David Lynch - Classic or Dud

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.

- Lynch the American

http://www.dgp.toronto.edu/people/stam/suomi/stam/pics/duck_rabbit.gif

I could see them leaving Dune out.

Elephant Man 4K came out last week.

Very surprised there haven’t been AI versions of unrealized projects.

WAH and SS are on the Channel as we speak - obv we dont know the deal but the owners of those flix dont have a problem farming them out. Also no studio is jumping on physical media in 2026 idk if they care about another imprint doing the labor of making a 300 dollar luxury item for cinema sickos

Yeah Lynch as IP is definitely worth most to fans and collectors. You can stream Straight Story all you want, you're not going to make much money from it.

Didn’t INLAND EMPIRE have a 4K release from Criterion? I remember scoffing at the idea. Sticking with my Absurda DVD as god intended.
Also I’ve had THE ELEPHANT MAN on 4K for about 4 years I think.

Inland is just blu, iirc. That and Eraserhead and Wild have not had 4K transfers, I believe everything else has.

Elephant Man 4K came out last week.

― whimsical skeedaddler (Moodles), Sunday, July 12, 2026 12:14 PM (six hours ago)

https://www.criterion.com/films/29677-the-elephant-man

Ah yeah, mine's the Studio Canal / Vintage Classics issue from 2020. No complaints. I'd gladly pick up an ERASERHEAD 4K (maybe?) but I think I'll be able to resist a box.

Didn’t they clean up Inland Empire a little? I started watching some video about how the Criterion edition ruined the movie and I checked out pretty fast.

They upscaled it to 4K as I recall. Lynch endorsed it and praised the strange image quality I think.

I will rewatch Inland Empire through any cycles of digital deterioration, it'll just get more amazing.

Aaaaannd ... just reported/leaked that Disney has allegedly lost the rights to "Straight Story."

i saw the 4k upscale of inland empire when it did its tour of theaters. looked fine!

A person could watch Inland Empire on a black and white crt tv and it would hold up just fine.

They announced that "28 Days Later" is getting a 4K release, and the reaction online was more or less: why? Same for the (Lynch produced/financed) "Nadja," which is getting a 4K release despite being partially filmed with a Fisher-Price PixelVision camera. I'm actually curious about that one, the movie has kind of been forgotten, afaict. There are rumors they cut the awesome songs from the soundtrack, though (Portishead, MBV) in favor of Simon Fisher Turner's score. The rock songs worked perfectly, iirc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR3RjPOCPFo

Most of Nadja was gorgeously shot on film, so it doesn't make sense to rule it out just because a handful of scenes use PixelVision. I actually saw the new restoration this year, but I've never seen the movie before, so I can't tell you how much music was cut out. (They clearly had songs though - the scene with the jukebox stands out but I forgot what song they played.)

Fisk was the man in the planet in Eraserhead. Lynch’s… unorthodox makeup techniques were miserable for him.

Lynch and Fisk knew each other since they were kids and they lived together for a while, they were both painters.

Rewatched Lost Highway with the kid last night. It’s still my least favorite after Dune, although it has loads of good moments. It is the slowest, stiffest, most dated Lynch movie and it flies off the rails during Mr. Eddie’s road rage scene. Which is funny on its own, but feels like it’s from a different movie. The last quarter drags and after seeing it five times I still expect it to end shortly after the imploding cabin.

All of the scenes shot in Lynch’s house are terrific, some of the shots really do read as moving paintings. The criterion edition of this is the best it has ever looked; it is literally a dark movie with deep blacks. It has looked like shit on all prior versions, muddy and bad.

Somehow I never caught that the music playing out of the radio in the mechanic shop, the squealing jazz that Jack Nance likes, is the same music that Bill Pullman was playing earlier in the movie.

I’ve not been the biggest LH fan since I saw it in the cinema on release, but I showed my 23 year old the 4K - her fourth Lynch including Twin Peaks and Mulholland Dr - and she thought it his best!