What I've been thinking for a while is that, in a way, Sue can be seen as played by two people, Nikki and the woman in the monolog. (And we see both on the street for a while, which is what MichaelPW is taking apart in another thread.)TheMysteryMan wrote: The story is something that filters through multiple characters and identities. The person we perceive as Sue, once Nikki enters the Axxonn door, is literally and figuratively a world apart from the Sue we saw portrayed in the OHIBT scenes. And when we return to behind the scenes of OHIBT, after the screwdriver scene, the film has completely changed as well. It began as a southern gothic melodrama and ends as this urban tragedy. Sue is different from the OHIBT Sue right from the point she enters the Axxonn door, and then we meet the woman talking to Mr. K, who through a nonlinear chronology we learn went through another Axxonn door before she met Mr. K, which could account for this seeming other switch in identity.
But (and I said this on another of these threads but can't find it right now), what has recently caught my attention is about "it had to do with the telling of time". It seems the woman on the street can't get into the club until it is the right time for her to be let in (Mr. K. etc. are waiting for Piotrek to get the gun and make it back to the US story). Then, Mr. K. says, "Yeah ... still here." They are checking to see how much time they have.
So, Piotrek gets the gun and is sent back into the story in California "” but now I see that he is sent as Nikki's husband, the most powerful guy around, who pulled some strings and got her the part. But how does a simple person like the guy we saw at the séance become a big shot like Nikki's husband? He is not the one who was sent back: Peter Lucas was and he is an actor. That's why he's introducing Dern to Mr. and Mrs. Zydowicz; he's playing himself and Dern is playing herself, meeting some relatives of Marek Zydowicz in Poland. I've gone back and forth about this, but I think this is the view that MPW was leaning toward (yes?) and it makes sense to me now. So he becomes the man in the green coat who scares Nikki into the house and traps her there as Sue.
As for the monolog woman, it seems they were just waiting for someone almost at the end of her life to come along and they could take a few things out of what she said and build the story they needed out of it for Nikki to play.
I stopped rambling above where I did because this is what puzzles me too. If Dern turned her head at the end and saw herself getting the part again on the couch, the movie would be a simple loop. But she turns her head and sees something else, a contented version of herself. The only thing that comes to mind about this right now is what Lynch said about Fred in LH: Sometimes people get caught in a vicious circle, but it's possible to get out of that circle. So in his mind there is hope for Fred, even though we don't see it. (btw Barry Gifford saw it opposite. At the west coast premier he held a Q&A and someone asked where is the redemption. Gifford said, "Sometimes there is no redemption." Just a titbit.)When she returns to OHIBT shortly after leaving Mr. K, the film is different. Has Axxonn really brought her back to her original life as Nikki, or is that not cemented until she frees the Lost Girl?
I guess I don't have the order of events as presented memorized yet. I thought the path scene came later, right after the phantom showed up missing in the scene at the shed in the woods. Gordy says he mumbled something about Inland Empire, and then we see the face on the path.By that point, though, isn't he already part of the Hollywood story? I'm fairly convinced that the Phantom has already possessed her by then (by the scene where she walks on the path in that spotlight with the Phantom grin on her face) and she doesn't need to lure him.
Yes, the interrogation scene just busts its way into the movie with no warning. So I've thought that the phantom made it happen. I guess I meant that even though it appeared earlier, what we see in the confrontation is how it happened. Going by: that is how Bob got into Twin Peaks, through people's fear etc. In that way, the phantom could be a name for what happens when people break down, when their human relationships don't hold everything together. So, that confrontation scene illustrates what she said in the station. Yes, everything seems out of order. If we see Devon dead in MTTH (or Billy, whoever it is), who's playing Billy in the Sides' home or how did Billy come back to life? As you say, this is what a different Sue sees. Looking at it from the beginning, I don't think any of this can ever be completely untangled because every effort has been made to be sure that won't happen. That way, the story, as a kind of dream, is an object in itself that never opens to reveal anything behind itself.Perhaps she only did it because he made her, and his intention was to plant the knowledge in Doris Side's head that this is the woman she was previously instructed to kill. If this is so, he seems to have been around from the time the project got underway, as we see the interrogation scene with her before Nikki goes through Axxonn the first time. Perhaps he knew to go as soon as he heard about the remake.
Touché. But if he sits in the interviewee's chair, then he is telling Mr. K. about the séance and hearing the details of the story that will come from what the monolog woman says, what his and the other rabbits' missions will be, etc.You probably just answered your own question, haha--he doesn't sit in Mr. K's chair because it would make the movie somewhat easier to explain. It almost seems like Lynch did his best to construct this Rubik's cube of a movie where you can never quite get all the colors to line up on each side. One theory gives you four sides that match, but the other two won't line up and never will.