Axxon N.

In David Lynch's 2006 film *Inland Empire*, ***Axxon N.*** is the longest-running radio play in history. It is also the name of an unproduced project by the same director. It was meant to be a nine-episode mystery drama series to be released online at David Lynch's website starting in the fall of 2002.

## *Inland Empire*

At the very beginning of the film, a series of black-and-white shots are seen. The first of them is a gramophone playing a record while an announcer presents *Axxon N.* as "the longest-running radio play in history [...] continuing in the Baltic region, a grey winter day in an old hotel," followed by a scene of Woman #1 and Man #1 walking down the hall of the hotel, entering the prostitute's room and having sex. Later on, the black-and-white shot of the Lost Girl telling Sue how to "see" is shown at the same time as the gramophone playing the record, further linking *Axxon N.* to black-and-white imagery.

The name is seen written on black metal doors three times (stylized as "AXx°N N.", "Axx°n N." and "Aˣx°N N." respectively), the first two of which the letters are written in chalk and lead Laura Dern's characters into seeing either each other or themselves:

* First, when Dern's character rerturns from getting groceries and sees the name with an arrow pointing right drawn under it, as if suggesting her to enter. She goes through the door and finds herself in the set of *On High in Blue Tomorrows* in an event that had been shown from the crew's perspective earlier in the film. This event is narrated by her as: "I see this writing on metal... and I start rememberin' something. I'm rememberin'... and, oh, this whole thing starts floodin' in, this whole memory. I start to remember." She is thus revealed to be the invisible intruder that made noise while Nikki and Devon were rehearsing and "disappeared where it's real hard to disappear", as he puts it.
* Second, when she walks down Hollywood Boulevard she sees it written with a long line drawn under it, the end of which is never seen. It resembles a long arrow like the one from the previous instance. After seeing the letters she turns around and sees either herself or another Dern character on the other side of the street.
* Third, Nikki sees it in metal letters embedded on a door that leads to Smithy's house.

## davidlynch.com

The poster for the series uses a black-and-white image from Lynch's 1994 photography series *Nudes and Smoking*. It shows a woman smoking and certain zones of the poster appear to be blurred out in an effect that is very similar to that with which the faces of Man #1 and Woman #1 are made blurry in *Inland Empire*. Lynch's audio engineer John Neff revealed that the series was "to be made quickly and cheaply, with no end in sight" and that it would have had actors from the Screen Actors Guild (SAG). Lynch tried to get a dispensation from the Director’s Guild of America, which he was a member of, to shoot Axxon N. as a non-union project since he was paying for it himself and it was just for the web. They wouldn’t grant him an exception so he quit the Guild and the series was scripted but never shot.

It was set to star Dern and Justin Theroux and feature an agoraphobic woman who couldn't go outside of her building. She saw many people entering an industrial shop from across the street, but never coming out of it. She finally crossed the street and saw "Axxon N." handwritten on the door. She walks in, turns left and became a different person. The project, together with elements from other web projects and ideas, eventually evolved into *Inland Empire*.

## References

1. ↑ "Axxon N.". LynchNet.com.
2. ↑ [as a caption to the photograph] *"*Nudes and Smoke *(1994). Photography by David Lynch."* Rodley, C. (2018). *Lynch on Lynch: Revised Edition* (p. 220). Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
3. ↑ Neff, J. (2009). *Re: Axxon N and the cigarette burn*. World of Blue.
4. ↑ Grevas, A. (2018). John Neff Discusses Working With David Lynch, His Career In Music & More!. *25 Years Later*.