In 2002, when I was 12 or 13 years old, I managed to rent David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, newly released on home video. Knowing little more than that Lynch was perhaps the world’s coolest director, and that his latest featured ample female nudity, I excitedly popped the disk into the player for a solo after-hours screening. Lynch, forever intent on keeping his mystery-laden work open to individual interpretation, defiantly released the DVD sans chapter stops, asserting they would demystify the film and its unique dream logic. (The omission also happened to make it harder for types like me to skip straight to Naomi Watts and Laura Harring’s sex scene.)
Mulholland Drive proved to be my first all-consuming, mind-roasting cinematic experience. Needing more, I tracked down a DVD set of the first season of Twin Peaks, Lynch’s cult TV series co-created with Mark Frost more than a decade prior. The only release available at the time was missing the pilot episode, due to issues with Artisan Entertainment securing the rights—and thus confusingly began with “Previously on Twin Peaks … ”—but that hardly mattered. I was fully locked into the show’s world from the opening credits, and Twin Peaks remains the most personally impactful work of art I’ve ever encountered.