Above left: The hairy-armed man gets the "girl is still missing" message from another man who talked to Mr. Roque, then he calls Diane's number. Above right: The phone then rings at Diane's place. As described in part 6 of the analysis, there are actually two separate calls to the phone beside the red lampshade. The first, chronologically speaking, is when Camilla calls Diane to tell her to go to 6980 Mulholland Drive. The second call (again, chronologically), which is the one from the man with the yellow phone, has as its purpose to let Diane know to go ahead and go to the audition Adam is staging, so that she can get the role that she believed (prior to the hit) was going to go to Camilla. The point is, the reason Diane wanted Camilla dead was so that she could get the role in Adam's movie. The fact that there are quite a few cigarettes in the ash tray by the phone, and that they look like the kind the hit man smokes (brown filters, as opposed to Adam's white filters), suggests that there has been some kind of working relationship going on between himself and Diane.
The hit man's cigarettes have brown filters (click image to enlarge).
The fact is that the hit man and Diane had already discussed the possibility of a hit prior to their Winkie's meeting. After the hairy-armed man is done talking to Diane, she must think that Camilla is dead.
Above left: Later in the movie, Diane has a dream that she is escorted to the set of The Sylvia North Story by some people in the entertainment business. The reality is that she got a call from the man with the yellow phone, as described above, and then later showed up on Adam's set. Note that her expression upon seeing Adam is highly similar to a 'love at first sight' look. This indicates that the real 'love story' of the movie is not one between Betty and Rita (Diane and Camilla), but is instead one between Betty and Adam (although it is one-sided, on Diane's part). Above right: Adam looks over and sees Betty (Diane). He is in the process of staging auditions for his movie, and Betty (again, Diane) hopes he will let her audition. Note that his cigarette has a white filter.
Above left: This blond woman is shown auditioning under the name 'Camilla Rhodes' in Diane's dream; Roque and others performed behind-the-scenes manipulations to make sure this girl got the part in Adam's movie. In reality, Diane had hoped that Camilla wouldn't show up for her audition due to her already being dead, but that the hit was bungled, and (the real) Camilla did go on to get the role - Camilla is represented by the blond woman in the dream. What must have happened was that the hit man kidnapped Camilla, but then she escaped before he could kill her. In fact, this is what is being represented in Diane's dream of the accident and 'Rita's' escape - Diane's knowledge that Camilla somehow escaped the hit man's clutches. Above right: The blue-haired woman says, "Silencio" ('silence'), after Diane shoots herself at the end of the movie. This indicates that now that Diane's dead, she's no longer haunted by the 'voices' from her past, such as those of her abusive parents.
We see that the reality of the movie is that Diane Selwyn was a call-girl 'on the mend', trying to stop drinking but suffering severe alcohol withdrawal symptoms. She saved up enough money from working (money which was later dreamed of as having come from a small inheritance from a relative), so that she could have her some-time friend, Camilla Rhodes, killed in order to get a role in a movie; but, the attempt failed. Another reason Diane wanted Camilla dead was because she believed that Camilla had, at various times, been condescending toward her, such as at the Mulholland Drive party. She also believed Camilla was taunting her, as evidenced by her flashbacks of Camilla and Adam kissing at the party and while on Adam's set.
Above left: Camilla and Adam kissing while on Adam's set. Above right: Diane got the idea for being 'Betty' in her dream-life, from having seen the waitress's name tag while conversing with the hit man at the diner.
When Betty sees a tag with the name 'Diane' on it (above left), in her dream of being at Winkie's with Rita, this is an indication that she (Diane) must have actually worked as a waitress or other food service worker at some point or another, such as at the Pink's hot dog eatery that the prostitute, hit man, and pimp were shown exiting (above right).
Some of the people Diane saw at the Mulholland Drive party, as well as what she believed she saw happen there, became the source for much of her later dream-life as Betty: Adam's mother (top left) became the landlady for Havenhurst; another woman she saw there became the Camilla Rhodes 'double' (top right - the blond woman); a man she saw in a cowboy hat (above left - indicated by the black arrow) became the mysterious Cowboy of the dream; another man (above right) became one of the Castigliane brothers (the man drinking espresso).
The pool-man who punched Adam came from Adam saying at the party (of his recent divorce), "I got the pool, and she got the pool-man." All the bad things that happen to Adam in the dream, such as his wife cheating on him, his picture getting shut down, the fact that people are looking for him, and his credit going bad, are Diane's dream-revenge for his not having given her the role she desired. Diane's 'idea' for her lesbian fantasies must have had its source in seeing the blond woman kiss Camilla, though in all likelihood it was just a peck on the cheek from a friend, not the 'romantic' kiss that Diane felt it to be.
Diane's dream of Adam's encounter with the Cowboy lets us know that her own subconscious is attempting to 'speak' directly to her in her dream; that's why the Cowboy speaks very frankly, and is so particular about getting Adam to listen - it's really an attempt by Diane's subconscious to get her own attention. Accordingly, when the Cowboy tells Adam that he will have done good if he sees the Cowboy one more time, but that he will have done badly if he sees him twice more, it's really Diane's subconscious saying this to herself. Later, it turns out that she 'sees' the Cowboy twice more in her dream: the first time is when the Cowboy knocks on her door and says it's time to wake up, and we see Diane's sleeping body in its normal physical state; the second time is immediately after this, when the Cowboy is shown standing in the bedroom doorway looking at Diane's partially decomposed body (the two scenes are separated by a fade-to-black).
Above left: Bob Brooker. Above right: Betty's audition for Brooker, during which she kisses a much older man.
The actual movie Diane hoped to appear in was in all likelihood not even a mainstream movie - she only dreamed that this was the case later. One of the main purposes of the scene with Betty's (Diane's) audition for Brooker is to convey to us the fact that Diane had, at some point early in her life, experienced sexual abuse from a friend of her father.
Diane's knowledge that the hit man (Joe) is a bungler is represented in her dream by his escapades in another man's office (killing three people, shooting the vacuum cleaner, etc.).
The hit man (Joe) has just shot the long-haired man (Ed).
The accident discussed by the hit man and the long-haired man (and first brought up by the latter) must represent some auto accident that he (Joe) and Diane both have knowledge of; but, it must not be one in which Camilla escapes from Joe. The reason for this is that Joe leaves the blue key for Diane (behind Winkie's, where she can pick it up), so he thinks he has her fooled into believing that Camilla has been killed, and therefore he wouldn't have told her about such an accident. Later in the movie than this dream (but earlier chronologically), Joe is shown with the black book at the Winkie's meeting with Diane. The reason he's already in possession of it at this meeting is because, as stated above, he and Diane had already discussed the possibility of doing a hit on Camilla prior to the meeting. Recall that the long-haired man referred to the black book as, "the history of the world in phone numbers." This implies that the book contained contact information for influential people in the movie business, and was thus to be used to help Diane get the movie role she was seeking.
Diane must have encountered someone while staying at the Sierra Bonita apartments, possibly a homeless man or woman, who sensed that something was wrong in her life, and this person became Louise Bonner in the dream, and was also part of the source for the person behind Winkie's. As discussed in part 7 of the analysis, Dan, the man in Winkie's who said he'd dreamed there was a person behind the restaurant, was in reality Diane's psychotherapist. It was actually Diane herself who had had dreams of the person behind the restaurant. The red-haired woman ('Aunt Ruth') is based on the girl Diane switched apartments with at Sierra Bonita (L.J. DeRosa).
Diane's whole dream-fantasy eventually 'collapses', as represented by the collapse of the singer in Club Silencio (above left screencap). In the end, after Diane has awoken and has an encounter with DeRosa, she is later shown staring at the blue key on the coffee table in her apartment (above right). It is at this point that the realization of all that she's done sets in, and she also realizes she's been a complete failure. The detectives who have been waiting outside her apartment complex come knocking on her door, and she then hallucinates, seeing the couple that raised her, and kills herself.
