My Night In A Dream Scene

by Rick Paulas

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Concluding our extended weekend of INLAND EMPIRE preparation - which, yes, was nothing more than Rick sitting alone in his room staring at his Eraserhead poster while listening to Roy Orbison's "In Dreams", until he finally saw visions of backwards-talking midgets, lesbian love scenes, and Robert Blake in whiteface talking to himself over the phone - is this story from our very first issue, telling the reason why Rick's ass is currently accepting calls from agents.

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(from the archives)

“How was the drive here?” the woman at the bar asked. We were in a mostly-abandoned building in downtown LA. Her face was lit by a chaotic strobe, a neon bulb twisted slightly off its circuit. I met her five minutes ago after being placed a foot across from her by a stranger.

“Average,” I replied in a ten-inch voice. “I ran over a few old ladies on the way. They flew right over the car. Blood’s all over my hood. It’s going to be a bitch to get out.”

“Oh, that sounds like fun,” she said, clearly not understanding anything I said.

“It’s more like work, really. I’m sick of them being lazy, collecting all that social security by doing nothing. So, I’ve started taking them out one by one.”

The woman smiled and put her lips to the martini glass, the red liquid never passing the threshold of her mouth. She mimed a gulp and set the glass down. We continued our faux conversation. Every now and then, the smoke machine kicked in, obscuring her from view. But that didn’t stop the chat.

Sitting alone at a table behind me was a Polish man in his 60’s. He was staring at a young lady across from him. When she turned to look at him, he spoke to her in a Polish/ Satanic combo pick-up line. He capped off the seduction by scraping plaque from his teeth with his fingers and writing words in the air.

“Alright, cut,” David Lynch said. “I’m going to talk to the actors now.”

He walked to the Polish man. I halted my conversation with the female extra and leaned in to catch the bizarre directorial cues that were about to come from Lynch’s high-pitched, nasally voice. It would have to be along the lines of “You’re going to have to scrape your gums a little harder” or “Could we stick a tumor on your forehead so you have something to pick while you’re talking?”

I mean, this was the man who brought us Eraserhead, one of the three Most Likely Films To Come From A Mental Patient of all time. Maybe he’d ask “How do you feel about having a fetus strung over your shoulder?”

After that Midnight Movie debut, he deflowered American small town purity with Blue Velvet, a film I urgently sought out after it was banned by my parents. Maybe he’d suggest the Polish man drop F-bombs a little more liberally. Or a make-up job to showcase the brain matter below his skull.

While it’s true that Lynch reached the height of his popularity with Twin Peaks, I didn’t think he had the tenacity to add cherry pie and a damn good cup of coffee to the Polish man’s rickety table. Nor did I think he’d add mid-coital lesbians to the foreground, simple because of the table’s aforementioned instability. If he placed them anywhere it would be in the background, blocking my performance. For the first time in my life, I was against the presence of naked lesbians.

But it had to be something crazy, right? This wasn’t some “safe” David, like Cronenberg, Mamet or Fincher. This was David Lynch! Perhaps, “Do you mind speaking your lines backwards, performing a tap dance and juggling with a miner’s hat?” Or, “Could you eat a plate full of maggots while a shaven dog sits on your lap?” Maybe, “Can you offer a lick to your nipple in mid-sentence?”

I leaned over, ignoring actual conversation with my co-star. Lynch kneeled across the Polish man, his hefty bald translator on his shoulder like a parrot. The trio huddled like an undersized intramural football team. I was the non-athletic fourth team member – added at the last minute to fill the player quota – wandering in the huddle’s vicinity, even though I had no business being there. I was just the decoy anyway.

“Now, you don’t want to scare her out of the bar.” Lynch spoke to the man directly, the interpreter chiming in when blanks needed to be filled. He talked quietly, which made the eavesdropping much more difficult. “If she sees you like that, she’ll run right out of here. Okay? Tone it down a little.” He was actually telling him to act less creepy. David Lynch was trying to make the scene less sinister. “Okay?” he asked. The Polish man closed his eyes and nodded. Lynch broke the huddle and strolled back to the camera.

The shoot is for Lynch’s next film entitled INLAND EMPIRE (caps his, not mine) and is scheduled for release in 2006. But seeing as he’s been shooting the film on and off for two years, that’s probably not a very strict deadline. Rumors have it that actors are given only breakdowns of their scenes, usually just before they begin shooting. One crew member admitted that when he was told they were shooting a bar scene that day he asked “There’s a bar scene now?”

That’s not meant to imply an unprofessional attitude by the crew or director, just examples on the secrecy surrounding the project. When we were filming, there wasn’t a script or a shot-sheet in the room. In fact, the only synopsis that could be found is a simple cryptic phrase: “It’s a mystery about a woman in trouble.”

“Alright, let’s try it again,” he said from behind the small digital video camera. It’s his first foray into the digital world, but it has apparently been pleasant enough for Lynch for him to proclaim that he’s forever done with actual celluloid film. I picked back up my silent conversation with the woman. “Yeah, I come here all the time,” I mouthed. “I’m a raging alcoholic. In fact, I completely forgot your name or if we had sex yet. Did we?” I asked.

“No, but I do find the possibility extremely enticing,” she probably didn’t say. Lip-reading is a skill I have yet to attain. Behind us, the Polish man began to cough up the Polish / Satanic syllables towards the woman, a stand-in for Laura Dern. This time, the raspy words came out a little less strained. And, even though I’m not a trained actor, when the man’s gnarled hand darted into the air to write the cryptic symbols, I didn’t flinch.

“Alright, cut,” Lynch said. He lit up a cigarette and turned to his producer. “That’s good.” The crew began to take down the set after only twenty minutes of shooting. Later I found out they spent six hours putting up the set and getting the lighting right.

I was given fifty dollars for my troubles and told I was free to go. Considering my standout performance, fifty dollars is a steal.

But don’t let me be the judge of my work. When the film comes out, and you notice a bar scene – possibly a dream sequence – with a strange Polish guy mouthing inaudible words and scrubbing his teeth with raw fingers, go ahead and take a look behind him.

Most likely out of focus you’ll see yours truly, standing at the bar chatting with some lady, admitting to her my deepest secrets and strangest fears because she can’t hear them. And if my body is out of frame, you should still see my gorgeously chiseled ass hovering over the Polish man’s shoulder.

If the scene doesn’t get cut, that is. Or if Lynch decides to digitally remove my ass because its beauty is far too distracting.

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Rick Paulas is an editor of Duct Tape & Rouge. In his free time he offers fake fantasy baseball advice for McSweeney's, ruminations about sport for the Chicago Sports Review, shitty ideas at Mental Flatulence, and digital testicle photography for those with special needs.