Everything you were afraid to ask about "Mulholland Drive"

In yet another narrative stream, a young director, Adam, is being forced by some evil Hollywood studio types to cast a certain ingénue in his film -- a blond named Camilla. Arrogantly, he refuses; a strange man in a spooky room orders that the film be shut down. Adam leaves for home in despair and finds his wife in bed with the pool man, who beats him up.

Meanwhile, a scruffy blond-haired guy is talking to a long-haired guy in a shabby office, who mentions something about an accident. The blond guy pulls out a gun and shoots the other, apparently to get a mysterious black book that has some sort of connection to the attempted killing of Rita. But a shot goes awry and hits a woman in the next office. The hit guy tries to strangle her, then shoots her. Then he shoots a janitor who wanders by. Then he shoots the janitor's vacuum cleaner and starts a fire, which sets off alarms and sprinklers.

Betty is staying in the vacant apartment of her aunt, in a building run by an older woman who calls herself Coco. Betty stumbles on the bruised woman hiding out in the shower! She's under the impression, at first, that she's a friend of her aunt's; but it eventually is revealed that the strange guest is suffering from amnesia. She christens herself Rita, after seeing Rita Hayworth's name on a movie poster; the pair find $50,000 and a mysterious blue key in Rita's pocketbook. This suits the Nancy Drew-like inclinations of the out-of-towner perfectly, and they set out to figure out the secret of Rita's life.

The director is thoroughly menaced by some dark forces, including a very scary guy in a cowboy hat in a deserted corral at the top of Beachwood Canyon, high above Hollywood.

The cowboy, calm but dangerous, tells the director again to hire Camilla, the ingénue. "If you do what you're told, you'll see me one more time," the cowboy says calmly. "If you don't do what you're told, you'll see me two more times."

Betty, meanwhile, is preparing for her first audition. She and Rita practice her lines; she's clumsy and conventional. But at the actual audition she turns into a sensual bombshell -- and blows away the producer and everyone watching!

Then a casting agent walks Betty over to the director's movie set. It seems to be some sort of '50s period piece. We see a woman sing Connie Stevens' "16 Reasons." Then Camilla, the ingénue the bad guys are shoving down Adam's throat, sings Linda Scott's "I've Told Every Little Star." "This is the girl," Adam says.

Betty and Adam's eyes meet. But she runs home to Rita.

The two women follow clues to the apartment of another young woman, Diane. They speak to Diane's neighbor, then break into her apartment and find her dead and decayed in her bed!

Shaken, the two return home and dress Rita in a blond wig as a disguise. Betty invites Rita to share her bed that night. Rita makes a pass and the pair find comfort in each other's arms.

"Have you even done this before?" coos Betty.

"I don't know," replies Rita, "-- have you?"

Betty says, "I want to, with you. I'm in love with you."

Rita has a dream about a stage show in a nightclub. She drags them to the club, which is called Silencio. There, musicians and singers pretend to perform, but the music is all canned. Says the emcee: "This is all a tape recording. It is an illusion."

Up in the balcony, the pair begin crying. Betty shakes and weeps in some hyperemotional response to the music. Without explanation, she finds a glistening blue box in her purse.

They go home. Rita turns to the closet. When she turns around, Betty has disappeared. Rita uses the key to open the box. She's apparently sucked into it; we zoom into it, presumably from her point of view, and it drops to the floor.

The movie suddenly changes. We're back at the dead Diane's apartment. We hear knocks at her door; we even see the mysterious cowboy again! "Hey, pretty girl, time to wake up," he says.

Her neighbor, whom we met before, finally wakes her up. Diane is a haggard, dirty-blond with a nervous twitch and a beaten-down look. She notices a blue key on her coffee table.

She's involved with a taunting but cold brunet -- the amnesia victim, Rita! The brunet's real name, we learn, is Camilla -- which is the same name as the ingénue the studio bad guys are pushing. But that woman was blond and much shorter -- an entirely different woman.

The two women have sex on the couch, but Camilla suddenly goes cold. Camilla says, "We shouldn't do this any more."

Diane, horrified, says, "Don't say that," and tries to force her way with her.

Next Page: The return of the mysterious box

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