Lost Highway: The Fist of Love

by Scott Ryan

In 1997 David Lynch released Lost Highway starring Bill Pullman, Patricia Arquette, Balthazar Getty and Natasha Gregson Wagner. The film came and went and critics famously panned the film. While it did span a top 10 soundtrack, the film has largely been forgotten until now. In 2022, the film was remastered and rereleased. Film lovers, Lynch fans and critics started to take notice.

Author Scott Ryan, Fire Walk With Me: Your Laura Disappeared, The Blue Rose magazine, has turned his interviewing sites on the cast and crew of Lost Highway to write maybe the first book ever to focus on this forgotten Lynch film. The book has new interviews with Academy Award winner Patricia Arquette, Balthazar Getty, Natasha Gregson Wagner, Producer Deepak Nayar, Production Assistant Sabrina S. Sutherland, DP Peter Deming, Camera man Scott Ressler, and more. The book also covers the film, the script and the famous soundtrack by Angelo Badalamenti and Trent Reznor. There is also a tribute to actor Jack Nance who starred in many David Lynch films including the title role of Eraserhead. Actress and life-long friend of Nance, Charlotte Stewart shares stories of their time working together on Twin Peaks.

Foreword by Matt Zoller Seitz

208 pages, Paperback

Published April 26, 2023

About the author

Scott Ryan is the managing editor of The Blue Rose magazine, the author of Moonlighting: an Oral History, Fire Walk With Me: Your Laura Disappeared, the co-president of Fayetteville Mafia Press and the host of The Red Room podcast.

Reviews

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great book exploring one of David Lynch's films that myself-- and many others, apparently-- like the least due to its easily misinterpreted opaqueness. "There are many theories about what happens in the film," writes Matt Zoller Seitz from the foreword, "None of them explain it because the film is not meant to be explained. Its meant to be absorbed, felt and discussed." Scott Ryan's book provides a perfect opening for that discussion and it inspires one to revisit the film. As a 50's style film noir, the main mystery of the movie is the movie itself, switching lead actors midway and subverting the concept of what's real and what's imagined from the mindset of a misogynistic psychopath. The book does a great job of validating an under-appreciated puzzlebox of a film with these interviews and essays breaking down one of Lynch's 'lost-audience' masterworks.

[Tom M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The access to Peter Deming, one of my favorite cinematographers, is key to this book. Really wonderful photographs, and it's worth getting the book for them alone. "Lost Highway" is among my favorite Lynch films (highly underrated, IMHO), so it's nice to have material continue to be written about it. I recommend picking this up.