Synopsis

After surviving a car crash on Mulholland Drive, an amnesiac woman hides in an empty Los Angeles apartment. There, she meets an ambitious actress newly arrived from Canada, and the two begin investigating the mystery of her identity. Their search leads through Hollywood dreams, sinister encounters, shifting realities, and a buried tragedy that transforms the meaning of everything they have seen.

Factoids & Trivia

• Mulholland Drive began as a television pilot for ABC. After the network rejected the project, French company StudioCanal provided funding for Lynch to shoot additional material and reshape the pilot into a feature film.

• The finished film premiered at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, where David Lynch shared the Best Director award with Joel Coen for The Man Who Wasn't There.

• Lynch deliberately kept the film open to interpretation and supplied viewers with a list of clues before its release rather than a definitive explanation of the story.

• The theatrical print came with a computer-printed note from Lynch asking projectionists to make specific adjustments, including raising the theater's sound level by three decibels.

• The film became a major career breakthrough for Naomi Watts and was nominated for three Academy Awards, including Best Director and Best Original Screenplay.

• Mulholland Drive was the final film appearance of veteran performer Ann Miller, who had been a major star of Hollywood musicals during the 1940s and 1950s.

• The film is dedicated to Jennifer Syme, a former production assistant who died in a car accident in 2001.