Valley House or Smithy's House?

Discussion of INLAND EMPIRE

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Robin Davies
Roadhouse Member
Posts: 72
Joined: Sun May 06, 2007 7:52 am
Location: England

Valley House or Smithy's House?

Post by Robin Davies »

I've been watching Lynch One and was puzzled by his reference to the house that a terrified Laura Dern enters as "the Valley House". I thought it was Smithy's House. Are there two houses in there?
Carl
RR Diner Member
Posts: 233
Joined: Wed Apr 23, 2008 1:32 pm

Re: Valley House or Smithy's House?

Post by Carl »

Well, Smithy probably lives in the 'Valley' (San Gabriel Valley, Pomona Valley... the Inland Empire.)
Of course, DL might have been referring to a shooting location.
Robin Davies
Roadhouse Member
Posts: 72
Joined: Sun May 06, 2007 7:52 am
Location: England

Re: Valley House or Smithy's House?

Post by Robin Davies »

Here's what Lynch says in Lynch One:
"...in comes Jeremy and Freddy and the scene proceeds. Four chairs around that table, reading the script, talking, and then Freddy notices somebody in Smithy's house in the set. And Devon goes quickly to investigate. Now he goes and he investigates but there's no-one there and he's going... he hears something and he goes back and the facade to the exterior of the Valley House is back there. He hears a door close. But the facade is that there's a door but it goes nowhere. There's no-one behind the f-, the wall. There's no doors back there. So he goes back and then Kingsley decides to come clean and tell him some of the history of this film and the scene continues."
We then cut to Lynch directing Laura Dern in rehearsal in the large movie set. He says "You see Justin getting closer and everything starts scaring the shit out of you. So you run in that fucking front door." Dern says "Oh that's the Valley House. I am so scared right now."
So clearly the house that Laura Dern's character (Sue Blue?) lives in is the Valley House. So why does Lynch mention Smithy's House as if it were another thing? Maybe Lynch One is designed to confuse us as much as INLAND EMPIRE!
Carl
RR Diner Member
Posts: 233
Joined: Wed Apr 23, 2008 1:32 pm

Re: Valley House or Smithy's House?

Post by Carl »

I do not see any confusion here. Valley House = Smithy's House.
Just staying with the obvious, putative interpretation ( cursed screenplay, Nikki trapped in the role of Sue,...) these scenes work brilliantly.
The roughness around the edges, the ambiguities, allow for us to work things out in our minds, for ourselves, where the big story takes place anyway.
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