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Industrial Symphony No. 1: The Dream of the Brokenhearted

• The performer of Twin Peaks theme Julee Cruise's experimental concert film, which opens with a short intro where a man breaks up with his girl over the phone, which devastates her. The concert is set in her nightmarish subconscious mind.
• Pivoting around the emotionally charged telephone conversation between an unsuspecting Laura Dern , and a devastated but determined Nicolas Cage , the first powerful scene of David Lynch 's "Industrial Symphony" ends with a painful breakup. Then, a floating Julee Cruise dressed in white appears out of thin air, inviting us in a palpable, ill-lit, nightmarish hallucination, as the cacophonous sounds of rejection intensify the despair of the heart-broken woman. To portray the scarred, anhydrous landscapes of separation and solitude, Julee Cruise performs hauntingly evocative songs from her 1989 debut album, "Floating into the Night", as well as recordings from the second season of Twin Peaks (1990) . The performance was filmed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music Opera House, on November 10, 1989. — Nick Riganas

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Industrial Symphony No. 1

The dream of the brokenhearted.

Industrial Symphony No. 1: the Dream of the Brokenhearted (ISN1) is the most idiosyncratic David Lynch creation from the Twin Peaks and Wild at Heart era. For the uninitiated, the 1989 recording of this live performance at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) features several Lynch regulars, including Laura Dern, Nicolas Cage, Julee Cruise, and Michael J. Anderson. Angelo Badalamenti’s unmistakable sounds fill the air throughout the 51 minutes of high-wire work, explosions, nudity, and a skeletal story that tells of lost love and a skinned deer on stilts.

The performance begins with a filmed piece starring Dern and Cage, reportedly completed as they worked on Wild at Heart . It’s clearly a breakup call, and while Dern’s character (The Heartbroken Woman) questions Cage’s character (The Heartbreaker) as to what he is trying to say, she know’s what’s up. At the end of their dialogue, it’s clear that Dern loves Cage, and that Cage loves Dern, but that their love is doomed. For Twin Peaks fans, Dern’s line “You sound far away” is eerily prescient, resembling the Fireman’s warning to Cooper that he is also “far away.” Something bad will most likely come of Dern’s and Cage’s conversation. And like my colleague Laura Stewart pointed out in last week’s Lynch Night piece, the use of Twin Peaks actors and themes are sprinkled throughout the performance just like they are throughout Wild at Heart .

The scene ends and we now are transported to the BAM stage, where pipes, scaffolding, power lines, and spotlights crisscross one another. Julee Cruise (The Dreamself of the Heartbroken Woman) walks in and the first chords of “Up in Flames” begin to play. While Cruise sings, a topless woman climbs and writhes among the platforms, followed by a fully-clothed man hanging down head-first from wires, headed toward the stage floor.

Cruise’s “I Float Alone” is next, and Julee floats to the top of the set with spotlights swirling around her. Michael J. Anderson (credited as “Twin A”) makes his first appearance, methodically sawing a log with “113” drawn on it, while ambient music plays. While he saws, the man who was previously dangling above the stage floor shines a flashlight toward the car that rests near the back of the set. The man startles Anderson, who runs off-stage, then returns pulling a small bench with a shadeless lamp on it. Anderson’s gold boots stick out as change from his more familiar monochromatic outfit choices. Throughout the scene, the sound of wind blowing fills the air.

The next portion has Cruise singing a stirring rendition of “Into the Night,” and her effortless harnessed floating is punctuated with a crazy drop to the floor. I believe that this whole recording was completed during the rehearsals, and perhaps because of that, the special effects are uneven. “Cruise” falls, strikes the car, and the stunt dummy’s legs flop unnaturally as it hits the trunk of the car on the way down.

At this point, the tune “I’m Hurt Bad” (used in the Double R scene where Bobby Briggs puts a quarter in the juke box and tells Norma “I’ll see you in my dreams.”) ushers in the most unusual and startling moments of the entire piece. Screeching sounds usher in a phalanx of masked men with hardhats on their heads and light bulbs in hand. The men begin to wave the bulbs over a bloody creature lying on a gurney. When the masked assistants finally get the skinned deer on its hooves, the melody takes off, and Anderson shines a spotlight directly on the deer while the masked men watch. Then just as fast as it began, the stages empties.

A narrator carries us through “Pinky’s Bubble Egg” while Cruise sings, and the man and woman crisscross each others’ paths on the stage. The masked men return to place “Cruise’s” body in the car’s trunk. Anderson returns to the stage with Angelo Badalamenti’s son (credited as “Twin B”), who plays a clarinet version of “Up in Flames” while Anderson reads both parts of the Dern/Cage exchange. Throughout the reading the formerly topless woman (now clothed), gyrates in the background behind the twins. Upon Anderson’s finish (“CLICK”), Cruise launches the now-iconic “Rockin’ Back Inside My Heart” and “The World Spins” back-to-back, moving from a 50s-style upbeat trip through romantic memories to a melancholy harbinger of what’s sure to be a depressing finish. As soon as Cruise sings “the wind blew our hair,” things begin to change.

Air raid sirens, screeching, and electrical sounds fill the concert hall. Flash pots ignite, and dozens of Kewpie dolls descend from the ceiling, and then rise to disappear just as quickly as they emerged. Glitter floats as the Dreamself of the Heartbroken Woman floats offstage and the curtain falls on this unique performance.

As I watched Industrial Symphony No.1 for the first time in the early 1990s, I was already deep into Twin Peaks . In fact, I searched video stores high and low for the VHS copy, and it is now listed as being part of the 2008  David Lynch: Lime Green Set DVD. The quality of the viewing experience is certainly diminished by the VHS image quality. However, it was released before the end of the original run of Twin Peaks , and made a nice bridge piece to the eventual VHS release of Seasons 1 and 2 in 1993.

I enjoyed watching this Lynch/Badalamenti production for the first time in many years, and hadn’t done so primarily because I was afraid my VHS copy might crumble into dust if I attempted to play it. As I mentioned above, ISN1 doesn’t really fit with much of Lynch’s work from the time period, and that’s OK. I would like to see an Industrial Symphony No. 2 someday!

A couple of final notes about the performance:

• How did Cruise’s heels stay on during the trapeze wire portions?
• Did you notice Cruise’s unplugged wired microphone being used during her “Up in Flames” lip sync?
• Was the topless dancer a dream representation of a threat to the Heartbroken Woman’s relationship with the Heartbreaker?
• “Pinky’s Bubble Egg” is the only Julee Cruise vocal performance that does not make an appearance in any other David Lynch production.

Written by Twin_Petes

Angelo Badalamenti Brooklyn Academy of Music David Lynch Julee Cruise Laura Dern Michael J. Anderson Nicolas Cage Twin Peaks Wild At Heart

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The cast and crew

Each year the Brooklyn Academy of Music has a special performance to open their New Wave Music Festival. For the 1989 festival, the Academy approached Lynch and Badalamenti to perform two 45 minute shows on November 10, 1989. They only had two weeks to prepare for the show, leaving little time to come up with an idea and rehearse. Taking the title from a collection of his works produced while he was at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Lynch and Badalameni worked Julee Cruise's music together with various imagry to produce a unique concert performance. Lynch shot a new film sequence of a phone conversation between a guy and girl breaking up, featuring Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern whom he was currently shooting Wild At Heart with. As with any live performance, there were a few problems. The digital tape used for the soundtrack stopped during rehearsal and had to be quickly relpaced. During the first performance, the man in the deer on stilts costume started to fall over into the orchestra pit. Lynch recalled, "It was my first live thing and I learned that many things go wrong and many, many, many more things almost go wrong." 1 Problems aside, the show made it through it's two performances, and the video proved to be a fairly good seller. It is currently out of print in the US, but is still available in the UK.

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Industrial symphony no. 1: the dream of the brokenhearted.

Directed by David Lynch

After her boyfriend ends their relationship, the dreamself of a heartbroken woman floats through the air over an industrial wasteland singing ballads of love.

Laura Dern Nicolas Cage Julee Cruise Lisa Giobbi Félix Blaska Michael J. Anderson Andre Badalamenti John Bell Warick Bright Chris Johnston Ann C. Fink Sarah Napier Robert Bono Frank J. Perrone Chris Tanner James St. Clair Marc B. Lorber Tom Judson Sebastian Stuart Leasen Beth Almquist Nicole Burdette Michelle Cote Elena Ferrante Brandace Hope Kathryn Humphrey Anne Padden Jubb Mary Jo Limpert Linda Russo Jane Sussin

Director Director

David Lynch

Producers Producers

David Lynch Angelo Badalamenti John Wentworth Rob Jason

Editor Editor

Cinematography cinematography.

John Schwartzman

Executive Producers Exec. Producers

Sigurjón Sighvatsson Steve Golin Monty Montgomery

Production Design Production Design

Choreography choreography.

Martha Clark

Composers Composers

Angelo Badalamenti Julee Cruise David Lynch

Makeup Makeup

Donna Gregory

Hairstyling Hairstyling

Terri Basilone

Propaganda Films

Releases by Date

01 dec 1990, releases by country.

50 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by nathaxnne [hiatus <3] ★★★★½ 10

Love Don't Go Away / Love Don't Go / Go Up In Flames

When I was in high school, I bought the Julee Cruise/David Lynch/Angelo Badalamenti album Floating Into The Night as soon as it came unto thee local shopping mall Camelot Music or the other store that wasn't Camelot Music also in the mall that was cooler but more expensive. They played Front 242 there and hired actual goths. Floating Into The Night allowed me to project Twin Peaks into every aspect of my Teenage Desire and Teenage Heartbreak and Nascent Excursions Into The Night. It is an album which sounded outside of time in 1990 and so sounds timeless today and always. What is crazy is that Floating…

Review by Rafael "Parker!!" Jovine ★★★★½ 4

Action! - Da Fuq? The David Lynch Chronicles

An attack to the senses, a experience that will grip you from the outset with its director's plethora of eccentricities. Angelo and David unite in a performance that encompasses much of their work: haunting, stunning and outright bizarre. It's like living in both paradise and hell at the same time, stuck in a type of pulgatory where good and evil cohabit, demonic spectres lurk followed by ephemeral lights, and beautiful angels proclaim the impending end of the world.

All in all, Badalamenti and Lynch have created a film that transcends the musical and the drama, something that has no words and must be experienced.

TODAY SCHEDULE Industrial Symphony No. 1: The Dream of the Brokenhearted Thought Gang: A Real Indication Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me Harry potter & The Sorcerer's Stone

Review by Graham Williamson ★★★½ 3

Another entry in Lynch by Inch: David Lynch, Ranked !

I knew of Industrial Symphony No. 1 because of a popular urban myth among Lynch fandom; that, while he was adapting Barry Gifford's Wild At Heart , he actually filmed the novel's downbeat ending before settling on the very different one the movie has, and used the discarded footage as the opening to this multimedia theatre piece. Lynch always denied this, and watching Industrial Symphony No. 1 I believe him. Yes, the opening film footage has Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern playing Southern lovers. They're also shot against plain black backgrounds, talking in a dreamy, narcotic rhythm, lit with cold, white, non-naturalistic light.

None of that resembles Wild At Heart at all,…

Review by 𝔸ℕℕ𝔸 4

David Lynch directs Laura Dern and Nic Cage breaking up, followed by a quasi-musical production of David Cronenberg's Crash , featuring Michael Anderson sawing for a long time.

Julee Cruise does her thing, by which I mean, floating in the air, an ethereal dream of the broken-hearted. It ends on The World Spins, which, of course, made me cry.

Julee Cruise killed herself yesterday due to health issues (lupus, chronic pain). Her husband said she went out on her own terms and had no regrets. He played B-52's Roam for her when she was passing away.

David Lynch reacts on his youtube channel.

I listened to Roam, but went back to The World Spins . There's few songs to completely wreck me…

Review by Walter 3

Watched this on my phone. Lynch would be so proud

Review by 🎃 Kyle 🎃 Johnson 🎃 2

There are sounds that are imprinted on my soul, that can carry me up out of wherever I am in a moment and take me somewhere else. That’s Julee Cruise’s voice — soaring, ethereal, dreamlike, transportive. Pair it with Angelo Badalamenti’s music and you have an incalculable, inescapable magic. 

I don’t get emotional a lot, but Julee Cruise has always stirred something in me, has trapped my heart in my throat more times than I can count. While watching this again this morning, I spent the entirety of “The World Spins” crying. I may not ever hear that song again without having to shed a tear. 

Float on, Julee. Your voice and its power will never be forgotten.

Review by Ira Brooker ★★★★ 3

It's floating dreamers and falling lovers and inverted car crashes and a phalanx of babies and ethereal vocals and jaded woodsmen and a 10-foot bloody man-deer and industrial squall and Julee Cruise Julee Cruise Julee Cruise Julee Cruise. And David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti. And Julee Cruise.

It's something like brilliant and I don't blame you one bit if you hate it or roll your eyes at it but I love it.

And Nic Cage and Laura Dern.

And Julee Cruise.

Review by Jake Isgar

Michael J. Anderson (better known as everyone's favorite dancing dwarf ) shines a spotlight on a giant skinned deer monster mounted on stilts. For that alone, this is worth it. Also, it's a beautiful distillation of the creative streak Lynch rode during the Wild at Heart/Twin Peaks period.

Review by Lizzy Deane

I'm in an odd place in space and time where I've loved Julee Cruise's art as its own entity, separate from Badalementi and Lynch. I felt her voice was hers, and it was ultimately the biggest instrument in any room she sang in. Not innocent, but still heavenly, it was music that understood purity is not without the pain of life. She played from a pocket dimension of glitter and deep space chimes. Few voices were so loving, and with such a way to transport as so much great art does. When you listen to Cruise, you listen to a soundtrack of another world. You don't know what it is but you know it is beautiful, and so deeply warm to live in. I hope her pain is finally relieved.

1956-2022. The planet won't spin quite the same.

Review by Mike Kennedy ★★★★ 2

Our Tuesday movie night film last night was a tribute to singer, songwriter and actress Julee Cruise whose husband announced that she had died last week “on her own terms”.  Cruise, whose collaborations with David Lynch gave her cult status, announced in 2018 that she was living with worsening chronic pain after being diagnosed with lupus.

The 51 minute concert film, filmed on the stage at the Brooklyn Academy of Music Opera House on 10 November 1989, is credited to “David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti, featuring Julee Cruise”.  Production designer Franne Lee filled the stage with what looks like post-industrial wreckage, including levels of scaffolding, a metal tower, various kinds of machinery, the body of a ‘50s Buick, a log…

Review by Matthew Noble ★★★ 1

An Angelo Badalamenti / Julee Cruise concert disguised as David Lynch's next art installation. Nothing more, nothing less.

The prologue is great though. Dern and Cage, acting their hearts out. Made me very happy.

Review by Pate Duncan ★★★★½

Lynch’s musical/concert film is full of beautiful cathected images that float by with only the slightest of narrative frames. His more abstract works have the quality of a Joan Miró painting where charged images commingle in a flat field, Lynch’s keen eye for images here working with his and Badalamenti’s soundscape and Cruise’s vocals for one of Lynch’s softest works, aided by the weird glaze of magnetic tape.

Grateful to have received this tape as a gift from a good friend 🖤

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Industrial Symphony No. 1: The Dream of the Broken Hearted (1990)

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Rest in power Julee Cruise and Angelo Badalamenti. 

A DVD rip of the original 4:3 full frame version of David Lynch, Julee Cruise, and Angelo Badalamenti's concert film masterpiece, Industrial Symphony No. 1: The Dream of the Broken Hearted. 

The play was originally presented (twice) on stage at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City as part of the New Music America Festival on November 10, 1989. Footage from these performances was used for the home video release.

The show was released on VHS in 1990, on LaserDisc in 1991, and on DVD on November 18, 2008 as part of the David Lynch: The Lime Green Set collection, which featured the performance in both full-frame and widescreen versions. The widescreen version has less visual information due to the top and bottom of the footage being cut off so that it fills up the entire screen of a widescreen TV. Presented here is the full-frame version.

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Industrial Symphony No. 1

A review of David Lynch’s film Industrial Symphony No. 1 .

Review Number: 4 Review Date: 28 August 2016

Title: Industrial Symphony No. 1 Director: David Lynch Stars: Laura Dern, Nicolas Cage, Julee Cruise Country: United States Release Date: 1990 Genre: Avant-Garde, Musical

“Where are you?”

The agony and ecstasy of love have inspired people in the realms of literature, music, art and cinema for centuries. But few, or any, have created a visual and musical oddity that captures “The Dream of the Broken Hearted”.

In our real world, David Lynch’s Industrial Symphony No. 1 exists in a time between Wild at Heart (1990) and Twin Peaks (1990-91). But in the disturbing and dynamic dreamscapes of Lynch’s inner world, we are witnesses to a strange musical play that portrays the aftermath of a failed relationship. A woman dreams. And we look in/on.

Laura Dern and Nicholas Cage (who starred as young lovers in Wild at Heart ) are the opening act, and then ‘click’, it’s over. Until something else begins.

For 50 minutes it offers a combination of harsh sounds and saccharine-sweet pop – the latter channelling Lynch’s fascination with an idealised America of the 1950s.

While some occasionally argue that Lynch is too weird for his own good, I don’t believe that is the intention. It’s his arthouse sensibilities and upbringing that give us something uniquely creative. For the latter, his happy childhood in Montana and travelling across the United States show that he understands and appreciates the goodness in the world.

But as he has often intimated, he can also see beneath that veneer to the ever-present violence. All these influences give Lynch the tools to construct something beguiling and, more importantly, entertaining.

As with some of his other creations, Lynch was assisted by Angelo Badalamenti and Julee Cruise. How fine it must be to meet people on the same wavelength. People that get it instantly. This good old-fashioned teamwork means we are also spared self-indulgent navel gazing.

This is a concise review. An analysis of every log being cut or flashing light in the symphony will bring no joy to the spectacle.

Don’t expect a Hollywood remake any time soon. We’re unlikely to see anything like this ever again.

“I guess I’m saying goodbye.”

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Industrial Symphony No. 1

No Longer Playing

1990 140 mins

A Part of DAVID LYNCH: A COMPLETE RETROSPECTIVE - THE RETURN  | This rare screening will be preceded by a 90 minute program of Lynch’s music video and commercial work

After her boyfriend ends their relationship, the dreamself of a heartbroken woman floats through the air over an industrial wasteland singing ballads of love.

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