The funniest movie David Lynch never made: “All kind of wacko hell breaks loose”
David Lynch didn’t believe in giving his audience answers and explanations. He wanted you to feel his art before you understood it, using surreal imagery that elicited a visceral and emotional effect. With his first feature, Eraserhead, the filmmaker left many audiences with their minds blown; it was a dark and tragic film containing grotesque sequences that were simply unforgettable, like the alien-like baby’s head replacing the protagonist’s.
The film allowed Lynch to make his mark on the avant-garde side of the industry, but soon he made a movie that was just as beautiful, but slightly more accessible: The Elephant Man. It proved that Lynch was a true genius, and the film floored his future Twin Peaks co-creator Mark Frost, who recalled being mesmerised by the way the director told the story with such “sensitivity”.
Just before his fourth film, Blue Velvet, was set to be released, Lynch and Frost were introduced by their mutual agent, and they decided to work together. After the failure of a script they began working on called Goddess, they tried something else—something Lynch once described to David Breskin as being an “out-and-out wacko dumb comedy” where “all kind of wacko hell breaks loose”.
The pair penned a screenplay (now available to read online) called One Saliva Bubble, a rather bizarre and surreal take on the comedy genre, which was set to star Martin Short and Steve Martin. Dino De Laurentiis’s company was set to produce the film, but sadly, just six weeks before production was to begin, the producer claimed that the project had to be scrapped due to bankruptcy.
Frost once explained the project in further detail in an interview: “It was about a whole group of people who happened to be at an airport in Kansas when they’re hit by a ray from a satellite in space that hits the baggage carousel and causes everyone in the room to switch identities.”
The choice to set the movie in Kansas is likely due to Lynch’s longtime obsession with The Wizard of Oz, while the switching identities theme would soon come to define much of his work, from Twin Peaks to Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive. In that same interview with Breskin, Lynch revealed that the movie would be full of “cliches, one end to the other”, and while it’s a shame it never got made, it seems as though he director wasn’t fully ready to commit to it anyway.
“It makes me laugh. Mark and I were laughing like crazy when we wrote it,” he said. “I thought of this idea on an airplane. Steve Martin and I had met, and we were interested in this one particular project, way back when. We had both read a book, I’ve forgotten what it was. He loved it, and he still loves it. The only problem is every time I get ready to commit to it, I think the problem for me is that there’s not enough meat to it. I feel like a lot of people could do it.”
