In the movie "Vanilla Sky," David Aames" life is sculpted by the pop image that surrounds him. For David, satisfaction comes only from becoming everything he sees around himself; the music and movies that he cherishes.
David's main problem throughout the movie is love. The only way David will ever fall in love is in story book fashion, which is far fetched, but he would never settle. Julie Gianni falls madly in love with David but he never shows any affection towards her because he sees her as nothing more than a good lay, not a girl he can run down the streets with like on a Bob Dylan album cover. The night of his birthday party, though, he finds Sophia and seemingly falls in love with her but the next day Julie decides to take David's lack of affection out on him by trying to kill him. Julie is unsuccessful though as David survived the accident, yet she did successfully kill him in another way by permanently deforming his face, which to David is everything.
Following the accident David goes through an extensive set of surgeries to correct his deformed face. During this time he totally abandons Sophia because to him the only way she would ever love him is if he is "perfect" not realizing that she could love him for the person he is inside. For the rest of his real life David wears a mask and tries to regain Sophia's love but fails, so he drinks till his death.
After David's "real" death he begins his "dream" life. In his new life he finds his face back to normal and Sophia in love with him. David uses the music and image he's lived for in his "real" life as his life in the dream state. He lives in the image that surrounded him and fell in love with Sophia the way he dreamed of. David's "dream" goes wrong though when Julie flashes in and out of his "dream" showing that he may have actually been in love with Julie in his real life even though he could not let himself believe that.