Aching to take a trip down memory lane? Feeling nostalgic to revisit the great Frank Booth (the iconic Dennis Hopper) now that he has passed on to the other side? If this sounds appealing all of a sudden, hold a beat.
David Lynch‘s classic 1986 suburban-set psycho-drama “Blue Velvet,” starring Hopper and Isabella Rossellini is coming to Blu-Ray. But that’s not even the good part. The release will include deleted scenes that were previously thought lost for those that can’t get enough of Hopper’s oxygen-sucking madness in a role and performance that was completely transformative and transgressive at the time.
Recently a guest on celebrated indie L.A. Radio station KCRW, Lynch told the programmers that footage from an early rough cut has been discovered and might make the new HD release.
You know, there is a thing called b-negative, or outtakes, or lifts, that don’t make it into the film. And in the old days, those things sat around and maybe became dangerously close to being tossed away. Then the internet comes, and people want to see deleted scenes and things like this, so those things become more and more valuable.
So, one day I looked into seeing where the lifts were because some of these scenes on their own would be beautiful to see again. So I find out that Dino [De Laurentiis], the producer, doesn’t know where they are. They’ve gone. His company went bankrupt, it was taken over by another company, and then it was sold to other companies. No one knew where they were, they were gone. So depressing.
Lately, those have been found. Somewhere up in Seattle. It’s incredible. I’m seeing stuff I thought was gone forever. And hopefully some of those scenes (some of them aren’t worth putting back together) will end up on the new Blu Ray. We did a 5.1 a while back and it was horrible. And now Dean and I did a new one and it is so thick and beautiful. It’s the mix, but it’s 5.1 killer beauty.
Thanks to Video Watchdog (via /Film) we know what some of the footage may entail including Kyle MacLachlan‘s character witnessing a date rape, an early introduction of Laura Dern’s character and scene were McClaughlan catches Rossellini’s character throwing a human ear down the toilet — fucked up stuff to say the least, but nothing out of the norm from the twisted and disturbing picture.
“Blue Velvet” is a masterpiece as it is, but surely this extra footage will be an added treat for hardcore fans. Evidently there’s also extra footage of “Fire Walk With Me” that was shown in Cannes that never made the final cut that is fairly holy-grail-ish, but that film — at least at the time — felt a bit like a shark jumper (Lynch of course, quickly recovered). Here’s a few stills from deleted scenes in the movie thanks again to /Film that culled shots from DVD Talk and Video Watchdog.