David Lynch - Classic or Dud

For Lynch, such normalcy ultimately looks a lot like conservative, middle-class American life

as depicted where? Inland Empire? Mulholland Drive? Eraserhead? honestly wondering where this positive depiction of conservative middle class American life exists in Lynch's films. cos the author of this piece doesn't give any examples, he just gives counter examples of "weird stuff" and infers from there

i do think there is something to be said for critics vicariously using Lynch as a scapegoat to work out/indulge some inner kinks and moral shaming but this guy seems to miss that point entirely.

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Friday, 1 September 2017 00:18

Something to be said for scapegoating? That it sucks.

imo Lynch has grown more sympathetic towards the lower class in his work. Laura Dern having the transformative lighter experience with the street lady in Mulholland Drive. look at Harry Dean Stanton, trailer park manager in the new Twin Peaks, similarly witnessing death and eternal life. the family in the Straight Story is all but absent from that trashed house, only Jack Nane and Sissy Spacek living a debilitated and physically demanding life, yet they persevere. Eraserhead felt pretty working-class, it was created in that world of the factories of Philadelphia. the guy lived a life of working class trudgery living in a tiny space. was the Elephant Man a paragon of normal culture?

it is weird that he brings up Blue Velvet cos i thought the sensitive effeminate man was good as a stark contrast to the misogynist supreme Frank Booth. it made sense for this person and not Frank Booth to perform that wonderful lip sync karaoke to Roy Orbison. you couldn't have had Frank Booth doing this, he was a violent, horrible man, someone we had despised already for a good chunk of movie time. it is beyond hilarious to say that the guy miming to "In Dream" enforces normality.

this guy is technically a great writer but his ideas are shit.

darraghmac--in addition to the above seek out the Stories documentary on the Eraserhead DVD. Intimate, great Catherine Coulson content, and a beautiful evocation of a lost world.

imo representation only becomes an issue when the material or setting demands it - i.e. the Ghost in the Shell remake, that dumb Lone Ranger remake (?... the one with Johnny Depp), or the first season of Girls. although i will say it is strange that the original series had more black actors than The Return. as for Lynch's worldview... i'm not going to read that shit article, but... the guy grew up in Missoula. his childhood & experience that shaped his worldview was presumably mostly white. TP is set in the PNW, a very white area of the country. it makes sense that the series is populated predominantly by white people. this doesn't extend fully to The Return, which spends a lot of time in Las Vegas, but boy... really fishing for something that isn't there in that thesis, especially w/r/t to the rest of his work (adam otm xp) Everyone has already gone through how dumb the "Lynch loves conservative white America" angle is. Terrence Malick is a much more conservative director imo, to make a totally unrelated comparison...

the original series had more black actors than The Return

Say what?

Lots of employees at the Great Northern. I mean, it can't be much longer than the list posted upthread, but there are more more.

more more
ugh

tipsy, re history of Lynch critiques:

Certainly, there have been quite a few complaints over the years regarding Lynch’s gleeful representation of violence against women. Others have analysed Lynch’s problematic depictions of disability and race, yet these critiques have been largely apologetic.

I haven't read enough DL scholarship to confirm or deny that last...

author photo in this essay looks kinda like Max Headroom

clearly Lynch is a WASP Eagle Scout Woody Allen

(when they were both nominated for the best directing Oscar in '87 btw, Woody said Blue Velvet was the year's best film)

There is definitely a seed of truth in that article, but yeah, so many exceptions as to render it muddy enough to not be able to make any sorta full proof case for it.

I think it was in The Art Life he was talking about how for a while as a teenager he was running with a bad crew and things were bleak... his details were sparse... was where he gets some his concept of trouble or "evil". I picture him as Jeffrey Beaumont in the back of Frank's car.

Oh, I mangled that a bit. I was definitely that kid in the back seat of a car a few times as a teen, so maybe I'm projecting but probably not totally.

although i will say it is strange that the original series had more black actors than The Return.

― flappy bird, Friday, 1 September 2017 03:08

I watched it all recently and I think there was more people of colour in general. Mostly great northern employees, law people and doctors in minor speaking roles.

Has anyone seen his Duran Duran movie?

I have. I didn't like it, and couldn't really detect any sort of lynch influence on it. It was hard to believe he was involved. But I don't really like Duran Duran beyond the hitz and I was bored and turned it off about a quarter of the way through, so maybe bloodcurdling Duran Duran horror takes place later on and I missed it

the powermad speed metal --> "love me" sequence in wild at heart, with the girl screaming in ecstasy sample triggered over and over, is david lynch's sense of humor at its very best

btw here is the story of how powermad became involved with lynch and wild at heart (among many other detours): http://nightflight.com/rock-stories-wild-at-heart-director-david-lynch-meets-powermad/

That Metal/Elvis scene is one of my favorite things he’s ever done. Feel very alone in rating Wild at Heart higher than seemingly everyone.

It's definitely gone from overrated to underrated.

I rewatched it recently and liked it a lot more than I thought I would. The way the story is broken up into flashbacks and oddball detours gives the film a weird flow. Hopefully they'll put out a fancy edition with all of the deleted stuff. Since The Return, we've been plowing through everything he's done chronologically. It all fits together well and more or less equally for me. Dune is the only one that really sticks out. And Duran Duran.

The Cowboy & The Frenchman was one of the best surprises.

The Cowboy and Frenchman is still randomly quoted (probably incorrectly) amongst some dork friends of mine thanks to a random drunken late night screening of his shorts eons ago. It struck us as super funny at the moment. Almost don’t want to revisit it.

I understand the criticisms of Wild at Heart, but it’s kinda Lynch’s most blown out Audio/Visual MTV Experience and it’s totally thrilling on that level.

I don’t think it holds up totally as a film, but there are enough scenes... cuts, color, sound, music that are really peak Lynch to me.

His new book of nude photography anyone? Not sure I want it but I'm curious to see who he photographs but it's probably all little known models. Wonder if there will be anything odd.

Lecturing today on THE ELEPHANT MAN and Lynch’s simple, precise, unfathomably powerful use of point of view; i.e the sequence with the frightened nurse in Merrick’s room

— Adam Nayman (@brofromanother) February 14, 2018

Also thinking of the amazing fact of Hurt, Hopkins and Gielgud present and sharply triangulated for a single scene - directed by a 34-year-old

— Adam Nayman (@brofromanother) February 14, 2018

The distended scene of the old man in the bank fetching water in the TP s2 finale put me in mind of the dinner scene in Cinderfella and sent me to googling. Lynch as Jerry Lewis' heir in "comedy of duration":

http://www.brightwalldarkroom.com/2017/09/04/lynch-time-and-comedy/

heh... you are going to love season 3

well, as that piece says, it's been a pretty constant trope for him through his career. (i stopped reading before the Dougie content.)

this is a great read. i like this bit about the botched comedy hitman scene in Mulholland Drive:

Just as the act of cleaning up won’t end, neither will the scene. It should have ended when he accomplished his goal, but once the accident is introduced, an intrusion of contingency that has no plot meaning, we are moved sideways rather than forward. We are made aware of the things going on in this building that are not important to the plot, and that therefore we should never have known about, or that at least should never have become part of the action.

it really captures one of the ways in which he sort of pushes against the edges of the frame where most directors let the holy narrative dictate things

What are some non-TP examples of this (comedy of duration)? I'm drawing a bit of a blank and the piece moves on to talk about Lynch's approach to comedy in general. The Cowboy & the Frenchman has some of this iirc but in general it seems to be something he saves for this show.

Yeah, the elevator door in Eraserhead that takes juuust a little bit too long to close comes to mind.

xpost to morbs but an example for wins, too

The hitman scene is more in line with a typical comedy crescendo of complications than something like the bank scene imo

The fight scene in the missing pieces is a great companion piece to the Andy floorboard scene in the same way that the bank scene is to the waiter scene

Family Guy chicken fight gag maybe the lowest common denominator version of this

idk what that is but there are like thousands of examples (I think there's an ilx thread "the joke goes on too long & that's the joke"), sideshow bob stepping on the rakes, Stewart Lee standup, loads of monty python but I always think of the "bring out yr dead" bit

just so you know why the waiter and the bank clerk remind me of Lewis:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvrmgJHltGY

Ha good catch. I wouldn't be surprised at all if both lynch & frost (who I suspect has more input into these types of scenes than ppl assume) are Lewis fans

well, they're the right age! Werner Herzog is.

My personal favorite in this vein:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAaifw-cVoQ

Family guy chicken sequence > Lewis tbf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gnZN4SEhjA

Family Guy [insert any skit here] < literally anything that's ever been created throughout history

Eric eternally correct on this

Hmm *studies next move*

Lewis so much better than wretched family guy but of course lynch is a recurring player in the Cleveland show so the inspiration could be running in all kinds of directions

and Herzog has been on American Dad!....

the relevant scene i think of first in the first hour of TP s3 is the protracted delay and frustration rhythms leading to the discovery of the head and body in South Dakota (woman and her dog, idiot in the alley, etc).

lynch is a recurring player in the Cleveland show

This fact is still weirder than any of Lynch's work.

the relevant scene i think of first in the first hour of TP s3 is the protracted delay and frustration rhythms leading to the discovery of the head and body in South Dakota (woman and her dog, idiot in the alley, etc).

While it's true that's a type of reliable comedy scene -- eg, the guy who comes to WC Fields in the middle of the night looking for "Carl LaFong" -- when Lynch does it, he usually leaves out the jokes, I think? I mean, Hank Worden giving the thumbs-up and the ancient bank office fetching water is kinda funny, but not really. Or funny-strange, not funny-haha (which is also how some categorize Jerry Lewis).