Where to watch Mulholland Drive (2001)

Trivia & production notes

• Mulholland Drive started as a 90-minute television pilot for ABC, with Lynch pitching the concept to executives by describing only the opening car crash scene and the mystery surrounding the $125,000 in Rita's purse.
• ABC objected to Naomi Watts and Laura Harring's ages, considering them too old for their roles, and the network's standards department also pressured Lynch to reduce cigarette smoking in scenes.
• David Lynch cast both Naomi Watts and Laura Harring based solely on their photographs, meeting each for a brief half-hour interview without having seen any of their previous work.
• Justin Theroux arrived at his casting meeting exhausted and dressed entirely in black with messy hair, and Lynch liked the look so much that he designed Adam Kesher's character to match that appearance.
• ABC cancelled the pilot after a network executive watched a rough cut at six in the morning and disliked it, citing objections to the nonlinear storyline, the actors' ages, and even a close-frame shot of dog feces in one scene.
• When Lynch received the greenlight to turn the pilot into a feature film, he had no ideas for how to continue the story until sitting down for meditation, when he described having a sudden creative breakthrough.
• Lynch expanded the pilot by eighteen pages to create the feature film, adding the romantic relationship between Rita and Betty and the scenes following the opening of the blue box.
• The additional scenes for the feature film were shot in October 2000 and funded with $7 million from French production company StudioCanal.
• Justin Theroux described working on Mulholland Drive as feeling half-blindfolded because Lynch refused to explain the plot or answer questions about the script, though he assured Theroux that his character was not meant to be Lynch himself.
• Ben Stiller visited the Mulholland Drive set one day, and Lynch, mistaking him for an extra, offered him a background role which Stiller declined.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Mulholland Drive (film), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Rewritten for StreamShack; errors are ours — tell us about them.