“I asked him jokingly: ‘OK, but what happens if I like it so much that I want to direct it myself?’ He said that in that case, I could direct it. “Monty wanted me to help him write the script so he could direct it himself,” Lynch shared in a 1990 interview. Lynch read Barry Gifford’s novel, Wild at Heart: The Story of Sailor and Lula, at the behest of his friend, Monty Montgomery. David Lynch wasn't supposed to direct Wild at Heart. Here are 16 things you might not have known about Lynch’s divisive neo-noir.

Yet a quarter-century later, we’re still talking about it. But the film was hardly met with unanimous acclaim when the film claimed Cannes’ top prize, it was met with “great cheers and many boos, some of the latter from me,” Roger Ebert recalled. Just one month after Twin Peaks premiered on ABC, Wild at Heart made its debut at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Palme d’Or. Starring Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern as star-crossed lovers Sailor and Lula, the film-based on Barry Gifford’s novel-was yet another high point for Lynch in what turned out to be a very good year for the cult director. Like a campy version of Romeo and Juliet, David Lynch’s Wild at Heart came roaring into theaters in 1990.

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