These days it’s Twin Peaks this, Twin Peaks that. A new season is coming, courtesy of Showtime, after the last ended 26 years ago, and everybody is once again talking about rooms that are red and lodges that are black, ladies who log and dwarfs who dance. Well, I don’t want to talk about any of these things, don’t want to talk about Twin Peaks at all, in fact. I want to talk about David Lynch’s other TV show, his 2001 movie, Mulholland Drive. Only Mulholland Drive is Twin Peaks, or started out that way.

The Backstory (or You Want to Know, Don’t You?)

It was supposed to be a spin-off. The basic idea was this: Audrey Horne (Sherilyn Fenn), God’s gift to saddle shoes and tight sweaters, the sweetest piece of cherry pie in the Pacific Northwest, especially after the death of her classmate and the homecoming queen, Laura Palmer, goes to Hollywood to seek fortune and, of course, fame. Mulholland would premiere at the same time Twin Peaks’ third season premiered. There was no Twin Peaks third season, so there was no Mulholland. It hadn’t even been born yet and Mulholland Drive was already dead.

In 1998, Tony Krantz, Lynch’s television agent turned production partner, persuaded Lynch to bring it back to life. Lynch kept the title but junked the rest, cooking up a new batch of characters and situations. He and Krantz drove to ABC, where Twin Peaks had aired its original 30 episodes, in 1990 and 1991, and delivered a pitch. It sold on the spot. Krantz: “David had them at hello because they wanted to do anything he wanted to do.” And then he did it and they discovered that it was the last thing they wanted. Their problem with Lynch’s pilot was that it was, well, Lynchian: weird, creepy, slooow. ABC passed. The Thursday nine P.M. slot Lynch had hoped his show and its three unknown leads, Naomi Watts, Laura Elena Harring, and Justin Theroux, would fill was taken by Wasteland, Kevin Williamson’s follow-up to Dawson’s Creek. Mulholland Drive was even deader than before.

Another resurrection, however, was coming. In the summer of ‘99, StudioCanal’s Pierre Edelman offered to buy the rights to Mulhollandfrom ABC, plus raise an additional $7 million to turn the pilot into a feature. Lynch accepted. He reconceived the footage he’d already shot, then wrote and filmed 18 new pages of script. Mulholland premiered at Cannes in 2001. While hugely lauded at the time, its reputation has only grown. In fact, according to a number of recent polls, including the prestigious BBC Culture, this two-time loser is the best movie of the 21st century.

Wasteland was canceled after three episodes.

The Director (or a Head Above the Rest)

Two things you need to know about David Lynch: he’s an Eagle Scout, and he trained as an Abstract Expressionist.

The Plot (or I Don’t Know Who I Am)

To know what’s going on in Mulholland Drive is to ask, What’s going on in Mulholland Drive? This isn’t a typical movie in which images and narrative support a story that’s being told. But one is. The tricky bit is describing it. The feeling is that to do so is to submit to a kind of cinematic Rorschach test, your perception of the inkblot/plot more revealing of you than the inkblot/plot. In other words, it’s a sucker’s game. And the temptation is to play it safe, tend to the gnomic. To say, for example, that Mulholland is a riddle that cannot be solved. Or a Grimm’s fairy tale set in the fantasy capital of the world, a neighborhood that is also a state of mind: Hollywood, California. Or, and now I’m quoting Lynch, “Part One: she found herself inside the perfect mystery. Part Two: a sad illusion. Part Three: love.” (Tough to beat Lynch for gnomic.) All of these characterizations are accurate, as far as they go. Which isn’t very.