Editing Blue Velvet (film) (section)

===Origin===
{{quote box|quote=Kyle is dressed like me. My father was a research scientist for the [[United States Department of Agriculture|Department of Agriculture]] in [[Washington (state)|Washington]]. We were in the woods all the time. I'd sorta had enough of the woods by the time I left, but still, lumber and lumberjacks, all this kinda thing, that's America to me like the picket fences and the roses in the opening shot. It's so burned in, that image, and it makes me feel so happy.|source= —David Lynch discusses the autobiographical content in ''Blue Velvet''<ref name="Film Comment">{{cite journal |last=Chute |first=David |date=October 1986 |title=Out to Lynch |journal=[[Film Comment]] |page=35}}</ref>|width=40%}}

The film's story originated from three ideas that crystallized in the filmmaker's mind over a period of time starting as early as 1973.<ref name="rodley"/>{{rp|135}}

The first idea was only "a feeling" and the title, as Lynch told ''[[Cineaste (magazine)|Cineaste]]'' in 1987.<ref name="cineaste">{{cite journal |last=Bouzereau |first=Laurent |year=1987 |title=An Interview with David Lynch |journal=[[Cineaste (magazine)|Cineaste]] |page=39}}</ref>

The second idea was an image of a severed, human ear lying in a field. "I don't know why it had to be an ear. Except it needed to be an opening of a part of the body, a hole into something else&nbsp;... The ear sits on the head and goes right into the mind so it felt perfect," Lynch remarked in a 1986 interview to ''[[The New York Times]]''.<ref>{{cite news |first=Nan |last=Robertson |title=The All-American Guy Behind ''Blue Velvet'' |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=October 11, 1986}}</ref>

The third idea was [[Bobby Vinton]]'s rendition of "[[Blue Velvet (song)|Blue Velvet]]" and "the mood that came with that song a mood, a time, and things that were of that time."<ref name=villagevoice>{{cite news |first=Lizzie |last=Borden |title=The World According to Lynch |work=[[The Village Voice]] |date=September 23, 1986 }}</ref>

The scene in which Dorothy appears naked outside was inspired by a real-life experience Lynch had during childhood when he and his brother saw a naked woman walking down a neighborhood street at night. The experience was so traumatic to the young Lynch that it made him cry, and he had never forgotten it.<ref>{{cite news | last=Ebert | first=Roger | title=Biting into ''Blue Velvet'' | work=[[Chicago Sun-Times]] | date=October 2, 1986 | url=http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19861002/PEOPLE/41216001/1023 | access-date=February 16, 2007 | archive-date=May 23, 2007 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070523163316/http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=%2F19861002%2FPEOPLE%2F41216001%2F1023 }}</ref>

After completing ''[[The Elephant Man (1980 film)|The Elephant Man]]'' (1980), Lynch met producer Richard Roth over coffee. Roth had read and enjoyed Lynch's ''[[Ronnie Rocket]]'' script, but did not think it was something he wanted to produce. He asked Lynch if the filmmaker had any other scripts, but the director only had ideas. "I told him I had always wanted to sneak into a girl's room to watch her into the night and that, maybe, at one point or another, I would see something that would be the clue to a murder mystery. Roth loved the idea and asked me to write a [[Film treatment|treatment]]. I went home and thought of the ear in the field."<ref name="cineaste"/><ref name="Peary">{{cite book | title = Cult Movies 3 | first = Danny | last = Peary | year = 1988 | publisher = Simon & Schuster Inc. | location = New York | pages = 38–42 | isbn = 978-0-671-64810-7}}</ref> Production was announced in August 1984.<ref name="Atkinson"/> Lynch wrote two more drafts before he was satisfied with the script of the film.<ref name="Blue Velvet"/> The problem with them, Lynch has said, was that "there was maybe all the unpleasantness in the film but nothing else. A lot was not there. And so it went away for a while."<ref name="rodley"/>{{rp|136}} Conditions at this point were ideal for Lynch's film: he had made a deal with [[Dino De Laurentiis]] that gave him complete artistic freedom and final cut privileges, with the stipulation that the filmmaker take a cut in his salary and work with a budget of only $6&nbsp;million.<ref name="Blue Velvet"/> This deal meant that ''Blue Velvet'' was the smallest film on De Laurentiis's slate.<ref name="Blue Velvet"/> Consequently, Lynch would be left mostly unsupervised during production.<ref name="Blue Velvet"/> "After ''Dune'' I was down so far that anything was up! So it was just a euphoria. And when you work with that kind of feeling, you can take chances. You can experiment."<ref name="rodley"/>{{rp|137}}