David Lynch's 'Ronnie Rocket': What Happened to the Director's Unmade Masterpiece?

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David Lynch's 'Ronnie Rocket': What Happened to the Director's Unmade Masterpiece?

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The greatest "what if?" in the 'Twin Peaks' director's career.
BY MATTHEW MOSLEY

https://collider.com/david-lynch-ronnie ... d-to-film/


David Lynch is no stranger to unrealized projects. From a Marilyn Monroe biopic to a comedy about three men who used to be cows living in northern Los Angeles, the surrealist director has enough unmade films to fill an entire filmography by themselves. The reasons for their cancellations are numerous, with lack of funding being a recurring theme among them. Given Lynch’s perchance for films of a slightly more unusual nature than the typical studio affair, perhaps that should come as no surprise. Many of these projects are still surrounded in mystery, with only a few snippets of information available that often raise more questions than they answer, but none are as well documented as Ronnie Rocket. Thanks to interviews with Lynch and various cast members who were attached to the project throughout its development, in addition to multiple versions of its script floating around the internet, the film has become the stuff of legend amongst cinephiles. But despite numerous attempts over the period of decades to get it produced, it remains the greatest "what if?" of Lynch’s career.

To attempt to describe the plot of any Lynch project could be considered the first step towards insanity, and in no instance is that truer than Ronnie Rocket. The film was set to feature dual narratives. The first would track an unnamed detective making his way into the heart of an industrial city to find a man named Hank Bartells, who controls the city’s electricity and is gradually turning both the city and its inhabitants until nothing but mindless shells for his own sick pleasure. The second would follow the titular Ronnie Rocket and his attempts to become a rock star, all the while dealing with a surgical mishap that leaves him dependent on being plugged into an electrical socket every 15 minutes. Sound strange? Welcome to the world of David Lynch, and, as with most of his works, this description doesn’t even scratch the surface of the strangeness on display. For example, because of Hank’s "reverse electricity" -- which sucks away people’s energy until they are left sitting or lying down permanently -- the detective’s ability to stand on one leg proves to be his most valuable skill in his quest to save the day. Or consider that he is constantly hounded by a group of "donut men" who seek to disrupt his mission.

To say Ronnie Rocket would have been an odd film is an understatement, and it is exactly this reason that has led to producers’ time and time again refusing to fund the project. His earliest attempts date back to 1977 when, following in the success of his debut picture, Eraserhead, Lynch pitched it to a studio using the premise that it was about electricity and a "three-foot tall man with a fake red pompadour". The studio never got back to him. Soon after, Lynch pitched it to producer Stuart Cornfeld and legendary comedy actor Mel Brooks, but the pair quickly realized the film was unlikely to find funding. However, they saw talent in Lynch and offered him the chance to direct from a selection of four different scripts they were hoping to produce. One of them was The Elephant Man, which formed the basis for Lynch’s second directing effort and which would propel his name forward to becoming one of the most recognizable in the industry.

Over the next few decades Lynch would return to Ronnie Rocket after many of his projects including Dune, Blue Velvet, and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, but never was it able to come to fruition. Multiple actors were considered for the film, but only two were ever officially cast: Dexter Fletcher and Michael J. Anderson (the latter of whom would go on to play The Man from Another Place in Twin Peaks), but the film’s continual delays eventually led to both dropping out. At some point Lynch must have thought himself cursed, as even when he found a willing backer in the form of Francis Ford Coppola, a finished film still failed to arrive after Coppola’s production company American Zoetrope went bankrupt following the failure of his 1982 musical One from the Heart.

While it’s impossible to know what a finished version of Ronnie Rocket would have looked like, elements of its concept recur throughout Lynch’s career with such frequency it’s as though we can almost piece together what he intended with the movie. The unnamed city which formed the center of the film (described in the script as the color of the blackest night, with only a few tiny lights from old buildings and factories breaking the monotony of the electrical wires that fill its skyline) is extremely similar to the pollution-filled worlds of The Elephant Man and the Giedi Prime sections of Dune. And the plot device of the detective trying to access a mysterious second dimension sounds awfully similar to the White and Black Lodges from Twin Peaks (the latter of which served as home based for Anderson's backward-speaking character). The use of multiple narratives is very reminiscent of Mulholland Drive, as is the concept of having a city play such an integral role in the film that it becomes a main character. Mulholland Drive is both a love letter and cautionary warning about Los Angeles, with traditional Hollywood iconography infusing every shot as though basking in the nostalgic image conjured up by the golden age of cinema, whilst also delving into the seedy underbelly hidden behind its luxurious facade. While Ronnie Rocket’s central location, overflowing with smoke and steam and despair, has more in common with the dystopian future featured in Metropolis than the glitz and glamour of L.A., the concept remains the same: The city is a character itself, with its shadow lingering over everything it touches.

Even Eraserhead, while released prior to Lynch writing the script for Ronnie Rocket, has a touch of familiarity about it thanks to its surrealistic tone, grim industrial aesthetic, and characters with physical deformities, raising the question of whether Ronnie Rocket could be considered a spiritual sequel to its predecessor. Regardless, Ronnie Rocket encapsulates the themes and imagery that Lynch has spent his career exploring better than any of his other projects, giving the film an almost greatest-hits vibe before his career had even taken off. With this in mind, it’s no secret why Lynch has tried so hard to bring his vision to light, but alas, we already know the ending to this story.

By the early 1990s it seemed that time had finally run out for Ronnie Rocket, as it marked the time when Lynch ceased his attempts to get the film made. Still, it clearly remains a project close to his heart, and, well into the 2000s, he was still insisting he hadn't completely given up hope on making it. Whether a completed Ronnie Rocket will ever become a reality remains to be seen, but the film’s surrealistic content combined with the budget required would make it a tough sell to even the most artistically motivated of producers. The option for it to skip cinemas and go straight to streaming may seem like its best hope, but with reports that Lynch’s rumored project with Netflix has been canceled, he may struggle to achieve even that. If nothing else, Ronnie Rocket has rightly earned its place alongside Jodorowsky’s Dune and Kubrick’s Napoleon as one of the great unmade films, which could be considered an honor in and of itself.
I have no idea where this will lead us, but I have a definite feeling it will be a place both wonderful and strange.
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