Laura Dern is the talented and beautiful muse of many of David Lynchs best films. Dern has starred in Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart and most recently, Inland Empire. In Lynchs three hour, shot on video opus Dern plays multiple characters all orbiting her main character of an actor who lands her first really great part in a long time. Dern has not only supported many independent filmmakers throughout her career, she produced Alexander Paynes first film Citizen Ruth, scored an Oscar nomination for Rambling Rose and even changed herself into a femme fatale for Novocaine. I got a chance to talk with Dern about Inland Empire from an undisclosed place in Manhattan.
Check out the official website for Inland Empire
Daniel Robert Epstein: So have you and David have kept in contact over the years?
Laura Dern: Yeah. We both got busy in different directions for a while which is part of why we didnt work together for a period of time. But we always remain friends and keep finding each other in the course of life.
DRE: I asked David if there is a narrative in Inland Empire and he said Yes there is. What did you ask him about when you were shooting this?
LD: I only remember a couple of times where I really had to pinpoint him down and say I need more. Thats over a three year period so thats pretty amazing considering there wasnt a script. If I could say anything to someone whos going to his film; I would want them to know about David before they entered the theatre. Theres nothing about David that is elitist. He hasnt figured out the plot and is sitting back waiting for you to fail his test. He believes in the visual arts and he is a painter whos start was about creating something on canvas and having interpretations be intuitive and completely different than anyone elses. Thats how he created art and then cinema took off from there. David believes in the intelligence of an audience. He believes in an audience going into the experience and discovering it for themselves. He knows what it is for him but he doesnt need it to be the same for you and I love him for that. I want people to know that because I had the same experience making it that they had watching it. I didnt know what the plot was but I had to feel my way through it and consider behaviorally what the character is walking through in each scene as we did it because I didnt know what was coming after or what had come before. I had no script to guide me. But David is so specific about the feeling he wants you to have. Even when he speaks in code, he gives you a word or a feeling or the mood that he wants then you can run with that for a long time. He told me at the beginning of shooting that it is about a woman in trouble. That really helped me. For me it became about many aspects of a woman going through a dismantling and maybe even a resurrection at some point. So I never saw it as these different characters and these different pieces. Thats a very exciting way to work.
DRE: Obviously you understand your interpretation of the film but do you feel that you and David were in sync?
LD: Emotionally yes. I think most of people who see it, probably could get all the same feelings from it. But even though I figured it out for me, I dont necessarily know what the rabbits mean or what does 47 mean or am I killing myself, is the guy my husband and what is the Polish connection? Is that woman me from a past life? Is it me in an altered state and Im finding myself? Theres so many ways people are talking to me about it and theyre all pretty fantastic ideas. So I cant wait to see it again to figure it out more and see what it makes me feel. The first time you see it youre watching yourself and seeing what you all did and how it came together. So it takes a couple times before you just sit and witness the movie.
DRE: Would you have done this film if it had been any other filmmaker but David?
LD: There are only a few filmmakers that I would take a three year journey with. But I would trust them because I either know them personally or because I love their work. But to have no script and to play several people takes the length of familial relationship. Also it wasnt just me trusting him but also knowing how much he trusts me. That was an incredible gift. The greatest thing a director can learn from David is that he believes so much in his actors. That confidence and faith forces you to take risks in a much greater way.
DRE: Do you remember your first audition for David?
LD: Yeah, it was for Blue Velvet. I was 17 and I went in figuring Id do what is always done at auditions which is sit down and be asked to read a scene. Im sitting on a floor in the hallway when David came out of the office and said I got to take a leak. He ran to the bathroom and afterwards he invited me into his office with the casting director and we spoke about life for 30 minutes. I remember us discussing trees and meditation. He mentioned something about being a mediator. We talked about him growing up in the Northwest and me growing up in LA and that we lived near each other in LA when he was making Eraserhead. We never mentioned acting or movies. I dont think hed ever seen me in a movie but hed been told something about me. Then he asked me to come to Bobs Big Boy with him to meet Kyle MacLachlan for French fries.
DRE: So he really does like Bobs Big Boy.
LD: Thats real. We went to Bobs and he was drawing on a napkin and then he asked me to go do Blue Velvet. That was my audition process. So I should have known then that Id end up doing Inland Empire because already it was going to be an unusual journey.
DRE: Is part of the fun of doing a David Lynch movie seeing what he does with all these disparate parts?
LD: Whats incredible is that its only as fun or maybe even less fun than the journey itself. David is so much fun. He wants it to be such a good time. Hes a nice man. He wants everybody to have fun which is unbelievably rare to have on a movie set. He cares deeply about this spontaneous, fun, experimental feeling. Being pushed towards bravery is a blast. He had a camera operator working with us and he needed something like a dolly shot but we had no equipment. So he put the camera operator on rollerblades. That can only be paralleled by seeing it. Its exhilarating, its scary, its exciting and you dont know what to expect. Thats what everyday at work was like.
DRE: David also loves Los Angeles. You grew up there and your parents are actors. Do you love Los Angeles?
LD: In some ways. I think he has more of a love of it than I but the parts of LA that I love, he loves equally. He loves old school Hollywood like Grauman's Chinese, the old Hamburger Hamlet restaurant on Beverly and places like the Beverly Hills Amusement Park. Those are things that I love too because they were my childhood and he has an appreciation for it on a whole other level and I love that about him.
DRE: Since you and David have worked together so much, do you have a shorthand on set?
LD: Yeah, we talk a lot about everything but the movie. I think hes a believer in not over talking, just like hes a believer in not over plotting. Everything becomes an intuitive, feeling experience and thats the way he describes it.
DRE: Have you ever shot a movie on video before?
LD: No.
DRE: Was it a different experience?
LD: Wildly different. Nothing like shooting a 35mm movie. With a 12 hour day on a regular movie, you hope for an hours worth of great footage. On a 12 hour day on this movie, wed come away with probably ten hours of great footage. We shot all the time. Wed get to work and start shooting. The Sony PD-150 is so lightweight that we were close together the entire time. It wasnt like he was in his tented little place watching a monitor. There are certain kinds of movies that require that, but there are other kinds of movies that are about human behavior and to have your director right there with you watching what youre doing and pushing you to try different things or go to a different place is the way it should be.
DRE: One of the last scenes has Laura [Harring] blowing a kiss and then theres all the other actors. Do you have a shorthand with the other actors since most of you have worked with David before?
LD: Not really oddly enough. David has a different language with each person. He gets his own feeling with each person. Each experience is so unique with David. Im friends with Naomi Watts and she and I did a movie together [We Don't Live Here Anymore] and we talked about how much we loved David and loved working with David, but it is still its own experience. But there are a couple of catchphrases we all know. Hes the most unique person and such a brilliant and extraordinary gift to film. I just feel really lucky to work with him.
DRE: Your two previous films with David are so beautiful and lush, do you feel like we are losing that now that David is only going to be working with video?
LD: I dont know the answer to that because I havent seen that much digital video being transferred. I thought I would hate it because I love film. But what David did with the transfer process and how he transferred it and how he works with color and light and sound and mixing and matching them all together is so beautiful. The crudeness of the film that he was working with becomes its own art. I dont know if in somebody elses hand I would feel the same way but somehow the nastiness of it was the beauty. But David certainly feels like its his future and Im sure it is the way of the future.
DRE: I love the scenes with you, Jeremy Irons and Justin Theroux. How was doing those?
LD: Great. That was the most like making a regular movie. The scenes with Jeremy and Harry Dean Stanton were done all together in five days. There was more crew as well. But we still were moving so fast which I think all the actors loved.
DRE: I know youve done like a dozen pictures with your mom including this one.
LD: Something crazy like that at this point. But there are only two where I felt like we were really working together, Rambling Rose and Wild at Heart.
DRE: Is it coincidence when the both of you are on a picture?
LD: Oh, total coincidence. Rambling Rose is the only time we actually sought out doing it together. I was involved in the movie and the director [Martha Coolidge] and my mom were very good friends because they had done another film. She really wanted my mom but mom and I also wanted to do it together. But David asked my mom to do Inland Empire without me even knowing.
DRE: I heard you might be in Jurassic Park 4.
LD: I heard that too. I dont even know. People have asked me if Im going to be in it so I dont know if that means theyre writing it and my character is in it.
DRE: Would you be interested?
LD: Well if Steven [Spielberg] were there Id always be interested because I love him.
DRE: What if he were just producing because I dont think hes going to direct it?
LD: You never know. I guess it depends on where they take the dinosaurs and me.
DRE: It has been almost ten years since your appearance on Ellen DeGeneres sitcom. It had a big impact at the time but it seems like it has faded.
LD: It had an impact on people who were ready to listen. Thats the good news. But it did not have an impact on the Bush administration. So Ellens show didnt make it any different. But what did excite me is that Ive never received more fan mail for anything in my life. A lot of it was parents thanking me for being part of something that helped them to honor their childrens choices. That moved me so much. At the time, it was huge because these huge sponsors were pulling out and we were in the middle of shooting and it was becoming a huge controversy. It wasnt just that she mentioned being gay but I was also playing a gay woman that she was coming out to and potentially coming on to. The whole thing was amazing and it seemed to be radical in this day and age, but it was at the moment. Unfortunately not quite huge enough to shift the tide of unconscious idiocy.
DRE: Did you have a big part in Year of the Dog?
LD: I dont have a big part. Its very much an ensemble. I had a hilarious time doing it and it was a hilarious character that I loved playing. I really wanted to do it because I think Mike White is totally brilliant. Mike is a born director. We tried to do a movie together a long time ago that he had written and that he wanted to direct. It never came to be so I wanted to support him when he finally got to direct.
DRE: Do you know what youre doing next?
LD: I dont. I had a small part in a movie with Russell Crowe [called Tenderness] and theres a movie with John Travolta and James Gandolfini thats supposed to come out called Lonely Hearts. But I dont know when that movies coming even though we did about a year ago.
Now Im trying to figure out what to do after this. I feel so liberated from doing Inland Empire that Im like Gosh, what do you do when you get to be three totally different people. But Ive been lucky enough to run the gamut so hopefully something fun will come up.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Check out the official website for Inland Empire
Daniel Robert Epstein: So have you and David have kept in contact over the years?
Laura Dern: Yeah. We both got busy in different directions for a while which is part of why we didnt work together for a period of time. But we always remain friends and keep finding each other in the course of life.
DRE: I asked David if there is a narrative in Inland Empire and he said Yes there is. What did you ask him about when you were shooting this?
LD: I only remember a couple of times where I really had to pinpoint him down and say I need more. Thats over a three year period so thats pretty amazing considering there wasnt a script. If I could say anything to someone whos going to his film; I would want them to know about David before they entered the theatre. Theres nothing about David that is elitist. He hasnt figured out the plot and is sitting back waiting for you to fail his test. He believes in the visual arts and he is a painter whos start was about creating something on canvas and having interpretations be intuitive and completely different than anyone elses. Thats how he created art and then cinema took off from there. David believes in the intelligence of an audience. He believes in an audience going into the experience and discovering it for themselves. He knows what it is for him but he doesnt need it to be the same for you and I love him for that. I want people to know that because I had the same experience making it that they had watching it. I didnt know what the plot was but I had to feel my way through it and consider behaviorally what the character is walking through in each scene as we did it because I didnt know what was coming after or what had come before. I had no script to guide me. But David is so specific about the feeling he wants you to have. Even when he speaks in code, he gives you a word or a feeling or the mood that he wants then you can run with that for a long time. He told me at the beginning of shooting that it is about a woman in trouble. That really helped me. For me it became about many aspects of a woman going through a dismantling and maybe even a resurrection at some point. So I never saw it as these different characters and these different pieces. Thats a very exciting way to work.
DRE: Obviously you understand your interpretation of the film but do you feel that you and David were in sync?
LD: Emotionally yes. I think most of people who see it, probably could get all the same feelings from it. But even though I figured it out for me, I dont necessarily know what the rabbits mean or what does 47 mean or am I killing myself, is the guy my husband and what is the Polish connection? Is that woman me from a past life? Is it me in an altered state and Im finding myself? Theres so many ways people are talking to me about it and theyre all pretty fantastic ideas. So I cant wait to see it again to figure it out more and see what it makes me feel. The first time you see it youre watching yourself and seeing what you all did and how it came together. So it takes a couple times before you just sit and witness the movie.
DRE: Would you have done this film if it had been any other filmmaker but David?
LD: There are only a few filmmakers that I would take a three year journey with. But I would trust them because I either know them personally or because I love their work. But to have no script and to play several people takes the length of familial relationship. Also it wasnt just me trusting him but also knowing how much he trusts me. That was an incredible gift. The greatest thing a director can learn from David is that he believes so much in his actors. That confidence and faith forces you to take risks in a much greater way.
DRE: Do you remember your first audition for David?
LD: Yeah, it was for Blue Velvet. I was 17 and I went in figuring Id do what is always done at auditions which is sit down and be asked to read a scene. Im sitting on a floor in the hallway when David came out of the office and said I got to take a leak. He ran to the bathroom and afterwards he invited me into his office with the casting director and we spoke about life for 30 minutes. I remember us discussing trees and meditation. He mentioned something about being a mediator. We talked about him growing up in the Northwest and me growing up in LA and that we lived near each other in LA when he was making Eraserhead. We never mentioned acting or movies. I dont think hed ever seen me in a movie but hed been told something about me. Then he asked me to come to Bobs Big Boy with him to meet Kyle MacLachlan for French fries.
DRE: So he really does like Bobs Big Boy.
LD: Thats real. We went to Bobs and he was drawing on a napkin and then he asked me to go do Blue Velvet. That was my audition process. So I should have known then that Id end up doing Inland Empire because already it was going to be an unusual journey.
DRE: Is part of the fun of doing a David Lynch movie seeing what he does with all these disparate parts?
LD: Whats incredible is that its only as fun or maybe even less fun than the journey itself. David is so much fun. He wants it to be such a good time. Hes a nice man. He wants everybody to have fun which is unbelievably rare to have on a movie set. He cares deeply about this spontaneous, fun, experimental feeling. Being pushed towards bravery is a blast. He had a camera operator working with us and he needed something like a dolly shot but we had no equipment. So he put the camera operator on rollerblades. That can only be paralleled by seeing it. Its exhilarating, its scary, its exciting and you dont know what to expect. Thats what everyday at work was like.
DRE: David also loves Los Angeles. You grew up there and your parents are actors. Do you love Los Angeles?
LD: In some ways. I think he has more of a love of it than I but the parts of LA that I love, he loves equally. He loves old school Hollywood like Grauman's Chinese, the old Hamburger Hamlet restaurant on Beverly and places like the Beverly Hills Amusement Park. Those are things that I love too because they were my childhood and he has an appreciation for it on a whole other level and I love that about him.
DRE: Since you and David have worked together so much, do you have a shorthand on set?
LD: Yeah, we talk a lot about everything but the movie. I think hes a believer in not over talking, just like hes a believer in not over plotting. Everything becomes an intuitive, feeling experience and thats the way he describes it.
DRE: Have you ever shot a movie on video before?
LD: No.
DRE: Was it a different experience?
LD: Wildly different. Nothing like shooting a 35mm movie. With a 12 hour day on a regular movie, you hope for an hours worth of great footage. On a 12 hour day on this movie, wed come away with probably ten hours of great footage. We shot all the time. Wed get to work and start shooting. The Sony PD-150 is so lightweight that we were close together the entire time. It wasnt like he was in his tented little place watching a monitor. There are certain kinds of movies that require that, but there are other kinds of movies that are about human behavior and to have your director right there with you watching what youre doing and pushing you to try different things or go to a different place is the way it should be.
DRE: One of the last scenes has Laura [Harring] blowing a kiss and then theres all the other actors. Do you have a shorthand with the other actors since most of you have worked with David before?
LD: Not really oddly enough. David has a different language with each person. He gets his own feeling with each person. Each experience is so unique with David. Im friends with Naomi Watts and she and I did a movie together [We Don't Live Here Anymore] and we talked about how much we loved David and loved working with David, but it is still its own experience. But there are a couple of catchphrases we all know. Hes the most unique person and such a brilliant and extraordinary gift to film. I just feel really lucky to work with him.
DRE: Your two previous films with David are so beautiful and lush, do you feel like we are losing that now that David is only going to be working with video?
LD: I dont know the answer to that because I havent seen that much digital video being transferred. I thought I would hate it because I love film. But what David did with the transfer process and how he transferred it and how he works with color and light and sound and mixing and matching them all together is so beautiful. The crudeness of the film that he was working with becomes its own art. I dont know if in somebody elses hand I would feel the same way but somehow the nastiness of it was the beauty. But David certainly feels like its his future and Im sure it is the way of the future.
DRE: I love the scenes with you, Jeremy Irons and Justin Theroux. How was doing those?
LD: Great. That was the most like making a regular movie. The scenes with Jeremy and Harry Dean Stanton were done all together in five days. There was more crew as well. But we still were moving so fast which I think all the actors loved.
DRE: I know youve done like a dozen pictures with your mom including this one.
LD: Something crazy like that at this point. But there are only two where I felt like we were really working together, Rambling Rose and Wild at Heart.
DRE: Is it coincidence when the both of you are on a picture?
LD: Oh, total coincidence. Rambling Rose is the only time we actually sought out doing it together. I was involved in the movie and the director [Martha Coolidge] and my mom were very good friends because they had done another film. She really wanted my mom but mom and I also wanted to do it together. But David asked my mom to do Inland Empire without me even knowing.
DRE: I heard you might be in Jurassic Park 4.
LD: I heard that too. I dont even know. People have asked me if Im going to be in it so I dont know if that means theyre writing it and my character is in it.
DRE: Would you be interested?
LD: Well if Steven [Spielberg] were there Id always be interested because I love him.
DRE: What if he were just producing because I dont think hes going to direct it?
LD: You never know. I guess it depends on where they take the dinosaurs and me.
DRE: It has been almost ten years since your appearance on Ellen DeGeneres sitcom. It had a big impact at the time but it seems like it has faded.
LD: It had an impact on people who were ready to listen. Thats the good news. But it did not have an impact on the Bush administration. So Ellens show didnt make it any different. But what did excite me is that Ive never received more fan mail for anything in my life. A lot of it was parents thanking me for being part of something that helped them to honor their childrens choices. That moved me so much. At the time, it was huge because these huge sponsors were pulling out and we were in the middle of shooting and it was becoming a huge controversy. It wasnt just that she mentioned being gay but I was also playing a gay woman that she was coming out to and potentially coming on to. The whole thing was amazing and it seemed to be radical in this day and age, but it was at the moment. Unfortunately not quite huge enough to shift the tide of unconscious idiocy.
DRE: Did you have a big part in Year of the Dog?
LD: I dont have a big part. Its very much an ensemble. I had a hilarious time doing it and it was a hilarious character that I loved playing. I really wanted to do it because I think Mike White is totally brilliant. Mike is a born director. We tried to do a movie together a long time ago that he had written and that he wanted to direct. It never came to be so I wanted to support him when he finally got to direct.
DRE: Do you know what youre doing next?
LD: I dont. I had a small part in a movie with Russell Crowe [called Tenderness] and theres a movie with John Travolta and James Gandolfini thats supposed to come out called Lonely Hearts. But I dont know when that movies coming even though we did about a year ago.
Now Im trying to figure out what to do after this. I feel so liberated from doing Inland Empire that Im like Gosh, what do you do when you get to be three totally different people. But Ive been lucky enough to run the gamut so hopefully something fun will come up.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
VIEW 4 of 4 COMMENTS
mistresst:
Laura Dern = goddess
strega:
Great interview. Really makes me want to check the movie out.