The story of how David Lynch discovered ‘Inland Empire’: “It was kind of a beautiful thing”
Ideas often came to David Lynch in the most magical and unconventional of ways, with the late director often discussing the creative process and practice of transcendental meditation to reach stories that lay deep in his subconscious.
Lynch created concepts and ideas that existed in another realm of reality, merging together on screen in dream-like worlds that operated in a world that exists all around us, but somehow feels completely unlike anything we’ve seen.
Through the blend of surrealism and fractured narratives, leading to films that force us to feel our way through them and let go of the rational that motivates our everyday lives, embracing the mysteries of our world and allowing them to take over.
But for Lynch, there was one serendipitous moment of fate that became crucial to the creation of one of his most mesmerising films, describing a mundane experience that gave him an insight into the title of Inland Empire.
Starring Laura Dern and Justin Theroux, Inland Empire is one of the most beautiful, unsettling and captivating films in Lynch’s filmography, following an actress who stars in the film adaptation of an old Polish play and slowly loses her grip on reality. It is the most experimental from his filmography in terms of story structure, with a non-linear plot that switches between the real and imagined worlds that the actress is occupying.
Many people have mulled over the layers of the film, but for Lynch, the first clue to the puzzle came at the beginning of the creative process, describing two strangely linked moments that influenced the enigmatic title. When discussing this after the release of the film, Lynch said, “Laura Dern said her boyfriend, now husband, was from the Inland Empire. The Inland Empire she was talking about was an area east of LA. And she kept on talking but I drifted off and I stopped her and said, ‘That’s the title of this film, Inland Empire’”.
While this might be enough to pique your interest, Lynch was then met with another strange coincidence that related to Dern’s earlier conversation, with the director saying, “A little bit later on, my brother was cleaning the basement of my parents house in Montana, and behind a bureau found a scrapbook that had fallen back there. And he dusted it off, looked at it, and realised it as my little scrapbook from when i was five. And he sent me this scrapbook, and I got it and opened it up and the first picture was an aerial view of Spokane Washington and underneath it had the words, Inland Empire. So it was kind of a beautiful thing, and I figured it really was a good title for the film”.
It’s a beautiful moment that highlights how sometimes, our best ideas and stories have been sitting with us for longer than we meet realise; slowly seeping in from childhood memories and staying there until we’re ready to rediscover them. He might not have known as a child why this title would become so important to him, but now it’s one of the crowning glories of his filmmaking career.
