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

*less than $100. (That was a weird typo.)

They're going to make a ridiculous amount of money off of this.

"Goddammit, why did we throw away the cleaning supplies and all the stale items in the pantry? That would've been pure profit!"

I can’t believe the sale of a beloved figure’s personal effects so soon after their death has only elicited ‘how much?’ and not ‘WTF?’

ha yeah I was def thinking how they must’ve started cataloging and photographing this stuff uncomfortably soon after he kicked it

Well, a close friend of mine had to deal with his parents suddenly dying not too long ago, and I was with him every step of the way, something he encouraged because not only did it help him, he thought it was information I could really use someday since it would've been overwhelming to learn on the fly (as it turned to be for him). I realize Lynch isn't like most people financially speaking, but he wasn't like, say, Prince or Elvis Presley where he had an enormous operation and revenue stream that was up and running even after death. They probably had to start cleaning out his belongings, unload any real estate, etc. because if you don't deal with those thing, it creates a lot of problems and a lot of cost that are going to fall on the survivors' shoulders.

A lot of the stuff they're selling is likely enticing to private collectors, but it's not something a museum or another archive will want to acquire unless they're truly unique or valuable. And if you're trying to settle bills and other things left behind, it's not unusual to sell what you can to put the money towards those costs.

I will add, it is sad, really sad, to see his instruments, gear and art tools get sold. Just watch something like Olivier Assayas's Summer Hours or Kenneth Lonergan's play The Waverly Gallery. It's a life that's over, and all these things that were part of his creative existence, they're no longer producing the things he put into the world. They're all being dispersed, and it's sad to think of some of them just sitting on a collector's shelf or behind glass rather than being used. That's a common, sad reality when people die - even if they're someone pretty anonymous, if something you remember them using like a chair or glasses turned out to be precious and was forever stored in a case rather than be used or touched, it feels sad, like a reflection of their own death.

(Full confession, had I somehow won what I bid on, I sure as hell would've used them.)

Hilarious pic. As someone noted, Atlas Shrugged is the most creased spine.

From the personal library of David Lynch pic.twitter.com/nFSKukPoec

— Lee (@leeartr) May 29, 2025

Zibaldone is just sending me...

A fitting post from an old friend after Lynch passed:

David Lynch-related story from last year. It's not a serious anecdote and it's a little embarrassing but... here goes. On July 8 I was in Los Angeles and drove to the Bill Pullman residence from LOST HIGHWAY (the first photo). The house, which belonged to Lynch, is not immediately recognizable -- in the movie Lynch frames it in a way to hide certain architectural details, like the triangles at the top. And there's some disrepair. The house right next door to this one also belonged to Lynch and at the time was used as his office or primary residence from what I gather. Out of the corner of my eye I saw someone emerge from this other house and leave a rocking chair on the curb. I called my friend Kyle; we came back half an hour later and put the (obviously discarded) chair into the trunk of my friend Felipe's car. We thought this chair could have belonged to David Lynch-- why not take it as a souvenir? Later we showed the image (the second photo) to a friend of ours who worked for a time with Lynch, in his house, and she confirmed, "That's his chair!!" Are you sure? "100%." Is this reliable information? I still don't know. But I want to believe it. Today the chair claims a spot on Kyle's patio in Echo Park. And when I come over, I sit in it.

We used to have an identical chair. My wife used it for rocking and nursing our baby.

ugh mandles

(that's not my friend, fwiw)

I didn’t realize Lynch had such in an interest in LBJ. That could’ve been an interesting biopic if he wanted to make it.

I knew I sensed the work of Henry Rollins in Lynch's films

he also had Behold A Pale Horse by Bill Cooper, the conspiracy theory book linked to anti government militias sometimes

Henry Rollins told some great stories on his podcast about working with Lynch on Lost Highway

Yeah, they traded a lot of music, much to Rollins and Lynch's delight. (They were mutual fans.)

Also gave some insight into how someone like Lynch can feasibly make movies - they may get name stars but they have very tight budgets.