Ajax Rules wrote:LostInTheMovies wrote:But the idea that there should be a 3 1/2-4 hour version of FWWM I just don't get, frankly. At best, it's a curious experiment but would not represent any improvement on the movie we've got.
I thought I read somewhere that also in the case of FWWM, there was a disagreement and commercial issues. In other words: I thought that DL wanted FWWM to be a much longer film, but that contract obligations forced him to narrow it down to its current length.
But you say that Lynch is happy with FWWM as it is. Couldn't it be both true? He is happy with FWWM (it is a briljant film), but he would have been even happier if there hadn't been a length constraint?
I don't think so. First of all, I don't know about the contract obligations - I wouldn't be surprised if there was a stipulation with the French company (can't remember its name, too lazy to look up!) that said his films had to run under 2 1/2 hours or something. But I'm not sure.
I do know, however, that he's stated in numerous interviews that Fire Walk With Me is the film it's supposed to be and he's happy with that. Plus if he had wanted to create a director's cut in 2014 he certainly could have done so. Look, adding 15-20 minutes might not hurt the movie (people have mentioned the expanded convenience store scene, the Hayward living room, Leland approaching the house at night, Laura under the fan and a few other scenes as adding something to FWWM). But adding another 90 minutes? Now that we've all seen these scenes, which are wonderful on their own, I think we can agree that most don't really form part of a larger tapestry. The two-decade-old myth that this excised material is the reason why FWWM appears choppy and uneven at times can probably be put to rest: including it would have made the film MORE choppy/uneven, not less. And restoring the footage would dilute the focus on Laura, which is what the final 2/3 of the film (and arguably even the first 1/3, indirectly) are all about.
There's a few factors to consider here - and keep in mind some of this is just educated guesswork on my part, so take with a grain of garmonbozia.
1) Although Lynch tackled a lot in FWWM, the decision to tell Laura's story was clearly the motivating factor. He's stated this later ("I fell in love with Laura Palmer, I wanted to see her live, move, and talk") and it's implicit in the decision to make a prequel rather than a sequel.
2) That said, the real power of the Laura story seems to have emerged more in production than pre-production. Engels' accounts of the writing are full of wacky anecdotes of creamed-corn planets and Eisenhower's inauguration but once Lynch got into shooting in the Snoqualmie/North Bend area everyone (from the British journalist writing the production diary to Director of Photography Ron Garcia, who is very eloquent on the subject) seems most taken with Sheryl Lee's performance. This is pure speculation on my part, but I would guess that the gravity of the story, already suggested on the page, didn't really sink in until the material was being shot and especially until Lee committed to the character so ferociously. Stories from the set - like Phoebe Augustine's conversation with Lynch about the screenplay's pessimism, and the subsequent elaboration of the angels motif - seem to bear out this conclusion. I've also wondered if the extra material wasn't included, in part, to protect against the possibility that Sheryl Lee, mostly untested as a film actress, wasn't up to the task. Hence when she knocked it out of the park, that precaution may have no longer seemed necessary.
3) Here we get into really speculative waters because what happens in Lynch's editing room is sacred and neither he nor Sweeney, to my knowledge, have talked in any detail about the what, when, why of reshaped film. But we do know that Lynch and Sweeney were beginning a close creative and professional (and personal, to the extent that's relevant) collaboration that would continue for a decade. Perhaps not coincidentally, the first "slice of Lynch" Sweeney ever edited was episode 14 of the show, with Maddy's murder. This part of his career is when his work becomes most committed to diving all the way into the darkness (even Blue Velvet holds back a bit) while also embracing a female point of view. This is something that Sweeney clearly valued, since she later told an interviewer that Lynch had a very rare empathy for female experience - and I would not at all be surprised if she encouraged Lynch to go in the direction he was already heading, stripping away nearly everything that didn't relate to Laura's personal struggle. Wrapped in Plastic editor John Thorne has also speculated that the use of the ring in the finale, which contradicts its build-up throughout the film, and seems to provide some kind of cryptic cathartic release for Laura, was not added until post-production, with inserts and tricky cutting. (It is true that there are no shots including both Lee's face and the ring, but there is a shot where she seems to be looking at her finger, so I'm not sure.)
With all that in mind, I think Lynch shot the extra footage for many reasons but that he knew it would be a mistake to include it in a finished film. Personally, I'm very happy with the presentation we've got - Fire Walk With Me and The Missing Pieces as dual perspectives of the last days of Laura's life (sometimes even dual perspectives on the same scene!).
