David Lynch's maddening but fascinating new film Inland Empire makes its debut here in Edmonton, Alberta this weekend, and I was able to snag an advance interview with Lynch's leading lady, Laura Dern. It took some doing to get hold of her, but she couldn't have been more gracious or her answers more thoughtful once we started our conversation. Edmonton is not exactly a major stop on any movie's publicity tour, so it was very generous of Dern to set aside the time to talk. We only spoke for about 15-20 minutes, so I never got to ask her whether she had any plans to star opposite Loren Dean in a film adaptation of Lorna Doone, but I did get to ask more questions than I thought I would. And since I stole that Lorna Doone joke from an old issue of Film Comment anyway, it's probably all for the best.
Anyway, here's our interview. Enjoy!
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Would it sound ridiculous if I told you I think Laura Dern gives an extraordinary performance in Inland Empire, even though I couldn’t tell you for sure what character she’s playing?
Dern starts the film as Nikki Grace, a Hollywood actress who lands the coveted lead role in something called On High in Blue Tomorrows, a romantic melodrama set in the Deep South, even though the director (an unctuous Jeremy Irons) says it’s based on an old Polish folktale. But as the film progresses, Dern appears to slip into several alternate realities and alternate identities—the white-trash wife of a Polish carny, a streetwalker working the corner of Hollywood and Vine, a bruise-faced woman telling her life story to a private detective. Every so often, Lynch cuts to a TV sitcom starring a family of giant, anthropomorphic rabbits, and Dern seems to be part of that reality as well.
Lynch created the part (or parts) specifically for Dern, an actress who seems to be a particularly rich source of inspiration for him. (She even has the same name as one of his favourite movies.) He cast her as Sandy, the epitome of virginal teenage innocence, in Blue Velvet, but just four years later he had her playing Lula, the unabashedly carnal, leopardskin-clad, hotter-than-Georgia-asphalt heroine of Wild at Heart. Between those two films, she’s like a living embodiment of the virgin/whore complex.
Her character in Inland Empire, on the other hand, can’t be reduced to mere formulas. The film may not be a complete success for Lynch—its logic is often frustratingly opaque, and the three-hour running time creates more than a few stretches of tedium—but it’s a triumph for Dern. She gives a performance so fearless in circumstances so challenging—working on the fly, without even a finished script—that it seems downright heroic.
Laura Dern spoke with me about acting, the making of Inland Empire, and the most surreal Best Actress campaign in Oscar history.
Q: In interviews, David Lynch always describes the plot of Inland Empire as “a woman in trouble.” But how did he first pitch it to you?
Laura Dern: Well, even that’s more information than I was originally given! [Laughs.] When people tell me that’s not enough information, I always remind them that I started the movie with even less.
Q: Is Lynch the kind of director who you just go along with no matter what, or do you say, you know, “I’m going to need a little more detail than that, David”?
LD: To be honest, both things. Naturally, David is one of the true visionaries of American cinema and someone who I think most actors would leap at the opportunity to work with. But he started out just saying, “Let’s experiment.” There was a monologue that was scripted and which we shot, but we didn’t know what it was going to be or how it would fit into anything. We were just experimenting with a character, and then, after a few get-togethers, we arrived at a turning point where suddenly he saw the movie. And we were so in the thick of it that instead of stopping and writing an entire script, we decided to just keep shooting and go day by day, scene by scene.
Q: Does that change your method of working, when you’re in the middle of an unfinished jigsaw puzzle?
LD: It changes it so much for the better. You work your whole life as an actor to attempt to achieve being “in the moment,” and then David comes along and forces you to. And it works beautifully for a character like this, who’s in such deep conflict that she doesn’t even know where she is. David was as clear as he needed to be in his direction, but it was still terrifying.
Q: Did shooting the film on digital video make a difference on the set? Did it speed things up?
LD: Absolutely. There were no cumbersome lights to move, so David could get a single and then just flip the camera around and get the other actress’ close-up without having to wait for a complete relight. So we were in the moment all the time—in a 10-hour day, we’d get scene after scene after scene, where on an ordinary movie you’d need two days just to finish one big scene.
Q: I have to say, despite all the benefits of digital video, part of me hopes that not every movie Lynch makes from now on is going to look like this one. Maybe that’s just the bourgeois moviegoer in me, but I’d really miss the visual beauty that you get in Blue Velvet or Lost Highway. LD: But if you look back at someone like Maya Deren, people at the time thought her 8mm footage looked crude and nasty and dirty too. I think the crudity of the digital video adds its own quality—it matches the crudity of that street person on Hollywood and Vine, it takes you more inside her experience. But when David says he wants to stay in the world of digital, I think what he really means is that he wants the freedom it gives him, the freedom from a cumbersome crew. You have to remember, there are never accidents with David. He’s such a revolutionary; at this point in his career, he’s not about to compromise his art just to make people comfortable.
Q: What’s your reaction when you hear people say Inland Empire is too hard to follow? Does it make you think maybe you should have given them a clearer path to follow? Or is it a mistake to watch the movie trying to find the magical key, to figure out the one ultimate, definitive explanation of what it all means?
LD: I do think that’s the wrong approach with this movie. I think David just wants you to enter the film and have your own experience, like you would if you were looking at a painting in a gallery or a museum. But I’m very used to these reactions. I was at a film festival with David the first time Blue Velvet was shown and people were very angry—including some critics who now say it’s one of their favourite films of all time. At Cannes with Wild at Heart, there was a jeering section amidst the standing ovation. So it would feel very weird if this film only got applause. It wouldn’t feel like David.
Q: What did you think of that very unconventional Oscar campaign Lynch mounted on your behalf, camping out on a street corner in L.A. with a live cow and a “For Your Consideration” banner?
LD: I didn’t even know about it until some friends told me it was on YouTube, which I’d never been on before in my life. I thought it was surprising and funny and irreverent and weird and wild and wonderful—all the things that David is. It was so beautiful that he would do that. And I must say, I liked his disdain for the conventional “let’s spend $3,000,000” Oscar campaign. I like that he’s shaking things up. I think it was a very political statement for him about how the film industry needs to find a new way. Inland Empire is self-distributed, self-promoted. It wasn’t just about picking up a different camera; he carried that sentiment through every aspect of this film.
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