David Lynch - Classic or Dud

Lynch was in the first classes of their kind at the AFI, and I think it was more like a residency program than formal classes. There were some abandoned stables that they allowed him to take over and the majority of his time at AFI was spent there. They had to shoot late at night so outside sounds wouldn’t interrupt; when birds started making noise in the morning it was quitting time and he would go to sleep in Henry’s bed and padlock the door so nobody would wander in and find him living there. I can’t remember an Altman/Lynch connection

Jack Fisk and Lynch were high school friends, Jack probably knows Lynch better than anybody. They went to art school together and after graduating they planned a long European trip. They got there, hated it, and immediately returned. Lynch married Jack’s sister. Jack was the man in the planet in Eraserhead and I think after that their careers separated until the Straight Story. Fisk started in set design and then moved onto directing and producing.

The making of Eraserhead is fascinating. They lived in that world for a long time. Catherine Coulson, the Log Lady, was there constantly, feeding them and being a den mother. Lynch insisted on paying them regularly, although it wasn’t much and they would have done it for free because it was the center of their lives at a certain point. When the money ran out he wrote out a contract and gave them a percentage of the profits. Nobody thought there would be profits.

...I would love to hear david lynch and mel brooks talking movies...

The origin of 3 Women is also Lynchian. Altman says he dreamed the title, choice of lead actresses, and opening image exactly as they appear and wrote the movie around them.

brooks really threw his weight around for lynch back when lynch had none of his own:

When Paramount Pictures studio executives were shown a cut of this movie, they wanted the opening and closing surrealist sequences to be cut. Executive producer Mel Brooks, according to producer Stuart Cornfeld, said to them: "We are involved in a business venture. We screened the film for you, to bring you up to date as to the status of that venture. Do not misconstrue this as our soliciting the input of raging primitives."

Brooks was really as saintly a producer as you could have; he even kept his name off the credits and publicity so no one would get the wrong idea about the tone of the movie.

I just found a sweet video of Lynch talking about Altman. They got to know each other after they were both nominated for Best Director in 2002 (Straight Story/Gosford Park). It doesn't seem like there was any direct connection early in on in their careers.

Post it!

I found this:

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

That's it! I don't know how to post pictures or video.

It took me a couple of years to figure out there was something beyond I Love Music.

I’ll have to revisit 3 Women… I saw it a long time ago, I remember being fairly ambivalent about it (despite the esteem in which I hold both actresses). The movie comes up a lot.

Trying to make good use of my Criterion trial, I watched a little of this movie today... it was so bad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_Lover_(1993_film)

(This is very tangentially Lynch-related – as it starred Mädchen Amick, and the casting director was Johanna Ray. Also, it was sort of like a Lynch movie as made by someone who has heard Lynch movies described once or twice, but had never actually seen one, or any movie at all.)

That Coulson was AC on eraserhead AND killing of a chinese bookie is one of my favorite bits of film trivia

"it's better that way, david" - what a sweet story

pic.twitter.com/MIajUppbpA

— [ominous whoosh] (@ominouswhoosh) April 26, 2023

David Lynch is filming something in West Hollywood

Seems based on a random tweet by someone having lunch – pretty thin stuff – but I guess these are the scraps we have to grasp onto...

yeah i'll take this right now, just pop it on the 'reasons to live' pile.

I watched Lost Highway again, and kind of loved it this time. There’s something about it that’s just highly… enjoyable to watch. Maybe especially if you’ve seen it once or twice already, and aren’t hung up on trying to “figure it out.”

My local Landmark theater is doing a David Lynch month. I missed Blue Velvet, but caught Mulholland Drive last night. Next week is Wild At Heart, which I've never seen, then Lost Highway the following week. I've never seen Wild At Heart before, so looking forward to that.

Wild at Heart has a middling rep but it’s pretty good. The tangents and side stories are what really make it work for me.

Lynch has this stylistic shift in the late '90s that almost makes him seem like a different artist... Lost Highway and Mulholland Dr just have this "look & feel" that's so distinctive (and of course there's The Straight Story in between those, which is remarkable in its own way). It feels weird to say that this is where he really "takes off," obv the earlier stuff is great too, but there's something about his new sensibility that's even better (IMO), and the re-watchability is particularly high on the films in that period.

i rewatched Lost Highway again recently too after not seeing it for a good 20 years and quite liked it still. I don't try to 'solve' lynch movies. The only one I haven't had the urge to revisit is Inland Empire, which I didn't watch in one sitting the first time and have never seen in a theater. Probably would if someone would show it around here.

Inland Empire is the one that benefits the most from seeing in a theater

I still stop the film when Balthazar Getty appears.

lost highway and mulholland drive both give the general impression of coming full circle and tying up loose ends at the end via the timely repetition of certain images and lines, even if there's no traditional narrative logic to it. i never really felt like there was anything to 'solve' because of that, they solve themselves for you.

Crossposting but having put this in the Dune specific thread, new oral history of the film (with new interviews with him) now out:

https://www.1984publishing.com/bookstore/a-masterpiece-in-disarray-david-lynchs-dune-an-oral-history

xp I dunno, I feel like Mulholland Dr is pretty straightforward & comprehensible (although I recall some disagreement on this thread about what seemed to me like basic aspects of the "reveal"). By contrast, I have no "explanation" for the final act of Lost Highway, or how it all fits together.

So much of it plays like a boring reprise of Blue Velvet, with Robert Loggia playing Frank and Robert Blake playing Ben.

...I'm reading thru the booklet now, and here's Gifford quoted as saying:

I think it's a very realistic, very straightforward case study of one person who is at a loss to deal with the way things have turned out.

OK man! (Ha ha)

i think the tape of the murder is one of the most disturbing things that Lynch ever shot.

So much of it plays like a boring reprise of Blue Velvet, with Robert Loggia playing Frank and Robert Blake playing Ben.

― the dreaded dependent claus (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, September 13, 2023 1:34 PM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i do not agree with this at all!!!

Yeah I don't either (sorry Alfred!)

xp

Yes, seeing Mulholland Drive on release, the final act* was immediately "oh, this is what he was going for in Lost Highway, but it works properly this time."

*(not knowing that it was a kludge to salvage a TV pilot)


Never rewatched LH until a local theatre did an all-his-features-and-some-of-the-shorts series recently, and the climax's vibes are great, but the biggest difference between how the two play is that it's impossible to give a fuck about the Pullman/Getty characters, whereas both halves of Watts are sympathetic, and clearly lock together as a whole person.

Here's Lynch in the booklet (quoted from that Lynch on Lynch book, which must be quite a tome, as so many quotes you see are drawn from it):

Mystery is good, confusion is bad, and there's a big difference between the two. I don't like talking about this too much because, unless you're a poet, when you talk about it, a big thing becomes smaller. But the clues are all there for a correct interpretation, and I keep saying that, in a lot of ways, it's a straight-ahead story. There are only a few things that are a hair off.

So I guess they both really think that! I think it's more "off" than they may realize, but I'll try to follow the "clues" more closely next time (again, the "mystery" no longer detracts from my enjoyment).

that's sorta how i've always felt, though there's something about how highway is so freewheeling and less composed than mulholland... it was the lynch film i most imagined in my head before i finally saw it, it retains a dark pull, and even though i do not give a fuck about this obtuse saxophone guy being in extreme psyche-splitting denial about killing his wife, i sure love the journey

xp to sic

It struck me that (I think?) you never see The Mystery Man and Alice together in the same frame; and after Alice walks naked into the cabin and Fred follows her, she's gone and MM is there instead... and then MM somehow shifts alliances and becomes Fred's ally against Dick Laurent (after Alice has turned on him). I feel like Alice and MM may be two sides of a coin somehow, but can't articulate how or why.

The first half of LH is as compelling as any Lynch, especially whenever Bill Pullman's playing free jazz in that club (the editing, the lighting!).

I've still only seen Lost Highway once, when it came out, and need to rewatch it. I didn't like it at the time, and in the years since it has remained in the least-favorite-Lynch slot for me (I don't really count Dune, I guess). My reaction at the time was more or less as Alfred says, it felt sort of forced and sour, in a self-conscious Lynch-being-Lynchy way. I do remember a few particular scenes and shots, it has its moments, but overall I found it off-putting.

LH is a lot better than I initially thought, but still probably my least favorite proper Lynch movie (not counting Dune). It is SO 1990's, mainly because of the soundtrack I guess, but it seems of its time in a way that his other movies aren't. It seems like he's putting in more effort but getting less out of it. I agree that the biggest problem is Pullman/Getty, especially Getty. There is zero charisma there, nobody that I am inclined to follow through their troubles. I keep watching because I want to see what happens, but I could give two shits if something bad happens to Getty's character. Patricia Arquette is so much more interesting but she's not in it enough, or not given enough to do.

I had the same reaction when watching in the theatre in 1997 and again in 2010-11 when I got the DVD. Our local repertory theater's playing it in early October, though, so I'm giving it another shot.

It seems like he's putting in more effort but getting less out of it. I agree that the biggest problem is Pullman/Getty, especially Getty. There is zero charisma there, nobody that I am inclined to follow through their troubles.

Reading the Premiere story by David Foster Wallace and about what a shit Getty was didn't help lol.

it's also a film that for a long time looked like crap on DVD; super dark, not a great transfer. I think it's been redone (I have an, ahem, 'digital file' of the film that appears to look better, don't know the source).

The Criterion Blu-ray looks pretty great to me.

yeah that's the upgrade that came later. that may be the source of what I have.

My favorite aspect about the Getty scenes are all the languorous images of back yards and sunsets fading in and out to bossa nova and trip hop cues. Getty isn't particularly sympathetic, but I like him as this dumb, hapless fuck up who never quite grasps what's going on around him. Kind of like how Pullman is perfect as this angry, snide jazz guy who never quite trusts his wife. These aren't relatable characters, but I'm not sure they're supposed to be. The tedium sets in when Pullman returns and a bunch of scenes and music cues get replayed.

Yeah I like how Getty's character (Pete) is dumb and easily manipulated; it's a nice treatment of the film noir / femme fatale trope.

If the film is really meant to be "a psychogenic fugue" (as it was encapsulated in the publicity materials) – a guy on death row imagines a whole other persona and set of events, as he dissociates from reality – there's so much "excess" in the film that it's hard to see how it reduces to that. And the details provided of Fred & Renee's life (and their "characters") are so sparse, and seemingly infected by these strange events from the beginning, that reducing the movie to "Fred murdered Renee and now he's hallucinating" feels like trying to stuff a huge inflatable bounce-house into a little box or something.

(Compare this to Mulholland Dr, where the final act is long, richly detailed, and carefully connects all, or most, of the dots an ingenious way.)

another thing I always notice about this film is how the composition of the Fred scenes tends to be extremely geometric in lots of interesting ways, but that goes away as it shifts over to Pete where things appear more naturalistic and less boxed in.

Robert Loggia is SO f'n good in this movie... just an absolute pleasure to watch.

One of my favorite Lynch sequences, and one that embodies the "feel" that I love in his work, is when Pullman describes his murder dream, with the ominous smoke drifting into the hallway. Some might accuse Lynch of recycling the same images over and over, but I'll never tire of how he shoots curtains, smoke, hallways and highways in headlights.