# Blue Velvet: my image of America



## Langham (Nov 7, 2012)

Naturally I've been to New York, but oddly enough, never advanced beyond the Brooklyn Bridge in discovering the United States. I am therefore entirely dependent on movies to create my inner image of that fascinating country.
What a great film to do that - surreal, exciting, utterly strange and weird. Could this have been Dennis Hopper's finest hour?


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## Shaver (May 2, 2012)

Synchronicity! I have just purchased a third DVD copy of Blue Velvet - each has different, and worthwhile, extras.

On this latest copy there is a decent interview with Hopper in which he reveals that in the original script Frank Booth's mask was not, as eventually depicted in the movie, allowing him to inhale a mixture of amyl nitrate and nitrous oxide but merely helium. This is perhaps even more perverse as in such a circumstance his behaviour would not be drug induced but rather his normal psychosis and, worse, his voice would have been cartoonish as he uttered such terrifying lines of dialogue. Imagine 'don't f***ing look at me' et al delivered in a Mickey Mouse timbre....

Concur that this is Hopper's finest hour but his Photojournalist in Apocalypse Now and the remarkable set piece with Christopher Walken in True Romance are also fine performances.

I have wandered, as a sole traveller, through a few rural American towns and Lynch's vision will ever tinge my experience of them but I suspect that every community, in every corner of the world, harbours its own darker side.

"I close my eyes, then I drift away into the magic night....."​
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## Langham (Nov 7, 2012)

^ I saw the film when it first came out (two times, I think) and I must admit had little or no idea what he was doing with the mask, although it certainly added something to the character. But I agree, helium would have had a bizarre effect..


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## Mr. B. Scott Robinson (Jan 16, 2017)

^^True Romance, a real classic there. Love it. Great writing by Tarantino. 

Cheers, 

BSR


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