justin Theroux suggests “It’s like you’re on an escalator into a cloud with him, you never know where the escalator lets off. He’s a total outlier because he doesn’t answer your questions.”

Theroux describes the set five years later making Inland Empire, starring Laura Dern, who’s first David Lynch project Blue Velvet dates back to 1986, saying, “The crew David Lynch assembles are great. You’re giggling. The stuff with Laura Dern and Inland Empire, we were laughing so much. Then you go to the screening of it, your brains all over the back wall. I had no clue that that’s how that scene was gonna be, the tone of that. Most of the time I’m a pretty quick study on (tone), but David Lynch is an absolute outlier in that respect in that what you end up seeing once he’s gone to the lab, and cut it up and put sound in and arranged at all, is so different from the experience you’ve had on set.”

David Lynch has created an eclectic cinematic family of sorts utilizing the same actors, cinematographers, composers, singers and crew in multiple films and TV series spanning decades which has forged an intimate and safe environment to play with their roles and surroundings, leading to a surprising end product, which we guess, surprises even its creator. Lynch says it best, “It makes me uncomfortable to talk about meanings and things. It’s better not to know so much about what things mean. Because the meaning, it’s a very personal thing, and the meaning for me is different than the meaning for somebody else.”