Lynch Goes Inland, Part II
August 20, 2007

Here’s the second part of Ed Grant’s interview with filmmaker David Lynch and actors Laura Dern and Justin Theroux of Lynch’s Inland Empire.

Inland Empire (Absurda/Rhino, available now) is a uniquely constructed film that is either purely surreal or a dream of some kind – or, as is the case with most of Lynch’s best work, a mixture of the two. The film was a long-stemmed project for Lynch and his cast that was shot in fits and stars on a digital camcorder over a period of three years. I interviewed Lynch and his stars Laura Dern and Justin Theroux about Inland on the eve of its NYC opening, and all three offered interesting insights about the film and what it ultimately ends up being “about.”

Justin Theroux summed up the lengthy, absorbing film as “an enormous jigsaw puzzle. After practically the first day we stopped trying to sit around and figure out what was going on.” According to Dern, Lynch let her have script for her tour de force scene, a long monologue delivered in a defiant Southern drawl, a few days before the scene was shot. For the rest of sequences, though, she and her fellow cast members only received their lines the night before, or on the morning of the shoot. This disjunction extends to the film’s plot, which left viewers wondering if the events of the film that feature Dern are all happening to the same character, or perhaps there multiple Lauras? The actress herself maintains that “it was all aspects of the same woman--that was the only way I could play it, especially because we shot out of sequence.”--Ed Grant

Check back next week for the third and final chapter in Ed's Inland experience with David Lynch and company.

Posted by Laurence Lerman on August 20, 2007 | Comments (0)