In keeping with the David Lynch / Nicolas Cage team-up theme from Wild at Heart, reviewed yesterday, I watched the short home video release of Industrial Symphony Number 1: The Dream of the Brokenhearted. The avant-garde concert / play, which was performed twice at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City in 1989, was released to video in 1990 and LaserDisc in 1991.

The 50-minute hallucinatory dream (so very Twin Peaks-y) opens with (likely) Sailor and Lula (from WaH) playing the “Heartbreaker” and “Heartbroken Woman.” In this scene, Sailor is seen breaking up with Lula over the phone in an awkward and emotionally poignant dialogue. That’s the entirety of their interaction and their only appearance in the play/concert/whatever-it-is.

You can watch the whole performance on Youtube (embedded below). Or if you’re interested in the breakup, just tune in starting at the 1:06 to 3:07 minute mark.

There’s not a lot to take away from this viewing other than the fact that Lynch has a knack for creating these surreal, abstract, nightmarish-BUT-somehow-still-grounded-in-1950s-Americana industrial hellscapes, that will lull you into a mesmeric sort of daze with angelic and soothing sounds, before pounding you with paranoia, noise, static, and visual perplexity. It’s really incredible how he does it, but it’s hard to get your head around. One moment you’re watching a 1950s style debutante singing doo-wap sungs from the trunk of an old car, and then you’re watching a little person sawing a log, and then you’re watching an air raid attack and a hundred burnt plastic baby dolls descending from the ceiling. And before you know it someone has erected a monstrous deer demon that’s twenty feet tall.

I don’t know what to make of it. But I don’t recommend watching this movie while on psychedelics. That’s just a recipe for a very very bad trip.

One nice thing about a weird one-off like this is that you get to sort of step back into the red-room dream sequences of Twin Peaks. Lynch even brings out a few of the regulars:

There’s Woodsman (Twin A) played by Michael J. Anderson.

There’s Julee Cruise as an angelic Dreamself of the Heartbroken Woman.

And then there’s the jazzy, creepy, atmospheric nightmare soundtrack courtesy of Lynch’s bestie, Angelo Badalamenti.

Memorable (but not very memorable) Nicolas Cage lines

“Ain’t nothing wrong with you, it’s just ‘us’ I can’t handle.”

“I can’t do it no more. I gotta go.”

Firsts for a Nicolas Cage character as Heartbreaker (Sailor Ripley) :

• Over the phone break-up (pretty cowardly, man, unless he was calling from prison!)

To conclude, I rented this movie at Scarecrow Video and had to pay a $150 deposit (just to ensure that I returned it: it’s very rare!) In the end, I’m glad the rental only cost me $3.00 because the movie itself was only as good as the shock / entertainment value it provided (mild shock, low entertainment, mild price). I also didn’t realize someone had posted the entire thing to Youtube. But I was pretty happy to watch the extra interviews on the DVD since Julee Cruise tries to explain what it’s like working with David Lynch. Surprising to me, she’s pretty down to earth, and while she admires Lynch greatly, she didn’t try to hide (what we all know) that Lynch is a wacky, wild, eccentric sort of genius. I think she called him Martian Jimmy Stewart, which gotta say, kinda nails it!

BUT I am kind of bummed that Lula and Sailor broke up, but let’s just hold out hope and believe that they will continue to break up and get back together forever and through all eternity–like some sort of fated Greek demi-gods.