David Lynch - Classic or Dud

I'm at a loss to recall any particular instance of some kind of classist snobbery in his work. In Twin Peaks the working class guys (Big Ed, Truman, Hawk, James) are the good guys. The Straight Story also has a certain dignity-of-the-working-class tone to it. IE, MD, and LH I would have a hard time identifying any of the central characters belonging to any specific economic strata (I guess Naomi Watts is obviously not as rich as Justin Theroux - but the latter is a clueless asshole whereas the former is deluded but more sympathetic). Dune is all about aristocracies until you get to the Fremen, who are obviously salt-of-the-earth types, and the ones responsible for redeeming the universe. Eraserhead is just about industrial wasteland in general, seems like everybody is poor and suffering in that movie unless there's some kindly rich character I'm forgetting.

the filth and moral rot seem to operate at all levels of society for him afaict.

Blue Velvet it seems like everybody is from the same middle class social strata, some people are just more psychotic than others lol

it's not as simple as classist snobbery. he's not a snob in that sense. there's a kind of middle-class, middle American distaste for both the rich and the poor. a sense of moral rot at both extremes, though it often seems more visceral when connected to poverty. i'm thinking of the trailer parks in twin peaks, much of the underworld that jeffrey encounters in blue velvet, the homeless guy in mulholland drive, some other stuff that i can't immediate bring to mind.

i think the veneration (?) of the working-class types is not inconsistent with a visceral disgust (i wouldn't exactly call it hatred) of the idle poor.

this was not an uncommon critique of lynch ca. twin peaks, btw. maybe it's off base, but it always seemed at least partially correct to me.

i think the veneration (?) of the working-class types is not inconsistent with a visceral disgust (i wouldn't exactly call it hatred) of the idle poor.

btw this is where "reagan democrats" and morning in america, etc. come in...

i was surprised that thom andersen didn't address any of those films in his "Los Angeles Plays Itself"

I went to a screening of Mulholland Drive last month, introduced by the author of this new book, The Architecture of David Lynch. He brought up the fact that Thom Anderson left Lynch out, and claimed Anderson had said it was because Lynch sees LA as a tourist, which didn't interest him.

i'm thinking of the trailer parks in twin peaks, much of the underworld that jeffrey encounters in blue velvet, the homeless guy in mulholland drive

I'd say almost all of these (w the exception of Blue Velvet) are balanced out by extremes of evil at the other end of the economic strata in the respective films/shows. Blue Velvet is weird, I dunno what signifiers indicate that any of the underworld types are poor. They're weird and creepy, but they aren't living in housing projects. I guess you could read a lot into the Heinekin/Pabst Blue Ribbon thing (a pair of signifiers which have oddly switched places since).

oh i think there are plenty of indications that frank's milieu, esp. the place where dorothy's son is being held, is on the wrong side of town, so to speak.

it's amazing how vividly i recall details of that film w/o having seen it for years, btw.

Here you go, re: Thom Andersen and Lynch:

It may say something that Mulholland Drive is a movie often cited by people who live outside of Los Angeles, but never by people who live here. Maybe it’s because Lynch’s vision of Los Angeles remains that of a tourist, although he has lived here for many years.

From Collateral Damage: Los Angeles Continues Playing Itself

Andersen's attitude seems to have softened since then, however:

I liked Inland Empire, my favorite David Lynch film … With Inland Empire what I had first regarded as arty in his work I began to realize was vulgar. I started to appreciate his films more after seeing that.

http://parallax-view.org/2011/03/24/screening-los-angeles-an-interview-with-thom-andersen/

thanks for that!!

i think andersen can be really dogmatic when it comes to films depicting L.A., as the first quote kind of indicates (cited in what? for what? by whom?)--i still like his essay film though.

i think even lynch would probably admit to seeing L.A. somewhat like a tourist. but that doesn't invalidate his vision! L.A. is, among other things, a major tourist destination.

Yeah, that was the attitude Richard Martin (the speaker) expressed: that it was all the better for it being an outsider's (Betty's) view.

i think maybe lost highway could be seen as more problematic, but lynch's films are so hermetic and strange that objecting to its view of los angeles seems sort of beside the point. i do think he's obviously admiring of aspects of L.A.'s built environment.

in twin peaks and blue velvet there's a sense of boundaries (moral boundaries linked to geographical ones)that are being invaded from outside or that one chooses to cross but in the l.a. films evil has a home everywhere; there's no sanctuary or innocence left to corrupt. imo.

I don't know how the compassion and openness of his Interview Project (http://interviewproject.davidlynch.com) can fit with or relate to the corruption of his film worlds, but it seems worth considering when making broad claims about his oeuvre.

i think what comes out in his films and what he's like normally are not necessarily the same thing

Mulholland Drive is a movie often cited by people who live outside of Los Angeles, but never by people who live here.

oh, come on.

yeah that's just pedantic nonsense

well TA takes Chinatown to task for warping history thru a '70s paranoiac prism, but i don't care.

i read that to the tune of "jimmy crack corn"

http://40.media.tumblr.com/8221cbe698d76f88dad257092bc95a14/tumblr_mi966nu4Os1qbyqfpo1_400.jpg

Dennis Lim has a book, “David Lynch: The Man from Another Place,” out November 3rd from Amazon Publishing.

Whether innate or cultivated or both, the picture of David Lynch the straight-arrow square is striking for the obvious contrast with the darkness and extremity of the work, its obsession with grotesquerie and depravity. In view of the work, in fact, Lynch’s mild-mannered calm can seem somewhat creepy. This is the contradiction — David Lynch the all-American weirdo — that defines how we think about him. Not for nothing did Mel Brooks call him “Jimmy Stewart from Mars” and David Foster Wallace describe his voice as “Jimmy Stewart on acid.”

That voice has become more caricatured over the years, even the subject of self-parody. Most of us know it from Lynch’s recurring cameo as the hard-of-hearing F.B.I. bureau chief Gordon Cole in “Twin Peaks,” whose foghorn delivery only slightly exaggerates Lynch’s speaking voice. So much about Lynch’s fraught relationship with language is summed up in that voice, in its unnervingly high volume and halting cadences. It’s clear from the 1979 footage — and from almost every interview he has done since — that words do not come easily to him. Both Lynch and his first wife, Peggy Reavey (née Lentz), have referred to his “pre-verbal” years, a phase that lasted into his early twenties, when he had a hard time stringing even more than a few words together. In his early short film, “The Alphabet,” verbal learning is a source of dread: a young girl is terrorized by the letters of the alphabet as she sleeps. The serial killer in “Twin Peaks” leaves lettered scraps of paper under the nails of his victims.

http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/david-lynchs-elusive-language

Can't believe DFW used the old "x on acid" line.

i always think of david byrne repeatedly deadpanning it (x="60 minutes") in the stop making sense self-interview.

“If you’re going into the netherworld, you don’t want to go in with Chuck Heston.”

http://41.media.tumblr.com/5ef522318a02f64b3dc302a0437d6f42/tumblr_mhyf6btTso1rxjpzqo1_500.png

(not that welles wanted to)

I looked up the 1979 interview mentioned in that New Yorker article:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3WFOPWbG8I

A lot of interesting stuff here. Lynch is clearly himself, but didn't quite have the whole David Lynch shtick yet, so he comes off a bit more earnest. I like what he has to say about the comedy element in Eraserhead, it helps to make sense of the role comedy plays in many of his films. Also, I never knew that parts of Eraserhead were filmed in downtown LA.

Thanks Moodles.

more from the

...Lim book; on Mulholland Dr.

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/3776-lim-on-lynch-mulholland-dr

The jury, led by the actress and director Liv Ullmann, awarded the best director prize jointly to Lynch and Joel Coen (for The Man Who Wasn’t There).

lol um one of these things is not like the other

but didn't quite have the whole David Lynch shtick yet, so he comes off a bit more earnest

but isn't lynch's shtick precisely that he's earnest?

i mean the moments when the shtick slips is when he admits to irony or to commercial imperatives.

I guess what I mean is there is less of the wacky showman element in this early interview

roundup on the book

https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/daily-dennis-lim-on-david-lynch

dfw's symbol of the shtick moodles is talking about was

http://img.timeinc.net/time/magazine/archive/covers/1990/1101901001_400.jpg

(good fixed-in-time headlines there)

can't wait to read Lim's book.

Lim interview:

Lynch’s compound, which I was fortunate enough to visit when I was writing about Inland Empire, is set up like a place that’s really conducive to working. There’s a quote I use in the book from Isabella Rossellini about how he set everything up to optimize working conditions. He has his house, office, recording studio, and screening room. You see art on the walls. I’m sure there are meditation spaces. Right at the top of the property, he had this beautiful studio where he works. You can see that in the weather reports he used to do and the documentaries about him. He obviously hasn’t made a film in a long time, but he’s been extremely prolific. I was surprised when I went to the Philly exhibition how much he had produced in the last ten years — new paintings and all kinds of work.

http://flavorwire.com/546923/discovering-the-man-from-another-place-dennis-lim-on-his-book-about-david-lynchs-labyrinthine-works

i went to lim's talk at videology the other night, and bought the book. it's well-written (so far, i'm only a few chapters in) but kind of light on new information. i haven't really learned anything that i didn't know about him already from other biographies (Beautiful Dark and Lynch on Lynch). during Lim's talk someone asked him if he had interviewed him for the book, and he said that although he relied on 3 past interviews that he had done years ago, Lynch didn't want to be interviewed for this one. but i still need to finish the rest of the book, so maybe there's some new stuff. i'm especially interested in the post-Lost Highway period

i thought you might've gone to that!

i didn't think i would, but happened to be nearby anyway so i dropped in!

btw there's this dual series upcoming at Linc Ctr (if you're not travelin')

http://www.filmlinc.org/daily/lineup-for-lynchrivette-dual-retrospective-revealed/

Yep, i should be around for at least some of it! i haven't seen anything by rivette, so i'd be most interested in seeing what's regarded as one of his better films.

What I consider the lesser films of Lynch and Rivette... yikes. (Tho I haven't seen Wild at Heart in 25 years.)

Watching "The Straight Story" right now for the first time. It is really hitting the spot. Good mix of goofy small-town charm mixed w cosmic profundity.

Love the running joke about Wisconsin being a big party state.

Also appreciated the movie beginning w a nonsensically staged shot of someone sunbathing outside. Lynch really likes hanging on to images of corners and it always does something weird to my brain.

Wow, loved the ending.

The Straight Story is my favorite Lynch. Richard Farnsworth is so damn good.

It was really TM. A lot of shots of people reflecting on something and it fading into stars.

I liked Alvin's sense of humor. He realized he was out of his mind but he was going to do it anyways.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xk8Y-XxaAog