Cast: Adam Kesher

AdamJustinTheroux

Sex	Male	Quotes: "That girl is not in my film!!!" "Yeah, sure. No it's been that kind of a day."
Age	Early 30s
Address	6980 Mulholland Dr.
Occupation	Director
Fashion style	Frumpy old fashioned plaid shirt, glasses
Family	Coco
Relationship	Camilla, Robert Smith, Ray
Doppelganger	Diane, Bob Brooker, Lynch himself?

Adam Kesher Adam/Betty trading eye contact

Adam is basically someone who pulls Camilla away from Diane. Diane is a narcissist, so she sees Adam in the "Betty" world [as being] in love with her. They have a moment. And I think again because she's so in awe of Camilla's life, she just represents everything that Diane wants and doesn't have. So she basically tries to change it all around. That's when she creates Justin's character, Adam, as being someone that wants her, instead of Camilla. I think it's just an obstacle in the way of her love affair with Camilla.

Naomi Watts in interview

In the dream part, Adam is several times involved in ridiculous situations, and I think this is an attempt to uncredite him as the perfect lover for Camilla. Diane wants her to be the only one who attracts Camilla, and in the sequence where Adam sees her (the casting scene), she makes him get trapped by her beauty too. She wants to ridicule Adam because of her envy: he has chosen Camilla for the movie and Camilla has chosen him as her lover, instead of her in both. - (damned martian)

Adam representing Diane - opinions

Adam essentially takes on the role of Diane at the moment when Vincenzo Castigliane says "it's no longer your film." And then all the bad things that happen to Adam (losing control/humiliation, the cheating/lost lover, his being thrown out, his going broke, his desire for revenge) are echoing things that actually happened to Diane, right up to the point of encountering the Cowboy and Cookie/the EmCee. With one exception: Diane apparently did not succeed in adjusting her attitude, hence the suicide. - (Sinister Lord)

I think in the dream Adam represents Diane as well as himself. To clear something up first - I do believe that Adam is Adam in the dream and part of his purpose is to simply be tortured. However, I think he is also used as a way of Diane justifying what she has done. Examples:

Adam is being controlled by Hollywood and is FORCED to choose Camilla Rhodes and say "This is the girl". In reality it is Diane who says "This is the girl" when she puts the hit on Camilla. Hollywood chewed up Diane and spit her out "FORCING" her (in Diane's mind) to kill Camilla.
Notice Betty's face in the dream when she and Adam gaze at each other. Adam had already said "this is the girl" which in reality means kill Camilla. When she sees him she starts to think about things that she's done and runs off the set to escape them.
Adam is actually Diane in the part where Adam walks in and finds his wife sleeping with the pool man. This represents Diane "walking in" on her abusive past and thinking about/dealing with it. Why is it that his wife is UPSET that he walked in and the pool man saying "Just pretend it never happened, it's better that way"? In her abusive past Diabe has angered one abuser by the discovery and the other one tells her to forget about it and she'll be better. That's also the reason Adam gets the pink paint all over his jacket. Pink is a feminine color and I think Lynch may have used that to show that Adam is Diane while he has the pink paint on his jacket.
Adam reacting with anger (smashing the car windows with the golf club) is reminiscent of the doorway scene where Diane evicts Camilla from her home.
In the dream Adam is being hunted down by "bankers" and is hiding in a different place than he actually lives. Diane was being hunted down by 2 detectives and hid from them by switching apartments.
The Cowboy represents Diane's conscience and visits Adam in the dream. What the Cowboy says at the corral is more pertinent to Diane than it is to Adam. It makes more sense for Diane's conscience to be sending a message (the one/two times thing) to herself...not to Adam. - (TBickle)

David Lynch directing Adam embodies the belief that the Hollywood enterprise is on the level. He has the naiveté of Betty in that he thinks everything is about great actresses and glamorous movie stars. He believes that there is "no way" that corruption and manipulation can be involved in his movies. Like Betty, he doesn't perceive that image is often more powerful than talent, and that images can be manufactured, bought and sold. To Adam, his work is about real talent. His integrity is not for sale and he will not be manipulated. This is the somewhat idealistic side of Diane that Adam represents. - (Alan Shaw)

… In this case Diane is visualizing Camilla’s seduction of Adam Kesher and the choices he had but didn’t take – i.e. he could have stayed pure to his principals and his art by choosing the best person for the part (as he wished to in the dream when first confronted by the Mafia types), and maybe the person for the part would have been Diane … but in the end he is incapable of resisting Camilla’s wiles and he too is corrupted, and through him Hollywood. - (Bob)

Adam representing Lynch himself

The Director in the film is clearly modeled on David Lynch. The hair cut, the rabid attempt to keep control of his film, the arty detachment - the guy is just like out of Eraserhead. But why so young? And if he is so young what is he doing directing films about the 50's? Lynch would have been about the right age for the jitterbug and late fifties music (he was born in 1946). What we see here is a parody of David Lynch who despite being a man of 56, in his films he can be forever young and he is not ashamed to use the facilities that Hollywood provides for narcissism to the full, while making a joke at his own expense. This young David Lynch making films about the 50's is a hint. He is like the dreamer that we never see, of the dreams that we do see, in "Mulholland Dr." - (Tim)

David Lynch with Justin Theroux Justin Theroux about Lynch's directing

I think what he basically wants you to do fist is character development - he wants you to do that on your own. I asked him a ton of questions about my character, you know, "Am I you? Am I this director, am I that director? Am I a good director?" and he didn't answer any of those questions, and I am glad he didn't. He sort of let that be up to me and I was able to sort of extrapolate the things I thought were important, just to the telling of the scenes.
[...] Again a really simple way of directing he has, is like, I would say "Okay, so they're telling me I can't cast this person. Am I angry?" - "Yes, you are angry!" - "How angry am I - literally, on a scale of 1 to 10?" - "You are 9 … 9.5 - you are almost a ten!"
He is not specific as far as, you know, physical gestures - so he sort of lets you have your own creative range. He wants you to tune into the frequency of the tempo, the level he wants it at.
The one question I did want him to answer was whether the director was talented or not, because I think that it made a difference in the playing. He said, not nessesarily …

davidlynch.de

Trivia

Adam Kesher smashing the producers' car windshield in with a golf club is a reference to Jack Nicholson who once was known to have smashed someone's windshield with one of his golf clubs at a road rage incident in 1994. Nicholson's nickname is "Mulholland Man".

Adam Kesher

Woody Allen

Jean-Luc Godard

J.-L. Godard (Contempt)