Project Summary

NEVERMADE EPISODE #1: 
EXPLORING THE LOST WORLDS OF DAVID LYNCH 
(Archive Documentary, In Production) 

Director: Ryan Mackfall. Writer: Kingsley Marshall.
Producers: Kingsley Marshall & Ryan Mackfall.

Synopsis
One script, one director, and one movie. We explore Ronnie Rocket, the greatest David Lynch story nevermade.

“I learned that just beneath the surface, there's another world, and still different worlds as you dig deeper. I knew it as a kid, but I couldn't find the proof. It was just a kind of feeling.” - David Lynch 

Outline
David Lynch had plenty of scripts on the back burner, including two features with Mark Frost that preceded Twin Peaks, but Ronnie Rocket is perhaps the most striking and one the director has persistently pitched to studio executives throughout his career. The script is adorned with mysterious symbols, and some illuminating pages from the director’s notepad were included in the 2007 art exhibition The Air is On Fire.

In 1971, David Lynch moved to Los Angeles to enrol on a Masters degree at the Centre for Advanced Film Studies housed in the American Film Institute in LA. Signed up to the course and received a grant on the back of a NEVERMADE screenplay centred around adultery called Gardenback, Lynch ignored the advice of his tutors and dumped this script to begin working on his first feature-length film, Eraserhead, eventually released in 1977.

Lynch intended Ronnie Rocket as the follow-up to Eraserhead, and has been described by the writer/director as an “absurd mystery of the strange forces of existence,” featuring "a three-foot-tall guy with red hair and physical problems” with a narrative concerned primarily about the mysteries of electricity. Put on hold for Blue Velvet, Lynch has pitched the script to producers after every project he has completed since. Isabella Rossellini, Dennis Hopper and Dean Stockwell have been mooted as being attached to the cast, with Michael Anderson in the lead role.  

This NEVERMADE will be constructed from the script and archive material held at the Academy Archive in Los Angeles.