Deleted scenes from Blue Velvet.

I grew up in a very small town with an incredible independent movie theater, and as a result I went to see a lot of cool stuff back then that I probably wouldn’t have heard of otherwise. There wasn’t a whole lot for a teenager to do in Rhinebeck other than walk to Upstate Films to see whatever was playing, and thankfully they never checked me or my friends for proof of age. In the summer of 1990 they were showing Wild At Heart, and I went to see it without knowing anything about it other than that it was directed by the guy responsible for Twin Peaks, the new TV show I’d been slowly growing obsessed with over the previous few months.

I loved Wild At Heart, and it got me curious about other movies David Lynch had made. I remember renting Blue Velvet with my friend Paul and just being totally entranced. It immediately became one of my favorite movies, and 22 years later, it still is. I’ve seen it so many times, and it never gets old. Like every David Lynch movie, the casting is absolutely perfect. This was my first real exposure to Isabella Rossellini outside of the context of being cover model (yes, she was in Wild At Heart, but her role in that film is very different and far less direct/personal—the affectations and appearance of the character are more compelling than the actor, if that makes sense), and her performance had an enormous effect on me. She has remained a constant source of inspiration in my life, and it all stems from the way that she portrayed Dorothy Vallens.

About ten years ago, I finally got to see Blue Velvet on a big screen. BAM did a special showing, and Isabella Rossellini was there to watch with us and to answer questions from the audience after. That was a wonderful experience.

Anyway, there is actually a point to this post! From Dangerous Minds:

Blue Velvet’s original shooting script is reputed to have been over four hours long. The theatrical release came in at 120 minutes. An additional hour of deleted footage was thought to have been lost when the producer of the film, Dino De Laurentis, sold his company. Fortunately, the footage was located and was released as an extra on the Blu-ray edition of Blue Velvet.

Nearly a full hour (!!!) of unreleased footage from Blue Velvet—an amazing thing to think about, right? It’s out of context and sequence (and without a full score), of course, and I’m hoping that another Lynch-obsessed person out there will take the time to do a fan edit of the movie with the deleted scenes replaced. In the mean time, it’s very, very cool to add an extra layer of fascination to a movie I’ve loved for so long and seen so many times. The dimension this footage adds to the character of Jeffrey Beaumont in particular is kind of mind-blowing. I almost feel like I didn’t really know who he was until now! I’ll leave my reactions beyond that out of this post, but if you’d like to discuss it further in the comments, I’m game.

(This probably goes without saying if you’ve seen Blue Velvet, but some parts of this video may be NSFW—depending on where you work, of course.)