S&D: That Vaguely Lynchian Indie Shit That Tarantino Obliterated From Existence

The Dark Backward, Johnny Suede, Apartment Zero...that kind of thing. The films that Living In Oblivion were referencing with the midget dream sequence, which was already dated by the time LIO came out because Tarantino introduced a more commercial kind of quirk. Do you miss this stuff? Have any favorites? Does Barton Fink count? Am I right to credit Lynch for this era of indie filmmaking? And where does Tim Burton fit in?

Nick Cave can't act.

Tim Burton comes from a different tradition (old school horror) than Lynch (art-school surrealism), so I don't any relation between them. Besides, Burton was never really indie, was he?

Barton Fink, on the other hand, does seem to draw from some of the same sources as Lynch, though I think it came out too early to be a proper Lynch pastiche. I guess both BF and Lynch had some of the same influences, like Polanski's The Tenant.

"so I don't see any relation"

in that one essay david foster wallace credits david lynch with inventing the coens. to be honest, though, american indie film is the most boring thing in the universe, so i don't really care whether or not he was right about it.

There's also the European school of film surrealism from Un Chien andalou to La Grande bouffet to Delicatessen, but that's kinda too playful and non-horror to count as a precursor to Lynch or Lynchian. I think Northern Exposure (the TV series) drew from both Twin Peaks and this brand of European surrealism though.

(x-post)

Northern Exposure had touches of magic realism, but there was nothing either European or Surrealist about it. it's Twin Peaks-like elements - Northwest setting, 'quirky' characters - are the stuff of a pitch.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_VFHoci8AzwA/RcGZNq_uYVI/AAAAAAAAADI/wmlq0lfLFD8/s1600/Eerie_Indiana-1.jpg

http://www.tvshowsondvd.net/graphics/news3/WildPalms.jpg

american indie film is the most boring thing in the universe

until the evolution of "summer thrill rides" that are actually "dark" Freudian horrorshows

http://spleennpipes.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/lars_von_trier_the_kingdom_dvd_cover.jpg

tarantino has sooooo much more to annswer for. 4000 heads in 4000 duffle bags on the road to nowheresville, man.

luckily, tarantino couldn't kill everything:

i thought mike white's pasadena starring dana delaney and balthazar getty was gonna be a return to lynchian stuff on t.v. but the man shut it down!

Fuck yeah, Wild Palms. I forced myself to watch that when I was 12 and was mad bored.

Tim Burton comes from a different tradition (old school horror) than Lynch (art-school surrealism), so I don't any relation between them.

the relation is more that thanks to lynch's indie success and burton's mainstream success, you saw a lot more gothic/surreal art-school shit movies get released in america than you did once Tarantino and the 8 million talking heads in duffelbags took over. they do have different roots, but they both got producers to think this arcane shit could sell.

8 million talking heads in duffel bags does sound pretty lynchian, though

Barton Fink, on the other hand, does seem to draw from some of the same sources as Lynch, though I think it came out too early to be a proper Lynch pastiche.

not at all. it came out 5 years after blue velvet (and 14 after eraserhead), and totally scanned as lynchian to me at the time. but they couldn't decide whether they wanted to be lynch or send him up, which is why i think it's one of their weakest.

faux-lynch cinema is better than the ten years of faux-tarantino cinema obviously. if lynch begat coens, tarantino begat, what...guy ritchie? fuck that.

can we talk about "transgressive" '80s nyc art-punk-sex films too?

like liquid sky and ... what else?

nick zedd

but they couldn't decide whether they wanted to be lynch or send him up, which is why i think it's one of their weakest.
^^^^
this

yeah alan rudolph was to some extent on the same tip (at least in that era). alex cox too.

and this, of course:

http://www.boingboing.net/200805271045.jpg

(ha, while google-imaging for an after hours, one of the links took me to an alex in nyc blog post)

"can we talk about "transgressive" '80s nyc art-punk-sex films too?"

THIS is still my favorite thing from that era. and i watched it all cuz i had to cuz i was film threat's target audience. this cast rules and my girlfriend lung leg is brilliant:

lung is cheating on me?

I'm gonna have to shiv you scott

i thought mike white's pasadena starring dana delaney and balthazar getty was gonna be a return to lynchian stuff on t.v. but the man shut it down!

4 real -+- fox canceling this will go down in history as one of man's cruelest mistakes

alan rudolph is a good example of this. Equinox, some other crap he did...it's all vaguely bad, but kind of good at the same time.

I don't really see Barton Fink as being a Lynchian pastiche ... it's more concerned with stuff like Day of the Locust.

well it's kind of nathanael west shit meets clifford odets shit but it is kinda wrapped up in a lynchian sandwich roll.

xp guess I'm probably underestimating the influence of Lynch at the time. I saw Barton Fink when it came out, and the only Lynch thing I'd seen at the time was Dune ...still have never seen Twin Peaks.

dude, seriously, get on that.

Just saw 'fire walk with me'
and I'm thinking it's quite possible that genuine Lynchian shit might have obliterated vaguely Lynchian indie shit.

It's like how pop metal was already turning into ballady cowboy bullshit before it was "killed" by grunge, but damn if grunge didn't give drive in the nail by giving labels something else to love

where does this shit sandwich fit into the discussion
http://www.tarantino.info/wiki/images/Destiny.jpg

Don't know what started it, but there was a kind of film noir resurgence in the 80s, but without any actual plot or suspense, just the poses and the dialogue and the histrionics of the genre (the kind of thing Garrison Keillor does with Guy Noir); I'm thinking particularly in art (Robert Longo) and theater and performance art. Combine that with the retro-fifties meme along the lines of The Atomic Cafe (not the nostalgia of American Graffitti and Happy days but the mocking of those days), and Blue Velvet and Trouble in Mind and Mystery Train all kind of cross paths.

The big shift from Lynch to Taratino is the shift from appropriating the 1950s to appropriating the 1970s, in music, mores, and slang.

repo man also key in the neo-noir boomlet.

Does Six String Samurai fit in here somewhere? I don't remember it very well.

repo man wasn't really noir in the same way that mystery train tried to be. pulpy & with its fair share of po faced melodrama, but i dunno if i feel the noir angle.

god... destiny turns on the radio...

beth b!

repo man also key in the neo-noir boomlet.

I suppose. I've always thought of Repo Man as being the patient zero of the west cost punk/indie film scene along with those Penelope Spheeris exploitation movies and folks like Alison Anders, Roadside Prophets, etc. The key neo-noir movie is Blood Simple and then maybe Miami Blues before you get to One False Move, Red Rock West, Underneath

god i thought monsieur hire was lousy, lots of inappropriate laughter in the theater during that movie. my wife and i always refer to it as "monsieur for hire"