David Lynch - Classic or Dud

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...