Blue Velvet

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Blue Velvet is a 1986 erotic thriller mystery film directed and written by David Lynch. The film begins with the protagonist discovering a severed human ear, which he takes to the police. He begins to investigate the matter himself, and discovers a seamy underworld within his quaint suburban town. The title is taken from a Bobby Vinton song by the same name, which is sung by Isabella Rossellini's character in the film.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

1 Synopsis
2 Frank's drug
3 Symbolism
4 Production
5 Blue Velvet as a Lynch film
6 Possible influences
7 Awards
8 Trivia
9 References
10 External links

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Synopsis

The film begins with a man collapsing from a stroke. His son, Jeffrey Beaumont, played by Kyle MacLachlan, finds a human ear in a field and takes it to the police. His curiosity piqued, he begins investigating the matter himself. In the process, he discovers that within his quaint suburban town exists a seedy underworld of sexual exploitation and brutal violence. A complex relationship develops between Jeffrey, his innocent girlfriend Sandy Williams (played by Laura Dern), who is the daughter of the police chief, and Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini). Jeffrey discovers that Dorothy is being forced to have sex with Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), a maniacal gangster who has kidnapped her husband and son.

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Frank's drug

Throughout the film, Frank Booth uses a mask to breath a gas from a tank. The identity of this gas is a subject of controversy. Lynch's script specified helium, to raise Frank's voice and have it resemble that of an infant. However, during filming, Hopper, an experienced drug user, claimed to have insight into Frank's choice of drug and that helium was inappropriate.

"...I'm thankful to Dennis, because up until the last minute it was gonna be helium - to make the difference between 'Daddy' and the baby that much more. But I didn't want it to be funny. So helium went out the window and became just a gas. Then, in the first rehearsal, Dennis said, 'David, I know what's in these different cannisters.' And I said, 'Thank God, Dennis, that you know that!' And he named all the gases." - David Lynch, LYNCH ON LYNCH (ed. Chris Rodley) p.143-144 Template:Fact

In a documentary on the DVD version of the film, Hopper identifies the drug as amyl nitrite.

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Symbolism

The most consistent symbolism in Blue Velvet is an insect motif introduced at the end of the first scene, when the camera zooms in on a well-kept suburban lawn until it discovers, underground, a swarming nest of disgusting bugs. This is generally recognized as a metaphor for the seedy underworld that Jeffrey will soon discover under the surface of his own suburban, Reaganesque paradise. The bug motif is recurrent throughout the film, most notably in the horrific bug-like oxygen mask that Frank wears, but also in the excuse that Jeffrey offers when he first gains access to Dorothy's apartment: he claims he is an insect exterminator. One of Frank's sinister accomplices is also consistently identified through the yellow jacket he wears. Yellowjacket happens to be the name of a type of wasp, which double-layers the symbolism on yet another level, as the economically dominant groups of the USA are the WASP's - White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Finally, a robin eating a bug on a fence becomes a topic of discussion in the last scene of the film.

The severed ear that Jeffrey discovers is also a key symbolic element; the ear is what leads Jeffrey into danger. Indeed, just as Jeffrey's troubles begin, the audience is treated to a nightmarish sequence in which the camera zooms into the ear canal of the severed, decomposing ear. Notably, the camera does not reemerge from the ear canal until the end of the film. When Jeffrey finally comes through his hellish ordeal unscathed, the ear canal shot is replayed, only in reverse, zooming out and revealing that this ear belongs to Jeffrey, as he relaxes in his yard on a summer day.

A number of scenes contain red drapes or curtains, a popular recurring image for Lynch, especially prominent in Twin Peaks.

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Production

Blue Velvet's origins may lie in Lynch's childhood, spent deep in the forests of Spokane, Washington, a Northwestern setting similar to that of the film (1). If Lynch's childhood memories inspired the setting of Blue Velvet, the actual story of the film originated from three ideas that crystallized in the filmmaker's mind over a period of time. After finishing The Elephant Man (1980), Lynch met producer Richard Roth over coffee. Roth had read and enjoyed Lynch's screenplay Ronnie Rocket but did not think it was something he wanted to produce. He asked Lynch if the filmmaker had any other scripts, but Lynch only had ideas.

"I told him I had always wanted to sneak into a girl's room to watch her into the night and that, maybe, at one point or another, I would see something that would be the clue to a murder mystery. Roth loved the idea and asked me to write a treatment. I went home and thought of the ear in the field." Template:Fact

For the filmmaker, the severed ear was the perfect way to draw Jeffrey into a secret world that lies at the heart of Blue Velvet Template:Fact. The third idea that came to Lynch was Bobby Vinton’s classic rendition of the song "Blue Velvet." Template:Fact Once these three ideas came to Lynch, he set out to write a screenplay. The director wrote two scripts but both had a weak middle act so he ultimately rejected them Template:Fact.

Blue Velvet was finally made in 1986, shortly after Lynch had completed his sci-fi film Dune, which ran into various problems during shooting and was a commercial and critical disappointment. Drained and frustrated by this harrowing ordeal, Lynch took some time off to develop a more personal project. Surprisingly, Dune's producer, Dino de Laurentiis, decided to give Lynch another chance, but only with the stipulation that Lynch take a cut in his salary and work with a budget of only $6 million. In return, the young director could have total artistic freedom and control over the final cut of the film. Template:Fact Because the material was completely different from anything that would be considered mainstream at the time, Laurentiis had to start his own production company to distribute it. Template:Fact

The finished film was cut down from an original four-hour length to its final 120 minute length. The missing footage was put in storage and apparently lost.

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Blue Velvet as a Lynch film

Blue Velvet introduced several common elements of Lynch's work, including abused women, the dark underbelly of small towns and unconventional uses of vintage songs (Bobby Vinton’s "Blue Velvet" and Roy Orbison’s "In Dreams" are both featured in disturbing ways). It was also the first time Lynch worked with composer Angelo Badalamenti, who would contribute to all of his future full-length films.

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Possible influences

Many elements of Blue Velvet are reminiscent of Charles Laughton's 1955 one-shot-wonder, The Night of the Hunter. The story of a child or naïve young man thrust into an unexpected adult world of crime, sex, and murder is common to both films, and the development of this subject as something of a journey towards the redemption of innocence also seems similar. Both films feature a helpless woman held under the power of a sometimes disarming but ultimately terrifying madman. Both madmen are tied symbolically to a primal, animal or insect world. And in both films the child character loses his father in the first scene, and later seeks the help of a surrogate father figure but is disappointed in this appeal to adult, masculine authority.

If Lynch was indeed influenced by Laughton, the ending of Blue Velvet deserves special attention. In both Blue Velvet and Night of the Hunter, the trial of the adult world is ultimately followed by a return to innocence and childhood. However, whereas Laughton's treatment of this ending seems heartfelt and has in fact been criticized as too saccharine or simplistic, Lynch's ending seems tongue in cheek, or even sarcastic. Just as Lynch's opening shots of perfect suburban America quickly prove too good to be true, his ending leaves doubt as to whether normalcy has really been recovered. The appearance of a deliberately stiff and artificial-seeming robin singing merrily to Jeffrey cements the impression of cynicism.

Additionally, Kenneth Anger's 1949 dialogue-free short Puce Moment, which features a dark-haired woman slightly past her prime modelling an array of bright clothing for the camera, may be counted as an influence. Template:Endspoiler

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Awards

David Lynch and Dennis Hopper won a Los Angeles Film Critics Association award in 1987 for Blue Velvet in categories Best Director (Lynch) and Best Supporting Actor (Hopper). In 1987 National Society of Film Critics gave the film Best Film, Best Director (David Lynch), Best Cinematography (Frederick Elmes) and Best Supporting Actor (Dennis Hopper) awards. Also David Lynch was nominated for the 1987 Best Director Academy Award.

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Trivia

The exterior scenes of 'Lumberton' were filmed in Wilmington, North Carolina.
A number of musicians have sampled Dennis Hopper's character Frank Booth in this movie, the Mr Bungle song "Squeeze Me Macaroni" features the sample, "One thing I can't stand is warm beer, it makes me fucking puke!!!!" dialogue at the end, and Anthrax's "I'm The Man '91" has him clearly saying "Fuck that shit!" which Frank Booth says in response to what type of beer Kyle MacLachlan's character says he likes. Pigface's unreleased remix "Sickaspfuck", found on their 2001 best of album, begins with Frank's shouting of "Let's fuck! I'll fuck anything that moves!" The Louisiana band Acid Bath also samples Frank Booth in the song "Cassie eats Cockroaches", the final track on "When The Kite String Pops". The song also samples "A Clockwork Orange".
Blue Velvet is quoted a few times in the Kevin Smith movie Clerks.
Blue Velvet was referenced in an episode of Arrested Development. Wayne Jarvis comments on Gob's puppet Franklin, asking (in an imitation of Kyle Maclachlan), "Why do there have to be puppets like Frank?"
Willem Dafoe was originally considered for the role of Frank Booth, as was Robert Loggia.
Isabella Rossellini wore a blue velvet dress at the Academy Awards Ceremony the year that Lynch was nominated for Best Director.
Peter Travers, the film critic for Rolling Stone magazine, named Blue Velvet the best film of the 1980s.