The heartache of ‘Ronnie Rocket’: How Francis Ford Coppola killed David Lynch’s most cherished passion project
David Lynch had many setbacks and unfinished projects throughout his singular career. For someone with such a unique vision, it’s not surprising that many of his concepts went unproduced, but early in his career, he was a darling of Hollywood and was being courted by major studios to make an astonishing array of mainstream films. Unfortunately, that still didn’t garner him enough clout to make his most treasured project.
Lynch almost directed everything from Return of the Jedi to Halloween II and was even in talks to helm the high school classic Fast Times at Ridgemont High. All of these fell through due to either Lynch’s lack of interest or scheduling conflicts, but there were plenty of other movies that the director was itching to make that never quite came to fruition. The most personal of all of them was Ronnie Rocket, a rock-n-roll fantasy about a detective who straddles two dimensions by standing on one leg. It would also include evil doughnut men, a three-foot teenager who becomes a rock star due to his obsession with being plugged into electricity, and an enormous wall of fire.
Lynch began writing the script shortly after he gained recognition for his surreal indie movie Eraserhead in 1977. He had caught the attention and patronage of Mel Brooks, but when he pitched Ronnie Rocket, he was told that he needed to direct someone else’s script before he would be taken seriously enough to have his own script produced. So he went away and made Elephant Man, picking up universal acclaim and eight Oscar nominations in the process. But when he shopped his script around Hollywood again, he was met with crickets.
Brooks and his producing partner, Stuart Cornfeld, had amassed a modest pot of money for the project, but it didn’t come close to covering the amount Lynch needed. Then, Francis Ford Coppola came to the rescue. The director had founded his own production company, American Zoetrope, in 1969 to break free from the stuffy confines of major Hollywood studios. He agreed to finance Ronnie Rocket and even had Elephant Man actor Dexter Fletcher on board to star as the titular mystical detective.
Just when it seemed like Lynch was about to finally get his passion project underway, however, Coppola released his own labour of love, the 1981 musical One from the Heart. He poured everything into the film, including all the finances that Zoetrope had at its disposal. When it flopped at the box office to the tune of tens of millions of dollars, it bankrupted the company and killed Ronnie Rocket dead in its tracks.
The loss of the project at Zoetrope indirectly forced the Eraserhead director to make one of his worst mistakes as a filmmaker: signing on to make Dune. Producer Dino De Laurentiis offered Lynch a hefty paycheck and a three-picture deal that included Ronnie Rocket, but the catastrophic production and box office returns from Dune quashed the opportunity before it even began.
Lynch made several attempts to make the project later in life, but it never came to fruition. If Coppola hadn’t gambled everything on One from the Heart, Lynch would have been able to make Ronnie Rocket exactly as he envisioned it. Instead, he took on the greatest professional failure of his life and still didn’t get his most cherished endeavour off the ground.
