Beneath Mulholland: Thoughts on Hollywood and Its Ghosts

by David Thomson

"It's time David Thomson be generally recognized not just as one of our sharpest writers-on-film, but as one of our wisest and best writers, period."
--Film Comment

"The most obvious contender for the best film critic in the world."
--The Independent (London)


David Thomson is at his incomparable best in this stunning collection of essays on Hollywood films--their stars and the illusions they create. He explores a sort of twilight zone where film actors and the characters they play become part of our reality, as living beings and as ghosts, residing on or buried beneath Mulholland Drive, or wandering among us.

Like all of Thomson's writing on the movies, Beneath Mulholland is rich in its understanding of Hollywood, laced with irony, thoroughly provocative and brilliantly creative. There is also a steady fascination with love, sex, death, voyeurism, money and glory, all the preoccupations of Los Angeles--or of that movie L.A. whose initials, Thomson says, stand for Lies Allowed.

He writes about James Stewart in Vertigo, Jack Nicholson in Chinatown, about Cary Grant ("Having fun, perched somewhere between skill and exhilaration, Grant is both the deft director of the circus and a kid in love with the show"), Greta Garbo ("She knows that she is a latent force that works in the minds of audiences she will never meet") and about stardom in "The star is adored but not that is the consequence of a religious respect that enjoys no ordinary relations with the object of its desire."

Entering another dimension, we meet James Dean at age 50--he survived the car crash--and discover how his career developed (and how it affected Paul Newman's). We see what happened to Tony Manero (John Travolta) after Saturday Night Fever ended and how Susie Diamond (Michelle Pfeiffer) moved on when The Fabulous Baker Boys was over. We are given a rollicking but instructive version of how Sony learned to live and die in Hollywood. We learn the 20 Things People Like to Forget About Hollywood ("All People in Hollywood Are Dysfunctional" is the first). And there is insight into How People Die in Movies--the empire of bang bang.  

Dazzling in its range, its style and its wisdom, Beneath Mulholland immeasurably enlarges and enriches our already undying memories of, and pleasure in, the Hollywood movie.

Genres: Film, Essays, Nonfiction

268 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

David Thomson, renowned as one of the great living authorities on the movies, is the author of The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, now in its fifth edition. His books include a biography of Nicole Kidman and The Whole Equation: A History of Hollywood. Thomson is also the author of the acclaimed "Have You Seen . . . ?": A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films. Born in London in 1941, he now lives in San Francisco.

Reviews

[Manuel Chavarria · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't always agree with David Thomson. In fact, I don't often agree with David Thomson. But he's a magnificent writer -- one of the very best -- and I will read and re-read anything and everything he's written.

[Dan Sendker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thomson's writing usually resonates with me a lot more than these essays did. Many of them were great, but the more fictionalized ones were a little uneven. For the first time, I noticed how problematic his writing on women can be.

[Harrison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really sharp insights on the Hollywood of the 1990s. But Thompson's fictional essays—ie, short stories purporting to be journalism, are the most interesting of the bunch.

[Sean Wicks · Rating 4 out of 5]

BENEATH MULHOLLAND carries out a similar theme from the vast majority of David Thomson's film writing - the blur between life and what happens on the screen. In this case he presents Los Angeles as a town where the artifice has long but squashed any indication of "normal" reality (there are also a couple of articles that take place in San Francisco and New York, but the majority of the focus is on Tinseltown). They reinforce his ideas of the movie-going audience as a collection of lonely, isolated-with-their-thoughts beings watching things they should normally be appalled to be viewing such as death scenes, extreme violence and "intimate" sexual activity.

It's a collection of his essays from various publications over the years that range from observations, critical theory and fiction blended with reality. For instance, there is an essay where as a writer sent to cover a major Hollywood star for the publication Movieline, David shows up on the wrong day only to be mistaken as the new bodyguard (and he runs with it) only to be subjected to the bizarre lifestyle of a celebrity who watches movies with a bowl of cocaine nearby and keeps a recently delivered Anaconda as a pet and lets her child play with it as if it were a dog. There are moments where this section inspires memories of Bogart's strange meeting with his client in the opening of THE BIG SLEEP which somehow stuck in my mind. After having read many of the essays and believed them to be reality only to discover they were more fiction than anything else (some examples in a moment) a final paragraph hints that this could in fact be a real situation with the names change to protect those involved. Is it real or fiction? Tough to say...but it left me thinking. Another example is a REAR WINDOW-like voyeuristic relationship Thomson carries out with a beautiful woman from the apartment across the road and the ending - which I won't spoil - is a pleasant surprise that I didn't see coming. Again Thomson had me so engrossed I wasn't sure where the article was heading or what to believe.

Thomson also carries on the ideas from his book SUSPECTS where he concocted real-life biographies for movie characters with a series of them here, as well as a what-if scenario that has James Dean surviving from his fatal car crash and becoming an even bigger celebrity with a long career that eventually forces Paul Newman out of the business (and to become the mayor of Cleveland) as Dean lands all the roles that made Newman a star. This is fiction, right? James Dean died in that crash...but again the lines are blurred and the fiction starts to feel like reality. Imagine Doc Brown from BACK TO THE FUTURE II talking about that "skewed tangent" of an alternate 1985 and you'll get the idea here.

Other observations include an essay on the art of "rear projection" from older films - especially driving scenes - where someone filmed crossing the road could in theory have appeared in numerous films in a fleeting moment and had absolutely no idea of it. Or say in a gangster movie the fleeing James Cagney could unknowingly pass a police car that should be chasing him because it's part of the stock car roll. A section designed as a screenplay outlines how a major female star campaigns and negotiates with the writer, agents and studio executives for a role that could change the course of her career that she hasn't even bothered to read but she - and everyone else - is completely relying on coverage from faceless studio readers and a personal assistant. This particular segment may ring more true than people would like to believe (and it often shows in which movies ultimately end up being made).

Thomson's passion for the movies and for the mythical legends and ghosts that make up the business of Hollywood comes through clearly in these essays as does his theory that it is an art form that has overtaken reality to a point where it is impossible for moviegoers to accept life as it really is.

[Andrew Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Literate cinephile japes with David Thomson. The chapter Suspects about what they did next is great fun (Vincent Vega, Elliot from ET, Connie Corleone etc). Thomson is always happy to venture an opinion, and though you may not agree with it, it's worth hearing what he has to say.

[Valentine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection is full of interesting tidbits. It's only short coming is that it reads far too much like academic research for most average readers. Me thinks that Mr. Thomson is a bit "above the crowd" at least in his writing and probably in his own mind.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a beautiful, affecting collection of essays about Hollywood. I especially liked "James Dean at Fifty" and "Ask the Anaconda".