Highway revisited
Bill Pullman recalls going full Lynch in 1997 noir psycho-drama LOST HIGHWAY
Bill Pullman as the beleaguered Fred.
IT MUST BE weird — bittersweet, let’s say — as an actor, to be offered the co-lead in a cool film, only to discover that halfway through, your character is to be played by someone else. David Lynch sent Bill Pullman the Lost Highway screenplay in 1995, asking him to star as saxophonist Fred Madison. Great! An hour in, banged up after killing his wife Renee (Patricia Arquette), Fred suffers some sort of psychological… happening, and the film changes course, now following someone called Pete instead — aversion, maybe, of Fred. Great! Or, not so great, if you’re Bill Pullman.
He loved the script, and didn’t want to change anything, he says, except for that. Well, he adds, correcting himself, “I didn’t want to change it.” But he at least wanted to ask the question. So he did: “You know, David, was there any moment where you thought maybe it’d be really good if the same actor plays Fred and Pete?” Pullman got a typically concise response: “Nope.”