I first met Rebekah del Rio Like millions of others did – on the movies. I was away from Los Angeles and visited my parents in Indiana, when a friend and I went to see Director David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive ”on Movies 6, a second-run house in nearby Mishawaka, where tickets cost a money. Except to love” The Straight Story “, I had not been a David Lynch Aficionado at all, after seeing “The Lost Highway” in film School and stupidly dismiss it as an over-symbolically cooked piece of Hoohah. (Boy I was wrong.)
I sat in the drugny seat and looked at a weak projection on a broken screen and was transported directly to another world or I would say, at home to La Beyond Naomi Watts and Laura Harring’s wonderful Wig-Swapping weirdness, what really pulled me in was the scene where their two characters participate in a late night performanceBy the name “Club Silencio”). The club’s announcer introduces ”Rebekah del Rio“And a pale woman with a jeweled tear under her eyes goes slowly and unfortunately to the theater’s lonely microphone. Against blood red velvet curtains, and without any musical accompaniment, she belts out Roy Orbison’s” crying “in Spanish (” Llolando “).
Like Watts and Harring’s characters, I was completely and completely fascinated. Del Rio’s performance, both intimate and grand at the same time, was a moment that caught the truth about Los Angeles that I have never seen before – the experience of going out during the small hours and discovering deep beauty in strange corners that can move you to tears. The melancholy and melodrama in the simple scene, mixed with Del Rio’s sad song by Orbison’s old pop song, still moves and inspires this day.
Many years later my wife came home from work and said she had a new assistant who had probably played and sang in “Mulholland Drive. “Did I know about her? My wife didn’t really understand my enthusiasm, but confirmed it was her.
Rebekah was a kind, astonishing soul if there was ever, blessed with, as Lynch himself said“One of the most beautiful voices in the world.” Later, I was told that she had suffered real difficulties in her life, including the incredible tragedy to lose her only son. She still sang as late as June 13 at a charity event in Los Angeles and had toured with filmmaker Richard Kelly for views of the movie “Southland Tales,” Where she had also been involved. I wish we had more of her. “Mulholland Drive” is now rightly recognized as one of the greatest – unless the Biggest – Movies from the 21st century and Rebekah’s performance are the slap, crying heart. Her voice not only has the rest of the movie but the rest of the American cinema ever since. Crying.
