My mom and the Lynchian universe

I realized today that my mom has a Scott Coffey story. He was in both Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive (and Lynch’s web series Rabbits, and Wild At Heart, though his scenes were deleted; he played Trick in one episode of Twin Peaks: The Return). But before he entered the Lynchverse, he was a skinny, cute redheaded teenager making a movie about the dance that developed at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina in the 1960’s (some say Carolina Beach, but I digress)—shag.

And he crossed paths with my mom on the beach.

While he was trying to schmooze a couple of local girls on a night off from filming the movie Shag.

So it’s 1988, my mom’s 38, I’m a junior in high school (I was Laura Palmer’s age when Twin Peaks began), and he was 28 and looked my age, God bless ‘em, and there he was, trying to lay the “I’m a movie star” line on a couple of townies at the shoreline. They weren’t buying it.

So that’s the scene. It’s early evening, and here comes my cute mom and her friend, the only other people on that part of the beach. He asked Mom to tell the girls that shagging was a kind of dance, that he wasn’t being rude, and when she did, he begged Mom to dance with him to demonstrate.

She promptly kicked off her shoes and danced with this adorable redhead in the sand so he could prove he was a movie star, gliding all over the edge of the surf. So he got to prove himself and rehearse all in one. I hope one of those girls kissed him that night.

Here he is in the movie, shagging with the fabulous Annabeth Gish to one of the two versions of my favorite murder ballad/story song, “Stagger Lee”: