There was a long stretch of time here on the site where my Top 10 favorites screen had the same three films in the top 3 slots as a lock.
Mulholland Drive was one of them. I have told the story before, but I might as well recount it here as the film gets its much deserved due.
I used to play this card game back in the 90s/00s, and I was at a big tournament in Boston. Some kid one table over had his laptop up, and he had
Mulholland Drive playing on DVD. A judge walked by, saw boobs, and kicked the kid out. After this happened, people at my table asked what movie he had been watching, and someone said
Mulholland Drive. Later that week, I was browsing at Blockbuster Video, and there were several copies of the film ready to rent. Having already wasted a good half not picking a film out, I grabbed a copy and off I went.
I went home and watched it with my then girlfriend and man did I hate this movie. I mean, I hated so much it made me angry. What kind of senseless garbage was this? I put the film in its case, drove back to Blockbuster, and told the guy working there that it had to be either the worst film I had ever seen, or close to it. I stomped around the store, picked up something shit like
Tomb Raider or the like, and went up to rent it. He said "I will comp you a rental for this one since the other one was so bad." I went home and watched
Tomb Raider, and promptly forgot about it for the rest of my life, because it is actually a bad film, and
Mulholland Drive isn't.
For the next two days, I could not stop thinking about
Mulholland Drive. It was like a little worm in my brain just a crawlin' around like one of the ants in the ear in
Blue Velvet. So, after angrily stomping around Blockbuster a couple nights earlier cursing under my breath about how terrible the film was, I did the only sensible thing: I went out and bought a copy of
Mulholland Drive.
I probably watched it 5 times in the next few days; it was the most interesting, absorbing piece of cinema I had ever seen. I spent hours on the internet studying every little detail and scrap of info about the movie and its meaning. I would talk about it with anyone who would listen, I drove my friends crazy, I made people watch it with me, after which they would avoid me for months on end. I gifted a copy to a friend that lived 7 states away, then hounded them for their opinion on the film. I lent it to the upstairs neighbor and three weeks later he moved to Georgia.
I was pretty much obsessed with this film for a good 8 years after I first saw it. When my later-to-be wife and myself went on our first date, we went out to eat and then went back to my place to watch
Mulholland Drive. Halfway through the film she asked if I was on any special mediation or perhaps in some sort of program. Surprisingly, we are still married to this day.
Sounds like this film might be at the top of my ballot, eh? Over the past few years, I am kind of cooled on it a bit. I don't watch it anywhere near as often as I used to, and I rarely even mention it these days. I had it at
#7 on my ballot.