It’s been a hot minute since I’ve seen it, but I remember at the time I did feel like it fell a little into the mastabatory category of films where Hollywood makes films about itself with the weirdest fixations on its own ‘culture’ and processes as if we the audience should all consider them the hardest working and greatest of the tortured artists, instead of as the cogs in the Americana Propaganda machine they really are.

The film is clearly deeply critical of Hollywood, presenting it as a place where talent and artistry goes to die, where shady producers have the power to ruin your life at any moment and where the dream of stardom and fame is used to exploit young woman in any possible way. The artists in this film are very much literal cogs in a machine they don’t understand.

It does also complicate things at the same time, when it flips the narrative in the second half and the film deliberately doesn’t make it clear if the machinations behind the scene of hollywood in this film are just delusions, real, or just manifestations of the real powers in the industry that can’t really be broken down like they seem to be in the movie. It’s both a denunciation of the hollywood studio system (that lynch has to work within) and a celebration of the power of movies (which lynch clearly believes in, but which as the movie shows can also be used for deluding yourself and others). That it is both is what makes it interesting.

I’d also argue that while Lynch is clearly not a political filmmaker, demystifying the hollywood dream machine, whose influence over the development of american capitalist ideology can’t be overstated, is not without its worth. There is a reason why a lot of the anti-communist work of the mccarthy era focused on hollywood and the broader entertainment industry. There used to be a time where even the state believed in the power of movies.