When Diane Ladd was approached by David Lynch to play Marietta, an antagonistic character in the 1990 movie Wild at Heart, she said Lynch wanted her to be a hot momma. Ladd was in her mid-50s at the time and women that age and at that time weren’t considered “hot.”
Yet, it became one of the three roles Ladd would get an Oscar nomination during her career as an actress. She passed away earlier this month at the age of 89. Her previous role had been as Clark Griswold’s mother in the holiday classic National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, despite the fact Ladd was only about eight years older than Chevy Chase. Ladd had stepped into that role where she was getting the “mother and grandmother” roles.
Still, her role in Wild at Heart is one of the strangest and boldest for an actress of her caliber and filmography. She had shared the screen with Jack Nicholson in Chinatown. She co-starred alongside Ellen Burstyn as the original Flo the waitress in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore directed by a young Martin Scorsese. Marietta is the type of Southern Belle style woman who lives in the Carolinas trying to some old-fashioned perception of how women her age should act. On the outside, she seems like she makes the best sweet tea around. But she’s one of the low-life criminals in this movie that blends neo-noir, black comedy, surrealist horror and absurdism.
In other words, it’s your typical David Lynch movie. And like all of Lynch’s movies, it doesn’t make a lot of sense on the first watch, or even the second. But sometimes the ride is better than the destination.
Marietta hired a man to attack “Sailor” Ripley (Nicolas Cage), who is the boyfriend of her daughter, Lulu Pace Fortune (Laura Dern, Ladd’s real-life daughter). Sailor gets over prison time for manslaughter as he kills the hitman who pulled a knife on him, knowing that Marietta set it up. When Sailor gets out of prison, 22 months and 18 days later, he and Lulu hook back up and take off on a ride west.
Marietta gets the gullible Johnny Farragut (Harry Dean Stanton), a private investigator, to tail them as she knows Johnny is smitten with her and has been for years. She uses her sex appeal to get Johnny to take the job but then turns to crime boss Marcellus Santos (J.E. Freeman) to kill Sailor. It’s later learned Sailor used to work for Santos.
Like a lot of Lynch movies, he’s more focused on the characters who never get the spotlight in other movies. They’re strange, perverted and even the people you’d walk across the street to avoid at all costs. Sailor and Lulu are young lovers even though they don’t fit the normal notion of characters at the time. They both love the bad Powermad, a real-life thrash metal band. Lulu also doesn’t seem to mind that Sailor has killed a man even in self-defense and he talks about his previous girlfriends in a casual nonchalant manner. This was around the time Hollywood and filmmakers began to rediscover the works of Jim Thompson as The Grifters and After Dark, My Sweet were adapted for the screen as well as a newer version of The Getaway.
And then Quentin Tarantino burst on the scene with Reservoir Dogs and that was all she wrote. Following the success of that and Pulp Fiction, the 1990s saw an explosion of gangster/crime movies with a nihilistic attitude and graphic violence galore.
The movie is based on the novel by Barry Gifford, who would later collaborate again with Lynch on the 1997 movie Lost Highway. The characters might seem detestable but there are detestable people in real life and not every bad person gets what’s coming to them. The plot combines elements of The Wizard of Oz and Sailor seems to be somewhat inspired by Elvis Presley, especially the early years and wears a snakeskin jacket. He also sings Elvis songs.
The movie in many ways is the first in an unofficial string of movies (including Con Air, Honeymoon in Vegas and Leaving Las Vegas) Cage made that dealt with Vegas, the desert, and Elvis. In fact, there’s several similarities between this movie and Con Air as Cage plays a character in both movies who goes to prison for manslaughter and his partner has a baby born while in prison that he meets years later when released.
However the movie was controversial before it even opened in theaters during the summer of 1990. Fans of Lynch’s Twin Peaks point to this movie as the drop in quality of the series, even though that happened in the second season after the movie was released. But it’s biggest controversy was winning the Palme d’Or, the highest award for a feature film, at the Cannes Film Festival in May which angered many of those in attendance. Roger Ebert made a note he was one of the people jeering in his two-star dismissal review. But then again, do you wonder if it changed people’s opinions a few years later when Pulp Fiction won the same award?
Even though the movie had the use of Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game,” a popular song, it still wasn’t enough to get people to the theaters. The outrageous sexual content and violence including a scene where hitman Bobby Peru (Willem Dafoe) literally blows his own head off with a shot gun probably wasn’t what audiences were looking for. Yet, I’d argue for all the violence in this movie, it pales in comparison to the Oscar-winning Dances With Wolves, especially the Director’s Cut. Cuts had to be made to the movie as it had initially obtained an NC-17 rating.
It’s not Lynch’s best movie. I think The Straight Story is the best. You can see elements of what would go on to be used in Lost Highway and Mulholland Dr. It only made $14 million at the box office. But contemporary views have changed and been more positive.
The 1990s were a different time than the 1980s. The Cold War was almost over. All around the world, countries were changing left and right and no one really knew what to expect. I think the idea of the young lovers of Sailor and Lulu who remain faithful and optimistic despite all the hellish things going on around them shows that you have to do what you can to survive.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 