David Lynch - Classic or Dud

I read a review. He's someone I don't particularly find compelling in terms of life story/art dynamic. Maybe someone will write a good bio 20-30 years from now.

My wife gave me a copy Tuesday as a late Father's Day present. I'm about 240 pages in and enjoying it. I really like the structure -- alternating sections of well-researched biography by Kristine McKenna with sections by Lynch reacting to, embellishing and occasionally rebutting the previous section. Loads of anecdotes that are new to me.

I wasn't aware of the bio until a friend told me he got it a couple days ago. Lack of publicity and enthusiasm is surprising. I just ordered a copy, that sorta structure sounds really enjoyable.

lol it's like how many people bought The Final Dossier and don't know about this

Ahh, I didn't understand that the bio part was not written by Lynch. That actually makes me more interested.

Same here

It’s kind of interesting - I’m not sure I’ve seen a similar bio structure?

I got the audiobook - I’d be interested to see what the print version looks like cause lynch’s sections seem pretty off-the-cuff a lot of the time, full of ad-libs, saying something & then correcting himself and so on. I’d guess they use a cleaned-up transcript of these in the physical book.

It’s entertaining, like WilliamC said there’s a decent amount of new stuff along with stuff you’ve heard a million times (he prefaces a couple of things with “I’ve told this story so many times”). The lynch sections get more scant the closer we get to present day, as you might expect, so it’s up to the McKenna sections to provide the detail.

There isn’t much in the way of “rebuttal”; the wives, girlfriends and children will say some pretty revealing stuff about his personal life in each chapter and Lynch won’t address any of it and just tells a couple of stories.

But yeah I enjoyed the audiobook as a kind of companion to the art life film (which btw anyone who’s seen that might be interested to know that we get the end of the “Mr Smith” anecdote in this book) and he also has a kind of quasi Dr Amp outburst at one point

i just want to know if he ever popped the cow (the one stranded on a ski trail in idaho)

He's someone I don't particularly find compelling in terms of life story/art dynamic.

Yeah the details of both his upbringing and his professional life seem pretty banal. Grew up squaresville but has always been a weirdo, has spent the last 50 years or so obsessed with making art. Some personal drama here and there, plus the Woody Woodpeckers, but he's definitely someone where everything interesting in the work itself.

...is in the work itself.

Lynch gave up toxic anger 20-30 years ago for meditation. Couldn’t give up smokes tho lol so yeah. Yeah

Lack of publicity and enthusiasm is surprising.

An interview piece in the Guardian today on the back of the book. I really like that main b/w portrait photograph of him. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/jun/23/david-lynch-gotta-be-selfish-twin-peaks

Lack of publicity and enthusiasm is surprising

i don't think it's necessary if you enjoy an artist to have to consume every single thing they do. i like Lynch for his movies. not gonna buy all his books or t-shirts.

also last year i devoted an insane amount of time and thought to 18 hours worth of new Lynch. not just the shows but the behind the scenes, the book, some podcasts, etc. his shit is so real, it's emotionally and mentally draining. can't blame anyone for wanting to take a break.

xp the back of the book presumably has more content tbh

You wait until they interview him about the copyright page!

his short movie on the chapter headings gave me nightmares so I'll pass i think

In his 40 years of film-making, the director has taken audiences from sunlit American idylls to surreal dimensions populated by demons, doppelgangers and psychotic killers. His are scenes you can’t forget: the whimpering, deformed baby in Eraserhead, the severed ear in Blue Velvet, the blood-spattered, skull-crushing violence of Wild At Heart, the nuclear explosion in Twin Peaks: The Return. Google “David Lynch creepy”, and you get 5.5m results.

sigh, pet peeve but if you google "david lynch creepy", in quotes, you get 3,030 results. if you google the same thing without quotes you get over 9.5 million results. if you google David Lynch Hot Dogs, you get more than 11 million results (if you google "David Lynch hot dogs", you get 3 results)

He does, however, squash the theory, much loved by some Peakers, that the last two parts of the 18-hour series should be watched simultaneously on two screens, with dialogue overlapping. “Yeah, I heard that. It’s bullshit. See, it’s beautiful that someone came up with this. You could double-expose scenes in lots of films and it could conjure some fantastic thing.”

sad lol

Lol I’d forgotten about that “theory”

His quote on trump from that interview is so dumb, he really should stay as tight-lipped on politics as he is on the meaning of his films

Its true that Donald Trump could be the greatest president ever if he was not Donald Trump

well its a function of arts graduates insisting that artists have something valid to say about politics etc isnt it they then ask great artists this as if it were going to lead anywhere but where it usually does

Nah I don’t think the interviewer that goes looking for a lynch quote on politics in 2018 is under any illusions, ppl know the kind of thing they’re gonna get

true true

twas a remarkably poor piece all told

He is undecided about Donald Trump. “He could go down as one of the greatest presidents in history because he has disrupted the thing so much. No one is able to counter this guy in an intelligent way.”

...what

you see em doin so?

It’s been funny watching people online today try and claim he’s the victim of clickbait w the Trump quote instead of dealing w the reality that great artists can have bad politics. Or it seems like he doesn’t follow politics closely at all. Like if it doesn’t effect him, he doesn’t care.

Who gives a shit

Or it seems like he doesn’t follow politics closely at all. Like if it doesn’t effect him, he doesn’t care.

Yep

Who gives a shit

otm

how out of character that David Lynch, so famously engaged with the world outside his own studio, would have one slight blip in his analysis of geopolitics

didn’t he love reagan

he’s like a kid watching bugs through a magnifyimg glass, it’s just bc ppl are reacting to trump that he even notices

“they’re swarmimg maybe they will eat the leader” etc

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed obsessing over the small print of celebrity interviews

yes next to the guy that finally wiped out the Cherokee and the other guy who nuked Japan and another guy who raped his slave and is on our $20 bill yes he could end up being the greatest among that esteemed crowd

No one is able to counter this guy in an intelligent way.

otmfmfmfm

what am i missing? the only way to respond to trump is more intelligently than trump

1964: College student David Lynch gets stoned at a Bob Dylan concert and walks out of the show. His roommate, Peter, gets angry about this, so Lynch throws him out. (Peter would later become J. Geils Band singer Peter Wolf.) pic.twitter.com/xaikQHOYSK

— Robert Loerzel (@robertloerzel) June 24, 2018

No he didnt “love” Reagan. So tired if that getting passed around

Xxp

oh lol sorry i should not take a magazine headline to heart

“No one is able to counter this guy in an intelligent way.
otmfmfmfm
― Hazy Maze Cave (Adam Bruneau), Sunday, June 24,

Lol

I heard that Dylan anecdote somwhere else recently, in almost those exact same words, I think in the Art Life film? He really does tell the same stories over and over. I have no desire to get this, at least not now.

The intelligent way to counter Trump is to say “Trump isn't that bad”

the fact that people earnestly care about this is insane to me, the guy has never uttered a coherent political statement in public that I'm aware of

also, for real, burn indiewire to the fucking ground. they suck and I hate them a lot.

Are people legitimately trying to make a deal out of that Trump statement? Def. dumb if you have any sense of the dude.

Dude said he voted for Reagan cause he likes 50s cowboys & doesn’t remember who he voted for in 2016, he is clearly not what you’d call a deep political thinker, he’s practically bruneau-level

Obv people shouldn’t earnestly care what he has to say about this stuff (and don’t really, that I can see, not like they do about eg Kanye who is at least as dumb & incoherent) which is why he should stop talking about it and ppl should stop asking him

I still prefer Lynch (fuck-witted/inarticulate political comments and all) over that annoying smug cunt Alec Baldwin, times about a zillion.

Lynch has had a speech problem since he was young. Which has made for some memorable dialogue in his movies but expecting Lynch to be articulate seems odd to me. Simon otm