I was this kid working in Seattle,
and I'm doing a play at the Empty Space Theatre.
Seattle was one of the stops on their casting run.
They wanted a classic search for a new actor, a new face.
I guess there weren't enough new faces in Hollywood at that time.
So this one woman came to Seattle,
I met her, read for her, she was impressed enough to recommend me to David.
So a week later I got a call.
With a free ticket to fly to LA.
So my understudy went on for the play,
and I met David Lynch and Rafaella DeLaurentis at the Universal Studios.
I knew David's "Eraserhead", and that was it.
I didn't know what to expect.
They were talking about his car.
I can't remember what it was. It wasn't a Packard, it was a...
Some kind of a special car that he had. It was kinda eccentric.
He walked in and I said, "But he's this young guy."
He had his uniform on - khaki pants, a white shirt and a black blaZer.
And spiky blonde hair,
and a very gentle face.
And he sat down and we talked. I didn't really know what to expect.
You don't do that in the theatre. You don't sit and talk to a director about something.
Then Rafaella came in.
She looked very severe with her hair up and a pencil stuck in it.
I thought she was older than she actually was.
She tried to cultivate that because she was a youngster taking on this big project.
We talked about things.
He's from Boise, Idaho, and I'm from Washington,
so we talked about Washington.
We talked a little bit about wine.
And we just talked.
And I was, like, "This is kinda weird."
We talked a little about "Dune",
but mostly, we were just chatting about this and that.
Where we grew up and what we liked.
At the end of it he said, "OK, here's a script."
And he said, "I want you to take it back with you.
"There are five scenes I want you to do. Come back and we'll screen-test."
I was like, "OK... OK."
So I took the script, got in the car, and drove over to meet Dino,
who was over at the Beverly Hills Hotel in one of the bungalows.
He came to the door, and he's quite small.
And he was very gruff. He was in the middle of eating pasta.
He still had a napkin on and pieces of pasta on his face.
I came in and we sat down and didn't say much.
We were sitting in the living room and he said,
"How old you are?"
I said 23, and he said, "Hmm...
"OK." And that was the meeting, about 45 seconds.
I got up, went to the airport, and flew back to Seattle.
My whole introduction was like this giant loop -
airport, studios, Beverly Hills Hotel, airport.
Five days later I was back down again for the screen-test. It was that strange.