Ronnie Rocket

Ronnie Rocket
Directed by	David Lynch
Written by	David Lynch
Starring	Dexter Fletcher Michael J. Anderson (both attached at different times)

Ronnie Rocket is an unfinished film project written by David Lynch, who also intended to direct it. Begun after the success of Lynch's 1977 film Eraserhead, Ronnie Rocket was shelved after Lynch felt he would be unable to find financial backing for the project. He instead sought out an existing script on which to base his next film, settling on what would become 1980's The Elephant Man.

Ronnie Rocket was to feature many of the elements which have since come to be seen as Lynch's hallmarks; including industrial art direction, 1950s popular culture and physical deformity. The script featured a three-foot tall man with control over electricity; Lynch first met Michael J. Anderson when tentatively casting for this role, and later cast him in Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive as a result.

Ronnie Rocket concerned the story of a detective seeking to enter a mysterious second dimension, aided by his ability to stand on one leg. He is being obstructed on this quest by a strange landscape of odd rooms and a threatening train; while being stalked by the "Donut Men", who wield electricity as a weapon. In addition to the detective's story, the film was to show the tale of Ronald d'Arte, a teenage dwarf, who suffers a surgical mishap which leaves him dependent on being plugged into an electrical supply at regular intervals; this dependence grants him an affinity over electricity which he can use to produce music or cause destruction. The boy names himself Ronnie Rocket and becomes a rock star, befriending a tap-dancer named Electra-Cute.

The film was to make use of several themes that have since become recurring elements within David Lynch's works, with a write-up for The A.V. Club describing its contents as "idealized 1950s culture, industrial design, midgets, [and] physical deformity". In addition, the film features two separate but connected worlds, another hallmark of Lynch's writings. The film's art direction would have featured a heavily industrial backdrop, setting the action against an "oil slick, smokestack, steel-steam-soot, fire-sparks and electrical arcs realm", similar to the direction ultimately taken in the depiction of Victorian England in The Elephant Man and the planet Giedi Prime in Dune. Although Lynch's first two feature-length films were shot in black-and-white, he had hoped to film Ronnie Rocket in color, inspired by the works of French film-maker Jacques Tati. Lynch planned to experiment for some time in order to find the right balance and application of color for the film.

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