David Lynch - Classic or Dud

it was an interesting experimental film, I still don't love it though

I think the films he made after that brought the viewer in more, bit by bit.

I want to rewatch The Elephant Man

I’ve actually never seen The Elephant Man, need to rectify that.

It’s very good. Sorta like The Straight story in that it is remembered as one of his more mainstream movies but it’s chock full of Lynch nuggets.

also his saddest film by a mile

It has an amazing ending.

Remember watching it with my roommate years ago and we were both trying not to blubber.

My brain has wanted to think about Twin Peaks lately, but I don’t have the time/patience for podcasts (so not sure how to really scratch the itch). I’ve been doing a sort-of TP rewatch by watching just the episodes that Lynch directed himself, followed by FWWM/Missing Pieces (and I guess eventually The Return again, it’s been a year or so since I first rewatched it).

The Diary of Laura Palmer is probably the best off-the-screen TP work and it works as a Twin Peaks object. The audiobook is supposedly excellent but I don’t know if I can do it.

I just finished a rewatch of OG Twin Peaks - trying to work up the courage to do Fire Walk With Me. Have never seen The Missing Pieces and I guess I may as well?

Don’t know when I’ll redo The Return - the first time through was one of the absolute greatest screen experiences of my life and I’m kind of afeared that it might lose some of its power the second time round.

Would definitely want to do it on Blu-ray with a decent sound system tho. Watching it on streaming I did get a bit annoyed by compression artefacts in the dark parts of the screen. Want my TP blackest ever black pls.

The Missing Pieces are really interesting and feel (to me) like integral, if less essential, parts of the story. I understand why none of them were in the final cut; though there are a few that I could make an argument for including.

Re FWWM, Missing Pieces, and courage: there's a fan edit out there that combines the two pretty well, making the movie a bit easier to take.

I'm slowly rewatching for the first time, and for some reason started with my first watch of the actual movie. I'm into the Return now and decided to leave the famous episode 8 until I'm done the rest. See what I can see in it after Cooper biffs it.

My favourite fan content is our own Simon's The Lodgers podcast and this guy's videos which I'll probably watch again later.

Haven't checked out the diary yet. Is the "Diane.." Cooper tapes book or audiobook worthwhile too?

I have listened to the two Mark Frost books which are pretty fun, and further the lore a bit and wrap up some minor storylines. But I feel like they'd be out the window if Lynch decided to make anything else.

emsworth: I'm enjoying The Return the second time through. Not looking at everything as a potential "clue" and just letting it wash over, it's different and good.

The diary is an essential companion piece to the series and especially the film, & if the latter had never been made would take its place as the most sustained/focused look at the real horror behind the murder mystery & kind of a justification of the whole enterprise for me? It’s not that the incest & abuse would be absent from the series otherwise — it’s kind of everywhere, but diffused in the town & its secrets, the world & its spinning, all the cycles and splits and breakages — but without these two extended bits from Laura’s perspective I think so much essence is lost from the story

(The story goes that Jennifer Lynch wrote it in like 3 weeks, then lost the manuscript and *rewrote* it in like 3 days, there’s def a rawness)

fwwm is such a punctum/eye of the duck for me, I should prob watch that fan edit one day but I just hate the idea of putting the missing pieces back in and diluting the film (tho of course I understand why you might need to make it “easier to take” considering the subject); also just on a formal level the editing style of tmp is so different, much closer to the return (it was the last thing in my mini-rewatch just before tptr dropped and it really primed me for the feel of those first parts). A big part of fwwm’s power is that it feels sort of apart from the series, the idea of the edit feels a bit like a fan tried to “improve” part 8 by cutting away to Lucy & Andy during the nuclear explosion

haha I don't think there is anything like that. Just full scenes arranged in whatever best order they could work out. Though I've only seen each once (the edit, then eventually the movie and the Missing Pieces), I noticed that the Philip Jeffries section was really diminished by going on longer. That really unexpectedly hit me in the movie as something terrifying.

I wonder if its seeing the film first but i just think that once youre past the prologue *anything* else just feels like pulling focus in an unfortunate way (and i love all those scenese, ed & nadine in the car is all time)

I think the compressed Jeffries scene is ideal for the film but I love the extended convenience store sequence with all the animal chattering - the worst bit of lynch/engels humour is around here tho & makes me feel weird about being the guy who's like "twin peaks fire walk with me is a masterpiece, one of the most radically empathetic works of fiction, and its supplementary film the missing pieces is an essential primer for the sequel series that manages to define the current era better than almost anything produced since. Nowhere is this more apparent than when the Buenos Aires bellhop says 'mr jeffries de shit it come out of my ass!' I'm smart"

The autobiography of Dale Cooper is pretty good and had a few genuine lol bits. It feels very true to the character. Not essential like the diary, but much more enjoyable than the Frost books. The Diane tapes are a different thing, and to make knowledge are only available on out of print cassette. It’s good but it has some continuity problems and isn’t worth spending $$$ for a tape.

The access guide to the town is very good and pretty funny.

xps the diane tapes are fluff along the lines of maclachlan hosting SNL, worth hearing once. The autobiography (which is a completely separate thing, confusingly) is entertaining enough & really funny in places, it's a piece of the version of twin peaks where windom earle matters

In terms of semi canonical twin peaks tie in media I'd say diary > tmp > palmer family interview > log lady intros > secret history > autobiography >>>>>>>>>>>>> diane >>>> final dossier

xp!

Never came across a copy of the access guide

The Diane tapes are a different thing, and to make knowledge are only available on out of print cassette. It’s good but it has some continuity problems and isn’t worth spending $$$ for a tape.

should be piratable too, def don't buy it

I'm thinking I should bump up the palmer interview in that ranking

lol I did not realize "My Life, My Tapes" was a different thing from "Diane ..", the book of supposed tapes. Thanks, will enjoy.

"Re FWWM, Missing Pieces, and courage: there's a fan edit out there that combines the two pretty well, making the movie a bit easier to take."

yeah i would rarely make a case for something like this, but I recommend watching both FWWM and this fan edit; it makes the best use of those removed scenes and includes everything you'd care about from them. It's very well done.

Just full scenes arranged in whatever best order they could work out.

aiui the order is almost entirely taken from the shooting script?

Think so yeah

I only read My Life, My Tapes once but it made an impression on me. There was cool stuff in there, the amputated hands holding chess pieces or black and white squares? something like that.

Compressed Jeffries vs. complete Jeffries is interesting... I agree the way it's all edited in the film is much more creepy and unsettling, though it's probably pretty confusing for someone who doesn't know the lore; the complete scenes spell everything out more (same with the extended "meeting" above the convenience store, and the other bits with those characters).

That said, I guess the extra Jeffries scenes are the Missing Pieces whose canonicity is debatable, as his references to "Miss Judy" and "Judy's place in Seattle" conflict w/the later retcon (though maybe you could get a No-Prize by suggesting that he's speaking in code or something).

FWIW, the two extra scenes that I could see inserting into the film are Laura & Donna driving from the Roadhouse to the Canadian bar with the two guys (I think the transition btw. those two settings is confusing in the movie); and the "I'm the muffin / You're the muffin" scene in Donna's living room (not just b/c it's a really nice scene, but also because bits of the dialogue become important later - especially something Donna's dad says).

If I made a fan edit, I might also drop the scene where Cooper predicts the specifics of the next murder to Albert, describes what the next victim is doing right now, etc. That exchange feels a little too "extra" to me (Cooper's intuitive and has interesting dreams, but he's not a psychic!).

I think he pretty much is a psychic as far as it goes tbh - “the log lady will be here in one minute”

The missing piece I might put in is the other Palmer dinner, as a contrast to the “wash your hands” scene, they’re genuinely happy but there’s something unnerving and desperate about it

pic.twitter.com/MbJfV7QdoY

— [ominous whoosh] (@ominouswhoosh) August 7, 2022

In terms of semi canonical twin peaks tie in media I'd say diary > tmp > palmer family interview > log lady intros > secret history > autobiography >>>>>>>>>>>>> diane >>>> final dossier

i don't think anyone agrees, but personally, Invitation to Love is the most enjoyable Twin Peaks-adjacent thing. i enjoy it more the 12th time around then on the very first

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFMen60b6UQ

Something that’s never explained in the movie is what it is about the Teresa Banks murder that leads Gordon Cole to classify it as a Blue Rose case in the first place… like what were the details of a seemingly unremarkable murder that raised his antennae. I suppose it’s one of those things that doesn’t have a clear answer (unless it’s addressed in one of the books)?

A question I have on Blue Velvet (after a rewatch) concerns Jeffrey, and his general "motivation" (the "detective or pervert" angle)... like, why does he sleep with Dorothy Vallens in the first place, especially given his (apparently genuine) interest in Sandy? I suppose he's supposed to remind of a Fred MacMurray character in a b&w movie – a "normal" guy with a weakness, tempted into a web of darkness – but this angle is not really developed, and he comes off as more just a cad. Then the conflict w/Sandy (after the great/uncomfortable scene in her living room) is resolved so easily, with a single phone call...

Wikipedia sez there's an hour plus worth of deleted scenes from this movie – maybe some of those flesh out Jeffrey's character? – though I feel like the film's "tightness" is one of is virtues, hard to imagine it really benefiting from add'l footage.

🍆

lol

Jeffrey's a kid, he's not very experienced, and Sandy's even more of a kid. Dorothy is 100 percent grown up, she's alluring for her casual sexuality and also for all of the mysteries and secrets she's tied to. (Plus she's Isabella Rossellini, that doesn't hurt.)

Exactly.

He wants both things. Look at the color of their dresses.

I forgot how substantial Laura Dern's role is... she's so good

I think that every time I watch her in anything.

I borrowed a DVD of Wild at Heart from the library. I think I only saw the movie once, when it first came out (I was pretty young), or mayyybe once more on VHS... I remembered very little about it beforehand, but recognized many of the moments as I watched.

In the first scene or two, I thought, "Oh, this is gonna be a disaster"... but as you get into its rhythm, the film sort of draws you in and becomes very watchable. Some of the critiques that came into my head early on – these don't feel like "real characters"; Lynch is going for a sort of campy theatricality but it's not "landing," etc. – ended up falling away / seeming irrelevant. I sort of didn't want to leave the characters behind at the end.

Part of that may come from watching the movie with an "on its own terms" generosity that wasn't easy in 1990. I remember there being such a strong vibe around "Lynch's first film since Blue Velvet," and esp coming on the heels of Twin Peaks S1; the hype level was so high. A lot of stuff in the movie that seemed like "random weirdness" at the time (oh, there's Jack Nance, doing a new variation on his Blue Velvet character... etc.) is easier to digest now (some of the violence/gore maybe still feels like a bit much, but now it just "is what it is").

It helps that the acting is so good... Laura Dern of course, but also Willem Dafoe in particular (whom I can normally take or leave, but man did he nail this role).

It was never among my top-tier Lynch, but having watched the deleted scenes (which unpack/expand a lot), I realize now how willfully obtuse and inexplicable a lot of the movie is. Which I guess is a valid artistic choice but kinda bugs me. It feels more like a hack trying to make something more Lynchian rather than just Lynch being Lynch.

On the whole, I'm just glad David Lynch made a movie with Nicolas Cage. Keeps all of us from always having to wonder.

I really should see it again (or maybe not) but my one time watching Wild at Heart I thought it was amazing and maybe his best movie (I saw this sometime in the early 2000s maybe a year or two after having seen Mulholland Drive). The characters are over the top in the best way, so many random weird and amazing scenes (I like this one in particular: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZ8ar_wuHfI).

Was very surprised afterward learning that it was considered to be his worst movie by a lot of people.

Wild at Heart is a blast and I think one of his most stylistically thrilling movies. Great editing, sound design, and in general just kinda pops off the screen.

I’ve always maintained it’s unfairly maligned. And tbh, considering what a sacred cow FWWM had become, I think it’s silly to accuse it of being “willfully obtuse” and “Lynch doing Lynch” when that film is frequently way more egregious in those respects.

To clarify, it seems like Lynch often works according to his own narrative logic, which is extremely subjective and might come off as willfully obtuse, but once you see the untrimmed Wild at Heart laid out, it's clear that there was at one point a much more straightforward narrative at play (hell, even the completely bizarre Crispin Glover sequence makes more sense). As such, the edits that were subsequently made seem to be very self-consciously about making things weeeeird rather than this just being a natural outgrowth of Lynch's inherent weirdness.

Also for the sake of clarity, this might be my second or third least favorite Lynch but it's Lynch so it's still way better than a whole lot of other stuff. And there's a lot to love in this movie.

Is the untrimmed Wild at Heart commercially available?
I don't find it particularly obtuse, by Lynch's standards - not by comparison to e.g. Lost Highway.

Also for the sake of clarity, this might be my second or third least favorite Lynch but it's Lynch so it's still way better than a whole lot of other stuff. And there's a lot to love in this movie.

very much the same for me. i will always watch Wild At Heart.

There's a Wild at Heart Collector's Edition which has the deleted scenes. They are presented in the same manner as the deleted scenes on Blue Velvet or the Missing Pieces. They are not integrated within the existing movie but presented as a separate work.

xp afaik there isn’t an untrimmed version available at all, there was a box set that had all of the deleted scenes (taken from a workprint so not great quality) - it was called “the lime green box” or something like that, should be torrentable still

Watching them did make me like the film better but I agree with vast halo that the film was p straightforward without them? But more HDS is always good

xp my info is outdated I guess!