The story of David Lynch’s unmade film ‘Ronnie Rocket’
Unconventional, atypical, dreamlike and visually poetic, this is the manifesto of Lynchian cinema. American director and screenwriter David Lynch creates to break cinematic laws and present audiences with something that entertains but also confuses them. The filmmaker utilises the surrealist art movement as the backdrop for his visual palette and conceptual narratives, competing for the title of the most influential filmmaker of his era. Any title attached to Lynch is synonymous with a layered and complex execution that audiences find challenging to make sense of. Ronnie Rocket was one promising project that offered such a reaction but has yet to see a green light.
The art director conjured the idea for this unseen project in Eraserhead’s wake; the plot charts a detective’s search for a mysterious second dimension, with his ability to stand on one leg being his one asset in the quest. The only thing standing in his way is the “Donut Men”, a group who stalks our hero and poses their electric-wielding power as a threat. Simultaneously, a rock star needs to be plugged into an electrical supply so he can garner the power to create powerful music with the occasional destruction.
Unfortunately, Lynch had no choice but to shelve the project after struggling to find financial backing. Instead, he occupied his time and creative juices by expanding on another script to base his next feature in the 1980s, a good use of time as this gave us the sentimental and powerful The Elephant Man, which stars the missed John Hurt in a brilliant performance.
Ronnie Rocket resided as a thorn in Lynch’s side that he could not part with, suggesting it should be his next project after almost every one of his early films, from Eraserhead to Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, searching for a way to align it with the stylised brand he was building as an auteur who feared no boundary.
However, his creative direction, unconventional visual palette and complex thematic concepts saw the director’s career reach new heights, meaning some ideas were outgrown. The shelved script did uphold some of the director’s trademark elements, such as industrial art direction and overall surrealist execution against classical pop culture. However, timing and finance never aligned. Furthermore, Lynch was met with a rocketing number of projects to immerse himself in, heading into the 1990s and 2000s with features he would become an untouchable household name, such as Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive.
All Lynch fans to visualise this perplexing project is the confirmation that Dexter Fletcher was attached as a star at one point, as was Michael J. Anderson for the rock star role. According to David Hughes’ 2001 book The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made, Fletcher said: “I should imagine that the big money heads at whatever studio it was couldn’t get their brains round it at all. It’s fine for the artist to read and enjoy, but for accountants, it was probably a very different proposition. But that’s David Lynch all over in a lot of ways”.
The last time Lynch discussed the project was in July 2013, hinting that it was an endless possibility. However, he expressed concern over the rise of “cheap storm windows and graffiti” and the disappearance of the natural industrial smokestack landscape central to his vision. He shared his doubts about whether the script has a place in his contemporary filmography and the industry as a whole, wondering if such a story would ever “go over”.
“It was still really alive in the ’50s and ’60s, but this industry is going away […] And then a thing happened. This thing called graffiti. Graffiti, to me, is one of the worst things that has happened to the world,” the filmmaker explained. “It completely ruined the mood of places. Graffiti kills the possibility to go back in time and have the buildings be as they were. Cheap storm windows and graffiti have ruined the world for Ronnie Rocket.”
Lynch has been feeding Ronnie Rocket’s themes and visual aspects into his following creations, animating his cinema with dots of what could be. Hopefully, the adventures of Ronnie Rockett and an electric-supplied rock star will hit the big screen one day.
Lynch’s shelved script can be listened to below.
