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Isabella Rossellini wears BLUE VELVET · MUBI Podcast

0:00
Heads up, this episode includes adult language and frank discussion of sexual violence.
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Do listen with care.
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It's also got a few spoilers.
0:11
So if you're listening to this podcast, I bet you're at least aware of the great psych rock band The Flaming Lips.
0:18
Well, a few years back on my old radio show, I had the weird honor of interviewing their lead singer, Wayne Coyne, about a music playlist he'd put together for us, inspired by the work of director David Lynch, kind of trying to capture the mood of his movies.
0:32
And at first blush, Wayne's choice of an opening track seemed spot on.
0:37
Big John...Big John... it's by, at one time very famous country singer by the name of Jimmy Dean a song called Big Bad John.
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That's Wayne.
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And if there's one word to describeBig Bad John, it's macho.
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Kind of broad at the shoulder and narrow at the hipAnd everybody knew you didn't give no lip to Big John It's literally about this giant mine worker who comes to the rescue of these other miners when the mine's collapsing.
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But there's a verse in the song that implies if he got slightly drunk or someone picked a fight with him, he could kill a guy with one punch.
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You know, there's this undercurrent of violence.
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Somebody said he came from New OrleansWhere he got in a fight over a Cajun QueenAnd a crashin' blow from a huge right handSent a Louisiana fellow to the promised land, big John There's definitely an area of David Lynch that is this vibe, this type of leftover, man's world, 50s Americana.
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Yeah, if you've ever seen Lynch's stuff, you know that vibe.
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His films are full of brooding rebel dudes, sometimes literally wearing 50s leather jackets and psychotic bad guys who can explode into violence any second.
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But then why, when I think of Lynch's body of work, do I not think of it as macho at all?
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I'm your regular host, Rico Gagliano, and I want to introduce you to a guest host who's going to spend the next few episodes answering that question.
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Her name is Simran Hans.
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She is a fantastic UK critic and culture writer.
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You'll find her stuff in The Guardian,The New York Times and many more.
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And she is about to show you how much Lynch was enamored of, influenced by and a close collaborator with women who had a huge impact on even his most throwback visions.
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Listen to her, her guests and their stories.
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And it's pretty clear Lynch sang a lot of different tunes.
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Here's Simran, enjoy.
2:49
There's this moment in David Lynch's fourth film, Blue Velvet, where the protagonist, Jeffrey Beaumont, is sitting in the car with his girlfriend Sandy.
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The characters, played by Kyle MacLachlan and Laura Dern, are waiting outside an apartment.
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Sandy turns to Jeffrey and says.
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I don't know if you're a detective or a pervert.Well, that's for me to know and you to find out. Detective or pervert?
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This question, or a version of this question, is one I've been thinking about since David Lynch's passing earlier this year.
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There's Lynch the pervert, drawn to a dark and disturbing sexuality that audiences weren't always sure how to take, and Lynch the detective who looked closely at that darkness and was sometimes repelled by it but still reveled in its mystery.
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Rewatching all ten of his films and the TV series Twin Peaks, I found myself captivated by the women who are almost always at the heart of that mystery.
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I noticed they suffer.
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And yet Lynch never pities them.
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And though they often find themselves in dire situations, somehow they still retain their power.
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There's something magnetic about his female characters, like the teenage troublemaker Audrey Horne from Twin Peaks.
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I'm Audrey Horne, and I get what I want, you understand? And the liberated Lula fortune in Wild at Heart.
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Oh, baby, you better run me back to the hotel.You got me hotter than Georgia asphalt. Or the wide eyed Betty Elms in Mulholland Drive.
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Hello, Betty.Very pleased to meet you. In Twin Peaks, there's even a female shaman with an all seeing accessory.
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I carry a log. Yes.Is it funny to you? It is not to me. It was important to David Lynch to preserve the mystery in things.
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He said as much.
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But I still have questions.
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Enough of them to fill a whole podcast series.
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Why are Lynch's female characters so provocative?
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And why do they feel so rare today?
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Of all of Lynch's women, there was one in particular I wanted to start with.
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So my name is Isabella Rossellini, and I'm an actress.
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And I've worked with David Lynch.
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Welcome to season nine of the MUBI Podcast.
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MUBI's the global film company that champions great cinema.
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And on this show we tell you the stories behind great cinema.
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I'm your guest host, Simran Hans.
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And I'm absolutely delighted to be sitting in for Rico Gagliano.
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This is Ladies of Lynch, a mini series about the subversive female characters created by David Lynch and the singular women who helped shape them.
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In today's episode, I'm talking to the great Isabella Rossellini.
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Earlier this year, she was nominated for her first Oscar for her part in a film called Conclave.
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But I'm going back to the early days of her acting career to 1986, when she appeared in David Lynch's Blue Velvet.
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As the sadomasochistic Dorothy Vallens Rossellini's performance scandalized audiences and divided critics with its controversial sexuality.
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People said, well, I don't understand her.
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She's a beautiful woman and why is she behaving like this?
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And the actress knew exactly what she was doing.
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There is this myth that directors manipulate actors and take young, virginal women and make them do something, and it perpetuates this idea that diminishes the role of acting and of women in general.
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First, though, I asked her what was going on in her life when she joined the cast of Blue Velvet...
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and what her career ambitions were back then.
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Well, ambitions?
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I was mostly working as a model, and I was kind of a successful model.
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And so I was just thinking, how do I evolve?
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My mom, of course, was a famous actress called Ingrid Bergman, and acting was not really something I wanted to do.
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But working with a wonderful photographer called Richard Avedon, Avedon said to me, "You know,"modeling is a little bit like being a silent movie star"because I'm not photographing just beautiful noses.
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"I'm photographing emotion.
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There is no beauty without emotion." So he made me think that maybe I could become an actress.
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The story goes that both Rossellini and Lynch were dining at the same New York restaurant.
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Their respective companions happened to know each other.
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We sat down, we made one big table, and we started to talk, and David Lynch asked me the same question.
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He asked me, what are you doing?
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And I said, well, I'm a model.
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I'm trying to do acting.
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Rossellini told him about the film she had just finished shooting, a thriller called White Nights.
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It starred the celebrated tap dancer Gregory Hines and the English actress Helen Mirren.
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And he said, "What, Helen Mirren?
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"I'm trying to get hold of her because I want her so badly"to do my new film called Blue Velvet.
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"But she seems to be saying no, and I want her so badly." And then the following day, I received the script from David.
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I got the script of Blue Velvet at home, saying, "Given that Helen Mirren"seems not to be wanting to do the film, would you consider doing it?" The script was unlike anything she'd read before.
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It was a mystery about a young man who discovers a severed ear.
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This leads him into the disturbing underworld beneath Lumberton, his perfect suburban hometown.
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Jeffrey becomes enamored with the sensual nightclub singer Dorothy Vallens and learns that back home in her apartment, she's tormented by a sadistic man called Frank Booth, who is brought to life by a menacing Dennis Hopper.
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But of course, he was controversial.
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So I called back David, and I said,"David, if I can test for the role,"it's a very unusual script.
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"It's a very original character.
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"I just would like to run the scene rather than talk about the character.
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"So I want to make sure that we all have the same idea of this character"Dorothy Vallens is." And with this scene that you were rehearsing, which scene was it?
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It was a scene of me finding somebody in my closet and interrogating him.
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Get out of there! Get out!Put your hands up. on your head. Do it!Get on your knees. Do it!What are you doing? Who are you?What's your name? What's your name?- Jeffrey.
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- Jeffrey. What?Jeffrey Nothing. But it looks like an innocent boy.
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So she's at first very afraid.
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And she's less afraid and more questioning.
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Do you sneak in girls apartment to see them get undressed?
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No, never before this.
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And then she has some company because she has been all alone.
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Get undressed. I want to see you.Look. I'm sorry.- Just let me leave.
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- No way.I want to see you. Get undressed. Later in the film, we discover that Dorothy is also a mother who has been separated from her young child.
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Family had been kidnaped by the character that eventually was played by Dennis Hopper.
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So Dorothy Vallens is a desperate woman.
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But should we think of her as helpless?
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In the scene we've just heard she does have some agency.
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So is it fair to say that Dorothy is in control?
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In Blue Velvet there isn't an easy answer, because the power, as Lynch observes it is constantly shifting.
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So David really dealt with mystery rather than deep psychology.
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He was interested about emotion.
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He would say to me, you know, you step into a room and immediately you know how you have to say good evening.
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You're saying it with a smile or you're saying it subdued.
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You're saying it, whispering it.
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Why is that?
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Why we enter into a room and the room has an atmosphere.
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That's what he wanted to capture.
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So when we talked about my character, he didn't want to hear what was a background.
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Why is this foreign lady ended up in this teeny town and became a nightclub singer, and was then ritually raped by a character, Dennis Hopper.
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And he didn't really want to know the psychology.
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Of course, as an actor, you have to create a background history, a biography of that person.
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It's hard to just say"I act strange" you know, can you cannot anchor that to a person.
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And we actors do portrait of people.
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It turns out that Rossellini's portrait of a woman who experiences domestic violence and sexual assault was based in part on a memory from Lynch's childhood.
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David gave me an image about my character.
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He said that when he was a little boy, he came back from school with his brother and they saw a naked lady walking in the street, and instead of laughing at her or fairly excited, they both burst into tears because they understood that something horrible had happened.
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And in fact, in Blue Velvet, there is that scene.
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There is the scene of me walking in the street.
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But David is not interested to tell what happened to her.
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I thought that this was a woman that was abused, basically, an abused woman.
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A portrait for me was an abused woman, and a lot of things corresponded, you know, like, I'm abused and sexually ritualistically raped by the character played by Dennis Hopper.
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But then as I befriend Kyle MacLachlan, who's hiding in my closet spying on this beautiful nightclub singer.
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I asked him to hit me also.
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What do you want?I want you to hurt me.No, I don't want to hurt you.
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I told you, I want to help you. Because I read several books about people that suffer from what is called Stockholm Syndrome.
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There are women, women or men that are abused, and then they become to self abuse themselves.
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- Don't! Hit me.
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- No, no!Get away! Get away from my bed. Now, David was not interested at all in that talk.
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But for me, it was interesting to anchor my character into a psychological portrait.
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So I did that research, and I just did the scene in front of David having in mind that David would say yes or no.
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You know, something that he liked or he didn't like.
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Let's talk a little bit about that specific scene.
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She's been ritualistically raped by Frank.
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Jeffrey Beaumont is in the the closet watching as a voyeur, and then she catches him and she tells him to get on his knees.
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And that scene is so fascinating to me because we've just seen the power dynamic- completely flip on its head.
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- Exactly.
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Why, in a film like Blue Velvet, do you think that the women have the power?
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Well, I don't think that Dorothy had the power, but, you know, she's mimicking Dennis Hopper, and then she gets a certain amount of pleasure when he's kneeling.
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When he's doing what, you know, she's always told what to do, and she's obedient.
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Eventually, we'll find out that Frank, the character played by Dennis Hopper, had probably kidnaped the child and the husband, so she has to do whatever he asks him to do.
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Again, David doesn't dwell much in it, but there's little references here and there that you can catch.
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But this woman is very troubled, so I don't think it's power.
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I think it's, you know, it's a psychology of an abused person that abuses, she's abused.
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And when she can, she abuses.
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I mean, I'm not a psychologist, so I, you know, I'm an actress.
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So it's a "what if" it isn't really a study.
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But we do know that, children that are abused often, I don't know, children that are beaten up, might do the same to their own children.
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So there was that feeling of a curse that was going to trap her.
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So I don't think she has any power.
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She's just trapped into a very dark place.
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When was the last time you watched it?
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I think I watched the film maybe 10 or 20 years ago.
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MOMA, the Museum of Modern Art celebrated, or maybe it was the 20th anniversary or the 25th anniversary of the film.
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So I went to see it with Kyle.
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We went saying, wow, you know, we went through hell when it came out, and now, you know, just to see what the audience was saying.
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And it seemed that all the controversy was evaporated and it was considered a masterpiece.
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And David became a celebrated director.
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And so we went just to witness the transformation of the film reputation.
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But I haven't seen the film since.
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When you think of that controversy, why do you think people in the 1980s got so agitated by the film?
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What got under their skin about it?
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Well, first of all, it was the beginning of David's work.
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He had done a film called Eraserhead, it was very much a David Lynch film, but it was very, very avant garde, if you want.
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And then he did a beautiful film called The Elephant Man.
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But if you want,The Elephant Man was still in the traditional realm of films.
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You could see David in it, but it isn't his full expression of detachment for narration, for example.
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Then he did another film called Dune that was not successful.
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He never-- it was a nightmare for him that didn't success.
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And finally he found the money to doBlue Velvet, a little independent film.
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And I think that Blue Velvet might be the first film where you see David restoring his identity, but Blue Velvet, you could follow it, not totally understand it, but had a little bit of narration.
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You could get your footing in it in a different way, I think.
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Exactly.
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You know, with access to the internet and online pornography, our cultural view of what we think of as taboo has sort of changed over the years, and it's broadened, I think, you know, for better or for worse, I think, you know, the sexuality on show in Blue Velvet, when you watch it today, it still feels shocking.
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- Why is that?
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- Well, it's shocking because it's a rape.
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And I think people were not used to seeing this kind of rape.
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I think that there were no portrait of abused women in that sense.
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You know, we'd seen a film about the Holocaust, the war.
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Of course, we have seen films where men and women were abused, but not a film that felt so cool with it.
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Rock and roll music and a certain amount of sexiness because she's sexy.
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Dorothy Vallens is beautiful and sings beautifully, and she's a sex symbol in the little town.
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And yet that is just a facade.
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Behind it there is all this darkness so that hadn't been seen.
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And I think most of all, it was David's language that hadn't been yet understood by the public.
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People said, "Well, I don't understand it.
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She's a beautiful woman"and why is she behaving like this?" And, I mean, I don't know, I cannot be in people's minds, but I think that it's also hard for me to speak about, like decades, things change because they don't change.
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Sex is difficult to deal with, even today people don't talk about the reality of it.
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And as David said, I think very beautifully, and sometimes I quote him., He said, you know, "the act of mating or making love, it could be the most tender"and the most sublime, and it can be the most horrid of the crime.
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"And yet the action is exactly the same." And that's what the film deals with.
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And that's why I think it's disturbing for the audience, because they want to have an answer to that.
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Is it pleasant or is it not?
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And then, you know, Dorothy Vallens has maybe aspect of her is sado-masochistic.
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And so that was also a further complication in understanding the character.
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Is she good or is she bad?
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Is she black or is she white?
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And if you play something more complex, people were disturbed.
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I think that's what the controversy.
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After Blue Velvet another much discussed aspect of Rossellini and Lynch's collaboration was their romantic relationship.
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And because they were now dating, people made assumptions about their professional partnership too.
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But more on that after the break.
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All right, everybody, your regular host Rico Gagliano here.
19:57
Taking just a moment in the middle of this interview with a legend to tell you about MUBI.
20:01
It is the global film company that champions great cinema, bringing it to you wherever you are in as many ways as we possibly can.
20:08
We stream movies, we produce them, we release them in theaters, movies from any country, from legendary auteurs or brilliant first timers.
20:15
We've always got something new for you to discover.
20:17
And as Simran mentioned earlier, ready to be discovered on MUBI right now is David Lynch's Twin Peaks, created with Mark Frost back in 1990.
20:26
This is the TV series that enthralled a whole generation of viewers, teaching them the pleasures of a damn fine cup of coffee, how to tie a cherry stem in your mouth, and also how supernatural horror, deadpan comedy, crime procedurals, and soap operas make perfect sense, all mashed up together.
20:42
It actually came out while I was an undergrad, and I remember coming home one night and my roommate was watching the first episode on TV, and I will never forget it was right at the end, and all I saw was a guy in a jail cell screaming with this maniac intensity, and then boom, the end credits rolled and I was like, "What the hell was that?" And he's like "The new David Lynch series.
21:02
You just missed something amazing." And he was right.
21:08
Basically, that show changed TV.
21:08
And if you're in the US, UK, Mexico and many other countries, you can see why by watchingTwin Peaks on MUBI right now we've got the whole series, the first two seasons, plus Twin Peaks, The Return.
21:22
Subscribe to MUBI at mubi.com and have at it.
21:26
We've got links and all the information you need in the show notes of this episode.
21:30
Speaking of which, let's get back to Simran and Isabella and the rest of this episode.
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Dorothy Vallens was one of Rossellini's earliest and most memorable acting roles, but it sounds like it ended up being a double edged sword.
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I don't think I played any other character as complex as as her.
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Yeah, I really...
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one of my favorite roles.
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What was it about the way that David saw people and saw women that meant that he was able to kind of reflect that complexity.
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Careful what you're saying, because this idea that there is a genius that fishes out of us, unfortunately, and I suffered a lot because David and I became a couple.
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And since I was a celebrated model, it was always like, the genius and the muse.
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You know, I was beautiful, but manipulated by him.
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I could express something wonderful, like a puppet.
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But he was the genius.
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And that is such a stereotype and a convention, you know, there is this myth that directors manipulate actors and take young virginal women that don't know who they are and make them do something.
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And that's a stereotype that, you know, women are stupid, men are genius.
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And it perpetuates this idea that diminishes the role of acting, diminishes the role of actress, and of women in general.
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When there is an actor, a director that has that idea and is very nasty, very manipulative, he doesn't get the same result, at least with me, you know, if somebody is going to manipulate me because he doesn't trust my brain, I don't think I will be a very good actress.
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I want to work with somebody who totally trusts me.
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And I can say, "Can I play somebody who's a victim of Stockholm Syndrome?" And they say, "What is that?""Well, can I show you the scene?""Oh, yeah, I like that. Yeah." That is because David said to me when he did the character, and I think it was maybe something that he experienced in his life.
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I said, "I want her to be unpredictable, scary in her reaction and unpredictable." And I had to create all the psychological background for this.
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And then when I played the scene, he just looked... yes.
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It's unpredictable.
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When you find Kyle MacLachlan character in the closet, you exercise power.
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You see you as a victim and now you are the executor of a crime.
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How surprising is that?
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He reacted to that kind of things, you know.
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I'm really glad that you, that you said that, that's really what this series is about.
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It's trying to challenge the idea of the male genius auteur and kind of think about what true collaboration looks like.
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And, you know, these incredible, complicated, interesting, fascinating women, they weren't just kind of plucked from this genius's imagination, but they were built together by all the different people behind the scenes.
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In my case, completely.
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And I'm absolutely sure that was the same case for Laura Dern, who is an incredible actress who David occasionally find a person who emanated exactly the same aura of the person that he wanted and then hired that man or that woman.
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It's possible.
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You know, it's very difficult to be a director, I'm sure.
24:59
Now, you and David also actually acted opposite one another in a film called Zelly and Me.
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You played a French nanny who's beloved by the little girl who's an orphan who she's looking after.
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And David played your boyfriend, and he's got a secret, too, in the film.
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How did you come to star in that together?
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So the director is called Tina Rathborne.
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There weren't at that time any women director, and she was telling stories that are very women-like.
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And this film, Zelly and Me was based a little bit on a biography of the director, who was an orphan, was a rich orphan.
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The mother died on a plane crash, and the father six months later died of a heart attack.
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So she was assigned to live with her grandmother, who was quite old, and the grandmother had a babysitter.
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And this babysitter was devoted to this child.
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And Tina wanted to tell the story of a romantic relationship with Mademoiselle.
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We tested also with the actors, and they all were kind of macho, you know?
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And, I said to Tina,"You know, it doesn't work.
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"These are, you know, if Zelly is a woman, is a little bit shy sexually"because she's a babysitter,"she lives in a foreign country.
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"I don't think she'll go for somebody who's macho and say, come on,"I'll take you out and drink some beer.
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"She would be terrified.
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We have to have somebody very kind.""And why don't you ask David Lynch?" who at the time was my boyfriend, because he's his nickname was the choirboy.
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He was such a sweet man.
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And so we tested, and Tina agreed with me that there was a sweetness and an insecurity and a shyness about David that you can imagine a spinster, virgin, older lady playing babysitter could fall in love.
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It wasn't falling in love with men: brutality, but, men: sweetness,I'm going to be missing our little meetings.Me too.But for me to be able to sit and talk to somebody like you...It's... chouette.You've got some chocolate here. And so David played that role.
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What was interesting is that Tina wanted to test him, and David went to be tested like any other actor.
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He was so nervous and later on he told me,"I was always told"how difficult it is to audition, but I never understood how difficult it is." So I think he became even sweeter and kinder when he had to, in his future film test for actors for their different roles, he really understood how difficult it is to be tested and rejected.
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Is this your father's?Joan, I'm not who you think I am. And what do you think you taught him about acting when you acted opposite each other?
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So much of acting is reacting.
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So, so much is a relationship that you establish with the person.
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And so David and I felt confident that, you know, we were a couple.
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We liked each other.
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So we could just use that.
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As simple as that.
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And you know, from the outside, after Blue Velvet, it seemed like David was on top of the world.
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Blue Velvet was recognized and celebrated by the mainstream.
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Twin Peaks was this cultural phenomenon.
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And then in 1990,Wild at Heart, which you also star in, won the Palme d'Or in Cannes.
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Le Palme d'Or 1990 Wild at Heart, David Lynch. How do you look back at his creativity and your own creativity during that period, when you worked together several times over that kind of five year period?
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Yes, no-- It was really wonderful.
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I completely loved working with David.
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I wish we could continue to work together, but I think because we were a couple and then we were not a couple, I wasn't hired anymore.
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And I was really sad about that, because it's rare that you find somebody that you can collaborate so closely.
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One aspect of that collaboration was designing how characters like Dorothy Vallens and Wild at Heart's Petita Durango should look.
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What kind of outfits they should wear and how they should do their makeup.
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As usual, Rossellini was involved in all the details.
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I suggested the look of Dorothy Vallens, I suggested, because I had very short hair as a model and looked very modern, and I understood that it wasn't correct for the character, who was from a small town, so we did the wig like a country western, and then I suggested to look like a doll, you know, with the makeup, with the red lipstick and the blue eyeshadow just as a facade, because I was trying to hide and like a little doll.
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And he liked that idea.
30:04
So-- and then eventually, when we did Wild at Heart, I also suggested the look of the other character.
30:10
Wild at Heart follows the madly in love Lula and Sailor, played by Laura Dern and Nicolas Cage.
30:16
When Lula's tyrannical mother puts a hit out on Sailor the couple ride off into the desert and leave everyone else in the dust.
30:25
Why in the hell do you want to come to Big Tuna, Sail?Well, I know it ain't exactly the Emerald City. On the road, they meet a woman named Perdita Durango, who wears skin tight black leather and a bright blond wig.
30:38
I played Perdita Durango, and maybe that is because I'm a model, and because I studied to become a costume designer, I work I often work in the physicality of my character.
30:50
But David created an atmosphere of great trust, of great kindness, and that's what gives you the freedom to experiment on the set.
31:02
Whoa! Look at this.So what do you want, Mr. Snakeskin?I was hoping you could tell me if there's a contract out on me.I really need to know. I don't remember what was written in the script, but what hit me it was that this character had to be at once a seductive, sexy, appealing, but also frightening and repugnant in a way.
31:29
I heard you were going with that bitch's daughter.- You heard right.
31:32
- You are one big, stupid asshole. And some images of Frida Kahlo came to mind.
31:41
Frida Kahlo is a Mexican painter.
31:44
She constantly does a self-portrait and a self-portrait are appealing and frightening.
31:49
She's very beautiful.
31:51
She dresses very well, but she leaves things that sometimes women don't like to leave.
31:56
For example, she has eyebrows that come together, you know.
32:00
So a lot of women remove their hair in between the eyebrows so that you have two eyebrows.
32:04
Frida Kahlo had one eyebrow.
32:06
Sometimes she didn't remove the hair on the side of her lips like a little shadow of mustache.
32:13
Sometimes she showed very her inside, her heart, or she had a back operation.
32:19
And so she saw her broken spinal column.
32:19
And yet the exterior was very beautiful.
32:24
And then there was this transparent thing that showed, you know, a fetus being dead, coming out of her or the broken spine.
32:32
So I said to David, maybe we should do a version of Frida Kahlo.
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And that's how we used the wig, the eyebrow.
32:41
I also wanted a little bit of mustache, but David thought that was too much.
32:45
We did a test with it and he said, no, it's too much.
32:47
People are going to be distracted, you know, by that.
32:50
And so this is how we came to be Perdita Durango and she's in the screen very little.
32:57
But I think her looks is very powerful, so...
33:00
And you want it to be a memorable character.
33:02
She's definitely, definitely memorable.
33:05
I want to briefly speak about your tribute to David at the 2019 Governors Award.
33:10
You did this incredible speech, and I'm going to read you a little bit of it.
33:14
You said "Emotions, as we all know very well, are not always rational, linear...
33:19
"Clear.
33:20
"So don't look for straight, linear, simple narrative in David's film.
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"He dwells much deeper than that.
33:26
He dwells in a realm of emotion that...
33:33
"eludes simple explanation.
33:36
"Definitive answer. Rationality.
33:39
"He is attracted to mystery.
33:39
And he tries to capture it for his film." How did you navigate that mystery as an actress?
33:49
Can you talk a little bit about the tension between wanting to flesh out your character and David's resistance to overexplaining?
33:56
You can play unpredictable in your reaction, but I feel more comfortable as an actress to anchor it to something, you know.
34:04
For example, to feel that Dorothy Vallens, she was more vulnerable as a foreigner because she didn't have a family to go to and say, "I'm being beaten up.
34:16
"There is a problem of drugs in my family." Whatever the problem was that made her to become the victim, there wasn't a mama that said, "You look pale.
34:24
"What's wrong with you?
34:24
You don't look like you look...
34:26
"You haven't eaten or you haven't slept." So as an actor, you do this kind of work.
34:32
I mean, life is mysterious.
34:34
I, you know, I don't have any problem with mystery.
34:36
Of course, life is mysterious.
34:38
I, you know, we go about it pretending we know, but we don't know what's going to happen.
34:42
We don't know why people do what they do.
34:42
I don't even understand why, you know, I push a button and lights turns on, and I push a button and lights go off.
34:52
So we're surrounded by mystery.
34:54
You know, I think that in in paintings, we accept abstract.
35:00
Kooning was a painter that, you know, painted with such a violence.
35:04
And you just say, "Why?
35:04
Why is this doodle?
35:08
"which was frightening me.
35:08
Or why is this doodle make me calm?
35:12
Why is that Rothko painting looking like the sea or the clouds in the sky, is an infinite like meditation on who are we in this universe Just by looking in his color blue.
35:26
So I think that David is an abstract painter.
35:29
Of all the female characters in David's films, that when you sort of think of them as a collection of women, with the exception of Dorothy, who is of course, she's close to your heart because she's yours...
35:42
Which other character kind of stands out to you or do you find yourself drawn to?
35:47
It's a question that I cannot answer.
35:49
The reason is that I...
35:49
I think that now that David is dead, they are retrospective.
35:54
And I am sure you have seen all his films, all of it is very present in your mind.
36:00
I have not seen films in decades, and I find it very melancholic to watch films by David, because I think of David, I think of our love, or I think of our friendship, or I think of that moment that was so beautiful doing that scene or of Dennis who's not here with us.
36:18
So for me, watching films that I've done in the past is a total torture.
36:22
So I never watched them.
36:22
So it's hard for me to tell.
36:25
I like the Log Lady.
36:26
It was so absurd that I loved her and that stayed with me.
36:31
She's brilliant.
36:32
And you know, earlier this year, you and your Blue Velvet costars, Laura Dern and Kyle MacLachlan, honored David's legacy at the Oscars.
36:41
Tell me the story of how you decided what to wear.
36:43
So David had just died, and I don't think he even knew that I...
36:49
he died before I was nominated.
36:52
He had seen the film Conclave and, sent me a text, a very lovely text saying how much he liked the film, but liked me and made me very proud of myself.
37:01
And so I decided to go to the Oscars, which is always this pressure about what you wear.
37:06
I said, you know, I'm going to wear an homage to David.
37:09
And I called Laura and I said, Laura, could you be my date?
37:13
Because Laura worked with David so much and she was, you know, kind of David's fifth child, or, I shouldn't say that because there is jealousy in the family.
37:24
David has four children, but Laura was also very, very close to his heart.
37:28
I mean, of course, he loves his children the way parents love his children.
37:32
But Laura was not only an actress, but a very close friend.
37:35
And so I asked Laura to be my date, and I was going to wear a blue velvet dress.
37:42
But a red carpet is not so much about film.
37:45
It's more about fashion and what you wear and, you know, and kind of a frenzy of gossip or who looks best.
37:53
People didn't understand it.
37:55
I mean, the next day, journalists like you or others understood that it was an homage to David.
38:00
I mean, it was on one hand sad because they didn't understand my homage.
38:05
And one hand I thought, wow, I'm pretentious of me to think that if I wear a blue velvet dress, people understand.
38:10
It's an homage to David, who just died.
38:15
I don't think it's pretentious at all.
38:17
You and David made an iconic piece of pop culture together.
38:20
I wish he'd continued.
38:21
I have to say that it was one of the saddest aspect of our breakup.
38:28
It was also that our collaboration had to come to an end.
38:31
I mean, he didn't want to work with me anymore, but that was really it was sad that he left, and he was also very sad that he left and our collaboration came to an end.
38:41
Well, you know, the work that you did make together still stands up and is still really special.
38:47
So you do have that.
38:49
Oh thank you. Yes I do.
38:51
Thank you.
38:53
I keep thinking about how Rossellini was seen as a vessel for Lynch's vision, instead of as a fellow artist who helped shape it.
39:00
But nearly 40 years later, Dorothy Vallens remains an enigma who can never fully be solved, and she belongs to both Rossellini and Lynch.
39:22
And that is the MUBI Podcast for this week.
39:24
Follow us to hear more stories about the Ladies of Lynch.
39:28
Next week our episode is all about the women of Twin Peaks.
39:33
Well, I mean, they were wildly out of step with what was going on.
39:36
This was remember, the show debuted not long after, kind of the heyday of the 80s nighttime soap, which was the antithesis of what we wanted to do.
39:45
We-- it didn't fit any of their parameters, and we took that as a very encouraging sign, actually.
39:51
Featuring that guy, the show's co-creator and writer Mark Frost.
39:55
So make sure you follow us so you don't miss it.
39:58
Meanwhile, if you love the show, leave a five star review wherever you listen.
40:02
And if you've got questions, comments, or a cover of a 1950s torch song you'd like us to hear, our email is podcast@mubi.com And now let's roll credits.
40:13
This show is written and hosted by me, Simran Hans.
40:17
Christian Coons is our editor.
40:19
Our original music is composed by Martin Austwick.
40:22
Ciara McEniff is our producer.
40:25
Our booking producer is Oli Charles and our assistant producer is Kat Kowalczyk.
40:30
Special thanks to Jacopo Bistacchia for helping to make this episode happen.
40:35
And Paul Smith, who recorded me from the attic of a barn.
40:39
This show is executive produced by Efe Çakarel, Rico Gagliano, Michael Tacca and Daniel Kasman.
40:45
And finally, to watch the best in cinema, subscribe to mubi.com Thanks for listening and keep an eye out for the Robins.
40:54
There'll be trouble until they come.