In its first incarnation, Drive was the pilot for a never-produced series for ABC, which had been home to Lynch's past television efforts Twin Peaks and On the Air (Hotel Room was made for HBO). Like most pilots, it's an introduction to a larger story, with a cast of nascent characters awkwardly feeling their way through a feaurette riddled with fetal plot lines: A woman whom we will eventually know as Rita (Laura Harring) narrowly escapes murder when the limo she and her would-be killers are riding in crashes. She emerges from the wreckage suffering from total amnesia, eventually wandering into a nearby apartment complex, which an upbeat young actress named Betty (Naomi Watts) is using as the launching pad for her Hollywood career. While the detective assigned to the car-crash case (Robert Forster) pokes for clues, a short-statured crime boss (Michael J. Anderson, Peaks' dancing dwarf) wonders why "that woman" isn't dead, a psycho assassin (Scott Coffey) shoots people, and a film director (Justin Theroux) courts danger by rebuffing his shady financial backers' casting suggestions.

Normally, it would take several episodes' worth of story to explore this densely populated miniverse. But Drive only has 146 minutes to do so and cover the usual cornucopia of Lynchian oddities, including the obligatory trippy nightclub scene (in this case, a Mexican performance-art cabaret) and some rib-tickling, out-of-left-field bit-parts (such as a larcenous elderly couple and a Roy Rogers-like mob enforcer). As a result, many characters fall by the wayside: Forster's detective disappears after only two short scenes, while Theroux's subplot — including a hilarious cameo by Billy Ray Cyrus, of all people — goes nowhere.

Lynch jettisons all other subplots in favor of Betty and Rita's search for the latter's identity in the second act. This is a wise decision, since the story offers a juicy Möbius-loop mystery and some telling commentary on the dehumanizing nature of Hollywood. Although maddeningly perky at first (a touch that was surely deliberate), Watts' Betty becomes Drive's most interesting character, displaying a conniving sexuality at an audition, and a steely resolve when tracking down Rita's origins. Her quest for truth mirrors the audience's hunt for meaning in a tantalizingly bizarre realm that would've made Buñuel proud.

It's only when Lynch throws in some unrealistic lesbian sex that Drive's dreamy air is dispelled. Sapphic hip is about as fresh as the Spice Girls, and, despite the attractiveness of the participants, feels tacked-on to anyone aware of the film's TV-safe origins. Lynch's inclusion of almost every frame of the pilot is another mistake, burdening the viewer with a catalog of people, places, and things that are rendered meaningless by the reality-upending third act, which actually takes place before any of Drive's other events.

Or does it? Unlike the clearly delineated nonlinear plots of Pulp Fiction or Go, Lynch doesn't offer the audience any definite answers as to what is going on, when it's happening, or who exactly it's happening to. (In fact, he rarely even gives such information to his actors.) To many, especially art-house patrons, this vagueness will be seen as an invitation to interpret the story's "true" nature with similarly minded cinéastes in a smoky bar for hours afterwards. To less intellectual and more suspicious viewers, however, Lynch is merely using his wacko reputation to cover up the fact that Mulholland Drive is an incoherent, overlong mess. Who's right? To be honest, I'm not quite sure, and anyone who says they are needs to see it again.