David Lynch - Classic or Dud

what a fucking gem

I'm so stupid that a major part of my brain is like "ok but maybe he's saving something for the number picking video"

Never dream, and you’ll never fail to achieve your dream

Lost Highway is so great. “50,000 PEOPLE DIED ON THE HIGHWAY LAST YEAR!”

I really recommend “Room To Dream” . Based on the anecdotes in there about how physically gruelling it was for him to make TP:TR I’d be surprised if he puts himself through something similar again.

“AND YOU...what the fuck is your name?”

I'm sort of fascinated by Lynch's late-career presence in the culture, his weather reports, this kind of affection that I feel like a lot of people feel for him even if they haven't seen all of his work. Thinking about him a lot lately, because we've been doing the entire Twin Peaks run with our kids (skipping a lot of the non-Lynch backhalf of S2). We're all the way thru Fire Walk With Me and up to about episode 6 of TP:TR. The kids (ages 13 and 16) both get him, they think he's weird and funny and disturbing, they laugh and freak out in all the right places.

He almost reminds me of Bob Dylan, the way he has both created a remarkable, enduring and influential body of work (I see so many things in so many movies, music videos, TV shows that have obviously absorbed Lynch) and has also created himself as a figure, a sort of friendly unreliable narrator that you're always happy to hear from.

He’s pretty similar to Herzog in that respect.

The folksy vibe that he affects is personally kind of a turn-off for me, and I've given him the side-eye for a few things over the years - but I watched every minute of the TP: The Return behind-the-scenes stuff, and not only was it really cool watching him work (actually kind of amazing to see him describe to actors how a scene should look, and he's describing the exact finished scene you already have in your head), but I guess it also led me to like/respect him more as a "person," at least in that context (and keeping in mind of course you're seeing what they choose to show you).

I feel like the fact that many of the same people have continued working with him for decades is about as glowing a recommendation for him as a person as you'll find in Hollywood these days.

Even the few times he gets frustrated and “loses his cool” a bit in those BTS scenes... he doesn’t fly off the handle or get abusive.

(He also just generally seems to treat cast & crew with real respect.)

I'm not sure his folksy vibe is exactly affected. He plays it up, but I also think it's him. Like, I don't think there's a totally non-folksy-eccentric David Lynch not visible to the public.

He has talked about being an angry person and how meditation helped with that. He has also said that he looked into therapy but he was afraid that it would interfere with his art.

I also remembered that an acquaintance recently told me a story about an incredible experience hanging out w/Lynch back in the 2000s (this guy’s roommate at the time was Lynch’s assistant)—it sounded like Lynch was really cool (and, yes, genuinely eccentric).

One side detail is that Lynch would sometimes call the apartment and ask for the roommate (I forget his name, let’s say it was Scott)—“SCOTT? IS THIS SCOTT?” Hi, David – no, this is Mike. “HI MIKE! PLEASE TELL SCOTT THAT I NEED A (whatever lens or piece of equipment) RIGHT AWAY. THANK YOU!” etc.

^ premium content

On him being an angry person, The Angriest Dog in the World seems like a reflection of that. A meditation on anger.

Herzog and Lynch are definitely both arbiters of a certain kind of disaffected, white, crotchety cool for Cinema Kids

lynch is for everyone

I’m slightly allergic to the epic bacon fuckyeahwernerherzog type stuff but I think lynch’s public persona is both more genuine and less interesting than ppl tend to assume. Not that there is nothing calculated in how he puts himself across (duh he is a celebrity) but like his first wife has talked about how he was basically nonverbal into his 20s, he won’t have cooked food in the house - the guy is clearly mildly unusual & I think his mannerisms are a part of that but I don’t think there’s much to talk about there tbh

Having said that his statements that pass into memedom (woody woodpecker, elaborate on that, quinoa, fucking telephone &c) are p much always classic

^ had the same lunch at the same Bob’s Big Boy diner at the same time every day for seven years, etc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5i98tfyGac

is this the first non-twin peaks thing lynch has done that features the backward/forward voice effect?

it was Donovan hiding behind that dumpster the whole time

Silly but diverting.

I watched that monkey film he did for Netflix and Totally Didn’t Get It… but no biggie.

I got the 7" of that, I dig it.

The song is lovely

Laura Dern says (re: forthcoming project), "there's a twinkle in his eye and he's up to something radical and fantastic."

At long last, Lynch's cult classic "Weather Reports" will all be collected and combined to create a 24-hour piece which Vanity Fair says "evokes an unsettling yet strangely familiar space between reality and utopia, where the temperature is comfortable and a soft breeze blows, the sun reliably peeking through any clouds." Available June 13.

It’s a great bit but I will never actually watch any of the weather reports

i catch one every once in a while

but honestly, if they were collected and i could get them for $5 or something, i would probably do it

if only to use as an alarm clock wake-up song/video for people staying in my guest bedroom

this has probably been pointed out on ilx and elsewhere, but i just learned about the sculptor Giacometti's sculpture for the 1961 re-staging of Waiting for Godot. he and Beckett were great friends (https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/alberto-giacometti-1159/when-alberto-giacometti-met-samuel-beckett).

In the original 1953 production of Godot at the Théâtre de Babylone (a converted shop), Giacometti sat in the audience. The director Roger Blin had reportedly jerry-rigged a flimsy tree together for the production, using twisted wire coat hangers wrapped in tissue paper anchored to a piece of rubber foam. It is not hard to imagine that Giacometti might not have been impressed with Blin's shambolic attempts at scenography. When Beckett invited Giacometti to create an entirely new vision for his work in 1961, the artist readily accepted.

In an interview with art critic Reinhold Hohl, Giacometti described the process of constructing the stage set in his studio with Beckett:

"We experimented all night long with that plaster tree, making it bigger, making it smaller, making its branches finer. It never seemed right to us. And each of us said to the other, maybe."

https://i.imgur.com/f4AUAjv.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/We9EF3F.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/N1Vzh1X.jpg

....

of course, i suppose another likely inspiration was probably the sad charlie brown christmas tree, so who knows

I only watched Eraserhead in full for the first time recently. Had no idea the Evolution of the Arm was prefigured in Henry’s apartment.

Also looks kinda like a neuron

AXx°N N.

And beyond

https://i.imgur.com/c1A3gsW.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/Lxwomx9.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/1rIjGGQ.jpg

xpost

Also how much the baby prefigured ET! Talking of which, here's a Lynch drawing from c.1970

https://i.imgur.com/5ufu2te.jpg

The other prototype evolution of the arm is of course the cover of Julee Cruise’s voice of love album

The Julee Cruise cover features one of his ham heads. Lynch sculpted the little head out of wax, around a piece of ham. Stuck it on a wire and let the ants crawl into the head to get the meat.

One of his short films has video of the ants crawling in and around a similar head.

I had a close encounter with a “Ten lined June beetle” on the sidewalk today; it gave me serious frogmoth vibes, exceeded only by the Jerusalem cricket on our patio that made me lose my s#% one night last night last year (I seriously thought I was gonna end up like New Mexico Girl, until I found a way to fling it into a neighbor’s yard).

The frog-moth that Lynch said he saw in Yugoslavia in the 60s was probably this creature, the mole cricket:

https://i.imgur.com/MvCCJu6.jpg

Looking at it now, it seems likely to have inspired the Eraserhead chickens too

Apologies for inflicting that on this thread.

I will not sleep tonite :|

Actually that's Gryllotalpa brachyptera, which is native to Australia, so not that particular one. More likely Gryllotalpa stepposa though it doesn't look quite as good.

I love it! What a weirdo

I’ve found a few of those in my time. Pretty cute guys, but if you pick them up the front digging legs can push your fingers apart with pretty amazing force.

I missed all this wisteria posting. Ambivalent about the new series being in the Twin Peaks world

https://moviehole.net/david-lynchs-wisteria-updates-cast-tease-involvement-twin-peaks-connection/