David Lynch - Classic or Dud

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!

I like Wild at Heart, even though it's not one of my Lynch faves. I've always thought of it as his comedy — almost all of his stuff has humor in it, obviously, but Wild at Heart has a kind of consistent zaniness that's different than any of the other movies. The jokes are steadily punctuated by violence and unsettling events, so in a way I feel like it's an interrogation of comedy — what's actually funny, where's the line, how far can you push it. I don't know, I'm not saying it's a super coherent statement as a film, but that's my sense of it.

(Also obviously it's his Wizard of Oz tribute, in somewhat the same way Inland Empire is a Lewis Carroll homage.)

That’s interesting about the deleted scenes…

I just read a long analysis of Blue Velvet, that ends with this remark:

Having just seen the deleted scenes, I can say that there's not a single thing in them that would do anything other than detract from the film and subvert what became Blue Velvet. Some ruthless, brilliant editing was done that pulled together a tight picture that in significant ways was radically different from what was initially imagined.

there are a bunch of scenes about Jeffrey's college life and girlfriend that are uniformly bad and needed to be cut to make Blue Velvet at all watchable

I remember when I saw Pulp Fiction, it felt like a less weird Wild at Heart with all of the sexual undertones - overtones? - with all of the naughty bits either removed or turned into cartoonish naughty bits, as if Quentin Tarantino was uncomfortable with sex. I had a similar feeling with Natural Born Killers. They both felt like less interesting variations of Lynch's film made by overgrown children without any of the underlying weirdness. Or with imitations of the underlying weirdness. I'm reasonably confident that this isn't an original take, but it was my first thought.

When I was young I remember that David Lynch was all over the media. He was hot stuff. But it's surprising how few films he has actually directed. How little he has to show. I assume he must have found it really hard to get funding, which might explain all the media appearances; he was selling himself. His IMDB entry is dominated, totally dominated with shorts. Short films, not shorts. I don't mean that his IMDB entry is dominated with shorts. He wears formal wear. Not shorts.

And yet he was all over the media because he was good in interviews and he looked the part; along with Tim Burton he was the model, the very archetype of the early-1990s arty-but-famous mainstream-underground creative talent. I'm surprised to find out his most recent feature film was Inland Empire back in 2006. His most recent credit is the video for "I Am the Shaman", a song by Donovan(!) released in 2021(!). I remember he did an album. With a woman. Sort of floaty singing noises. With a woman. I imagine him sitting at the mixing desk looking at the faders, thinking about Monica Bellucci.

He's obviously busy, but when I think of him I am filled with a wistful sense of melancholy because he reminds me of glossy magazines.

There was def some stuff toward the beginning of WAH that had me thinking it felt like a possible source for some of Tarantino's schtick (line readings like: "Did I ever tell you this snakeskin jacket represents my individuality and belief in personal freedom?"). Or maybe it was just kind of synchronicity... WAH feels plugged into the era's "indie film scene" in a certain way – Crispin Glover showing up; John Lurie sitting around in one scene – that I don't otherwise associate w/Lynch so much.

It's also true there was a mini-trend of violent, "young lovers on the run" flicks in the early '90s – I know QT wrote True Romance and (sort of wrote) Natural Born Killers – not sure if WAH "inspired" either of those screenplays or if he already had them going.

His cameo in Spielberg’s autobiographical The Fablemans has gone down well. Apparently it’s a spoiler to say who he plays so I won’t dig.

"The audience broke into cheers and claps three times during david lynch’s cameo... and it was well deserved." "Judd Hirsch & David Lynch should go for Best Supporting Oscar as a team."https://t.co/NSzBZE2UuO pic.twitter.com/xV8HLvTIei

— --------- (@fatecolossal) September 11, 2022

Fabelmans, sorry.

No weather report for weeks now. I hope he's OK.

I finally revisited Lost Highway… this is the one that put me off Lynch for decades, when I saw it in the theater. I was surprised by how little of it I remembered; basically just the beginning section and a little at the end. I had no memory of the entire Balthazar Getty story in the middle, which is the most entertaining/engaging part!

It’s wild how much that section has the “look & feel” of Mulholland Drive… not just the way it’s filmed (although very much that), but also the unhurried but deliberate pacing, and the (genuinely funny) offbeat humor involving bizarre violence. The “road rage” scene is great.

The movie is different from most Lynch films in a few ways; his main characters are usually extremely vivid, which is not the case here… they’re quite “blank,” I guess on purpose. Also, the soundtrack has not much Badalamenti, and instead these songs with vocals that sort of pop in and distract from the action rather than complementing it (…Lou Reed doing “This Magic Moment”?!).

The brief appearance of Marilyn Manson is (obviously) unfortunate, in retrospect; and along with some of the music, grounds the film a little too strongly in that specific mid-‘90s L.A., Ray Gun magazine milieu.

I enjoyed watching it, and thought a lot of it was pretty compelling (not sure why I had such a negative reaction in college!)… but it’s hard to avoid feeling like it didn’t quite “work” the way it should. Or maybe seeing it as a rough draft of the (far superior) Mulholland Drive…

how oj simpson-y was it, iyo? i just recently heard that the case inspired the story.

It doesn't quite work except as a draft. The actors are unpleasant and not well cast (Getty? Loggia? Pryor?). The opening credit sequence is tops, though.

I thought Loggia was great!

He wanders in from a funnier film.

great capsule review morrisp (and good calls Alfred)

Thx! I’m actually glad I ended up seeing his later movies this way – getting newly interested with Twin Peaks: The Return; then watching Mulholland Drive; and then the others – as I doubt I would’ve appreciated them as much otherwise.

I keep getting ads for a David Lynch MFA program and it seems like it’s just… transcendental meditation classes?

I’d rather have a John Carpenter MFA, he’ll get high and challenge you to some NBA 2K.

it seems like it’s just… transcendental meditation classes?

Adds up. Should have some meteorology as well though.

we should have a thread like 'what's on your favorite artist's mfa curriculum'

i want to attend whoever's is like, we walk along a highway and look at leaves

Feel like that could be Kelly Reichardt

Very funny that the Eraserhead baby has an entry on the "Villains" wiki

— machine gun kelly reichardt (@LingoUnbound) March 8, 2023

I just got the ad for that “screenwriting” MFA program where it seems you actually learn TM… pretty funny.

David Lynch SCOOP! He says "bloody" in the British sense:

Now that's all in the bloody history books!

Also he has possibly been brainwashed by his TM gurus, going by the final lines in the interview.

https://www.reddit.com/r/FindLaura/comments/12unmgu/april_2023_cahiers_du_cinema_interview_with_david/

Interesting interview, thx

Wonder why he doesn’t want to hear about the new Dune movie(?)

The bloody is prob just an artefact of his answers being translated into French & then back again

Wonder why he doesn’t want to hear about the new Dune movie(?)

why would he?

None of that is new info. This paragraph hints more about what wont' be happening in the future.

"If I had the strength, I would prefer to embark on a series. If I had the strength..."

xp you tell me… I don’t know a lot about Dune, but I thought he was really displeased with what the studio did to his version etc. So it’s not immediately obvious to me why he would have bitter or complicated feelings about a new version

Everything direct interview I've ever read about him regarding his Dune is that it was an incredibly painful experience and I doubt he likes thinking about it, much less talking about it or seeing how someone else would approach the problem of Dune. David Lynch is very much about the WORK, and taking it seriously and making something that feels RIGHT. Dune was his movie that took the most amount of work in terms of dollars and sets and the sheer magnitude of it all was overwhelming and it turned out the most wrong. I've been wondering lately if the Criterion Collection will do Dune since they've done his other works, but if he has anything to do with it they won't. Not that he has any control over it, but he would not participate in it and it might would even damage their relationship. I think he appreciates that Dune had to happen for him to get where he is today, but it was a colossal public humiliation in his eyes.

What does he mean he didn't go to film school? He studied film at the American Film Institute, right? I gather that experience was very different than what we think of now as a film school; I think Eraserhead was more or less his film school. I don't know that he took a Fundamentals of How To Work A Camera class?

He goes on about fish so much, I have to wonder if he eats seafood.

None of the TM stuff is alarming, he's been going on about that stuff forever. It did him a lot of good, apparently, and so he thinks it would help everybody else.

Thx, Cow Art. It’s interesting that he still has such negative/complicated feelings about that movie, after 40 years of success (to put it mildly)

According to Edelstein, we couldn't do A Straight Story today because it's just a simple story, without a concept.

Oh, we can do whatever we want.

<3

It's an odd comment anyway, that movie totally has a "concept"... I suppose he meant a studio wouldn't know how to market it today, but I'm not sure why

That's also probably a translation issue.

Not that he has any control over it, but he would not participate in it and it might would even damage their relationship. I think he appreciates that Dune had to happen for him to get where he is today, but it was a colossal public humiliation in his eyes.

He actually showed some surprising interest in it in an interview last year:

AVC: Some notable filmmakers have returned to their works years later with re-edits, because just as a viewer’s relationship to a piece of art can change over time, so too can a creator’s. Was a new narrative cut something you ever considered with Inland Empire?

DL: No. But Dune—people have said, “Don’t you want to go back and fiddle with Dune?” And I was so depressed and sickened by it, you know? I want to say, I loved everybody that I worked with; they were so fantastic. I loved all the actors; I loved the crew; I loved working in Mexico; I loved everything except that I didn’t have final cut. And I even loved Dino [De Laurentiis], who wouldn’t give me what I wanted [laughs]. And Raffaella, the producer, who was his daughter—I loved her. But the thing was a horrible sadness and failure to me, and if I could go back in I’ve thought, well, maybe I would on that one go back in.

AVC: Really?

DL: Yeah, but I mean, nobody’s…it’s not going to happen.

AVC: Well that’s interesting, because in the past you were always much less open to it.

David Lynch: Yeah, I wanted to walk away. I always say, and it’s true, that with Dune, I sold out before I finished. It’s not like there’s a bunch of gold in the vaults waiting to be cut and put back together. It’s like, early on I knew what Dino wanted and what I could get away with and what I couldn’t. And so I started selling out, and it’s a sad, sad, pathetic, ridiculous story. But I would like to see what is there. I can’t remember, that’s the weird thing [laughs]. I can’t remember. And so it might be interesting—there could be something there. But I don’t think it’s a silk purse. I know it’s a sow’s ear.