Production
In the summer of 1989, Lynch had finished up the pilot episode for the successful Twin Peaks television series and tried to rescue two of his projects – Ronnie Rocket and One Saliva Bubble – both involved in contractual complications as a result of Dino De Laurentiis' bankruptcy, which had been bought by Carolco Pictures. Lynch stated, "I've had a bad time with obstacles . . . It wasn't Dino's fault, but when his company went down the tubes, I got swallowed up in that". Independent production company Propaganda Films commissioned Lynch to develop an updated noir screenplay based on a 1940s crime novel while Monty Montgomery, a friend of Lynch's and an associate producer on Twin Peaks, asked novelist Barry Gifford what he was working on. Gifford happened to be writing the manuscript for Wild at Heart: The Story of Sailor and Lula but still had two more chapters to write. He let Montgomery read it while the producer was working on the pilot episode for Twin Peaks in pre-published galley form. Montgomery read it and two days later called Gifford and told him that he wanted to make a film of it. Two days afterwards, Montgomery gave Lynch Gifford’s book while he was editing the Pilot, asking him if he would executive produce a film adaptation that he would direct. Lynch remembers telling him, "That’s great Monty, but what if I read it and fall in love with it and want to do it myself?" Montgomery did not think that Lynch would like the book because he did not think it was his "kind of thing". Lynch loved the book and called Gifford soon afterwards, asking him if he could make a film of it. Lynch remembers, "It was just exactly the right thing at the right time. The book and the violence in America merged in my mind and many different things happened". Lynch was drawn to what he saw as "a really modern romance in a violent world – a picture about finding love in hell", and was also attracted to "a certain amount of fear in the picture, as well as things to dream about. So it seems truthful in some way".
Lynch got approval from Propaganda to switch projects; however, production was scheduled to begin two months after the rights had been purchased, forcing the director to work fast. He had Cage and Dern read Gifford's book and wrote a draft in a week. By Lynch's own admission, his first draft was "depressing and pretty much devoid of happiness, and no one wanted to make it". Lynch did not like the ending in Gifford’s book where Sailor and Lula split up for good. For Lynch, "it honestly didn’t seem real, considering the way they felt about each other. It didn’t seem one bit real! It had a certain coolness, but I couldn’t see it". It was at this point that the director's love of The Wizard of Oz (1939) began to influence the script he was writing and he included a reference to the "yellow brick road". Lynch remembers, "It was an awful tough world and there was something about Sailor being a rebel. But a rebel with a dream of the Wizard of Oz is kinda like a beautiful thing". Samuel Goldwyn, Jr. read an early draft of the screenplay and did not like Gifford’s ending either, so Lynch changed it. However, the director was worried that this change made the film too commercial, "much more commercial to make a happy ending yet, if I had not changed it, so that people wouldn’t say I was trying to be commercial, I would have been untrue to what the material was saying".
Lynch also added new characters, like Mr. Reindeer and Sherilyn Fenn as the victim of a car accident. During rehearsals, Lynch began talking about Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe with Cage and Dern. The director acquired a copy of Elvis' Golden Hits and after listening to it, called Cage and told him that he had to sing two songs, "Love Me" and "Love Me Tender". The actor agreed and recorded them so that he could lip-synch to them on the set. At one point, Cage called Lynch and asked if he could wear a snakeskin jacket in the film and Lynch incorporated it into his script. Before filming started, Dern suggested that she and Cage go on a weekend road trip to Las Vegas in order to bond and get a handle on their characters. Dern remembers, "We agreed that Sailor and Lula needed to be one person, one character, and we would each share it. I got the sexual, wild, Marilyn, gum-chewing fantasy, female side; Nick’s got the snakeskin, Elvis, raw, combustible, masculine side". Within four months, Lynch began filming on August 9, 1989 in both Los Angeles (including the San Fernando Valley) and New Orleans with a relatively modest budget of $10 million. Originally, the film featured more explicit erotic scenes between Sailor and Lula. In one, she has an orgasm while relating to Sailor a dream she had of being ripped open by a wild animal. Another deleted scene had Lula lowering herself onto Sailor's face saying, "Take a bite out of Lula".
Read more about this topic: Wild At Heart (film)
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