David Lynch - Classic or Dud

Did anyone ever see that interview he did for scene by scene - i loved the bit where he's talking about "the eye of the duck" to describe the key scene in his films.

Also i highly recommend the book "Lynch on Lynch" - so much fun!

Umm. This movie is two years old. Why are we speculating on its award chances?

*waiting for backlash*

crosspost

Yeah, quite right. I read the book a year before the movie came out so my timing was perfect there...

although, N. has had my copy of the cinema one for nearly a year, now.

cremaster's opulent mythboredom reminded me a lot of dune

absolutely. it's funny how the production design seems to be the central concern of the film for much of its length, but unlike other well-appointed films, the design is actually so rich it actually sustains interest.

this movie redeems dino dilaurentis's reputation from all the europudding he's made. (well, this movie and "blue velvet.")

the last half hour is a mess, yes, but it's compelling for being so incomprehensible. the ending, if you haven't read the book, is just quizzical--all the more so for being so terrifically bombastic and theatrical.

FWWM, like Dune, does have a lot of extra footage still sitting there. As a fan of fractured, difficult art I'm not too bothered about seeing it restored. Pretty much all the series cast shot scenes.

Err, Lynch incidentally is brain-crushingly classic.

There's a much better book out there if you can find it at all -- The Making of Dune by Ed Naha. He was hired to essentially hang around on site during the entire length of filming and write a book about it all and did a fantastic job, I thought. While essentially uncritical about the final product itself, it actually doesn't talk about that so much as just the filming itself. Also laden with tons of photos.

Here's ten, in order of "classicness":

1. Mulholland Drive
2. Eraserhead
3. Blue Velvet
4. Wild at Heart
5. Elephant Man
6. Twin Peaks
7. The Straight Story
8. Dune
9. Fire Walk with Me
10. Lost Highway

1. Mulholland Drive
2. Blue Velvet
3. Eraserhead
4. Elephant Man
5. Lost Highway
6. Fire Walk with Me
7. Twin Peaks
8. Dune
9.The Straight Story

sorry, jaymc, my aside has troubled you, AND i used the wrong tense in one sentence!
and it revived a discussion, how about that ?
but huh ?, you haven't commented on Princess Anne and the BAFTAs, which was what i was getting at. Or anything else beyond the semantics of said paragraph. What do YOU THINK ?

I'm not sure I'll ever get round reading the book so could somebody please summarize what it adds to the movie?

David Lynch: Well, you know, nature can teach us a lot of things, and there's
something about, in painting, you're working within a certain shaped
canvas and there's many things that you, you know, one does
intuitively, to move the eye, you know, there's repetition of shape,
there's repetition of colour, but when you start looking at a duck,
you see your eye is moving in a certain way, and you see textures and
colours and shapes and you start wondering about a duck, what it can
teach us about, you know, any kind of abstract, you know, painting, or
proportions or even sequences, scenes, and it always is interesting
that the eye is in the perfect place - if you move it to the body, it
would get lost, if you move to the leg or the beak, it's two, kind of,
fast areas competing, even though the eye is the fastest, it's the
little jewel.

DL: Well, there's slow and fast. An empty room is a certain speed,
and a person standing there is another speed, and that proportion is,
you know, can be beautiful, if the room is a 2 and the person is a 7.
I think a person is around a 7; fire and electricity can go up to a 9,
for instance, or really intricately designed, you know, decorative
room is pretty disturbing, sometimes - it's too fast. But then if you
put something slow in it, it could work beautifully. A busy room and
a person, they fight each other. So...

MC: Is this to do with how fast our eye moves to scan it, to see
what's happening?

DL: It's a relationship thing, I think. Fast and slow areas.

MC: OK. What is the eye of the duck scene in Straight Story?

DL: I haven't thought about it. I have to think about it. I can't
just jump in and think, but I believe every film has the eye of the
duck scene. But, it can fool you. You know, which one it is - it
could be the scene we were talking about, I don't know.

MC: What's the eye of the duck scene in `Blue Velvet'?

DL: I used to know.

MC: Is it the `In Dreams' song.

DL: It's the eye of the duck, that's the eye of the duck, yes, yes.

[clip `in dreams']

MC: And what's the eye of the duck scene in Elephant Man?

DL: (laughs) I used to know.

MC: Is it the scene where he goes to the theatre? Near the end?

DL: No, I think, strangely, the eye of the duck scene is the ending.

yeah that's the upgrade that came later. that may be the source of what I have.

My favorite aspect about the Getty scenes are all the languorous images of back yards and sunsets fading in and out to bossa nova and trip hop cues. Getty isn't particularly sympathetic, but I like him as this dumb, hapless fuck up who never quite grasps what's going on around him. Kind of like how Pullman is perfect as this angry, snide jazz guy who never quite trusts his wife. These aren't relatable characters, but I'm not sure they're supposed to be. The tedium sets in when Pullman returns and a bunch of scenes and music cues get replayed.

Yeah I like how Getty's character (Pete) is dumb and easily manipulated; it's a nice treatment of the film noir / femme fatale trope.

If the film is really meant to be "a psychogenic fugue" (as it was encapsulated in the publicity materials) – a guy on death row imagines a whole other persona and set of events, as he dissociates from reality – there's so much "excess" in the film that it's hard to see how it reduces to that. And the details provided of Fred & Renee's life (and their "characters") are so sparse, and seemingly infected by these strange events from the beginning, that reducing the movie to "Fred murdered Renee and now he's hallucinating" feels like trying to stuff a huge inflatable bounce-house into a little box or something.

(Compare this to Mulholland Dr, where the final act is long, richly detailed, and carefully connects all, or most, of the dots an ingenious way.)

another thing I always notice about this film is how the composition of the Fred scenes tends to be extremely geometric in lots of interesting ways, but that goes away as it shifts over to Pete where things appear more naturalistic and less boxed in.

Robert Loggia is SO f'n good in this movie... just an absolute pleasure to watch.

One of my favorite Lynch sequences, and one that embodies the "feel" that I love in his work, is when Pullman describes his murder dream, with the ominous smoke drifting into the hallway. Some might accuse Lynch of recycling the same images over and over, but I'll never tire of how he shoots curtains, smoke, hallways and highways in headlights.

I like how confusing the geography of the house is, simultaneously small yet labyrinthine

Reading the Premiere story by David Foster Wallace and about what a shit Getty was didn't help lol.

Roffle. I remember reading that at the time and thinking "Well this guy's a tool."

I've always found following the clues in a Lynch film as missing-the-pointish as it would be in Antonioni or other pure vibes types. Guess according to the man himself I'm the one missing the point, lol.

Like let's say that Fred did kill Renee, and dissociates/imagines the rest in prison. Who was leaving the videotapes at their house (assuming that "really happened")? Was Fred doing that himself, even though there's no indication of such a thing? Did he really meet the Mystery Man at the party (whose face he had previously seen in a dream), or was that a hallucination? The host, Andy, also sees him, and says he's a friend of Dick Laurent's. Who said "Dick Laurent is dead" into the intercom?

If all of that is also somehow part of a retroactive "dream," you're left with the absolute barest-bones sketch of a marriage to hang the rest on. And if those things are real (as I think they're meant to be), what clues are we supposed to follow to understand it all?

I am almost sure I’ve bought more copies of LH than times I have watched it

Oh I guess I saw it at the cinema too

Watching a making-of doc… Pullman actually learned to play saxophone for his role, and memorized his two “pieces.” (I assumed it was dubbed!)

The Mystery Man is Fred's conscience. "Call me," I'm in your head right now.

He's the one making the tapes, leading Fred a few steps at a time back into the bedroom to face the truth.

Huh, thx, I’ll think that through…

Interestingly (to me), I recall having a similar reading of the role of the elderly couple in Mulholland Dr. (one of those few “extra pieces of the puzzle” in that film).

I did end up seeing Wild At Heart earlier this week. I thought it was a very enjoyable comedy. I've seen over-the-top Nic Cage a million times, but Laura Dern was absolutely boiling over as well and they clicked so well together. The rest of the cast were amazing too - Grace Zabriskie, Willem Dafoe. Jesus, what a memorable film!

One thing that I noticed throughout the movie that brought me down though, was I really feel like it used black actors as props. Of course, you have the absolutely ultra-brutal scene in the beginning where Sailor bashes his assailant's brain in. Later, in New Orleans, there is a scene where the camera just trucks across the face of an unusual-looking, older black woman who you don't see before or after. The feeling I got was "here's this weird-looking black woman - see how strange New Orleans is?" There's also a scene where they're getting gas and Lula is preening for this old black man sitting in a chair outside of the service station, and he's kinda just there to smile and show increasing excitement about how hot Lula is.

It's not the only time I've felt this about a quirky indie comedy (thinking about a lot of Coen Brothers films here), so I'm kinda halfheartedly writing it off as "those were the times..." But overall, the works of David Lynch that I'm familiar with are very white and don't engage much with race. The one exception off the top of my head is in Twin Peaks, in which you have Josie and a few other Chinese characters in her storyline, as well as Catherine Martell's undercover guise of Mr. Tojamura, both of which are pretty cringey.

Not trying to cancel Lynch here or anything. Just a few hang-ups that stood out to me in an otherwise compelling and entertaining movie. Interested to see if anybody has more charitable readings than I have.

Of course, you have the absolutely ultra-brutal scene in the beginning where Sailor bashes his assailant's brain in

I’m admittedly squeamish, but when I first watched the film (VHS rental from Hollywood Video!) I turned it off at this scene because I found it too gratuitous, in an "edgy ’90s" sort of way. Didn’t end up finishing it until I did a Lynch retrospective a few years ago in the lead up to the new Twin Peaks season.

in which you have Josie and a few other Chinese characters in her storyline, as well as Catherine Martell's undercover guise of Mr. Tojamura, both of which are pretty cringey.

Fortunately, the character of “Naido” in S3 solved this problem… NOT!!

One thing that I noticed throughout the movie that brought me down though, was I really feel like it used black actors as props.

What say you about Richard Pryor's casting in Lost Highway?

I've only seen Lost Highway once and had completely forgotten about Pryor. Can't remember what his role was. There's a good chance I'll go out to see it this Tuesday. Will keep that in mind.

can't say i've read much good writing on lynch in regard to race but i enjoyed this:

https://www.vulture.com/2017/09/david-lynch-racial-politics.html

yeah lynch is a white guy who does best just dealing with white people, frankly. Hawk is a problematic character all over the place, just native trope after native trope (made worse by the fact that Michael Horse isn't native). I mean I still love TP obviously but these elements are all cringetastic.

Horse isn't native?

it's disputed. his mother is swedish, his adoptive father is german. he has claimed to be Yaqi (from Mexico), but he's not enrolled in any tribes nor do any tribes claim him. So if he is Yaqi, that comes from his father, but he hasn't elucidated that relationship.

yikes bro.

Meantime, next week's episode on You Must Remember This in the "Erotic 90s" season will, in fact, be about Lost Highway (plus at least some discussion of Jennifer Lynch's Boxing Helena I gather.)

Finally rewatched Lost Highway, long classified in my head as my least favorite Lynch. I liked it better the second time, was reminded how many great shots and scenes it includes. It really is gorgeous. But yeah, still pretty much my least favorite Lynch — cold and uninvolving, imo, except for a legitimately great performance(s) by Patricia Arquette. Bill Pullman and Balthazar Getty remain more or less inert. Such a mid-'90s film, in that gritty '90s bummer way — very little of the warmth and humor that balances the horror in most of his other work.

BUT also, in retrospect it seems to me like the first in an L.A./Cali noir trilogy, followed by Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire. There are ideas and motifs in Lost Highway that show up more fully realized in both of those films, almost like he had ideas he was wrestling with and Lost Highway was a sort of first draft. So, totally worth seeing but not one of his greats. (imo, ymmv)

New interview with Isabella Rossellini on Blue Velvet: https://www.indiewire.com/news/general-news/isabella-rossellini-responds-roger-ebert-blue-velvet-review-1234968621/

(I don’t think I was aware of the Ebert review…)

https://deadline.com/2024/04/david-lynch-animated-movie-snootworld-netflix-addams-family-edward-scissorhands-writer-caroline-thompson-1235877710/

“I don’t know when I started thinking about Snoots but I’d do these drawings of Snoots and then a story started to emerge,” Lynch told us in a rare interview. “I got together with Caroline and we worked on a script. Just recently I thought someone might be interested in getting behind this so I presented it to Netflix in the last few months but they rejected it.”

Lynch was philosophical about the reasons for that decision: “Snootworld is kind of an old fashioned story and animation today is more about surface jokes. Old fashioned fairytales are considered groaners: apparently people don’t want to see them. It’s a different world now and it’s easier to say no than to say yes.”

Lynch was coy about which project may be his next or which is taking up most of his time, cryptically noting: “I can’t talk about those things right now.”

Well at least this keeps hope alive...