The party scene, they start to speak spanish, almost puposely to further alienate Betty/Diane which cuts with the crash of the cofee cup to the diner, seeing the waitress (named has changed again) meeting the hitman, (I am not convinced the hit man isn't another extension of her fictional remembrances).I think it's obvious that what we are seeing early on in the movie is Betty's memories replayed in her DRUG induced miserably bleak state, also the laboured way we see her making coffee, the ganster throwing up the coffee, this is when we are hearing the phrase for the first time, when they are planning the casting of Camilla. " This is the girl". Some times I do believe that Lynch toys with obvious statments. Maybe this is the girl,( literally puking coffee) this is her last miserable day, remembered with huge denial, anger and regret. Her failed career, betty's hopeful one, (I don't think Diane was the stellar actor she was perceived to be.) There is a lot of self projection by Diane, the non supportive parents, terrorizing her at the end, mocking essentially Betty's wide eyed inoccent arrival.
Her glamerous cheating girlfriend Rita/Camilla could be another Failed actress, when we see Camilla toward the end of the movie being shoved out the door by a dejected Diane she is speaking w/ an accent, dressed a little like a prostitute, maybe she was just that. The hitman was asking a hooker if she had seen her, I also think this prostitute was the Camilla who auditions,"this is the girl", who also is seen as the hopeful actress whispering and kissing Rita at the party. Possibly Diane's diluted memory of a real party. Note we see Cowboy walk accross the room in the distance. Wheels are in motion.
The colours, I think blue is death obviously, smoke, box, maybe the pink could a homosexual referance? Why pour pink paint over the wife's FAMILY JEWELS ? Adam's wife. Alot of the characters are conveniently obvious by nature. Maybe this is an indicator that they are all just a cast in the diluted rememberances of a woman racked with guilt over the loss of her girlfriend, or the murder of her,denial and internal torment about her sexuality. The cowboy, a grim reaper? One's attitude, Diane the obvious polar opposite to Betty. As is Rita to Camilla, conviently for Diane replaying the reasoning, victimization that propels her to order the killing, or maybe just killing, herself. Why does Rita feel compelled to change her appearance to look more like Betty, after returning from the corpse? Let me help, " I know what you have to do" Betty says. Rita wakes up saying "silencio" taking Betty in to the Club, Spanish version of Crying, maybe Diane is saying goodbye to her spanish femme as she returns to the host who can no longer facilitate her being if she is not alive to imagine it. Betty shaking, blue box appearance, possibly the moment of her death. The cowboy does return for the second time, at the party, btw, he said he would if Adam was BAD.
Adam ? I think the content of the script at Betty's stellar audition is very interesting. I am almost sure it had an element of sexual misconduct, maybe a painful memory of a rape. The fact that she nails it lends you to believe that that feeling of empowerment is the only way Diane could possibly replay a moment like that. The scene with the guy pushing the prostitute in the back of the van, this I am sure was the girl who played the Camilla hand picked actress, who looks a little like the waitress, whos name changed I can't remeber, Betty to Diane ? "Maybe this is the girl." Maybe this is all Diane.
I honestly think that the only death in this movie is the suicide.

totally agree
ah em!
derry

Agreed that the party scene has to be fantasy. Imagine an actress flaunting both her current and former lesbian love interests in the presence of her movie director fiancee, assorted members of the film industry, and her mother-in-law-to-be! Not exactly the way to a happy marriage or a successful career.

The hit man scene does seem to be fictional since, as others have mentioned, the coffee cups at Winkie's are the same as Diane's own coffee cup in her apartment.

The cowboy told Adam that he would see him one more time if he "did good" and two more times if he "did bad". He "did good" and so encountered the cowboy one more time. Diane, on the other hand, "did bad" and encountered the cowboy two more times, so the cowboy seems to have been speaking to both of them. Some of Diane's (or Betty's) experiences parallel Adam's. They both meet the cowboy, they are both humilated in love (even, one might say, by Rita at the party, though Adam evidently didn't notice), and they both encounter the actor who plays the manager Cookie in the downtown hotel and the emcee at The Club Silencio, who reveals to both of them that "it is all an illusion", even if somewhat indirectly so to Adam.

Cookie seems to be related somehow to Coco, Adam's mother and the manager of Betty's apartment.

Incidentally, I think the point regarding the color symbolism is well taken, but I think pink more likely refers to duplicity or something like that than homoeroticism, as Adam Keshner's wife was definitely heterosexual in her tastes. Pink is a watered-down version of red, which David Lynch uses a lot (including in this movie) to symbolize evil and hell, so pink could be evil trying to pass itself off as something else.

In another thread I've commented on the symbolism of the name "Winkie's", and I think there's an extension of that here. The hit man and his friend talk to the prostitute outside a fast food joint named "Pink's", a name obviously intended to be associated with "Winkie's". When the hit man asks the prostitute id she wants anything she says "Not from here", which is a pretty bizarre response for a somewhat banged up (or at least scratched up) prostitute who then asks him for a cigarette; someone like that would hardly be expected to be so picky in her tastes in food that she would turn down a free meal. I think the idea here is that the food at Pink's is best avoided as a spiritual danger.

Incidentally, yesterday I saw a posting that commented on the fact that Adam Keshner didn't smear pink paint on his wife even though his hands were covered with it, as he was. That may have been intentional: maybe someone as run-of-the-mill as a cheating wife, particularly of Adam Keshner, didn't quite merit the "pink letter of shame" in his view. Adam, by contrast, was nicely daubed with it. Obviously that may be over-interpreting things.

That's what I think the blue color represents in all her dream part. Is just a remembrance of the severity of what the sight of the blue key again will bring in her real world, that the murder had been committed.

Some other general comments I've posted somewhere else here. I think the "monster" is an allusion of reality per se.

See what the man in the diner said about it: "I hope never to see this man again outside of a dream". And it wasn't his dream after all, it was Dianne's dreaming that this guy had had a dream. And in the real world, she had seen this guy seeing her when she was committing herself to ordering a murder. The monster was indeed sort of an unconscious portrayal Diane had for herself in her dream world, e.g. what in her unconscious she really was in the real world, a monster. That reality was simply mostruous and horrible.

Notice also the monster is the one that actually unleashes the little old guys from the blue cube, the ones that would hunt her in her last moments, who eventually enter Dianne's apartment when someone is knocking on the door (probably the detectives btw), and the little old devils become normal sized crazy looking people harrassing and chasing her driving her to unbearable madness, until she kills herself. It's the result of having faced her horrible reality, that her dreams were crushed, that in her own eyes she was a hopeless looser, that she had become an envious and resentful person to the lowest extreme possible.

Another comment, I think the Cowboy is just a signal for sort of a "reality check" for Dianne. When during the real world part the blond girl (Betty) kisses Camilla at the dinner, then she goes to the restroom or somewhere, and at that point Diane sees the cowboy walking by. I think that image stuck in her unconscious as a red flag for the reality check she was experiencing at that very point in time. She had just realized Camila was having an affair with another woman, while at the same time she was also marrying the director. She had rejected her clearly before, and now to leave no doubt about it, she had made sure she came to this party, whether to hurt her on purpose or not who knows, the fact is, at that party she left no room for doubt, Camilla had rejected her, and had other ongoing relationships, some much more serious or formal (to the point of marriage) than what she had had with Dianne. So seeing the cowboy at that point when she was getting hurt the most became an unconscious symbol of reality check (I think).

Also, notice it's the cowboy who enters her room (during her dream) and says quietly "Time to wake up". The cowboy is the "wake-up trigger" in her dream, consistent with having him associated with a major reality check event in her real world.