Just out of prison for manslaughter, Sailor (Nicholas Cage) breaks parole to take Lula (Laura Dern), his inseparable lover, to California. Lula's mother Marietta (Diane Ladd), accompanied by a private eye (Harry Dean Stanton), pursues the de facto fugitives to rescue her daring daughter from herself. In Big Tuna, Texas, a scruffy town inhabited by lowlifes, they encounter the thoroughly demented Bobby Peru (Willem Dafoe), who confirms Lula's observation that “this whole world's wild at heart and weird on top.” David Lynch's fantastical free-for-all helped put Sailor and Lula on the American misfit map when it won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.