| Frank Booth | |
|---|---|
| First appearance | Blue Velvet |
| Information | |
| Gender | Male |
| Occupation | Gangster |
Frank Booth is the fictional antagonist of David Lynch's 1986 psychological thriller Blue Velvet, portrayed by Dennis Hopper.
Booth became one of the best-known villains in cinema. He ranks #36 on AFI's list of the top 50 film villains of all time.[1]
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Booth, the central figure in Lumberton, North Carolina's underworld of drugs and prostitution, is depicted as a violent sociopath with a taste for torture and rape. He also has a compulsion to inhale Amyl nitrate once in a while. At the start of the film he has been steadily taking over Lumberton's drug trade by having rival drug dealers murdered. One of his henchmen, a corrupt homicide detective named "The Yellow Man," then steals the dealer's drugs from the crime scenes and clandestinely transfers them to Booth, who sells them off.
Frank's most prized asset is Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rosselini), a beautiful torch singer who brings huge crowds into the local nightclub, and over who he takes complete control when he kidnaps her son and husband. He extorts sadomasochistic sexual favors from Dorothy by mutilating her husband and threatening to kill the child if she does not give in. He makes her his slave, to the point that after pretending to enjoy his abuse for so long, she begins to derive masochistic pleasure from it.
During the course of the film Booth constantly uses profanity in every situation he encounters. During a typical night with Dorothy, he repeatedly switches back and forth between two personas: "daddy" and "baby". Daddy violently beats Dorothy and verbally degrades her, and Baby simulates raping her while sobbing like a child. Twice in the film he is depicted crying uncontrollably; once while listening to Dorothy sing "Blue Velvet", during which he weeps but makes no sounds, and a second time while watching Ben, one of his henchmen, lip-synch to Roy Orbison's "In Dreams".
Booth's criminal empire is threatened by college student Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan), who finds a severed ear which Booth accidentally dropped after cutting it off Dorothy's husband with scissors. Beaumont quickly becomes obsessed with the case. He breaks into Dorothy's apartment, where he witnesses Booth raping her. At first Booth writes Beaumont off as a mere nuisance, and he and his cronies rough him up to send Beaumont a message. Beaumont tells his girlfriend's father, the local police detective, what has been going on. The police detective instructs Beaumont not to involve himself any further, but Beaumont defies that order and sets out to rescue Dorothy's son after Booth nearly beats her to death, strips her naked and leaves her in front of Beaumont's house.
Beaumont rushes to Dorothy's apartment in hope of rescuing her son, and finds Dorothy's husband bound to a chair and shot in the head, and the Yellow Man, who Booth has crudely lobotomized. Booth flees to the apartment after the police raid his home, and overhears Beaumont calling for help on the police radio. Realizing that Booth is coming for him, Beaumont intentionally gives the police false information on his whereabouts to throw Booth off his trail. Booth enters the apartment, kills the Yellow Man, then seeks out Beaumont, who takes the Yellow Man's gun and shoots Booth in the head, killing him.
Hopper's performance revived his career, and has become one of his signature roles. In particular, a scene in which he brutalizes Dorothy while huffing gas and screaming "Don't you fucking look at me!" and "Mommy, mommy, baby wants to fuck!". Perhaps most memorable of all is when Jeffrey Beaumont requests Heineken Beer and Frank Booth replies, "Heineken? Fuck that shit! Pabst Blue Ribbon!". Booth says the word "fuck" in almost every sentence, often multiple times. With the exception of "Suave" Ben (who only uses it at Frank's request), Booth is the only character in the film to say the word.
Booth's lines and excessive use of the word "fuck" are frequently referenced in pop culture. The line, "Don't you fucking look at me!" was voted by Premiere Magazine as one of the "100 Greatest Quotes in Cinema", and was sampled by electronic act Faultline for use in the title track of the album Closer, Colder. Industrial group Pigface sampled one of Booth's lines for use in the remix song "Sick Asp Fuck." Samples of Frank speaking are strewn throughout Mr. Bungle's Self Titled Album. Most notably, in "Squeeze me Macaroni", the entire scene with Frank from "Man, Where's the fucking beer man?" to "One thing I can't fucking stand is warm beer, makes me Fucking Puke!" is played.
When hosting Saturday Night Live, Dennis Hopper appeared in a skit as Frank Booth, hosting a game show titled "What's That Smell?", which he opened with Booth's line "Hello, neighbor."
In a 2011 interview with Rolling Stone [1], Lynch was asked "Who is a more dangerous gentleman, Frank Booth or Marcellus Santos?" Lynch's response was "That's a good question. I'd rather hang with Frank Booth. I'd rather chill with him, and wait for a booty call, than with Marcellus."
The part of Frank Booth was originally offered to Robert Loggia, Willem Dafoe, and Richard Bright, who all turned it down. When Hopper read the script, he called Lynch and said, "You have to let me play Frank! Because I am Frank!"
Throughout the film, Frank Booth uses a medical mask and tube to inhale some kind of stimulant from an aerosol canister. The identity of this gas is a subject of controversy. Lynch's script specified helium, to raise Booth's voice and have it resemble that of an infant. However, during filming, Hopper, an experienced drug user, claimed to have insight into Booth's choice of drug, and said that helium was inappropriate. Lynch later explained the change:
| “ | I'm thankful to Dennis, because up until the last minute it was gonna be helium — to make the difference between 'Daddy' and the baby that much more. But I didn't want it to be funny. So helium went out the window and became just a gas. Then, in the first rehearsal, Dennis said, 'David, I know what's in these different canisters.' And I said, 'Thank God, Dennis, that you know that!' And he named all the gases. | ” |
In a documentary on the 2002 Special edition DVD version of the film, Hopper claims the drug was amyl nitrite, an angina medication used recreationally as an inhalant in the disco club scene.