David Lynch - Classic or Dud

I happen to be in the middle of a (very) longform analysis of The Return; she goes into great detail around the visual and thematic parallels w/Eraserhead (and Blue Velvet).

sweeeeeeet, i want to read that.

also: eraserhead is funny. like, very, very funny. i guess people know that, but in the pop culture lynch word cloud, i feel like "funny" doesn't come up often, and especially not for stuff like eraserhead, which is also very, very terrifying. but i can see why it grabbed the attention of mel brooks - absurd recognizes absurd. (probably influenced by the fact that the first words i saw on the screen on my millionth rewatch this evening were "ABSURDA")

thanks for that link morrisp - enjoying the deep dive

was just reading the bit about the ep 1 New York box - she talks about the horror movie trope of being punished for having sex and that's absolutely in play (I appreciate too her kinder reading of sex representing a scary unknown for younger people) - and I remember there's definitely a sense that fucking somehow summons the entity in the box...

but in tandem with this there's a feeling that the dude is being derelict in his duty by _not watching the box_, like that's his One Job - and I was toying with the idea of this being a inverse of the schrodinger's cat thought experiment - like maybe that watching the box is the thing that stops some kind of terrifying quantum uncertainty from manifesting - then in the next paragraph that critic starts to talk about Heisenberg but coming at it from a completely different route - via coffee and Annie in S2 and Alphaville! - and anyway it was quite a trippy couple of paragraphs to be reading before dawn

I feel I will never grow tired of letting my mind roam over the landscape of this show

Glad you're enjoying it! Yeah, her attention to detail is incredible - I mean just incredible, she pores over every detail of the frame - and she goes on some fascinating tangents (and even if a certain % of the connections she draws may seem dubious, in a "no way could all this actually have been intended" kind of way, her free associations are fascinating all the same).

I discovered that site around four years ago, in the context of her Kubrick writing, and read her shot-by-shot analysis of Eyes Wide Shut (it took me days!). I revisited it a week or so ago, and found she had tackled The Return in the interim... I was like, oohhhh snap, gotta read this.

(Also, certain aspects of The Return have always felt sort of Kubrick-ian to me; so it was satisfying to see that this particular Kubrick nut is also a TP/Lynch nut.)

It's also a nice complement to other online Twin Peaks writing (my personal favorite is by this guy), because she doesn't get so much into analyzing the "big picture" questions or coming up with big theories, and instead tackles the show on more a nuts & bolts level of what a viewer's impressions may be as they watch in real time (though obviously she's writing it after having absorbed it all).

I wouldn't normally dare be so gauche as to post a meme, but this is scarily relatable to me:

https://scontent-lax3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.6435-9/fr/cp0/e15/q65/228764671_375111773982087_8199663706223836590_n.jpg?_nc_cat=104&ccb=1-4&_nc_sid=8024bb&efg=eyJpIjoidCJ9&_nc_ohc=CifgfXR39_oAX9cknLZ&tn=XH2JVfvgE2vGS31K&_nc_ht=scontent-lax3-1.xx&oh=2d354f5457e2b7d8f12168b1f9d04f44&oe=61368AAA

so relatable

Sounds bad, folks

ICYMI, the original, seemingly reliable Reddit insider tipster now says David Lynch’s long-gestating project with Netflix, Wisteria / Unrecorded Night, is no longer in development there.“It's possible that it maybe goes to someone else or maybe they start prod again @ later date” https://t.co/73bOrUDhXa

— --------- (@fatecolossal) September 23, 2021

Was kinda waiting for this news tbh given no official announcement 4 months after they were meant to have started filming - I assume the pandemic spiked it

Ah well. We'll always have the weather reports.

Unrecorded Wisteria

I watched The Straight Story, on Disney+ (based on a recommendation in the Inland Empire thread). What a remarkable movie. Really glad I saw it (I really had a misconception of what it would be like).

hey morrisp, what age kids do you think would appreciate the Straight Story?

It's sounding like a new film may be debuting at Cannes

So the answer is Blue Velvet / Wild at Heart and Twin Peaks (I'm glad to see so many people are as excited as I am about a new David Lynch film) - Variety have just run an article about Lightyear https://t.co/31du84ygoc

— Kaleem Aftab (@aftabamon) April 11, 2022

In related news, I'm planning to catch Inland Empire at Austin Film Society the 2nd week of May

xp I'd say older preteen or teenager; it's not very "kid"-oriented, despite the much-discussed G rating.

xp (to myself)

Don't know who this guy is, but –

David Lynch just told me in no uncertain terms he does not have a new film at Cannes this year. Take that for what it’s worth.

Also, um I just had David Lynch on the podcast.

Coming soon. pic.twitter.com/1GnPftrqBA

— Josh Horowitz (@joshuahorowitz) April 12, 2022

david lynch is the kinda guy who says "film" and "television" and ne'er the twain shall meet so

doesn't seem like he is dissembling. was really looking forward to something new

hopped back into rewatch of TP The Return last night, episode 5, so so so good

I've been watching arguments about this tweet for a while now, so you should see it.

instructive comparison on "dark suburbia" might be david lynch vs thomas pynchon: for lynch the dark stuff is all incursions from some supernatural and/or criminal outside, for pynchon suburbs are basically little nazi factories

— joolsd (@joolsd) April 15, 2022

everyone is replying “this is a misreading of lynch” and they’re all right

I was indifferent at first but it's been going for a while now so I'm gonna back it.

I know a ceiling fan that begs to differ

suburbs in the return a blasted wasteland full of isolated people in addicted trances an inch from gun violence iirc

what he's sentimental about is "small towns", but still the rot is inside. (the only transmission project blue book ever receives is from the woods.) and the traditional reverse of the reactionary coin-- the corrupt city-- doesn't really appear either, not even in eraserhead (tho maybe on giedi prime): his vision of j. edgars from philadelphia is of knight-errants. (but still the rot is inside.)

(well of course there's hollywood lol. he likes it tho.)

Lol

yeah yeah suburban concupiscence allows the extra dimensional demons to enter your brain and force you to commit atrocities https://t.co/mYSV0eN2Ih

— joolsd (@joolsd) April 17, 2022

I'd say he also gets moist-eyed thinking of the rot.

I mean if he wants shots fired, why not just say Lynch is Mike Love with better aesthetics?

better hair

Reads more Freud.

Wild that anyone could watch fwwm and take away that Leland is “forced to commit atrocities” lol

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BNjZjNjIyYjgtMjc2ZS00MWY2LWFiZmItOTM3YzFlZDRkNTNkXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNjUxMjc1OTM@._V1_.jpg

It’s funny cause the idea that “dark suburbia” is lynch’s thing really only comes from blue velvet & twin peaks, & in the latter more developed work it couldn’t be clearer that the suburban middle class home is THE site of evil in this story even if you insist on being thuddingly literal about “supernatural entities” or w/e

I watched The Straight Story, on Disney+ (based on a recommendation in the Inland Empire thread). What a remarkable movie. Really glad I saw it (I really had a misconception of what it would be like)

After bringing up The Straight Story on that thread we watched it a couple of days ago. It had been a long time since I last saw it - I always liked it, but now I think it's a major work of his. I can't think of a better depiction of regret and forgiveness. It's not underrated; I've been underrating it.

My dad is a vietnam vet in his 70s and I finally made him watch the Straight Story. He watched all of it which means he must have liked it.

It holds up amazingly well.

The scene in the bar where Straight reflects on his war experiences is arresting (especially b/c it kind of comes out of nowhere).

Farnsworth and Spacek’s performances are terrific… I see the film won and/or was nominated for various awards (including an Oscar nom for Farnsworth), which were clearly well deserved. All I remember from the “discourse” at the time was — “David Lynch made a G-rated Disney film about a guy on a tractor! hurr hurr hurr”

Looks like Mary Sweeney had a lot to do with the film as well

In re Lynch and suburbia, his work doesn’t really have a lot of suburbia in it. As noted above, mostly small towns and cities, tho The Return does have that great Vegas subdivision. But if I’m parsing the original tweet right, it’s more saying that Lynch’s portrayal of evil doesn’t have a political agenda (or even political awareness), which I think is pretty much true. His villains and dark forces are rooted in more primal, individual desires and appetites. In that sense, settings aren’t that important, because those things are everywhere.

i guess but also that tweet is trying to say that the supernatural incursions come from *outside* whatever environment or person he's depicting, which is basically the opposite of the truth, it's always from the inside

inland empire made me reflect on this further bc as with most lynch work it has nothing to do with suburbia but does i think contend with the environment of flagrant abuse and trauma that hollywood is just an inch below the surface, and depicts these cycles of abuse as a story that's being told and retold with different people in different positions

starting to think of fire walk with me, mulholland dr., and inland empire as a loose trilogy of films all about the same thing (with lost highway like an uneven sketch of the space between fwwm and md), only one of them taking place in suburbia

you can still argue that this is apolitical but idk i can easily shape it into something political through reading, like even identifying and observing the nature of "evil" through this prism can feel like an implicit critique of systems and all the jungian shadows that form when people try to align themselves with systems

lol I was totally conflating suburbia with “small towns” upthread wasn’t I (I think the point stands, neither are hugely a focus)

Isn’t the actual inland empire part of the suburban sprawl around la (along with Pomona which also comes up)? I am v bad with this stuff (need to reread city of quartz but I will only forget it all again) but that seems potentially interesting ito placing the site of dread on the margins - but again not not political

There’s definitely some sort of class dimension in how many of the terrible uncanny figures in lynch code as poor & itinerant: drifter Bob, the hobo-like woodsmen, world of truck drivers, man behind the dumpster, the travelling circus in IE; but there are different ways to read this & the reductive takes don’t quite fit (many of the dreadful underworld figures are rich, many of the benevolent figures are poor (Shelly & the homeless ppl in IE spring to mind))

I have to quibble a bit with the idea that it has nothing to do with suburbia. Once she has her mental break about an hour into the film, doesn't she find herself trapped in suburban limbo? Isn't that what On High In Blue Tommorrows is about, suburban trysts? And isn't the title of the film a reference to suburban Los Angeles?

Lol, in other words, wins otm

hm yes i guess you’re right that is part of it

but this suburbia is also connected to like hollywood blvd and poland

one of many chords he’s playing

The actual IE is not suburban L.A.

like even identifying and observing the nature of "evil" through this prism can feel like an implicit critique of systems and all the jungian shadows that form when people try to align themselves with systems

otm

the bad, or dangerous, or violent, or haunted, or maybe only transitional place in IE-- "the marketplace", the place where the "chemical factory" makes it so you can't "think straight"-- is a place in the mind, some kind of trauma castle (with its one-way doors and scenery flats and narrow alleys and opaque windows and dark stairwells and extreme closeups of porous material signaling shifts from one layer of perception to another while sitting on suburban carpet setting a small fire in the late afternoon, this is the lynch movie that most seems to take place in the brain, like a whole movie in the black lodge) but that's exactly why it also works as broader social critique, w palimpsestic resonance beyond-but-including hollywood/america/capitalism, instead of only being a movie about how glad lynch is that his career after dune found+followed a back alley.

Can you connect the dots? It’s also a broader social critique because…?