The most acclaimed American film of this century was a television program.
I am not referring to The Wire (2002-2008) or The Sopranos (1999-2007), or any of the other landmark television series that many critics hail as equal to, or surpassing, most of recent cinema. Rather, the twenty-first century American film ranked highest on the standard-bearing Sight & Sound critics’ poll (at #28 in the 2012 poll) actually was a television show, at least before it became a film. Mulholland Drive, David Lynch’s 2001 mind-bending film noir, literally was a television program, conceived and produced as a pilot for ABC in 1998, before they rejected it the following year for being too violent and strange. The French company Studio Canal Plus asked Lynch for permission to see the pilot a year later, then purchased its rights, and provided funding to shoot more footage to create a feature film version.
This unusual, and perhaps even unique production history is typically treated as a footnote for critical and scholarly analyses—often just as an aside marveling that such a remarkable film could emerge out of such initial commercial failure. Some critics outright reject the significance of the film’s origin story; as one writes in reference to its television beginnings, “People often talk about this fact
like it was some kind of obstacle, but to [me] it is the least important thing in the world. Especially given [my] interpretation it shows just how in control Lynch is regarding every bit of what we see” (Film Crit Hulk n. pag.). However, I contend that a key part of what makes Mulholland Drive truly remarkable is precisely its televisual origination—not because it transcends the limits of televisual failure through
a twist of cross-media fate, but because its initial design for television is essential to its cinematic achievements, and provides a crucial key to understanding the film’s power and emotional resonance.