It's the inevitable and long-awaited DAVID LYNCH POLL

That was very suck-cinct.

It's funny, Lynch has cycled in and out of being my favorite active filmmaker since I was 17 and saw Blue Velvet. It's hard to rank or compare him against other people from 2000 on, say, because his output in that time has been so sporadic. But Mulholland Drive/Inland Empire/TP:TR is an amazing late career run.

It's dumb imo to get hung up on his fanboys. I'm sure there are blinkered Tarkovsky stans too. Lynch is a virtuosic and imaginative artist and I'm happy to be alive while he's doing his thing.

It'll probably be hard to argue against TP:TR being his greatest thing once it's done, just in the sheer scope and creative freedom of it. But for non-18-hour work, I'd go:

Mulholland Drive
Inland Empire
Blue Velvet
Eraserhead
TP:FWWM
The Straight Story
Wild at Heart
The Elephant Man
Dune
Lost Highway

Of those, I only count the last two as failures. And they're both still worth seeing.

I'm sure there are blinkered Tarkovsky stans too

me

j/k i've only seen five movies all by david lunch

sooooo sensitive, Brad! ;) plz go to something in this series with me.

http://metrograph.com/series/series/107/gotta-light

kudos to the programmers, I wish there was more stuff like that here

Apologies (mainly to myself) for continuing down this avenue because it is simply too dumb to bother with but I guess it might be true to say that lynch brings along more non-cinephiles than a lot of filmmakers in the same vague area maybe, by virtue of being American and having made a tv show? Just from peeping reactions to the new TP there are ppl for whom lengthy shots/scenes are insane and revelatory in & of themselves (I think even ~those ppl~ prob have a lot of faves tho so idk let's just leave this stupid convo)

morbs, i'd really love to see kiss me deadly in a theater but unfortunately it's in dreaded dcp

yeah, I've seen it on film before so i wouldn't do that. More likely the shorts programs.

i'm def down for one of the shorts programs and possibly 2001

I think I've mentioned this elsewhere, but Wild at Heart started out as way overrated and FWWM was way underrated. These days, I think the opposite is true. Also, I love Lost Highway way more than most people on here. Dune was the first Lynch film I saw and I'll always love it, even though it is extremely flawed.

Here's my list:

Blue Velvet
Mulholland Drive
Lost Highway
Inland Empire
Eraserhead
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
Dune
Wild at Heart
The Straight Story
The Elephant Man

Breakaway is a great 5 minute seduction.

I guess it might be true to say that lynch brings along more non-cinephiles than a lot of filmmakers in the same vague area maybe, by virtue of being American and having made a tv show?

That was def true with the OG TP, not sure the new one is having the same effect. I'd say it's not only because he's worked in TV, but also because he's totally immersed in pop culture, or at least some corners of it, so he gives some relatively accessible (or accessible-seeming) handles to people in a way that Hou Hsiao-Hsien or Joanna Hogg or etc do not. Once people grab hold of those pop references, they may be confused by what happens next. But he's pretty approachable on the surface. (See also Wong Kar-Wai, e.g., compared with someone like Tsai Ming-liang.)

Re thread subject, dunno if I've done already. I don't really enjoy ranking things so I'd cop out and go for a four-way tie of fwwm/md/ie/ss as features I love p much equally; I also love the elephant man, and eraserhead & blue velvet are near-perfect formally imo. The Gifford ones I connect with least although I like lost highway a lot more than I used to (I'm sorta suspicious of an opinion about lynch that I suspect to have gone unrevised over the years)

I continue to reserve judgement on dune until the day I stay awake through the whole film.

xp yeah that too

There was a thing going around on twitter with people saying their favorite films of 77, and seeing Eraserhead along films like That Obscure Object of Desire and The Devil, Probably, is so weird. Lynch has kinda made at least one masterpiece in five decades in a row now, and that's probably as good a reason as any to have him as a favorite filmmaker. He's not mine, though, far from it.

He might be my favourite living American one, if I had to pick, which I don't, and neither do you

Well, you know, Sean Baker, so...

Love Sean Baker, one of only 2 directors I follow on twitter iirc

he's probably my favorite living American filmmaker lol wins otm xp

Sean Spicer is my favorite American.

gesundheit

Anita Baker is my favorite American.

Anita Cocktail is my favorite living American drag queen

caught up in the crapture

Giving You The Breasts That I Got

One thing to add about Lynch's works: they gain a lot from being seen in movie theaters. I feel very lucky to have been able to see Dune, Wild at Heart, FWWM, Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, and Inland Empire all during their original theatrical releases. I'd love to see Lost Highway again in the theater because I really struggle to get the right volume levels at home to be able to catch all of the brilliant creepy dialogue between Pullman and Arquette in the early scenes without then being walloped by Fred's crazy sax playing.

Inland Empire was a particularly intense and singular theater experience. The effect of being a captive audience in a three hour movie where coherence gradually melts away and spans of time start to lose all meaning was quiet powerful, like being trapped in a nightmare. It's not an experience I can copy at home where it's just way too easy to be distracted while watching it, it just loses that sense of total immersion.

otm. seeing Mulholland Drive in a theater in May blew me away, i had only seen it once before in 2007 at home & it just didn't click. but that was in preparation to see Inland Empire when it opened here. it only played for a week and i'm so glad i got to see it in a theater. i'll never forget that opening title sequence. i've gotta rewatch it soon - got a sweet Japanese blu-ray of it for like 10 bucks on Amazon.

also i've been fortunate enough to see FWWM in a theater twice - although the first time was five years ago with a crowd that was treating it like a MST3K thing, laughing at the 'awkwardness,' which... whatever, standard shitty crowd, but they kept it up through Leland's assault on Laura. I saw it at a different theater with a much smaller, more subdued crowd in July, and it was just devastating.

whenever there is a re-do of this poll - i guess when The Return ends in a few weeks - I'll probably vote Mulholland Drive, but I wish I could vote for the final episode of season 2. even though it's not feature length, imo it's the most spellbinding & powerful thing Lynch has ever done.

having said that, still need to see Wild at Heart, Straight Story, & the Elephant Man. stoked to see WAH in a theater next week on 35mm. lots of Lynch revivals this year! I'd love to see Lost Highway in a theater, the DVD i got looked like shit & I think I said this upthread but it really felt like a dry run for Mulholland Drive, with a much duller color palette, extremely dated soundtrack & aesthetics, and a depiction of evil/total absence of love that imo is much better explored in The Return.

a crowd that was treating it like a MST3K thing

oh good, it's not just NYC that needs the death penalty for this.

whenever there is a re-do of this poll - i guess when The Return ends in a few weeks

What's your hurry? Some of us didn't have the money to subscribe to Showtime.

also, not a film (notice there is no TP original series in the above poll).

Eraserhead, The Grandmother, Twin Peaks finale, Premonitions, The Return eps 3 & 8, The Alphabet

xxp it was part of a local series that usually screens 80s/90s blockbusters that could be read as camp but aren't like Manos: The Hands of Fate or whatever. along with FWWM, they've done Total Recall, The Shining, The Thing, Dead Man, RoboCop, Predator, Terminator 2, Groundhog Day, Point Break, Batman, Die Hard... those are just off the top of my head, and FWWM sticks out like a sore thumb in that group, besides maybe Dead Man and The Shining.

I was lucky enough to see Lost Highway the first time at the historic Tampa Theatre while on vacation, complete with organist before the film. Memorable evening, but I still don't care for Lost Highway much.

What's your hurry? Some of us didn't have the money to subscribe to Showtime.

also, not a film (notice there is no TP original series in the above poll).

― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Thursday, August 17, 2017 2:38 PM (six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't have cable or a Showtime subscription. my TV gave me a 7 day free trial for Showtime, I watched all 14 episodes in 3 days and will pay for one month to see the last 4. and i absolutely think Twin Peaks should be included, all seasons separately. you could debate the merits of including the original series because it wasn't all directed by Lynch, but The Return is an 18 hour movie.

Nitpicking probably but the "18 hour movie" thing bugs me. Each ~57 min segment is is demarcated by opening and closing credits. Each has its own structure and momentum, and features a musical interlude. Etc. Just let it be a tv show, nothing wrong with that.

To be fair lynch didn't call it an 18-hour movie, he called it "a feature film in 18 parts", which makes more sense. People kind of conflated the first half of that construction into the second, assuming it's "meant" to be a single unbroken thing - which it obv isn't, or it would have been released that way. It was produced as one big thing and then the episodes/chapters were formed & as you note given their own internal structure.

would def put Ep 8 in my top ten of things he's ever done and probably in the top 10 best standalone episodes of a tv series ever

Isn't that how a significant amount of tv is made these days? xp

nbd; also nbd but when this poll is redone I think it should include individual eps of TP & TP:TR limited to those Lynch directed. I also want to be able to vote for short films. Altogether I think that's still under 50 options.

Sweet. Eager to rep for s2 finale

Inland Empire was a particularly intense and singular theater experience. The effect of being a captive audience in a three hour movie where coherence gradually melts away and spans of time start to lose all meaning was quiet powerful, like being trapped in a nightmare. It's not an experience I can copy at home where it's just way too easy to be distracted while watching it, it just loses that sense of total immersion.

― Moodles, Thursday, August 17, 2017 1:03 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Unfortunately missed it in the theater but watched it in the dark and with headphones on (LOUD), which felt effectively immersive and nightmarish.

Episode 8 of The Return is one of the most jaw-droppingly amazing things I've ever seen on film.

And one of the few instances I can think of where I can use 'jaw dropping' as a literal descriptor of my experience.

Isn't that how a significant amount of tv is made these days? xp

I'm not a tv expert but I don't think so, I imagine even the few tv series that have a single director are split into episodes at the script stage and I really don't think it's usual to film a season as a single film, I could be wrong tho

I have no idea what I'm talking about either really, high five

there is no major tv series with a single director, TP:TR is a glaring exception

Wasn't true detective a single director? There are a few classic non-US ones like Berlin Alexanderplatz too

non-US tv is a totally different beast imo

yr right about Fukunaga tho, forgot about that (was def noted as unusual at the time!)

All I meant is that series like 13 Reasons Why and Stranger Things that are made for the all at once dump streaming market are presumably conceived and written as a whole and fully shot before airing, unlike what I understand to be past tv practice, and have exec producers, dp's etc guiding the overall vision even if the actual directing of actors is farmed out in a more workmanlike way.

Anyway, to make this post somewhat worthwhile, I'm going to say again that I think Lynch is definitely at his best when making short films, whether they're standalone productions or folded into longer works. Ep 8 is basically 4 loosely-connected shorts, the most talked about of which is also the most derivative and least satisfying, to me.

there is no major tv series with a single director, TP:TR is a glaring exception

― Οὖτις, 17. august 2017 21:34 (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Wasn't true detective a single director? There are a few classic non-US ones like Berlin Alexanderplatz too

― blog haus aka the scene raver (wins), 17. august 2017 21:37 (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

+ The Knick and Show Me a Hero.

everyone otm wrt being in a theater experience. this is why i bought a projector a few years ago and use it to watch just about everything

I noticed David Lynch has his own brand of coffee they sell at whole foods (for $2 more than the other coffee they sell)

Pamela Fryman directed 196 of the 208 episodes of How I Met Your Mother

the commercials they did for the Japanese canned coffee w the original Twin Peaks crew and all new storyline is cool. all that stuff is on youtube.

i have mad respect for David Lynch. i first saw Mulholland Drive in a theater with a film geek friend who was my first post-HS friend and he introduced me to the Athens hipster scene and awesome movies. his roommates all worked at Vision Video and constantly had stuff. anyways we saw MD and it was unlike any movie i had ever seen. we were laughing with joy at every scene that occurred, at the seeming randomness of it all, at the anarchic mockery underlying these pretty regular subject matter of Hollywood actresses and murder mysteries. the Gen x love for twisted 60s nostalgia and one-scene characters. the boogeyman popping out from around that corner and the perfect reaction/soundtrack mix to solidify this temporary nightmare in your psyche. the holy shit is that Billy Ray Cyrus? the cowboy? what the fuck?

i watched all of Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet a few years later with some other friends that were super into that stuff and had the big VHS box set that spelled out TWIN PEAKS on the side. i've seen Eraserhead a few times now, last time at the Plaza Theater in Atlanta with a close friend of mine and the parental angst and pressure to live this absurd bleak (but beautiful) trudgery was so wonderful and poetic and industrial. it really feels like a documentary of another world. i've only seen half of Lost Highway, i think i made it to the part where the guy falls into the table and impales his head on it. the movie made me feel bad and i was not terribly interested in watching it at the time. we did find the OST CD at a thrift store recently though, and it fucking rules.

a few years ago i bought Straight Story on VHS and have watched that a few times and have cried so much both times. the movie is a perfect example of new Twin Peaks style imo, they opening shot is this weird overhead crane shot that holds for a long time w only ambient things going on for a good bit. the movie all leads up to this meeting that is possibly the best, most hopeful and loving ending of any movie i have ever seen, with Harry Dean Stanton. i am so glad he has gotten to work with Harry and so many other actors from over the course of his career. the new Twin Peaks is a victory lap.

so there are long scenes of "nothing" but the characters walking, sweeping, or just breathing. why is this upsetting to us? it is perfectly normal. it is even more normal than the "normal"
parts of the show that use cuts and editing. shouldn't we relate more to something that is in real-time? visual culture has cultivated shorter and shorter attention spans through constant jump cuts. when confronted by an unedited scene we become self aware as an audience - is this a Zen technique? to us, we are so accustomed to cheating time through editing/video/film, the passage of normal time in that medium has become funny, painful, obvious, awkward. in visual media the normal is weird and the weird is normal.