My Cult Characters #4: The Cowboy In Mulholland Drive

My Cult Characters #4: The Cowboy In Mulholland Drive

Posted on Monday October 6, 2008, 16:19 by Nick de Semlyen in Empire States

Greetings, dear readers, and welcome to another episode of My Cult Characters. First, apologies for this blog’s long absence. I’d like to tell you I’ve been busy on a mission to return a gifted mountain gorilla to her birthplace near the ruins of Zinj, but I haven’t — that’s the plot of the film Congo.

Anyhow, on with the show. I won’t sugarcoat it — my next pick is a freak, even by David Lynch’s standards. He appears in Mulholland Drive, the film I love the most out of Lynch’s freaky filmography, and while he could easily be snipped out of the film without making much of a difference, for me he’s the icing on this curious-tasting cake.

I am referring to The Cowboy. A Wild West-styled creep so out-there he’s known to his friends as The Lone Deranger, this chap turns up at several points in the splintered narrative, mostly hovering malignantly in the background of crowd shots. But his moment in the limelight, and the reason he’s made my list of unforgettable minor characters, comes with his showdown with Adam (played by Justin Theroux, cousin of Louis, a fact which makes this confrontation even more deliciously strange).

For reasons I won’t go into, mostly because I don’t have a clue what they are, Hollywood director Adam has been summoned to a spooky corral in the middle of the night. He has been warned beforehand that he will be met by “The Cowboy”, to which he’d mockingly replied, “Should I wear my ten-gallon hat and my six-shooters?” But his smirk has faded by the time he reaches the ranch — to find The Cowboy standing in the shadows, actually wearing a ten-gallon Stetson, as well as a red neckerchief and skeezy moleskin jacket, in which he may well be packing pistols. The Cowboy is pale as a corpse, expressionless and talks in a horribly slow Texan drawl. The effect is unpleasant.

“Howdy!” he greets Adam. “Howdy to you,” Adam replies. After a modicum of edgy small talk, Adam attempts to get to the point. “Well now, here’s a man who wants to get right to it. Kinda anxious to get to it, are ya?” asks The Cowboy.

He proceeds to ensnare Adam in slippery double-talk about being “a smart aleck”, tests him to make sure he’s listening, then compares their dysfunctional conversation to a buggy, insisting, “I’m drivin’ this buggy. Fix your attitude and you can ride along with me.”

Finally, the ever-pedantic cowpoke — who comes across as half-serial killer, half-deputy headmaster — reveals the reason they’re both there, issuing a stern warning to Adam to cast a specific girl in his film. Adam stands in stunned silence, as the broncobuster departs with these unforgettable words: “You will see me one more time if you do good. You will see me two more times if you do bad.”

I won’t reveal whether The Cowboy re-appears one more time or two more times, except to say that it’s not enough times for me. I want to see Lynch make a spin-off, in which The Cowboy drives around in a buggy, getting into uncomfortable situations with waiters, car-park attendants and minor celebrities. It would be like Curb Your Enthusiasm, but way more awkward and with more dwarfs.

As a post-script, I was lucky enough to get the chance to interview Lynch myself earlier this year, ostensibly on the topic of transcendental meditation. It was as surreal an experience as I hoped, with folk singer Donovan in attendance strumming his guitar, a huge bowl of black coffee at Lynch’s feet, and the director himself, sat on a throne with antlers, yakking about the cow he hand-picked for INLAND EMPIRE’s ill-fated Oscar campaign. Since he was on the subject (kinda), I seized the moment and asked about his inspiration for The Cowboy. Lynch looked down at the bowl of coffee, stared up at the ceiling, then violently fluttered his fingers for a long moment. Finally he stopped, beamed a giant smile and said, “I like cows. And I like cowboys.” And that may be as close to unlocking this character’s mysteries as we’re ever going to get.