David Lynch - Classic or Dud

w/r/t all their other movies, sure. But Blue Velvet's early sixties Americana, perversion in a small town- that's quintessential Waters. And if he ever wanted to move beyond the campiness of Polyester, Blue Velvet is the movie he would've made. I can imagine Waters being pretty deflated when he saw it in 1986.

when has waters ever been interested in moving beyond camp? Beyond some surface similarities in their reference points (which were, tbf, all over the place at the time - the proliferation of "wow late-50s/early 60s America sure was fucking WEIRD" were all over the place at the time until finally drying up in the late 90s), Lynch and Waters have very different goals as filmmakers. Waters has never been interested in being serious, or evoking horror, or in fucking with narrative and audience expectations the way Lynch is.

I mean you can draw a through line from Blue Velvet and True Stories and Polyester and Edward Scissorhands to any number less successful movies, this exploration of middle America's inner weirdness was a cultural thing not at all specific to any of the filmmakers, all of whom made very different movies for very different reasons. it wasn't a competition.

I mean there were so many movies about this - Stand By Me, Parents, it's a long list

Wow, I was just thinking about Parents as I read the above couple posts, haven't thought about it in years!

Bob Balaban's lone horror film!

I was really excited about INLAND EMPIRE at the time and the path Lynch might take with digital video- seems now is that he'll never make another film, just like John Waters.

given that lynch just finished shooting an ~18hr film that if successful could raise his profile higher than it's been in a decade, I don't think it's unreasonable to hold out hope that he can get another theatrical picture made

You mean the new Twin Peaks? TV is one thing, I don't think it'll be much easier to get funding for a feature film or if he's even interested.

xposts Waters' wheelhouse is camp but I'm not convinced he never wanted to move beyond it and make something darker and more serious like Blue Velvet. Whether or not he had the capacity to, or even thought about it before Blue Velvet, it struck me as the film he should've made in the mid-80's. Strange to think there was such a long gap between Polyester in 81 and Hairspray in 88.

xxpost (aside) Not film but Balaban also had some involvement with Tales From the Darkside.

but I'm not convinced he never wanted to move beyond it and make something darker and more serious like Blue Velvet

Waters is not exactly a reclusive or secretive person, he's made no secret of his goals as a filmmaker and has written extensively about his films, their inspirations, and his sensibility. Like, entire books. I dunno why you would think this about him, it's something he has literally never expressed an interest in.

I'm thinking specifically of an interview in the New York Press years ago where it came up. He said he loved the film but was bummed and felt beaten to the punch by Lynch. Trying to find it online.

in a weird way, I feel like Waters' films are much more wholesome than David Lynch's

I mean, Pink Flamingos is basically just a disgusting movie about a loving family

this is great - Ebert gets it totally wrong, and suggests that Isabella Rossellini was used and abused by Lynch against her will. Siskel points out that she consented to the role, then Ebert says "well the film was shot in two halves, and she had no idea the other half was all campy comedy!" - as if she didn't read the entire script?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uehfL60EA4

xps yeah I mean TP, which was shot as one big film - and even if it'd been made in the conventional manner he's obv interested in directing again. idk much about the money side of things tbf

Ebert recanted that review

xps yeah I mean TP, which was shot as one big film - and even if it'd been made in the conventional manner he's obv interested in directing again. idk much about the money side of things tbf

― mario vargis loosa (wins), Thursday, June 2, 2016 2:44 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

afaik money is the only obstacle - Waters was trying to make a claymation/animated christmas kids movie called Fruitcake circa 2007 but then the economy collapsed and he hasn't been able to find funding since. There was a great article about the disappearance of mid-level independent movies and directors like Soderbergh, Waters, and Lynch either sitting back or moving to TV...

yeah it's all about financing with this tier of directors

ie that's the obstacle, not that they've run out of ideas

well then surely at the very least off the back of a theoretically successful twin peaks lynch could get another inland empire done on the hoof

fingers crossed! you never know, and i found this post pretty funny and encouraging:

I love Laura Dern (and have some sort of feeling approaching something like fondness for Lynch.) It'll probably come out in 2015 though knowing him.

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Thursday, May 12, 2005 4:27 PM (11 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

btw heres that article: http://flavorwire.com/492985/how-the-death-of-mid-budget-cinema-left-a-generation-of-iconic-filmmakers-mia

I was really excited about INLAND EMPIRE at the time and the path Lynch might take with digital video- seems now is that he'll never make another film,

― flappy bird, Thursday, June 2, 2016 5:00 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Iirc we didn't know anything about INLAND EMPIRE until it was finished and ready for release and that he funded it mostly off his own back acquiring additional funds from investors during the actual process rather than in advance. He could be making another film now or could be channeling his fee for TP2 into making something new. We just never know with him.

there was plenty of advance press as inland empire was being made

There was? I thought it was a surprise to everyone that he had a new film imminent but maybe I'm just remembering it wrong.

Cool to see that the zig zag carpet is shared between eraser head and the twin peaks cooper dream sequence

from Amy Taubin's Cannes report in the current Film Comment, where the first two eps of TP 2.0 were screened:

"I wish I could be interested in Lynch’s fiddling with CGI, his overworking of his actors’ glottal stops, and his evocation of Mystery Science Theater 3000, the symptomology of Alzheimer’s disease, and, more generally, castration anxiety. But I’m not."

She did like the new Top of the Lake.

her loss, truly

Wow, what a shitty place to stop watching.

With the Lynch documentary The Art Life getting a home video release from Criterion next month, I was really surprised to notice today that it's streaming on Amazon. (It's good.)

I enjoyed it, really liked seeing so much of his art and process. Wished the narrative didn't stop at Eraserhead.

Lynch the normative reactionary?

"Notwithstanding his aesthetic distinction, Lynch’s depictions of queerness, disability, gender, sexuality and race suggest that any deviation from white, heterosexual, middle-class life is not normal. Consistent with his position on trespassing, the director’s films strictly demarcate a place of normalcy that must be aggressively protected from the deviance and obscenity of the outside. Against Waters, who locates the darkest elements of the American experiment in so-called polite society, for Lynch, evil comes from the place we are always told evil comes from—the periphery. In his work, it’s the killers at cheap motels, drug dealers, prostitutes and back-alley perverts that menace the shining city upon a hill. A position profoundly at odds with critics and audiences increasingly attuned to racism and inequality, Lynch’s worldview is an anachronism and worthy of more serious critique."

http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/man-behind-glass-trouble-david-lynchs-brand-weird/

evil comes from the place we are always told evil comes from—the periphery

this is bullshit

While Lynch is largely regarded as patron saint of the weird, his nearly ecclesiastical approach to the supposed aberrance of bodies, erotic desires, sexual orientations, abilities and races undermines the supposed weirdness he depicts. For these elements to appear exceptional, there must be a presumptive normal against which the weird is measured. For Lynch, such normalcy ultimately looks a lot like conservative, middle-class American life. To his credit, he often suggests that suburban America is not as innocent as it seems, but he nevertheless continually establishes a dichotomy between good, minimally kooky, salt of the earth folks—Alvin (Richard Farnsworth) in The Straight Story, Sheriff Harry Truman in Twin Peaks (1991)—and deviants. The hostility with which Lynch regards nonconformity, then, ultimately suggests a profound resentment of “the weird”.

his (arguably) most famous work centers around an upstanding upper-middle class pillar of a white community raping and murdering his daughter

or the closing credit sequence in Inland Empire - where all the girls are liberated and together and finally happy - how is this "conservative, middle-class American life"?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxG5-MlEurI

hot take reductive nonsense

I do think David Lynch plays off a particular brand of "normal" - specifically the American white nuclear family of the 1950s - in just about everything I've seen of his. He has both a fascination with that period (the conservative ethos, the aesthetics/design) and a love of throwing in gruesome/comedic/surreal/mystical weirdness to see how it screws it up.

This is a dumb essay.

(didnt read essay tho, not necessarily agreeing w it)

an upstanding upper-middle class pillar of a white community raping and murdering his daughter

...while possessed by what appears to be a longhaired grease monkey.

...OR IS HE?!?!?!?

^^^

then there's the Elephant Man, a whole film about how "normal" people are the real monsters etc.

Dune (of course) doesn't fit into this rubric at all either.

there are so many dumb holes in this argument.

Now I know why he called it The Straight Story!

lol

Article speaks of a tendency... you seldom find universals in a filmmaker with a 40-year-career.

the fact that there are significant countervailing tendencies would indicate that the conclusion being drawn is wrong

yes, that essay is dumb: the standard line you usually hear trotted out about david lynch (and especially wrt blue velvet and twin peaks) is that his work pries into the evil that is lurking behind the surface image of white picket fences and all-american small town life. and while that's a bit of a whatever,cliched take it's certainly more on the money than this.

yes, that the Rotary Club types are actually crossdressers and into BDSM...

I knew this wd provoke a firefight from the worshippers.

im not really a worshipper and i think if you wanted to critique lynch on how unwoke he is, how white his films are, or how often the portrayal of women in his films betrays a hairy-handed lechery then you can easily do that. i just don't think this is particularly illuminating