David Lynch - Classic or Dud

with its Aussie soap stars, Mulholland Drive is like a lost episode, at least outdoingFire walk with Me me in episodic tension or edge (but to be fair, what can be expeced from a prequel)

Mulholland Drive is a great film for Lynch, yanking him out of his US weirdo cult niche and projecting world class ideas onto the world stage. I fail to see how it could stand a chance at BAFTA with Princess Ann on the board however (Oscars and Globes out-of-th-qn i assume).

His outsiderness, and his adoption finally by Cannes, like a Roman Polanski.

Most certainly did -- his third film after Eraserhead and The Elephant Man.

Did anyone ever see that interview he did for scene by scene - i loved the bit where he's talking about "the eye of the duck" to describe the key scene in his films.

Also i highly recommend the book "Lynch on Lynch" - so much fun!

Umm. This movie is two years old. Why are we speculating on its award chances?

*waiting for backlash*

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

this should go on the things you learn when you old but i had no idea that mulholland drive only became a movie after ABC turned it down as a t.v. pilot. and that it was going to be a twin peaks spin-off. watching the naomi watts/lynch dvd commentary on youtube.

FWIW, a VHS dub of the pilot (before Lynch decided to change it into a feature film) does circulate. I don't recall anything surprising or truly revelatory if you've seen the feature film, but it is indeed in 4:3 aspect ratio - still the standard ratio for TV productions at the time - so it was a bit interesting to consider that the bulk of the film had to be cropped to 16:9 rather than meticulously planned or composed for it while it was shot. Doesn't mean it wasn't cropped well or without care, it's just usually not the ideal situation.

would genuinely love to hear the experience of someone watching it without any setup!

yes

watching Lost Highway and got to the scene backed by Lou Reed and was thinking a great upcoming ILM poll would be david lynch music scenes.

I had a bootleg DVD of the Mulholland Dr. pilot, it’s been at least 15 years but it had very little of what made the movie incredible IIRC.

the Blue Rose cut and the Mulholland pilot are inverse mirrors displaying Lynch's artistry and craft intertwined. Mulholland Drive is an astounding achievement of building a self-contained, dizzying nightmare of a film out of the set-up of an ongoing comedy narrative, via an unintuitive structure that feels completely planned (if opaque). The Blue Rose Cut is ideal to watch as the bridge in a rewatch, going from S2 to S3, but Lynch was right to tear out everything that both he and the audience (would have) found comforting and satisfying to see on screen. Removing the other Peaks characters not only puts the focus better on Laura, but lets the story stand separate from Twin Peaks the series where an other-dimensional spirit inhabits Leland and makes him do bad things, and Fire Walk With Me the film, about absolutely real and banal abuse and trauma committed by a father.
In both cases, the "craft" of nuts and bolts rebuilding of the story on paper and on the steenbeck is not distinct from the "art" of the vision to change the story, to create images and sounds that compel. Of course it's visible across his finished works - music, sound design, sculpture, hand-made special effects, cabinetry, paintings - that his multi-disciplines are not distinct... but it's fascinating to have two major film works from one guy that each have alternate, completed, originally-intended drafts* that demonstrate such a combination of brain-shooting-flames creativity and roll-your-sleeves-up work-to-a-deadline.

* 'an approximation of' with the Blue Rose cut, but close enough

Great post

god, the Marilyn Manson scenes in LH just get exponentially worse with time.

counterpoint to everyone above:

no, you should watch twin peaks s1/2 & fwwm first before watching the return

So many great references.

“Is it about the bunnies?”

Kyle M in the NYT, gift link:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/19/opinion/kyle-maclachlan-david-lynch.html?unlocked_article_code=1.qU4.Q1vc.9qVIVrf29PEm&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

switching fwwm off after 30 minutes, hilarious

also watch fwwm and the missing pieces separately. the blue rose cut doesn’t function as well as either do apart

The first 30 minutes of FWWM is pretty much it's own separate movie.

switching fwwm off after 30 minutes, hilarious

Something about the archness of TP (also Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart) irritates me no end. Archness is not an approach I seek in my entertainment menu. Anyway thanks all for the advice folks, I'll attempt TP:TR at some point cold and hope there's no coffee talk.

you don't have to like stuff though! don't hurt yourself. you can't like everything/everyone. that's why i stay off of film threads on ilx. i don't like a lot of stuff that people like here.

watched Mad God with cyrus and maria the other night. they'd never seen it. i wonder if david lynch ever saw it.

Remembered going to see The Elephant Man with my parents when it came out. I was 5. Honestly a foundational experience for me. From there to watching TP when it was on network TV to all kinds of other memorable experiences, David Lynch has been there with me. I’m sad to see him go and grateful i coexisted w him this long.

J G Ballard on Blue Velvet, from The Guardian Sept 18 1993

Blue Velvet is, for me, the best film of the 1980s -- surreal, voyeuristic, subversive and even a little corrupt in its manipulation of the audience. In short, the perfect dish for the jaded palates of the 1990s. But a thicket of puzzles remains. First, why do the sensible young couple, played by Kyle MacLachlan and Laura Dern, scheme to break into the apartment of the brutalized nightclub singer (Isabella Rossellini) and risk involving themselves with the psychopathic gangster -- Dennis Hopper in his most terrifying screen performance?

A curious feature of Blue Velvet is the virtual absence of the youngsters‘ parents, shadowy figures who take almost no part in the action. I assume the film is a full-blown Oedipal drama, and that the gangster and the nightclub singer are the young couple's ‘real‘ parents. Like children hiding in their parents‘ bedroom, they see more than they bargained for. Playing his sadistic games with the singer, the gangster rants ‘Mummy, mummy, mummy‘; a useful pointer to David Lynch's real intentions. The young man longs to take the gangster's place in the singer's bed and, when he does, soon finds himself playing the same shocking games, a crisis that can only be resolved by killing his ‘father‘ in the approved Oedipal fashion.

The second puzzle is the role of the severed ear found by the young man after he visits his father in hospital, and which sets off the entire drama. Why an ear rather than a hand or a set of fingerprints? I take it that the ear is really his own, tuned to the inner voice that informs him of his imminent quest for his true mother and father. Like the ear, the white picket fence and the mechanical bird that heralds a return to morality, Blue Velvet is a sustained and brutal tease, The Wizard of Oz re-shot with a script by Kafka and decor by Francis Bacon. More, more ...

did ballard like cronenberg's crash. never read/heard about what he thought of it.

He talks about it here:
https://www.frieze.com/article/jg-ballard-dangerous-driving

I told a buddy last night that my favorite image in Blue Velvet happens in the first act: Jeffrey and Sandy ambling on the sidewalk, passing an overweight man stage right clutching a dog's leash in a statuesque way.

FWIW, there's a video clip from TIFF of Guillermo del Toro going around where an interviewer apparently asks him about Lynch. He's good friends with Mark Frost and he recounts how Frost told him "David isn't ironic." That's key because it does put his films in a different light if one thought they were too arch or skeptical about the sentimental moments.

xps iirc Ballard was pleased with both Crash and Empire of the Sun.

xps Ah, saw the doc, and it wasn't that he didn't get Dylan, he was really high (still really new to marijuana, which made him stop on a freeway the first time he smoked it) and way too far from the stage to get into the music, so he left early. He was definitely a fan and said this later on after he was established: "I love Bob Dylan. Who doesn't? He tapped into some kind of vein and it keeps on keeping on. There's nobody like him. He's unique, and just... way out cool."

The documentary is a welcome supplement to what's out there, and it innately understands that the most effective bit of myth-making is to leave details out - particularly leaving blanks people will fill with their imaginations. But it also means people should seek out more like Room to Dream if they want to learn more about this life, because the gaps can be misleading. For example, the aborted Mr. Smith story suggests something sinister the way plays out in the film, but it's not - the encounter was just an emotional moment for Lynch that seemed to come out of left field. It would've been nice to include Lynch's early influences like Francis Bacon, who isn't mentioned once in the film much less explained - the story about showing his father his workspace in Philly wouldn't be as startling, but Bacon's influence does bring more logic to some of his more gruesome motives (like seeing how things decompose). And even comical moments like Wolf and Lynch spitting up because of a Dylan show feels less impulsive when you take into account Wolf's remarks to WGBH upthread - when one guy's very neat and another a complete slob, it's not too surprising when something little comes along to end a cohabiting arrangement that doesn't seem sustainable.

*about Lynch's life

I’m daily tripping over the fact that there won’t be any more Lynch projects or delightful throwaways or flashes of his singular presence.

Memorial meditation about to start. Zoom link here: https://bit.ly/3PFwr6j

one thing i’ve been struck by when reading about lynch recently is how many people stuck their necks out for him early in his career. the dean of the afi film school threatened to resign if the board didn’t agree to fund eraserhead. he borrowed money from all of eraserhead’s cast members and their spouses over the film’s 6-year gestation. mel brooks took a chance on him and fought the studio about cuts to elephant man. dino de laurentis gave him full creative freedom for blue velvet, even after dune’s massive failure.

he was a guy who inspired a lot of loyalty, and his collaborators completely believed in him and his vision

he inspired a lot of loyalty,

whoops idk what happened with that last line

This is true but it's also a shame this slowed down in the 2000s, he clearly had a lot more to show.

Resident Advisor memorial piece, focused on sound.

I printed the letterpress portion of this special edition sleeve. Just the type, printed letterpress with metallic silver ink. The image around it was printed letterpress. Sacred Bones got somebody who was the drummer of a band who did printing, I can't remember which band. It was really frustrating though because I had almost no extras. When you do this kind of thing you need overage to set up the press, and also figure there's gonna be some misprints. But this was like an edition of 250 and they gave me 255 or something, which is crazy.

https://www.discogs.com/release/5119068-David-Lynch-Bad-The-John-Boy

You can see my picture of the printing here:

https://www.sheffieldproduct.com/music-packaging

Discogs notes says "silk-screened wrap-around art" with no mention of the deep impression letterpress type!

Still, it was an honor and I was psyched to be involved.

frickin sweet

Awesome. Those look great.

Thanks. Just realized the type should say “the image around it was printed silkscreen”

Sorry “typo”. Not my day.

I loved the doc on Criterion Channel: work work work while he spills autobiographical devastation

It's pretty amazing how lucky he was, and as much as he emphasizes that in the doc (specifically how life-changing the AFI grant was), they don't mention he repeatedly borrowed money from a lot of people over those years, that he was rejected by Cannes and presumably a lot of other festivals, and even after Eraserhead finds a measure of success as a midnight movie, he was trying his hand at roofing work when out of the blue Mel Brooks calls him and arranges a meeting.

Honestly, I don't think I could put myself in his shoes. You're more or less living in a horse stable, making a movie that's so strange, nobody thinks you have a future making movies that are commercially viable (which means "who's going to hire you?") Your wife divorces you, you have a kid that will now need child support, you're deep in debt to your friends, and you've taken, let's say, THREE years making this thing and you have no idea how much longer it'll take. Now your parents are screaming at you to give everything up and get a job and clearly have no faith in you, and they're clearly not impressed by whatever work you've done so far. I can't picture myself having the will to plow ahead into a life like Lynch's circa 1975/76 much less continue on the way he did.

A horse stable in Beverly Hills, tbf.

lol

but where else will you find a horse stables that come standard with an espresso bar and designer hay?

Yeah I was struck in the documentary by just his certainty that this was what he needed to do. In the anecdote about his dad and brother pleading with him to pack it up and get a job, Lynch didn’t sound demoralized so much as disappointed that they just didn’t get it.

That note of pain impressed me.

good lynch review generally

If you post about David Lynch on FB, you will be bombarded, within minutes, by David Lynch-related material. I expect an invitation to spend a week in the Black Lodge before the night's out.

My feed is full of Twin Peaks groups and merch, which is mostly dumb but better than most social media spam. I don't mind that particular algorithm.

Comparatively, I don't mind too much either. But I am wondering whether or not to accept this friend request from Major Briggs.

https://www.25yearslatersite.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/d7af0a79-bc0b-4333-b0f8-6d4ee0ed7913.jpeg

The interview of him and Naomi Watts on Criterion is pretty good.

Very touching in the end when Lynch says how great Naomi is

he’s incredibly gracious toward his collaborators and they all seem to love him