Mulholland Drive | Harbour Highlights, October

Team member Chloe tells us why she chose the iconic Mulholland Drive

Chloe Hopgood

19 Oct 22

Harbour Highlights is a series of cult and classic favourites handpicked by the Harbour Lights staff. This month, Customer Service Assistant Chloe Hopgood explains why she chose David Lynch's Mulholland Drive.

In response to the film, Chloe has created the below artwork using pan pastels, colour pencils and acrylic paint.

This is the film.

This is the film that got me into film, unforgettable since I first saw it on the horror channel seven years ago.

I was immediately enthralled, inspired and sucked into David Lynch's entrancing world of glamour, seediness and nightmare, and I'm still stuck in that world now, Lynch having a profound influence on my style, artwork and identity — so it feels very apt that Mulholland Drive is my first Harbour Highlights pick!

Lynch simply describes Mulholland Drive as "a love story in the city of dreams" and while to some he may be confusing and cryptic, I believe you should go on what you feel alone, and allow yourself to drink in the emotion and visceral reactions you may have rather than becoming frustrated at the winding plot.

Mulholland Drive might not seem like an obvious pick for the spooky month of October but to me it's a film that so deeply captures the feeling of experiencing a nightmare that you're desperate to wake up from.

The dizzying nonsensical logic of dreams. Or worse, that sinking feeling you get when you realise something truly awful is on the horizon...

Now, take a long walk with me down the uncanny valley, or as I like to call it, Mulholland Drive.

Behind the scenes of Mulholland Drive:

Mulholland Drive began life as a Twin Peaks spin-off, following the character of Audrey Horne in Hollywood. The project never happened but, six years later, Lynch turned the idea into a TV pilot separate from the world of Twin Peaks. On his desire to return to TV, Lynch described the appeal of the open-ended nature of the storytelling: "You feel all these threads going out into the infinite which, to me, is a beautiful thing. It's like a body with no head."
This is the 14th film to be nominated for a Best Director Oscar but received no other nominations. Others include The Last Temptation of Christ, Short Cuts and Lynch's own Blue Velvet.
Billy Ray Cyrus credits his role in the film as what ultimately led to his daughter Miley Cyrus's career. "If David Lynch says I can be an actor, then I can be an actor. There wouldn't have been a Hannah Montana without David Lynch."

Mulholland Drive is showing at Harbour Lights on Wed 26 Oct, 20.30 with tickets only £8 / £5 Members — Book Now