I'd say that's a little oversimplified. It's not so much that Hollywood is "fake", but (as you said earlier) that cinema in general is not real, I don't think that's meant in a derogatory manner.

Take the Silencio scene for example, 'Llorando' isn't "fake" in the sense that the criticism is often leveled against Hollywood, rather it's beautiful and moving and has a profound effect on the audience; it's just not real, and apparently it's execution is quite taxing on the performers.

I don't think the whole "dream" thing is a cop-out, rather just an attempt to placate (at least somewhat) the people he knew would be crying 'WTF???'. I (and probably many of those who enjoyed the movie) would've been perfectly happy if the transition between the two "realities" had no explanation whatsoever. The whole point of it was that Lynch is getting two completely different emotional responses from the audience, with the same cast of characters. You only need the contrivances if you insist on a literal interpretation of the whole thing as some sort of metaphore.

Oh, and so what if it's indulgent? All of cinema is, people just seem to get upset when they personally don't have an interest in a specific indulgence that the director did.

Now that's a new one. How do you mean?

Perhaps... but don't forget that what I posted was only my reaction to the movie, as opposed to the "canonical" one.

Didn't notice the distinction with the music. I'll pay attention to it next time I watch it (whenever that will be!).
What then, is your interpretation of the events not involving Betty we see, before "the box"?
I explained why I believed they were about Diane trying to assuage her guilt of ordering a hit on her ex-lover and her lack of general sucess in Hollywood (The "evil" monster who lives behind the "evil" cafe. The bumbling assassin. The "consiracy-theory" like dark forces pulling the strings behind the movie productions).

While you are probably right about some of them, I think there's also a few that were simply the beginnings of plot threads that would've been picked up in the series, but obviously couldn't develop in the movie. I am not sure about this, but I think I remember reading that a lot of it was already flimed (not just written) by the time they decided to make it into a movie, so that would explain why these loose ends weren't "cleaned up".

It's hard to see Diane thinking that the "bumbling assasin" was a hope for Camilla ; after all he ends up killing more people than he came there to kill. And she already has the key (I doubt that when she wakes up is the first time she finds it).

Scenes like the Winkie's diner, I think, are just really cool scenes that Lynch wanted to do, and while loaded with symbolism of all sorts, attempts to fit them into the reality of the movie (any of them) are likely to be contrived - even if they are Lynch's own. Incidentally, the impression I always got from the Winkie's scene was that it was about another aspect of the reality/unreality thread and the power of convictions and delusions. The "evil man" behind the dumpster doesn't seem to actually exist, other man (don't remember his name, if he had one) doesn't see him, or believe in his existance, but he's perfectly real to the man that <i>does</i> see him.