Synopsis

Fred Madison, a withdrawn jazz musician, and his wife Renee begin receiving anonymous videotapes showing the inside of their home. After Fred is convicted of Renee's murder, he inexplicably vanishes from his prison cell and is replaced by a young mechanic living a different life. As identities, memories, and realities collide, he is drawn into a violent and dreamlike mystery involving desire, jealousy, and guilt.

Factoids & Trivia

• The film grew partly out of an incident David Lynch said happened to him: an unknown voice allegedly spoke the words "Dick Laurant is dead" through his home intercom.

• The title came from Barry Gifford's 1992 novel Night People. Lynch and Gifford co-wrote the screenplay, combining film noir conventions with a deliberately fractured structure.

• Lynch later said that the O.J. Simpson trial had been an unconscious influence while he and Gifford were writing the story, particularly its themes of marital murder and suspected guilt.

• Trent Reznor produced the soundtrack, which combines Angelo Badalamenti and Barry Adamson's score with music by David Bowie, Lou Reed, Rammstein, Marilyn Manson, and The Smashing Pumpkins. Nine Inch Nails recorded "The Perfect Drug" specifically for the film.

• Rammstein were still relatively unfamiliar to American audiences when the film was made. Lynch reportedly played their music during production and used two of the band's songs in the finished film.

• The soundtrack album became more commercially successful than the movie, reaching No. 7 on the Billboard 200.

• Lost Highway was initially met with sharply divided reviews, but it later developed a strong cult following and became the subject of extensive academic interpretation.

• Austrian composer Olga Neuwirth adapted the film into an opera in 2003, with a libretto by Elfriede Jelinek.

• Criterion released a 4K restoration supervised and approved by Lynch, along with the feature-length making-of documentary Pretty as a Picture: The Art of David Lynch.