What is the Hole Inside the Hole

On David Lynch’s Inland Empire

SIMON CRITCHLEY and JAMIESON WEBSTER

Where am I? Where is the key? I gave it to you. What’s wrong with me? Do you know
what whores do? Yes, they fuck. I’ll tell you what I want.
Fine.

This is the only question in the movie whose answer can be known: do you know what
whores do? Yes. They fuck. All other demands for knowledge are left unanswered. The
whore, face obscured, anonymous, doesn’t have to ask anyone anxiously if he can
look at her and tell her if he’s known her before. The whore has known everyone and
no one. She is safe in her anonymity. She is protected. There is little room to
fall.

This film, is it about marriage? Your husband, he is involved?

A little boy went out to play. When he opened his door he saw the world when he
passed through he caused a reflection and evil was born and followed the boy. Evil
was born.

(Sinnerman, where you gonna run to)

A little girl went out to play, lost in the market place, as if half born. Then,
not through the market place, but through the alley behind the market place, this
you see, is the way to the past.

(Please hide me lord)

It isn’t something you remember. Forgetfulness it happens to us all. Where was I?

Is there a murder in the film? Brutal fucking murder.

(Don’t you know I need you, rock)

I can’t remember if it is today or yesterday or tomorrow. I suppose if it was 9:45

I would think it was after midnight. These times recur in the film, as empty
markers against which the recurrence of timelessness winds like a snake.

If today was tomorrow you wouldn’t even remember that you owed something on an
unpaid bill? Do you know what debts you hold? Actions do have consequences, such is
the dreadful utilitarian law of life. And yet, there is the magic. If it were
tomorrow you would be sitting over there.

Do you see? She will, but not until it’s all over. Brutal fucking murder.

(All on that day)

What is time? Accursed time, with its before and after, its relentless succession
of nows. What if yesterday were tomorrow and today yesterday and tomorrow today?
Imagine. Perhaps the whore knows something more about this. Perhaps it is his wife.
Whorish othertime.

For that we would need an act of grace. Unforeseeable. We would need an actor with
a porn-star name like Nikki Grace (Laura Dern). You have everything you need to
soar back to the top and stay perched there.

Hollywood. Where stars make dreams and dreams make stars. Eventually these stars
fall, not like scales from eyes but eyes that fall like scales. Are you able to be
true to hubby with a wolf in the den? That is all we demand of you.

If I don’t kill you, her husband will. Her husband is the most powerful guy around.
He knows everything. I could tell you stories that would curl your hair and kill
your head. So listen to me when I tell you, around Nikki, keep it in your pants.
But you have to admit, she’s got a nice ass.

On High in Blue Tomorrows. First scene. What do you want? I want to apologise? The
things you said weren’t the truth? Were they the truth? Are you sorry? Why are you
crying? I’m so sorry. Look in the other room. Someone is there at the back of the
sound stage in Paramount Studios, just next door to the Hollywood Forever Cemetery
on Santa Monica Boulevard. It’s Laura Dern/Nikki Grace/Susan Blue/whoever/HCE/all
the other women, from later on, from when the curse of time is lifted. Let the
identifications roll. Down the rabbit hole.

There’s a rumor about a movie, they say. This film is actually a remake from an
unfinished film. Something happened. Something happened inside the story, inside a
hole inside the story and the two lead actors were murdered. Brutal fucking murder.
It’s a Polish gypsy folktale called Vier Sieben, 47, the room number of the wise
rabbits. Sometimes someone is not told the whole story.

The producers of the movie know this. Who are the producers? We don’t know. Is
Nikki’s Polish husband secretly financing the film and deliberately trying to
debase his wife, to turn her into a whore and kill her? At least in this way, he
can desire her. But then that can’t be entirely true. In this movie, it is always
Nikki who desires, a forbidden desire. Each and everyone.

Splitting of time- splitting of love and desire- an unpaid debt, a crime.

Police station – I’ve been hypnotized or something, I’m going to kill someone. Who?
I don’t know. Who hypnotized you? I saw him looking at me once when I looked around
the bar and he then moved his hands and he said that I wouldn’t know who it was.
How are you going to kill this person? With a screwdriver.

Your wife? I’ve been with her since I was a little boy? Nothing little about you
now. Why are you doing this? Don’t play dumb. I have a husband, you have a wife and
kids… I never met you before. I didn’t know you before. I had this feeling, you’ve
had it too, don’t you? I can’t afford to. All I see from here is blue tomorrows.

Are you enjoying yourself? There is a vast network, an ocean of possibilities. Such
is enjoyment. I like dogs, I used to raise rabbits, I’ve always loved animals.
Their nature, how they think. They can reason their way out of problems, watch them
think through the trickiest situations. Can I borrow a few bucks?

I can’t afford to. (It’s funny in ways you don’t expect).

Husband and Devon – I want to hold you close. Sometimes people don’t say exactly
what they mean and you have been guilty of this all evening. I will mean everything
I say. My wife is not a free agent. I don’t allow her that. The bonds of marriage
are real bonds. The vows we take, we honour and enforce them. For ourselves, by
ourselves. If necessary they are enforced for us. Either way she is bound. There
are consequences to one’s actions and there will for certain be consequences for
wrong actions. Dark they would be and inescapable. Why instigate a need to suffer?

Such is the wish in the dream. Such is the hole in the hole. Let’s negate for a
time the implacable truth that the mother is certain and the father is not. An old
story about one always half-told: Mater semper certa; pater est quem nuptiae
demonstrant (Mother is always certain; the father is whom the marriage shows).
Inland empire- the father is certain and the wife that I love is also my whore that
I desire. How nice it is on high in blue tomorrows. You have nothing to worry about
now, you dying lady.

Devon hits on Nikki, then we switch to a scene in the movie of the two of them
caressing. As Billy Side and Susan Blue? It is unclear. I won’t fall in love with
you. Uncut. Are you two happy?

The question of happiness is always dark and inescapable. But why instigate a need
to suffer? Enjoyment is a vast network of possibilities.

Cut to another scene. What? Something has happened. I think my husband knows. He
will kill you and me. Damn, this sounds like dialogue from our script.

At this point and from this point on, Nikki and Susan begin to blur. What the
bloody hell is going on?

Cut – We don’t know the real reason why On High in Blue Tomorrows wasn’t finished.
Stories grow out of the imagination surrounded by these screwball stories. We
shouldn’t give them credence… unless they are true.

Cut – They fuck in real life with the husband/producer looking on at them, but no
one is in their place, they cannot stay in their place. Later, she will come to
look on the adulterous bed from the exact place of her husband, in the hallway,
through the alleyway. He will lie down where she is, or is it where he was? These
things are never clear. It is better. The whole story cannot be told.

Look at me. Remember that thing that happened in the story from yesterday, but I
know it’s tomorrow. That scene where I was parked in the alley way. This is the way
to the past. It’s a scene we did yesterday in the alley and I see this writing on
metal and I start remembering something. This whole thing starts flooding in, this
memory, and I start to remember, I don’t know what it is. It’s me. Nikki. That
doesn’t make any sense. It’s me, Devon, it’s Nikki. Look at me you fucker. Please,
look at me. Look at me, please, and tell me if you’ve known me before.

Anxiety signals the approach of the new.

Axx oNN – The axiom of the unintelligible. She goes in through the door. Time
fractures backwards and forwards and she meets up in earlier scene. She runs to the
door and goes into the house with her husband in the window. She goes in door 1358,
in an old 1950s style room. Billy presses his face against the window, but he can’t
see her, doesn’t know her.

The window goes dark then we switch to a street-scape. She is in the Inland Empire.
The Inland Empire is at the back of the sound stage. We know for the first time it
is the Inland Empire, just at the back of Hollywood. Always been there. Who knew?

She goes into room full of women. What do they have in common? They all fucked
Devon/Billy. The look on her face, pleasure, horror, some combination of the two.
This face, her look, looking on, will return later.

Who the hell are you? Look at us and tell us if you’ve known us before. There are
two obvious meanings of ‘know’ in the movie, epistemic and fuckaesthetic, Did he do
that thing, that little shaking thing, while he was, you know… wasn’t that great.
Yeah. I let him do anything. It’s strange what love does. So strange. In the
future, you’ll be dreaming. The kind of sleep where you open your eyes and someone
familiar will be there.
Cut – Poland. Whores. Lost Girl (Karolina Gruszka).

Do you want to see? Then burn a hole with a cigarette in the silk. Look through the
hole. Primal scene? The hole in the sheet. Your virgin wife? Your female patient?
It’s just silk. It’s just a hole. Sometimes a hole is just a hole.

She’s in some shithole in the Inland Empire. Where? Pomona? San Bernardino? Who
cares. She burns a hole in the silk. She looks through. Polish whore or a woman who
can’t give a man children. I’m not who you think I am I’ll never let you have her,
never. Man beats whore. We learn the time is 9:45, but as we learnt in the earlier
scene with the amazing Grace Zabriskie, it could be after midnight.

The wise rabbits burn bright candles held high on seven-branch candelabra (we
exaggerate).

Cut – She goes upstairs as a new persona, brutalized, debased, castrating woman,
marked with a tattoo on the back of her hand, with the initials L.B. The rage. The
reversal of identifications. They are moving now. They are dancing.

She meets the analyst who is a rabbit wearing a human disguise. You go down the
rabbit hole and meet a rabbit. Who did you fucking expect? God almighty? I don’t
really understand what I’m doing here. So they told me you could help me, so I
guess I’ll just tell you the thing. There was this man I once knew, his name was,
doesn’t matter, lot of guys change, they don’t change but they reveal what they
really are. It’s an old story. This guy he revealed something looking back on it,
all along it was being revealed, he was planning something with me in mind….

When I get mad I really get mad. I gouged a man’s eye out when I was fifteen he was
trying to rape me had his thing out and was pushing my legs apart. I got my finger
in his eye. What a man you are, crying like a baby. He could still see me with his
one eye, grabbing his nuts and tearing at him, crying like a little baby holding
his nuts till the ambulance come. What happened? He come to be reaping what he been
sowing. That’s some pretty heavy shit he’s been sowing.

Cut – She stares at cigarette and burned silk. All the girls again (it is said
there is no such thing as All the Women): I thought you would last… I saw it
coming… I thought he was the one you know… so where he’s gone… find someone else…
not easy when you feel like shit… oh baby (laugh)… tits and ass (showing her tits)…
sweet. All dance.

The girls, the past lovers, the whores, arrive on the scene to mark the unfolding
of the story between Susan Blue/Nikki Grace and Billy’s wife who will stab her with
the screwdriver. To stab the woman who your husband betrayed you with is also to
stab yourself. And so she did. They are as two punished. Why? That other woman is
always there in wedlock. Why do women always insist on unraveling the details of a
man’s previous lovers? Hearing them speak about him, every little detail, that
shaking thing before he, you know… Is it a dream? A nightmare? Why instigate the
need to suffer?

So much feminine masochism, Mr. Lynch.

Cut – Back in the Inland Empire. Impoverished desperate couple. Feeling of

violence. She tells him, I’m pregnant.

She calls the rabbits from the Inland Empire. Yes, she calls the rabbits. She says,
‘Billy?’ (canned laughter).

Through silk again. Back with the analyst. I seen him coming at me with a crow bar
once. I guess he figures I was two-timing him and I was coming home we were shacked
up at the time and he was waiting for me in the half-light. Waiting for me to come
home, worked himself into some kind of a frenzy. I see this shape burst out of the
chair, crow bar going up, I scream and turn, fucking crow bar smashes into that
door, cheap piece of shit, it just splinters like glass. I don’t take this kind of
behavior. I see what this fucker was up to. Bam! I kick him in the nuts so fast
they crawl up into his brain for refuge and he goes down like a two-dollar whore.
Bullshit telling me he loves me.

Were you, in fact, seeing another man? (First time the analyst speaks. He has a
way. How good of him to point out her indiscretions also, where are you Nikki
Grace?) I was screwing a couple of guys for drinks, no big deal. This one guy he
was kind of cute, had dick like a rhinoceros, fuck the shit out of you I tell you
what, he’d buy me a couple of drinks after, we talk and he’s tell me about the town
he grew up in all the little girls he’d fuck, chemical factory putting so much shit
in the air you couldn’t think straight, lot of crazy shit going on there, weird
dreams, seeing things that wasn’t there. So one time this little girl was staring
off at something and starts screaming and the people come to her and ask what’s
wrong and she says she sees the end of the world all fire and smoke and bloodrain,
you know, like they say, the wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Cut – Look at me and tell me if you’ve known me before? Yes, we will do that.
Husband spills ketchup on stomach where the woman stabs herself with the
screwdriver. Time she stops. Time she stopped.

Cast out this wicked dream that seized my heart.

Billy’s wife screwdriver in hand, stabs herself.

Who is she? He said that I wouldn’t know who it was.

Cut – Who are those people? Hot dogs. The situation is becoming dangerous. Give me
that hammer. There is no toilet paper in the Inland Empire. They are a group that
performs in traveling shows in the Baltic region. What’s that got to do with you? I
will take care of the animals. It was said that I have a way with animals. I’m sure
he does. I’m sure this husband has a way with animals.

Cut from animal to analyst – Went to some Eastern Europe shithole with the circus.
Carnies, gypsies, conmen, a real fucking ball of shit. There was this guy who would
start talking, real regular talking up the crowd and they would push in closer, he
did some sort of thing on people. They called him the Phantom. He got in a bar room
fight at night. Circus clowns. So when they take him down to the station he
disappeared. This is the kind of shit I’m talking about. He was a marine from North
Carolina, he had a sister with one leg, she had a car stick for the other one. She
killed three kids in the first grade. This is the kind of shit. Fucking funny.
People. All got their own peculiarities, own way of livin’.

Cut – L.A. at Billy’s house with his wife. What are you doing here? Something’s
wrong, bad wrong, do you feel it? Sue? Billy, do you love me? Don’t you remember
anything, how it was? Billy, something’s wrong. I love you Billy. Wife slaps her.
Sue, go away. (Flips into a rage, like the woman with the analyst. Gnashing of
teeth). I don’t care, it’s something more. I don’t care, it’s something more.

Back in the Inland Empire. I came about an unpaid bill that needs paying. Alright.
Do you know a man who lives here? Do you know him? What do you want? There is an
unpaid bill that needs paying. You already said that. Do you know that man who
lives next door. Crimp is the name.

Funny name, Crimp. The imp of the perverse.

Cut – Crimp. Man with a lightbulb in his mouth and a screwdriver on a small table.
Isn’t he the Phantom? The one who hypnotized her?

Cut – There is someone there. I have to tell you. There is someone. Brings in the
husband. Do you recognize her? I don’t see her. You understand she sent for you.
(The Lost Girl). I don’t know where I am; I don’t know where I am. I hear her now.
You don’t see her.

The horse was taken to the well. Take the pistol. Let’s go! Right away, it’s after
midnight. Girl disappears… a ghost… she’s already been murdered. The three Poles
merge into the three rabbits. I’m going to find out one day. Where was I? This
isn’t the way it was. (canned laughter). It had something to do with the telling of
time….

Can we lift the curse of time?

Major cut/jump to Hollywood Boulevard – Where stars make dreams and dreams make
stars. Two Nikkis/Susans/L.B.s staring at each other: the one from the analyst’s
room, the other from the Inland Empire. We hear a scream like in a horror film.

On Hollywood Boulevard with all the whores. ‘I’m a whore. Where am I? I’m a freak.’
She laughs mockingly. Looking at herself across the street laughing at herself. AXX
oNN – Billy/Devon’s wife is stalking her. She’s going to fucking kill me. Runs
upstairs at club.

Back at the analyst’s office – I don’t know what I’m doing here. There was this man
I once knew. I’m trying to tell you so you’ll understand how it went. I don’t know
what was before or after. I don’t know what happened first and it kind of laid a
mindfuck on me. My husband he’s fucking hiding something. Acting all weird before
he left. He was talking this foreign talk and telling loud fucking stories.

Cut – Husband beats her…. I’m not who you think I am. Are you listening to me? I
know for a fact that I can’t father children. Brutal fucking murder. Woman with
child. A son. We suppose it is the son. The son who is not the son of the father, a
whoreson, a dead son. What makes a father a father? Bastard. She doesn’t know the
husband at the moment he decides that he knows that she’s a whore. His certainty is
a brutality. I mean everything I say. Her not knowing… I can’t say.

His face all red, eyes bugging out. I figured one day I’d just wake up and find out
what the hell yesterday was all about. I’m not too keen on thinking about tomorrow
and today is slipping by. I guess after my son died I went into a bad time where I
was watching everything go around me while I was standing in the middle, like in a
dark theater, before they bring the lights up. I’m sitting there wondering how can
this be. Phone rings…. Hello. Yeah still here. (She has a screwdriver). I don’t
think it will be much longer now. Yeah. The horse to the well. Yeah. She’s around
here someplace that’s for sure.

Billy’s/Devon’s Wife takes screwdriver from Nikki and stabs her. Punished. For
being a whore. Finally. Runs off.

There are consequences to one’s actions and there will for certain be consequences
for wrong actions. Dark they would be and inescapable. Why instigate a need to
suffer? Why? There’s a question. Axiom of the unintelligible.

Falls to ground on Hollywood Boulevard next to a black woman and black man with an
Asian girl. You dying lady.

What you say about Pomona? You asked about the bus. Can’t get no bus to Pomona. You
can get the bus for Pomona here if you get on the subway first. I never can get no
bus. You can go all around Hollywood from Hollywood and Vine and you can get to
Pomona for $3.50. I never heard of no bus there. I went last summer to visit my
friend her name is Niko (not Nikki). I stayed for two weeks. My cousin comes from
Pomona. What time is it? I don’t know. It’s after midnight. After midnight? It
could be 9.45. My friend Niko in Pomona has a blond wig. She wears it at parties,
she’s all on drugs and turning tricks, but she looks very good in her blond wig,
just like a movie star. Even girls fall in love with her in her blond star wig. She
blows kisses and laughs… but she has got a hole in her vagina wall. She has torn a
hole into her intestine from her vagina. The hole inside the hole. Baby, don’t tell
us this shit. She has seen a doctor but it is too expensive and now she knows how
her time has run out. She’ll score a few more times and then, like that, she will
stay at home with her monkey. She has a pet monkey. This monkey shit everywhere and
she doesn’t care. It screams like it’s in a horror movie. But there are those who
are good with animals, who have a way with animals. They can reason their way out
of the trickiest of situations and then shit everywhere.

It’s okay, you dying is all. You saw the light. It burns bright in heaven. No more
blue tomorrows. You on high now.

Camera pulls back and up. Director yells, ‘Cut… and print it’. Bravo. What’s the
matter Nikki? You were wonderful… The Lost Girl, the one who was killed by her
husband, sees Nikki on TV. Nikki sees herself on the screen in the theater talking
to the analyst about how her son died. She’s standing in the dark theater seeing
herself talking about standing in the middle of a dark theater, everything going
around, time spins, identifications dance, her in the middle, before they bring the
lights up.

Time is folding back on itself. Time it stopped. Time she stopped. Phone rings,
It’s the conversation again. The horse to the well. The analyst goes up a
staircase… AXXoNN is on the analyst’s door.

The axiom of the unintelligible leads back to the Inland Empire through a rabbit
hole. She opens a drawer next to the bed. The bed from the scene of adultery. Takes
the pistol. It’s L.B. and she’s not messing around.

Poland and Inland Empire collide. She is going down a long corridor with the gun,
into Room 47, Vier Sieben. She shoots the man from Poland. She shoots the Phantom.
She shoots her husband. Superimposed on his face, a grotesque female face. The
imago. Hers? It is the mother behind the father who refuses that father as a
husband and the husband who refuses his wife for his mother. It’s an old story:
where you love you cannot desire, where you desire you cannot love. Perhaps there
is something in the sexual drive that will not allow for complete satisfaction. Who
said that? Perhaps there is just a loop, a short circuit of the debased and the
forbidden, the debased woman for the man, the forbidden man for the woman.
Deadlock. Or wedlock.

Cast out this wicked dream that seized my heart.

Rabbits. The rabbits live down their hole in room 47. Blue light, blue tomorrows.
She meets the Lost Girl who’s been crying from the beginning. They kiss. A long
fucking kiss. The other woman. Nikki/Susan disappears. The Lost Girl smiles. The
door opens and she leaves. She leaves room 47. She runs down corridor. Out. She
greets her husband and her dead son that glimmered in the analysis. He takes up his
role as father, the father is whom the marriage shows.

The Lost Girl comes home in the end. Happy family? Happy ending? Suturing the hole?
Eat your heart out. The horse goes to the well, but you can’t make it drink. Not
one drop.
Subtitle: A Woman in Trouble. Amazing Grace. What once was lost now is found. Never
Inland Empire.

Look. Nikki sees herself across the room. (If it were tomorrow you would be sitting
over there).

Fade out. End. Closing credits. In the whorehouse in Pomona. No, in the mansion in
Hollywood. Same difference. Enter the Phantom’s sister with one leg. Castration.
Sweet. Niko with monkey. Shit all over the floor. Sweet.

They all dance around Nikki.

Grace.

Oh Sinnerman, where you gonna run to?

Sinnerman, where you gonna run to?
All on that day

Well I run to the rock, please hide me, rock

I run to the rock, please hide me, Lord
All on that day

But the rock cried out, I can’t hide you

The rock cried out, I can’t hide you
The rock cried out, I ain’t gonna hide you guy
All on that day

So I run to the Lord, please hide me Lord

Don’t you see me prayin’?
Don’t you see me down here prayin’?

But the Lord said, go to the devil

The Lord said, go to the devil
He said, go to the devil
All on that day

So I ran to the devil, he was waitin’

I ran to the devil, he was waitin’
All on that day

I cried –
Power.
Bring Down -

Power.