MD Theories

MulhollandDr.-Theories

Threads: My Theory | Diane sold her soul? | Connection to "Angel Heart" | Related: Hell sign at Sunset Blvd. | Magician = The Devil?

making deals with the devil

This movie is about making deals with the devil. And when I say devil, I simply mean some form of supernatural evil. Demon, devil, pick your evil. What are the nature of these deals? Well, that varies, but the two examples that we see the most of is Rita/Camilla and Betty/Diane, and with them, they got new lives for their bargain.
Rita starts the movie in trouble. At that point she's already made her deal with the dark side, as evidenced by the fact that she has her blue key. She is saved by the car accident, but also loses her memory of the key and her deal. Eventually she remembers enough to take Betty to Silencio and receive her box. Upon opening it, everything changes.
Now Rita is Camilla, and she has the life that (despite her apparent wealth previously) had eluded her before. Now how is this accomplished? By a fundamental reordering of reality. This is not "Hey kid, I'll give you a million bucks for your soul." kind of deal. This is a complete restructuring of existence. That is why elements are still the same (such as the director's divorce due to his wife's affair) while other elements are very different (such as Betty's shift to Diane).
And the shift to Diane is very important. Because aside from screwing poor Betty, it does something else. It puts her in a position of weakness and need. This in turn leads her to making a similar deal with the devil. When she is at the diner with the "hitman", she isn't asking to have Camilla killed. She's asking to have things changed. Maybe to the way they had been before, maybe to where she has all the wealth and adoration, but in any case, to a different reality where her life doesn't suck and where Rita/Camilla doesn't rub her face in the fact that she rejected her.
Yet in the end, another change doesn't serve the devil's purpose, as the bargains have already all been made. So Betty/Diane is pushed over the edge she was already teetering on by her elderly visitors and takes her own life.

Now the explanations for various points in the movie:

Bum in the back of the restaurant: The evil entity behind it all. It uses others to make the deals and manipulate, but its in control.
The man in the diner that had the dream: It could be that the man picked up on the evil thing nearby. Either that, or he had made a deal with an intermediary of the thing and the dreams were foreshadowing of his fate.
Director and picking the "right girl": Two things are clear about coffee man and his partner at the meeting. They're both very feared by their hosts and they are not normal. In all likelihood, they are not even human, but regardless, they are pressing to get a specific girl the lead in the director's movie. Why? Likely because they are fulfilling a deal with the girl or someone close to her. It's interesting how these roles shift once Rita switches to Camilla. It's also clear that by the end of the movie, the director has gained continued success by giving in to the demands of the coffee man, who is now at his dinner parties apparently (no doubt acting pissed about the drinks).
Elderly Couple: Given their bizarre behavior after Betty walks off (and in the car), to say nothing of their miniature selves and their last scenes, I believe they are evil creatures (demons or whatever) that serve the thing behind the restaurant.
Diane's Apartment: The woman they see dead early on in the movie clearly is not Betty, and I don't think it's Rita either. Instead, I think that this is one of the themes of Lynch's movies, which is that damnation is a cycle or a spiral, where you come back to the same spots again and again. (See Lost Highway, mentioned more below). In other words, the dead woman is either A) someone else who had past dealings with the bum and its minions, or B) a random suicide whose presence is meant to foreshadow Diane's later suicide (and perhaps even plant the idea in her head).
The man behind the glass: An agent or an element of the force behind all of this. It is clear that he controls to one extent or another the way terms to deals are met, such as in shutting down the director's movie and freezing his accounts.

Final thoughts:

I personally believe that in Fire Walk With Me, Lost Highway, and Mulholland Drive are nuanced and varied takes on how people deal with supernatural forces. In FWWM, this took the form of possession, while in LH and MD, the issue is making deals. In LH, its primarily bad people making deals with the devil, and in MD, its primarily good people. Interestingly enough, it could be argued that the bad people come out better, but both sets are doomed in the end.
One final twist: Still using the above theory, perhaps the entire movie takes place in Hell. This would account to the massive shifts in reality, as the characters are tormented and damned by their selfish desires and the failures that ultimately result from the deals they make. - (Tenebrae13)

A rebirth

Diane (or Betty, whichever, they're the same people) is a fresh faced actress looking to make it big in Hollywood, she ends up meeting Rita and falling in love. A sequence of events take Rita out of Diane's life. Heartbroken, Diane meets a man with a black book. In exchange for a purse full of money history will be redone to keep Diane and Rita in love. An elderly couple arrive at Diane's home, slipping through the cracks in her door, they terrorize Diane, causing her to commit suicide, and commence her rebirth.

Delivered by the elderly couple (whom Diane's memory of has been erased) to Hollywood, Diane is now a fresh faced actor once again, and Rita is delivered to her helpless and naked. They eventually fall in love, as planned, but begin to discover the demons Diane has signed a pact with. The dead body in the bed is Betty's former self, the near to end scene in which she commits suicide is chronologically between the two time paths. Lynch has simply reversed the two halves of the story, so that we discover the demons and Diane's pact at the same time she does. - (PyroGamer)