guess there are many of these out there, but now that i've written it, i post it here, for whatever reason

fred & renee married. an unidentifiable feeling that something alien, some mysterious third party, would stand between them grows within fred (video tapes). fred is someone who doesn't judge others, he takes them as they are and doesn't bother about anything, seeing them all as individuals who can't willingly do what's evil (artist). a feeling of guilt grows within fred (mystery man (who is more than that btw)). from where does it come? from fred himself, he must have done something (has invited mystery man). the sentence mystery man says(doesn't come when not invited) is his general statement and it's true in most cases. but that sentence doesn't apply to fred. fred catched it (mystery man at his house) because of his careless conduct with others (that's why it's at a party); every person he met and the general view on life of every person he met and he acknowledged without thinking lives within him. that way mystery man came to live with him (in his head, in his thoughts, unidentifiable feeling of guilt). but fred doesn't know; he can't give this explanation, so he can't free himself of mystery man.

so, to sum it up: in him, there is an unidentifiable feeling of guilt and an unidentifiable feeling of something alien between him and his wife. fred (artist) never judged individuals, accepting everyone. but that stops now. he begins to think for the first time in his life in terms of guilt and innocence, trying to judge others. something must be wrong. he loves renee and he knows the inside of himself. there is nothing wrong with him. yet there is something wrong. but what is it? he becomes obsessed with the question of guilt.

what's his problem? his real problem is that he doesn't understand the difference between female and male. he doesn't even know that there is a difference. he always thought he could, just by means of goodwill, cover up every emerging problem. but that doesn't apply now. he's trying to judge renee and he tries to gather proof for his trial by analyzing renee (dismembered corpse). therefore he feels the need to ignore every outspoken will (present and past) of her (murders her). thing is: he's comparing the acts and thoughts of renee to the acts and thoughts of a sane male. but a sane female is not a sane male, like a female is no male, well, at least if you put "wild" in front of every "male"/"female". so there's no solution, no judgement ending his trial. but that doesn't matter anyway because his killing and dismembering of renee induces a karmatic backfire which changes him.

he ignores the outspoken will of a human being and, having all emotions and benevolence suspended / taken back, analyzes a human being (also taken back: this "it's not that x loves you, it's that you love x"-thing). and he's obsessed with that, he does that all the time. so, his view on every human being and on society and stuff changes accordingly. and what kind of a world is that? when you think of a world in which everyone had the same attitude, that fred has towards renee, towards everyone. and fred doesn't come to a conclusion. so he supposes that everyone can't come to a conclusion. yet the outside world doesn't cease doing what it does. they all do things. they act though they can't act, since they can't come to a conclusion, to a judgement and without the ability to judge things you can't act and if you act though you can't judge, the outcome of your acts will be wrong - so everything is wrong. and how everyone looks at everyone else - as cold as fred looks at renee. the feeling of guilt. everyone is guilty beyond words in such a world. so is fred. and this world i here tried to describe is then shown as fred being locked in jail.

 then he tries to get out of this world. where he is - he can't find a thing there - so he goes way back, to his childhood and his youth. that's the transformation to pete. he remembers how it was, back then, with renee and him, at the beginning and he tries to find a solution there (childhood/youth). they both were kind of artists (as defined before) or at least fred / pete thought it this way. and they felt they were the only ones who were like that in a world controlled by dick laurent (he's a criminal, isn't he?). they wanted to be different from the others (that is the robbery scene), to escape the dick laurent / eddy - world as a couple or at least pete / fred thought it this way.

then i don't know. i haven't seen the film since 2 years and i have no copy within range. i guess fred as pete kills dick laurent. (EDIT: of course that's to me a metaphorical killing of the thing laurent represents. and i've read now someplace else that mystery man hands the knife and does the shooting himself. o-ho. but i won't change this now, anyway, the main thing i wanted to say was "karmic backfire" and my interpretation of the shot with the dismembered corpse.) after that he feels like he had killed the king of the world and everybody would be after him. but unlike the last scene suggests ... after the end of the film: police cars don't come closer, back off bit by bit, until they can't be seen anymore. pete (it's fred now) doesn't explode or something, calms down bit by bit. reduces velocity bit by bit. stops, looks around, he's all alone on a vast highway, no traffic anywhere. o! it wasn't the king of the world, it was just the king of the world. well - then ... then there is a sudden change, a sunrise, a chuggeling towards a blinding bright horizon and a happy yet longing (but only longing in retrospect since the object longed for has been attained) country tune involved, like a mixture of the absurdity of wah's ending and straight story (haven't watched it once). yes, that ending wouldn't fit the imagery and the general tone of things in lh at all, that's true.

so. i guess that was my summary. wanted to add a smiley but don't know which to choose. now i know one, but i have to write a sentence first: i know, perhaps i shouldn't have called it summary if there are so many things missing. and the title is changed now. wonderful. and yes, you're right when you think that i haven't deduced my summary from watching the film. it's more like i have a pov and i try to stuff it into the film, looking whether it might fit or not. it's not possible to just watch the film and try to deduce and then end off with what i just wrote, i know that.

and of course ... one may see the story as a story about an actual murder. so the pete-sequence would be the inside of fred's head in jail, trying to understand who or what he really wanted to kill. there are many ways to sew the scenes together. it all depends on how trustworthy you think fred, renee, laurent and mystery man are and what they were meant to represent ... there are a whole lotta stories which may be seen in this movie, which wouldn't be repelled by the movie.

REWATCHED LH

mystery man, first flash at 17:50

) mm is a violated female consciousness, desiring retribution

) it's love. it's swapping of personalities. dismembered corpse. it's what she does and did to him? or it's what she is like (even if she had never met fred)? after some time (marriage) that became apparent to him. so: questions in a world of blue. was it me? "funny how secrets travel". he internalizes her problems, thinks he caused her dismembered, dead state (of mind)?

) mm is truth, how it really happened, in opposition to fred's "not necessarily how they happened"? like a truth of an instant, a timeless truth (that alice/renee herself cannot control, cannot structurize and put into a larger context, cannot unify with civilization)? (so that mm shooting laurent would be like shooting everything that doesn't take care of alice/renee not being able to unify her vision with civilization? (it would happen inside fred's head, you know.))

) mm is not the fence, is he? fence is an illusion, non-existant. at the fence's place, mm becomes especially visible.

pete

dick laurent is there even before alice is introduced. possibility to put all / much guilt on pete. he believed (not in the sense of worship) in dick laurent. that freezed after falling in love with alice.

moebius-strip. i'd say it's more like a moebius-knot in a shoelace. 2nd part of shoelace appears after one run through the moebius-part. or it stays a moebius-s in that sense, that after completing the m-s there is nothing left besides memorizing and remembering the story.

depiction of half of pete's work as fixing the car of mr. eddy is quite funny.

47:14 house of fence restored, induces change to pete. like: wasn't that our goal back then?

51:12 garland avenue

btw, in general. am i messing things up here? is the movie like a catalyst for own thinking and i am destoying that here?

and it is some sort of season 3 of tp, begins with "my husband killed me", dick laurent as lmfap and help of screaming laura from the black lodge in form of mystery man (who gradually changes into a stand-alone entity)...? & sheila as audrey & starlight hotel on sycamore.

"and what the f is your name?" he saved renee in that manner. now he's applying it to himself.

Well drunk or not...I quite enjoyed reading your summary....some interesting points.

I personally think that the key to this movie...is very much the same sort of key that exposes Mulholland Drive (MD)...that we're not dealing with a linear plot primarily.

One particualr moment in MD...that seems to open up the whole mystery, is the 'drug haze' pillow moment....then off into dream/nightmare world. And you go from there etc....

Anyway...

I find a similar sort of thing in Lost Highway...the moment I refer to is when Fred gets this huge punch on the nose from one of the 2 cops....this moment seems to signal that we've just come out of a warped recollection....Fred's warped recollection (which makes up the first part of the film).  This is followed by Fred saying 'Please tell me that i didn't kill my wife'...that is denial.  Watch this scene with the 2 cops and the nose punch closely...the 2 cops have obviously been at the house questioning Fred, perhaps a while, as can be seen from their relaxed state of dress (no tie, open collars....they've obviously been talking to Fred for quite some time). This section prior to the punch is reasonably long and makes up the first part of the movie....before he makes his 'psychogenic fugue' transformation into Pete.

It really helps to break it down into its component parts or what appear to be component parts.

At the very start of the film...there is a brief 'stand alone' scene....with Fred waking up the next day or whatever and smoking a cigarette in the dark....then we get the door buzzer and Dick Laurent is dead motif! This fades away quickly and then we probably move into the Fred 'recollection' (as he remembered it, including the denial) segment....which ends with the nose punch and still more denial, even though his wife's dismembered corpse is either in the building or has recently just been removed...and it was Fred himself that did the evil deed....no matter how much he tries to suppress it!

After this...we are led to believe that Fred has been imprisoned and is due for execution.

During this...we see Fred suffering mentally with the 'status quo' and he descends into a form of self induced psychosis....this being his 'psychogenic fugue' moment and mentally transforming himself into Pete to avoid confrontation with the horrible truth...which is that he brutally murdered his own wife!

This 'fugue' allows him to escape his responsibilty for a while...but it is short lived, reality has a habit of trumping fantasy in the long term!  At the end of the movie we see his fugue breakdown and he is fried for his crime.

So Fred is mentally reborn as Pete....and carries on his merry way (albeit slightly confused) as a different person.  From this point on the film spends a lot of time having Pete's fantasy world partially cave-in on him at various points....this is reality trying to get a hold.  Pete fights it for some time, but the walls of his fantasy are doomed to close in on him eventually....as we see.

The 'man in black' features in Fred's warped recollection & in his 'fugue' state...but for me, not in any reality!!!  This is important because the 'man in black' to me, is a symbol...the symbol of death, that Death being Rene's. (arguably perhaps Laurent too) All this has to be considered in respect of the real Fred continually denying the fact...that he killed his wife!

The video tape element to me also doesn't work in any linear sense....I feel the whole 'video tape' concept is again a symbol for something.  It features in Fred's recollected memory (as being dropped by the door, for reasons unknown) it features in Pete's fantasy as a porno, something offered to him by Laurent.  The tape in actuality is probably a symbol of Rene and her work within pornography and via people connected to the Laurent circle etc.

It doesn't take much of a stretch to think that perhaps Fred in 'reality' came by this tape and viewed it to his horror (hence its multiple inclusions thru out)....as his own wife was the star!  (Fred hates video cameras remember...maybe we know why?!) We see sex scenes like this featuring Rene...near the end of the movie and during Pete's fantasy!  Is the tape the real reason why Fred flipped and ended up killing his wife as a result.

The tape manifests as something foreboding, but unknown in the first part of the film (his recollected memory before nose punch, or how he likes to remember things)....and manifests as a random 'jack off' porno tape in the latter part, while he is Pete.  For Fred's denial to have any real effect...the knowledge of the contents and meaning of the tape MUST be suppressed all the way through....otherwise he trips the switch and is left KNOWING that he killed his wife.

Interesting that Lynch uses the video tape to reveal to Fred in his FINAL part of the recollection phase...images of him and his wife's dismembered body...this is just prior to the nose punch!  That is reality closing in again...

If you watch the movie closely....during the 'recollection' phase, when discussing Andy and Mokes...no real answer is given about what she does etc she says she can't recall (more like he doesn't want to recall)....but in the Pete (fantasy) Fred (fugue) scenario....we find out about Rene's work in greater detail.  So the 'recollected memory' of Fred's denies knowledge of her activities (how he likes to remember it), whilst the 'fugued' Pete is stuffed full of info about her activities and is probably closer to the truth!  The more Pete finds out about Alice/Rene (see what happens after Pete sees the image of Alice/Rene on the screen at Andy's) the weaker his fugue becomes and hence reality comes closing in!

The 'fugue' element is a bit tricky....as it is difficult to know when it starts, could it be while he is trapped in the electric chair seconds from death or a bit of time before...who knows?

Anyway...that's a little part of what I think overall...I love this movie!!!

to make it short, so that you could answer ... you're not dealing with the points i tried to make at all. i said, in post#2 that i doubted anybody could understand what i mean (from reading what i wrote), i didn't say that i had the feeling that the things i wanted to point out were worthless.

just in order to pick one thing out. you say fred was fried for his crimes. i really don't think so. i have written in #1 about the (my) real ending, which in fact is there, in the movie, with the david bowie-song. at first he sings "i'm deranged" in a sorrowful way, crying about himself and how insane he is. but later on, in the end, he sings "i'm deranged" hopefully & in a positive way. also there are the lines "and the rain sets in / it's the angel man" (i always understood "it's the angel now"). what do you make of that? doesn't that somehow contradict what you said, that he was fried for his own crimes? i really think it's some sort of tp season 3, with fred being coop. also think of wah as a dream that could occur in black lodge. also tried to think of lynch's whole oeuvre as something coherent, like a concept album (all his feature films telling a coherent story).

but thank you for answering anyway. so you haven't read my response to your "sycamore trees"-post? because i was a bit insulting and hostile. i erased it now, but perhaps you read it. i made the mistake to log on while i was near coma (alcohol). hope, you may forgive that.

Didn't read your post on the Sycamore thread....but I'll forgive you anyway, whatever you said.

I have this tendency to get very bored in my work (my actual employment)....and often like to rant about things and subjects....I am inclined to over do it, though!

The sycamore post....was me having some fun in the main, but does have some pertinent points imo.

If it had been specifically written for the movie...it would lend the idea more weight. However, we do know that it must have some relevence though...or David wouldn't have included it... at the bookends of this film!

QUOTE:  am i right that you only wanted to point out that many things in tp may be derived from a lot of places? instead of deriving it only from "king arthur", so that you wanted to point out that all those things could also be derived from whereever (egypt, sumerian, jewish, christian, islamic, hindu, etc pp thought)?

Yup...bang on the money

There is an Arthur/Osiris connection though...at least imho.

 There is nothing new under the sun.

Anyway...I'll wager much of this esoteric stuff is from the mind from Frost, as much as Lynch.

Is busting balls your speciality?

Listen...we all know David chooses the soundtrack and sound design very carefully...I don't believe David has any peers when it comes to this issue.

To suggest that the Bowie track defines and is the basis for the entire movie...I can't really agree with, but hey I'm just one person.  I already stated that its inclusion was obviously for a reason, I even suggested a musical moebius element (seeing as the film's start and end point are effectively the same and isn't Fred deranged himself?)...no doubt there is some essence of the whole in all the various parts, if we break them down.

The 'angel' aspect I've been led to believe is connected to his other album 'The Lodger' and the 'Look Back In Anger' single...The two songs were frequently played together during the 1995 Outside Tour.

The 'psychogenic fugue' aspect was outlined by Lynch years ago.

"What if one person woke up one day and was another person?"

David Lynch (Cinefantastique)

That's me done with this issue.