The City of Absurdity   Lost Highway  
About the Film

  David Lynch | Barry Gifford | Patricia Arquette | Bill Pullman

Robert Blake | Robert Loggia | Natasha Gregson Wagner

Balthazar Getty | Patricia Norris | Mary Sweeney | Peter Deming

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Bill Pullman (Fred Madison)

"There's a lotta ghosts in David's stories..."

"It's a very, kind of scary movie, and very enigmatic - a lot of questions it raises."

"He [David Lynch] is like a dreammaster that's going to throw some dreams at you that you can't get out of your head all day, the next day or days afterwards."

"The only rule of Lost Highway is that there are no more rules. Yet, this film creates its own rules, and it establishes them; it follows them. The hardest part for the audience is to accept this new logic. When we shot the desert scenes, we thought a lot about Michelangelo Antonioi's Zabriskie Point, because we were shooting in the same locations. That film didn't obey any logic either, and yet it has become a milestone. I am convinced that Lost Highway will have a similar fate. It has often been said that the largest school of American theatre is realism; well, this film will teach Americans what a metaphor is."

"The thing that scared me more than anything else about doing this particular role, about a guy who's very troubled and complex, the thing that really kept me up at night was the saxophone playing, in a curious way. Because I felt like all the other things were part and parcel of the script and the text and what David was going to get going on the set and everything, and I felt very equipped for that. But the saxophone is so much a part of his identity, and particularly the identity where you get to see Fred in a way that you wonder if that's always there. Because Fred can go really berserk on the sax, and things come out that you don't see at any other time. "

"It's unfortunate that movies can't be six hours, and you can't get people to sit for it all, because things get cut. One of the things that got cut was two sax pieces. They both start on kind of an even groove, and then they begin to fragment and twist and turn and get more frenzied until this point when it's non-linear, non-melodic screeching and honking there on the sax. And it's kind of an embodiment of some feelings [Fred] has.

"I'm happy with the choices I've made. I've been allowed a great freedom. I mean, could Kevin Costner really afford to make Lost Highway? I don't think so. Not that he wouldn't be able to carry that part, but this kind of film would conflict with his image. In my case, my fascination With the films of David Lynch was pure magnetism. Shooting Lost Highway taught me a lot. It helped me to face one of my childhood fears, the terror of being abandoned. Patricia too had to overcome her stumbling block, for her it was the sex scenes. Of course this doesn't mean that compared to Lost Highway a film like Independence Day was easy to make. On the contrary David and I knew that the huge success of ID4 would certainly be beneficial to his film."

"Historically some people have compared David Lynch to a deviant Norman Rockwell, and others to a Jimmy Stewart from Mars. I personally think that David is the sum of two opposites. On one side, he is the ultimate and absolutely innocent man. And on the other side he has the courage and the honesty to explore the horror that lies with in every human being. His films are like surgical knives which separate the 'normal' from the 'abnormal'. But I can't stand it when people say that David has a sick mind because it's not true not at all."

"Maybe I've always known it, because when Blue Velvet was released, part of me felt that I could have played the main character. I don't want to steal anything from Kyle. I just felt I could have perfectly fitted into that character. When I received the Lost Highway script, I didn't really want to read it, because the part of me that dreamed of interacting with the Blue Velvet universe had grown up and matured. But then I read it. And I felt as if David Lynch knew me intimately. It's difficult to explain. It's like when you look at a painting, and you feel like the painter knows your inner soul. So, David and I met, and it was like we'd known each other for years; we'd had similar experiences, we'd been to the same places, and we have a similar sense of humour. David was already a part of me."

"The film is about the obsession to own someone. Fred Madison tries to shake off the jealousy when he's having sex with his wife. For him the sex is like a lie detector."

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© Mike Hartmann
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