1152 Lost Highway

[Darth Lavender]

I had pretty much assumed both R2 and R1 were taken from a Lynch Approved HD-Master, with one or both company having fiddled a little with contrast or whatever in the process of compressing it down to Standard Definition...

[miless]

I'm not sure exactly what the typical incorrect NTSC>PAL transfer may be, but that may possibly be the reason the R2 PAL DVDs look so off.

[Nothing]

I had pretty much assumed both R2 and R1 were taken from a Lynch Approved HD-Master, with one or both company having fiddled a little with contrast or whatever in the process of compressing it down to Standard Definition...

That is highly unlikely. Contrast and colour correction are determined during the grading process, not during mpeg2 compression. If for some bizarre reason they decided to re-grade Lynch's HD master, it would cease to be director-approved anyway.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

Here's some interesting info on the transfer of LH from John Neff from the Dugpa Discussion Board:

I haven't seen the 'new' Universal DVD yet, but if it has a lower bit rate it could be due to the date of the transfer. Unless Universal re-transferred the film for this release, the scan was done in the Spring of 1998 or 1999, for USA Films, who had the DVD rights. The technology in film scanning has come a long way since then, especially in resolution. The soundtrack was not re-treated, and the original John Ross 5.1 mix was used for the DVD.

Problem was, they never released it. Barry Diller was head of USA films then (he went on to lead Universal for a while), and apparently he did not care for the film.

It was very frustrating to David that it was not released. I would be interested to know if he had a hand in this release, and if a new transfer was made.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

More reviews:

Slate

The New York Sun

Stop Smiling

[Antoine Doinel]

David Foster Wallace's article, originally published in Premiere, about his visit to the set.

[LavaLamp]

Re-watched Lost Highway a while back, and feel it's one of Lynch's best films. Very atmospheric & disturbing, and even somewhat creepy (like most of Lynch's films).

Superb soundtrack - from David Bowie's "Deranged", to Smashing Pumpkins' "Eye" to Lou Reed's "Magic Moment", each song really fits the scene it's placed over. The other instrumental music in the film is also excellent, from the jazz to the techno to the synth music - the music played at the party in the beginning is especially memorable.

However, even after numerous viewings, much of the movie was very confusing to me, and it seemed to take place in two different "realities". Here are some questions to those who understand the film better than I do:

Who was the strange, creepy man w/no eyebrows (Robert Blake) that Fred (Bill Pullman) met at the party? He seemed to know Fred, and I also couldn't understand how he was in two places at one - he told Fred to call his house, and when he did, the same strange man answered - bizzare. At the end of the movie, Fred and the strange man seemed to almost be friends; something else that didn't make sense, especially considering what had happened before. Was the strange man supposed to be the devil?

Did Fred really take out his wife (Patricia Arquette)? If not him, who did? And if his wife was really dead, then who was the woman with blonde hair, also played by Arquette (the blonde-haired woman who was the girlfriend of the gangster Mr. Eddie)? It seemed like they were one and the same person, but that doesn't make sense.....

How/why was the Pete character (Balthazar Getty) transferred to the jail cell where the Fred character was? Was the strange man involved, and did this have anything to do with whatever happened on the front lawn to Pete while his girlfriend and parents looked on? And, why did the transfer reverse itself on the beach (when Pete became Fred again)?

In the beginning of the film, Fred woke up and heard a message that said, "Dick Laurant is dead". At the end of the film, Fred went to his own house, pressed the buzzer, and said "Dick Laurant is dead". Why was Fred leaving a message at his own house? And, was this scene at the end supposed to be taking place at the same time as the scene in the beginning of the film?

Who took the videotapes of Fred's house, and why?

Thanks in advance for any info. on this...

[Mr Sausage]

My interpretation (which is not at all unique to me):

The second, noir-ish part of the story is a fugue state Fred Madison entered in order to escape the hell he'd made of his life. That fugue state contains many real elements of his actual life, but altered or twisted. That fugue state eventually collapses, however, and reality takes over. You can kind of piece together the 'real' story behind it all. Here is my guess at it:

Dick Laurant (Loggia; he may or may not be a gangster) is having an affair with Fred's wife, Renee (brunette Arquette). Fred, who's impotent or suffers premature ejaculation, is already deeply troubled. He discovers the affair after following the two to a hotel (scenes of which are replayed during the second half of the film), waits for Renee to leave, then kills Laurant and buries him in the desert. He represses the memory of the murder, and not well. The first scene of the movie, when the voice over the speaker says "Dick Laurant is dead" is the memory of that murder breaking through from wherever Fred had sectioned it off--it's the first sign of his growing psychosis. Driven by feelings of inadequacy and mental instability, Fred begins to videotape his house and wife. The part of him that does so is the part he had partitioned off when he committed the murder. Eventually he kills his wife (notice how when he watches the final tape, he flashes to full-colour memories of sitting in her blood), is arrested, goes to jail.

The thing with the headache is him entering the fugue state, a psychotic break where he retreats from reality into himself. In his fantasy, he's living a noir story in which he's a young, virile kid (Pete) who has lots of sex, courts beautiful women, lives an exciting life and all that. His wife, Renee, is transfigured into the ideal women (Alice; blonde Arquette) whom he actually can possess, and Laurant becomes her husband whom he cuckolds instead. Fred/Pete more or less lives out this virile fantasy until it starts to collapse. Things go deeply wrong in the fantasy; headaches turn into flashes of the unpleasant reality beneath; his ideal dream woman turns out to be a whore that's using him.

A key moment: after Pete kills the pornographer, has a headache, and wanders down the hallway of the pornographer's house, the hallway changes into the hallway of a different building altogether and when Pete opens the door to the washroom, he sees a distorted image of Alice having sex just like in the pornographic video. Reality is breaking through the fantasy, as the POV shot of the walls pulsing and changing into a different hallway repeats a later POV shot of Fred walking down the hotel hallway just before abducting Dick Laurant. Pete is getting glimpses of the moment when, as Fred, he discovered Renee was cheating--Renee's betrayal is mixing with Alice's. Fred's feelings of guilt, frustration, betrayal, and impotence invade the fantasy and distort it: much as he couldn't possess his wife, Fred/Pete cannot possess his idealized woman, Alice. The moment of his ultimate triumph on the beach is also the moment of his deepest failure: Alice declares he will never have her, either, and disappears. The fantasy breaks totally at that point; Pete turns back into Fred and begins to relive his crimes: killing Dick all over again and returning to his house to remind himself (symbolically at this point) of his own guilt, before taking off in a car, turning into a hideous monster. He is trapped in the hell of his insanity.

The man in black is, well, who knows. A figment of Fred's insanity? The embodiment of his monstrousness?

[Orphic Lycidas]

I'm also a huge fan of "Lost Highway" and of its soundtrack as well. While the film, in an attempt to not merely explain but to recreate its protagonist's mental illness, is not straightforward and often confusing, it does provide an attentive audience with enough information to piece together much of the storyline on repeated viewings. Needless to say (but I'll say it, anyway), spoilers will follow:

***SPOILERS***

The starting point for Lynch was a very rare psychological condition known as a dissociative (or psychogenic) fugue. In response to a severe trauma a person can repress memory of the incident or construct a fantasy world in which reality had occurred in a more idealized and less painful set of circumstances. A fugue state combines both of these responses. Fred, the saxophonist, murders his wife in a fit of jealousy, represses the murder and creates a fantasy life for himself ("Pete"). The Mystery Man is thus a representation of Fred's homicidal urges whom he himself has invited into his house (his mind and heart). That is why they seem "buddies" when they murder of Dick Laurent. Fred is jealous over his wife (the dark-haired Arquette). She seems to have a possible past in pornography; he cannot sexually function. I don't really think the video tape is supposed to be taken literally as it is a visual representation of the Mystery Man being allowed by Fred to enter further and further in his domicile (ending finally in his butchering of his wife, Renee).

In prison Fred breaks entirely with reality and is now a virile young guy with two gorgeous women who keeps getting intruded upon by signals that he is not who he thinks he is. Fred's saxophone plays on the radio at work, to his dissatisfaction. His parents refuse to tell him the truth about what happened one night (the truth they cannot utter probably being that he is not a real person but a part of a fugue state). Fred Laurent, whom Fred has murdered in a jealous rage, is a mobster involved in the pornography business who threatens Pete's life and who Fred probably thinks of as the man who took Renee away from him (he is sometimes framed as standing threateningly *between* the lovers). Although it is less clear I do think we are meant to understand that Fred killed Laurent right before the film begins and has simply "repressed" this reality from his conscious mind.

There is one part of the story I still don't find very clear. I am not fully convinced by Mr. Sausage's interpretation on this point but am open to coming around. Is Renee cheating on Fred with Laurent? Or has Laurent simply been targeted because he's the man who led her into the pornography business in the first place? If she was having an affair with him in real time why is the blonde Alice attempting to run away from Laurent? Is this indeed what happened to Alice in the past or is this an evasive fantasy on the part of Fred to make the fantasy a "happy" one?

[LavaLamp]

Very thorough & detailed responses, everyone. I appreciate your taking the time to post. The film makes a lot more sense now. The idea that Fred was just imagining the "Pete" sequences was not something that I necessarily thought about before....

Agree whole-heartedly about the soundtrack. I buy very few film soundtracks, but LH's music was so incredible I bought the CD years ago. Still enjoy listening to this - it definitely brings to mind the creepy horror & noir elements of the film....

I will definitely have to watch the film again soon, taking into account the explanations in your posts. Again, many Thanks

[Mr Sausage]

There is one part of the story I still don't find very clear. I am not fully convinced by Mr. Sausage's interpretation on this point but am open to coming around. Is Renee cheating on Fred with Laurent? Or has Laurent simply been targeted because he's the man who led her into the pornography business in the first place? If she was having an affair with him in real time why is the blonde Alice attempting to run away from Laurent? Is this indeed what happened to Alice in the past or is this an evasive fantasy on the part of Fred to make the fantasy a "happy" one?

I'd have to go back to see if the affair between Renee and Laurant was real or imagined (certainly Fred knew that he could find Laurant at that hotel). But the reason Alice is attempting to run away from Laurant in the dream is simply the reversal: Fred now gets to be the one to cuckold Laurant, rather than the other way around. It's Fred's way of bigging himself up.

I don't know if Renee was in the pornography business or not, either. Fred's dream seems to think so.

[Forrest Taft]

[…]returning to his house to remind himself (symbolically at this point) of his own guilt, before taking off in a car, turning into a hideous monster. He is trapped in the hell of his insanity.

I always took the flashing lights/facial distortions/screams at the end to be the moment of Fred's execution. When Pete is talking to Mystery Man and Mr Eddy on the phone, Mystery Man tells the story of what happens when people are sentenced to death in the Far East:

In the East, the Far East, when a person is sentenced to death, they're sent to a place where they can't escape, never knowing when an executioner may step up behind them, and fire a bullet into the back of their head.

In Lost Highway then, Fred is sentenced to death, and "sends himself" to a place he can't escape - the fugue state - and the execution happens suddenly and unexpectedly, when he's driving in his car in the final scene, trying to escape from the police.

[Mr Sausage]

Are you allowed to execute someone who has a psychotic break on death row, or would they be remanded to an institution at that point?

[Forrest Taft]

Touché, Mr Sausage, but in my defense I've been convinced he dies at the end since way before I could even begin to piece together many of the other pieces in this puzzle. But I guess it could be possible that authorities would see this man as someone in denial of his actions, but still "sane enough" to face his punishment. Or maybe this is a pretty thin, and speculative reading...

[Mr Sausage]

It's a piece of interpretation I'm undecided on, so I usually don't bring it up in discussions.

[John Cope]

My own reading of this has more to do with form than content (pretty much how I interpret Malick's recent films too). I've always seen this whole thing as understandable primarily as dream, as a cinematic representation of a dream state. That too is kind of obvious I guess but I can't bring myself to place any kind of line of distinct division in the narrative. It seems much more profitably understood as one big mélange (the spice Melange), as do the two Lynch films following this, not counting Straight Story, and the Refn films most obviously drawn from Lynch's distinct influence (Fear X, Only God Forgives). That approach seems to open it up more rather than lock it down.

[Mathew2468]

What's your non-psychogenic fugue reading of the film?

[Mr Sausage]

It seems much more profitably understood as one big mélange (the spice Melange), as do the two Lynch films following this, not counting Straight Story

I disagree. Lost Highway is unusual in Lynch's filmography in that it more structurally and narratively unified and more outwardly coherent and self-resolving than the films that surround it (especially Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire, both of which fit your description a lot more, I think). I attribute this quality to Barry Gifford, who wrote the screenplay. I think he lent the structure of the film a psychological coherence that Lynch's other films tends not to have, hence they're plotted like dreams: associational, non-logical, non-linear, unresolvable. Lost Highway is about how psychology alters reality, but nevertheless presumes there is a coherent reality to be altered, unlike Inland Empire, or to a lesser extent Mulholland Drive, which doesn't privilege any particular reality. For the moral core of Lost Highway to work, it must privilege the reality in which Pullman has killed his wife and her lover, with all the other realities caving in to that reality, being more flimsy than it. And we see that happen (the noirish reality of the second half never drives or distorts the events from the first, it's not vice versa).

It's interesting that you would favour opening Lost Highway up instead of locking it down when the movie is explicitly a closed circle. On a sheer formal level it's closed off and locked down. As it should be, since Fred escaping into an open, expansive world would go against the movie's moral centre, which is a man trapped in the shrinking prison of his own inadequacies as a human being, somewhat conventionally forced to relive his crimes as a nightmare (again, something atypical of Lynch that I attribute to Gifford).

As a formal exercise, Lost Highway visually and thematically links the two halves of the movie together, but always has the events of the second half crumble into the events of the first half to which they are linked. One of the realities is privileged.

[John Cope]

Your points are well made and well taken but I guess for me I simply don't care that much about what it is that specifically unifies this work or about figuring it out in that way. You're certainly right that it is about a collapsing or ever tightening closed circle or circuit. And I don't dispute the fugue state as an appropriate interpretive mechanism. But the openness and expansiveness, what I value about Lynch's work, still comes through here (and, interestingly enough, in the Gifford scripted eps of Hotel Room which Lynch shot and which I consider among his finest works). But this has more to do with a directly experiential quality. For me, the video tapes were always key to this. It's hard to imagine them as "real" or literal and yet they exist in the section of the film to which most would most ascribe that state in a blanket sense. What you're getting at though is more acceptable to me as it doesn't deny an inter-penetration of the elements (which, of course, is what we get in more pronounced fashion in Mulholland Drive).

[Roger Ryan]

I'll only add that I've always interpreted the final image as Fred desperately trying to take on another identity (as he did with "Pete"); his fugue state experience having convinced him that he can escape his punishment by becoming someone else.

[warren oates]

I understand Sausage's interpretation and his arguments, but I'm much closer to John Cope on this. Lynch is a highly instinctive and intuitive filmmaker. The entire idea that what was happening to Fred was a "psychogenic fugue" is a retroactive invention of the producers who were trying to find a way to package their picture for audiences and critics. Lynch himself has admitted in later interviews that Lost Highway, for him, grew out of a few disparate bits of inspiration: the initial image of someone getting those creepy videotapes left on their doorstep, his fascination with the O.J. Simpson murder case (specifically how Simpson could do what he did and appear so calm afterward -- almost as if he were a different person...) and his take on Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" (which he'd been thinking about adapting in a more straightforward way since the 1980s). While it's possible to map a fairly detailed one to one correspondence between the two realities in Lost Highway, I think it's a mistake to watch this as if it's a puzzle film that can or should be "solved." Especially in light of Lynch's other works. Lost Highway, in the context of the whole body of work, almost feels like a crucial transition between the kinds of narratives Lynch was exploring in Blue Velvet (where Frank and Jeffrey are of two separate worlds but within the same reality) and Twin Peaks (where the worlds of light and darkness in the town start to give way to other intervening realities, like the Black Lodge) and later films like Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire where dual and then multiple interpenetrating realities coexist, influencing and altering one another, and there is no primary reality where it can be said with any certainty that "this is what actually happens." In that light, the irreducibility of key elements in Lost Highway such as the Mystery Man point to an openness if not a fundamental inscrutability in the film that aligns Lynch more with a predecessor like Kafka, than the more legible, decodable and mostly Freudian dream logic of the DSM-ready psychogenic fugue explication.

Lynch has repeatedly stated that, for him, the point of making a film is to give someone an experience they couldn't have had otherwise. We've all had the "it's all just a dream" experience plenty of times in fiction, especially since "An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge," and its bazillion offspring. Lost Highway is aiming for something more mysterious. The ontological status of Fred and Pete is closer to that of Bob and Leland Palmer in Twin Peaks. Neither is so neatly reducible to facet or figment of the other: They both exist, they both overlap, they're both "real."

[Mr Sausage]

The whole problem with your (and I suppose John Cope's) argument, Warren, is that it boils down to "because I want it that way." Whereas there's considerable textual evidence that a psychogenic fugue has taken place--and more importantly, the idea actually explains things. A lot of things. I get that people want to preserve the mysterious and the ineffable, but personally, I'm happy to explain things when there's explanations to be found.

The entire idea that what was happening to Fred was a "psychogenic fugue" is a retroactive invention of the producers who were trying to find a way to package their picture for audiences and critics

I have no idea who first proposed it (I doubt it was the producers, but I have no evidence), but Lynch agreed with it and discussed the point in detail in Lynch on Lynch. He's quite happy with it being understood that way.

Lynch himself has admitted in later interviews that Lost Highway, for him, grew out of a few disparate bits of inspiration: the initial image of someone getting those creepy videotapes left on their doorstep, his fascination with the O.J. Simpson murder case (specifically how Simpson could do what he did and appear so calm afterward -- almost as if he were a different person...) and his take on Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" (which he'd been thinking about adapting in a more straightforward way since the 1980s)

Lynch came up with the entire first half of the movie--from Fred getting the mysterious message, to the videotapes, to ending up in jail--while driving home for a few hours one night. I believe he then gave that to Barry Gifford, who wrote the script (and as I said, gave the structure a psychological coherence not usually found in Lynch's later films). I've always been aware of the genesis of the movie and that information changes nothing for me.

In that light, the irreducibility of key elements in Lost Highway such as the Mystery Man point to an openness if not a fundamental inscrutability in the film that aligns Lynch more with a predecessor like Kafka, than the more legible, decodable and mostly Freudian dream logic of the DSM-ready psychogenic fugue explication.

Except the "inscrutable elements" do not cause the central conceit to decohere.

Lynch doesn't resemble Kafka very much, either. For all the narrative flexibility and non-rational atmosphere, the emotions of Lynch's characters are understandable and psychologically complex. It's uncanny just how acutely he understands the emotions of, say, an abuse victim (Laura Palmer). That he can represent these emotions without recourse to any intellectualized discourse shows that he just has this precise and intuitive empathy for other people. He doesn't need to study the psychology of abuse victims or, indeed, people undergoing a psychogenic fugue: he just somehow intuitively understands what it means to exist in that headspace. But it needs to be emphasized: the people and emotions he employs are recognizably human. For all his oddness, he is never detached from our world.

Lynch has repeatedly stated that , for him, the point of making a film is to give someone an experience they couldn't have had otherwise. We've all had the "it's all just a dream" experience plenty of times in fiction, especially since "An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge," and its bazillion offspring. Lost Highway is aiming for something more mysterious. The ontological status of Fred and Pete is closer to that of Bob and Leland Palmer in Twin Peaks. Neither is so neatly reducible to facet or figment of the other: They both exist, they both overlap, they're both "real."

And here your argument reduces to "because I want it that way." The only reason you say Lost Highway isn't a dream is because you've decided that it's not enough for you, you want it to be more, regardless of whether it actually is--indeed, regardless of whether Lynch himself thinks dreams are inconsequential in that way. I remember Nothing once argued at length that Mulholland Drive was a lesser film because it devolved into the inconsequentiality of 'it was all a dream'. And I responded that, unlike Nothing, Lynch considers dreams to be immensely important and fertile places and is quite happy to place the most significant elements of his movies within dreams. Rather than reducing things to simple fantasy, the dreams in Lynch's films are expansive, they're revelatory, they dredge up inescapable facts and emotions and further testify to the weirdness and complexity of experience. Dreams lend the world a more primal intensity; emotions can be evoked more directly, without social conventions to mediate them, and whatever we'd like to hide from ourselves are revealed in them. Lost Highway is about a man escaping into a dream only to find everything he wanted to escape has been magnified a thousand times.

I think it's a mistake to watch this as if it's a puzzle film that can or should be "solved."

The film became a more emotionally wrenching experience when I realized the significance of what I was watching. Without that, I would have to go back to watching a fascinating if somewhat alienating film of successive non-sequiturs. So I fail to see the mistake.

[warren oates]

Lynch considers dreams to be immensely important and fertile places and is quite happy to place the most significant elements of his movies within dreams. Rather than reducing things to simple fantasy, the dreams in Lynch's films are expansive, they're revelatory, they dredge up inescapable facts and emotions and further testify to the weirdness and complexity of experience. Dreams lend the world a more primal intensity; emotions can be evoked more directly, without social conventions to mediate them, and whatever we'd like to hide from ourselves are revealed in them. Lost Highway is about a man escaping into a dream only to find everything he wanted to escape has been magnified a thousand times.

That's more or less what I'm getting at. That in most other more conventional narratives, there's the dream and then there's the subtext of what's really happening, with clear lines in between and no room for strangeness once you've broken the code. For Lynch, like you say, dreams aren't so much masking what's really happening as they are also, very much what's really happening. So I'd argue that even if Fred actually killed his wife, can't deal with it, had a breakdown, etc. -- that Pete's more like the bug Gregor Samsa suddenly finds himself transformed into than he is like the soldier who escapes a hanging and runs to false figment freedom.

If you're curious, check your Lynch on Lynch for that reference -- it was the production company's publicist who introduced the notion of a psychogenic fugue state. The stuff about O.J. he's only talked about in later books like Catching the Big Fish. Kafka's also mentioned in Lynch on Lynch: "The one artist I feel could be my brother is Franz Kafka." And that's not just some kind of glib one-time aside. I knew someone who worked on Mulholland Drive and would see a copy of the collected short stories open and bookmarked in Lynch's work room.

[Mr Sausage]

If you're curious, check your Lynch on Lynch for that reference -- it was the production company's publicist who introduced the notion of a psychogenic fugue state. The stuff about O.J. he's only talked about in later books like Catching the Big Fish. Kafka's also mentioned in Lynch on Lynch: "The one artist I feel could be my brother is Franz Kafka." And that's not just some kind of glib one-time aside. I knew someone who worked on Mulholland Drive and would see a copy of the collected short stories open and bookmarked in Lynch's work room.

Perceptive publicist. Also, I know about Lynch's affinity for Kafka. I still don't consider him very Kafkaesque. Lynch's thematic preoccupations are not Kafka's (you do not find Lynch's fascination with duality in Kafka) nor are his techniques (Kafka would never use readily interpretable symbols as Lynch does). If I had to pick a literary affinity, I'd say Lynch's later movies are closer to Jose Donoso, especially his book The Obscene Bird of Night, itself a melange (to use John Cope's word) of different realities, none of which the novel fully commits to. There's also something of Raul Ruiz (especially the Ruiz of City of Priates) in his films--indeed, Ruiz would've been the perfect candidate to adapt the novel of his fellow countryman, Donoso.

That's more or less what I'm getting at. That in most other more conventional narratives, there's the dream and then there's the subtext of what's really happening, with clear lines in between and no room for strangeness once you've broken the code. For Lynch, like you say, dreams aren't so much masking what's really happening as they are also, very much what's really happening. So I'd argue that even if Fred actually killed his wife, can't deal with it, had a breakdown, etc. -- that Pete's more like the bug Gregor Samsa suddenly finds himself transformed into than he is like the soldier who escapes a hanging and runs to false figment freedom.

In case I've been giving the wrong impression: I don't think the fugue state is less important as an experience. What happens to Pete is important. Everything Pete experiences lends force to what happens to Fred, and vice versa. The correspondences and divergences between the two add up to something more than the pieces by themselves, even if the reality of murder and guilt is stronger than the one of adventure and escape (hence the one crumbles into the other). That's where the moral force of the movie enters. But everything in the movie does contribute to the atmosphere of horror and mental unhealthiness.

But this movie is still much closer to Bierce's story than Kafka's. It's a more complex version of the same thing.

[cinemartin]

I find Sausage's reading pretty on point, but I sympathize with Cope as well. Especially on the point about the videotapes. If my memory serves, the video showed both Fred and Renee sleeping in bed on the second tape. If that plane of reality is primary, in which events can be plainly discussed with the detectives assigned to the case, how can Fred video himself in a bed? And speaking of the detectives, there is the scene at the end in which the four cops have a conversation regarding Pete, Fred, and Renee (Alice has disappeared). I always disturbed by that scene, thinking it was there to throw the theory of the film being reduced to aberration of Fred's memory/consciousness out the window while simultaneously keeping it relevant.