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

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

I bought that massive Ingmar Bergman box from Criterion and I’m slowly making my way through it. I know that Lynch is. Bergman fan, and Persona is supposed to be Lynchy but I haven’t gotten to that one yet.

I just finished Summer With Monica and the last third of the movie is remarkably like Eraserhead, down to the cries of the baby and it even has an oppressive droaning industrial sound that pops up. Anybody else notice this?

Don't remember that, but there's several shots in The Silence that Lynch was clearly aware of.

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.

instagram and FB have been nonstop lynch stuff for me for weeks now which actually makes me engage with those horrible platforms more. ok you got me meta.

Just watched The Cowboy and the Frenchman last night.

I wish he did more stuff like that. Imagine him directing Pee Wee’s Playhouse.

Well well

https://archive.org/details/filmography-david-lynch/

Basically, every major feature-length thing he did, including the Industrial Symphony, Hotel Room, the original Mulholland pilot and the Duran Duran concert (though I've heard that might have been encoded wrong and needs a reupload).

have we heard that he died intestate because he specifically wanted to have no heirs or

Huh, I assumed he would have left it all to TMCorp or whatever

I’m asking if there’s a reason in accordance with his wishes (or “in respect of” him, as the uploader puts it) that we should celebrate so much of his corpus being bootlegged

“In respect of this creator, I’ve uploaded things he wished did not exist and that he didn’t make, and things he very carefully controlled the distribution of for decades, plus nearly every work that could generate residuals for his designated heirs. Fuck him and fuck them, in respect.”

"and Persona is supposed to be Lynchy but I haven’t gotten to that one yet."

I suppose it could be seen in a similar way to MD as it centers on its two female leads and their adventures but not really?

Hugely similar! Twinning, slipping identity, dependency, illness, jealousy, projection. The illusion of cinema is directly fucked with. There are also overt visual quotes of shots from Persona in MD.

“In respect of this creator, I’ve uploaded things he wished did not exist and that he didn’t make, and things he very carefully controlled the distribution of for decades, plus nearly every work that could generate residuals for his designated heirs. Fuck him and fuck them, in respect.”

Noticed a couple of weeks back that my local Alamo has been adding all kinds of screenings of his full features for March into early April and been grabbing tickets as I can:

https://drafthouse.com/movies/in-dreams-films-of-david-lynch

(I'll have to miss Wild at Heart due to PopCon and Dune due to a concert, but at least I saw both of those on their original theatrical runs. Real shame they couldn't get The Straight Story.)

This is good, even if it hurts

“I knew he’d been unwell but he was in great spirits. He wanted to go back to work — Laura and I were like, ‘You can do it! You could work from the trailer.’ He was not, in any way, done. I could see the creative spirit alive in him.”

https://www.indiewire.com/news/general-news/naomi-watts-laura-dern-david-lynch-not-done-1235110397/?utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

Like a Simpsons joke, a rare photo of David Lynch signed by Peter O'Toole.

Screening of Lost Highway tonight. Only had five hours sleep. This finishes near midnight...

See what I feel like in two hours but these are all perhaps perfect conditions for watching it.

Talked to a couple of old acquaintances about Lynch, and I had one of those moments where you think you know a guy... one's a fan but the other was completely dismissive, totally skeptical that Lynch's films really held up as great film art, and the one counterexample he chose to emphasize his point, the one lofty standard that Lynch's work failed to meet, was Four Fucking Weddings and a Funeral. Jesus fuck...

It was uplifting to see such an intense & sustained outpouring of love for Lynch, in the weeks following his passing… I knew he had big fans of course, but didn’t realize how many of us there are out there.

had a conversation a week ago with someone (who i probably assumed was lynch aware/indifferent at worst) about him and the other person immediately surprised me with their distaste because of how degrading they thought his movies were toward women. we did both agree "mulholland drive" is his best, so that was a happy middle ground we reached.

I'm trying to imagine what Four Weddings And A Funeral would have been like if Lynch had made it

Funny

There would have only been two weddings, each repeated with different actors playing the same characters but in different emotional states. The funeral would have been for a decapitated deer head.

His daughter shared a photo of his gravesite. I imagine it'll be covered with tributes soon enough.

Got a little choked up seeing this too - still sad and bewildering that he's gone.

Very cool that he is mere steps from the Paramount lot, which was featured in several of his films.

;_;

expect him to rise up and denounce the kerning on that headstone

Google AI overview let me know there is a Lynch film I never knew existed!

The phrase "Christian Bale, my name is Mud" refers to a character named Aloysius Devadander Abercrombie, known as Mud, in a surrealist film by David Lynch. The film is described as a "surreal critique of a modernity left in the past," starring Bale as the lead character.

(the AI overview result when I googled "christian bale my name is mud" to disprove someone insisting it was him in the "My Name is Mud" video)

sorry. not trying to be a bitch. but is this necessary to post

never mind please ignore me

I just thought it was such a ridiculous response and a frustrating example of AI enshittifying everything. But I'll run my posts by you for prior approval next time.

For all the meaningless and inane shit that gets posted daily around here and this gets called out?

That's like the 4th or 5th example of something just like that I've seen in the last couple of days. Keep em coming imo

I wonder what Lynch would have thought of AI.

listen, i said never mind, so now im gonna say fuck off. yeah i click on the david lynch thread expecting posts about david lynch’s art, not to see someone reposting ai slop and going “haha look at this ai slop” btw there’s so much of that on the fucking internet rn. are you enshittifying the internet less by reposting it? think about it

i said never mind bc i know better than to engage with the biggest persecution complex on this board. and i’ll never do it again

what would david lynch thing about ai? well i imagine he’d be intrigued by it bc digital film so transformed his art, but ultimately it prob would’ve offended his sensibilities as a painter (idk of any legit visual artist who is excited about ai)

This old teaser does kind of read like AI slop:
https://64.media.tumblr.com/5afdab4d041264eb91c169797c3370e0/f4c881af9469975b-55/s1280x1920/b20b2f3d82022a5e555e753568452385ddc7328f.png

I do think his credulousness and enthusiasm with regards to TM probably would have transferred over into generative AI as some kind of meditative practice. He wasn't a fan of people being able to skip chapters on DVDs though...

I've seen some AI-generated imagery & animations that are heavily surrealistic... he might have appreciated that 'ghost in the machine' weirdness while still decrying the lazy 'didn't read the book' cheating stuff that we've arrived at now

https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/interviews/david-lynch-music-sound-chrystabell-cellophane-memories

Artificial intelligence? He’s always been seen as someone who embraces new technologies. “I think it’s fantastic. I know a lot of people are afraid of it. I’m sure, like everything, they say it’ll be used for good or for bad. I think it’d be incredible as a tool for creativity and for machines to help creativity. The good side of it’s important for moving forward in a beautiful way.” But does he acknowledge the threat it poses to creative industries? “I’m sure with all these things, if money is the bottom line, there’d be a lot of sadness, and despair and horror. But I’m hoping better times are coming.”

what would david lynch thing about ai? well i imagine he’d be intrigued by it bc digital film so transformed his art, but ultimately it prob would’ve offended his sensibilities as a painter (idk of any legit visual artist who is excited about ai)

(whoops, didn’t mean to include the text from ivy’s post, I used reply to get the formatting options in Zing)

It’s probably inevitable that someone is going to feed the Ronnie Rocket screenplay into the slop machine.

I like to think Lynch would hate AI after dicking with it a while, but who knows.

There's a lot of David Lynch stuff that he explores at the cusp of technology, I'm thinking specifically stuff like this in Twin Peaks 1

https://www.syfy.com/sites/syfy/files/styles/scale_862/public/2019/08/josiepackard2.jpg

and this in The Return

https://pbs.twimg.com/tweet_video_thumb/GIiz_oIWIAAL7zY.jpg

And especially all the short films he posted on his website
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggz_oXPjfhg

I kind of acquaint it with the way the Residents play with technology, where it looks completely amateur and shitty even in its time but betrays their natural curiosity and (and this is the most generous reading, and I don't know how true it is) a willingness to explore the uncanny valley between "real" and "fake."

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/53/Icky_Flix.jpg

Naturally, the Residents have started using AI. I can imagine Lynch doing something with it, not to do the goofball "camera tricks" that people are using it for, but to make something totally bugged out and ugly that looks like total dogshit but is unmistakably "him"

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

RE: AI, this was reported after he died, but he was looking into using it. Not to do creative work for him but to basically facilitate his filmmaking (IIRC anything involving animation) which feels logical - given his difficulties getting funding and the fact that the work he had in mind wouldn't gross much money (i.e. was going to lose money), he'd probably use it to handle the labor for him inexpensively and quickly.

the biggest persecution complex on this board

this is a hotly contested position