David Lynch

[In Heaven]

No further comment.

[miless]

he probably did her directly after the shoot.

[chaddoli]

did what to her?

[miless]

did what to her?

snowballed her panties

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioKyxGkBRro

No further comment.

That was a waste of my time. Did Lynch lose a bet or something?

[Robin Davies]

Probably won a bet. =P~
I think he was dared to do it by someone on the chatroom on his website.
Not really the sort of thing I can imagine Bergman or Bresson doing.
Herzog ate his shoe so maybe this new collaboration with Lynch will result in some unusual recipe ideas...

[Mr Sausage]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioKyxGkBRro

No further comment.

That was a waste of my time. Did Lynch lose a bet or something?

Oh come on, he's clearly revelling in the sheer goofy absurdity of it. He can barely stop from laughing. Lynch always has an infectious childlike quality about him.

[Antoine Doinel]

Going out to eat? Lynch has some recommendations.

[Nothing]

well, he is known as Dirty Dave

[moviscop]

"Still Warm"

He loved those panties. Although, I wish I could see the original and not the remixed one.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

LA Weekly has an interesting piece on Peter Ivers who did the "Lady in the Radiator Song" for Eraserhead.

[flyonthewall2983]

I finished watching Lost Highway today (thanks, Hulu!) and I agree Fletch's interpretation of it as an odyssey of sexual frustration, and what dangers lurk below once it's pushed to it's peak. Just until recently, I had no problem admitting my general confusion/ignorance to David's work. At worst, I thought he was just someone who does weird for weird's sake. But after watching this, and reading some interviews with him, I'm a little closer to appreciating his work on the level so many here do.

If I can stay on the subject of Lost Highway, can someone explain why Richard Pryor's cameo is seen by some as something disturbing or insulting to his legacy? Watching it, I got the feeling that David would have cast Richard in that role if he made it before he started to deteriorate physically. It's only notable that it's him in the role, since it was one that was limited to about half a minute of screen time.

[Cold Bishop]

I'd imagine it has to do with the obvious condition he was in, and Lynch's reputation for weirdness made people look at it as some "sideshow" sort of stunt, making a spectacle of him. I think its complete b.s. Lynch was a fan and wanted to work with him and gave him a role he could handle. According to Lynch, Pryor improvised about 9 mintues of footage outside of the scripted scenes which he called "amazing" and which would have been nice to see as it would probably have made a stronger case that it wasn't just a bizarre-for-bizarres-sake cameo, which the blink-and-you'll-miss-it screentime might lead people to believe.

[flyonthewall2983]

It'd be cool if that stuff saw the light of day.

[colinr0380]

The brief Pryor performance might also be a nod towards the ridiculous nature of cameos that often detract from a sense of 'naturalism' in a film ("Hey, it's Troy McClure! I remember you from such films as...") - see the recent Halloween remake. It sort of works for a film as off kilter as Lost Highway though, don't you think?

There also may be a through connection if we add in Robert Forster's grand total of thirty seconds as the policeman investigating the car crash and gazing out at the mythical city at the beginning of Mulholland Drive!

Or it could be seen as adding another layer to the film in that a character who would ordinarily go completely unnoticed in the film as a whole is given a weight by the famous actor making an appearance and forces consideration of why they are given such prominence.

We could also add Mary Steenburgen in Inland Empire. Or William H. Macy. Inland Empire could be seen as a film full of actors giving discreet 'cameo' performances held together by the main actors whose identities are more fluid and less fixed, and their changing personas are what gives meaning and context to the characters surrounding them.

Or something like that!

I really like Michael's electic chair interpretation of the ending of Lost Highway. I get the impression that the Balthazar Getty section of the film is also the attempt after Fred's killing of his wife over her relationship with Andy to actually place the blame where it belongs, resurrect his girl and kill the pimp and the client instead. Though by Fred leaving his final message that 'Dick Laurent is dead' in the intercom he also plants the seeds of mistrust and doubt of his wife that drive Fred down the road to violence in the first instance. He's the catalyst more than anything in his wife's past for her death and that's the guilt he can't face. The death of Dick Laurent rather than being a release and a comfort to Fred just acts as another reminder of her sordid past.

Isn't this the greatest delusion though, and the thing that the mystery man is angry at Fred for - that it is another form of running away from responsibilty for your actions by making your punishment about something else, something more acceptable. Better to be on the run from the police or frying in the electric chair for the honour killing of your wife's abusers than to think that you might have killed her yourself?

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

I really like Michael's electic chair interpretation of the ending of Lost Highway. I get the impression that the Balthazar Getty section of the film is also the attempt after Fred's killing of his wife over her relationship with Andy to actually place the blame where it belongs, resurrect his girl and kill the pimp and the client instead. Though by Fred leaving his final message that 'Dick Laurent is dead' in the intercom he also plants the seeds of mistrust and doubt of his wife that drive Fred down the road to violence in the first instance. He's the catalyst more than anything in his wife's past for her death and that's the guilt he can't face. The death of Dick Laurent rather than being a release and a comfort to Fred just acts as another reminder of her sordid past.

Wow, I'd never thought of that and now it feels blindingly obvious. #-o I swear that this forum knows more about Lynch than the people whose books about Lynch I've read.

[flyonthewall2983]

Since I haven't seen this elsewhere in the thread, here is an interview with David, promoting Lost Highway. In that link also is another interview taken a few years later, talking about The Straight Story.

[godardslave]

Since I haven't seen this elsewhere in the thread, here is an interview with David, promoting Lost Highway. In that link also is another interview taken a few years later, talking about The Straight Story.

thankyou very much for that great link, Charlie Rose is just superb! =D>

[flyonthewall2983]

No problemo. And I do agree, Charlie is one of the few digestable talking heads on television today.

[colinr0380]

Since I haven't seen this elsewhere in the thread, here is an interview with David, promoting Lost Highway. In that link also is another interview taken a few years later, talking about The Straight Story.

Great interview! You inspired me to do my periodic check of YouTube for Mark Cousins' Scene By Scene series and found the 1999 interview he did with Lynch.

[flyonthewall2983]

The bit that really got to me is 38 minutes or so into that interview where he mentions Jack Nance, and for a few seconds you can see him a little choked up after he mentions his name.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

Lynch has his own blog.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

Lynch has his own blog.

More TM! I should have seen that coming when I saw the URL address.

[Anonymous]

I think Blue Velvet is the absolute worst Lynch film. It looks like a film made by a very intelligent person trying to make a David Lynch movie. And failing.

It reeks of futile effort, and pathetic attempts to shock. I am generally a huge fan of his, but this one was all plastic, and no guts.

I could not disagree more with this.

This film changed my life. Imagine, if you will, a 24yr old me, in 1986, innocently buying a ticket to see this film, having recently seen Top Gun, and thinking how wonderful that film was!!! I sat through Blue Velvet absolutely transfixed. That was a major turning point in my life. I had been transported to a brave new world, and I was never going back to my Top Gun world again. Mr Lynch showed me his vision of the underbelly, what lies beneath the shiny veneer of Suburbia. His vision spoke to me. Frank Booth spoke to me!

A supreme work of Art, this. Thank you Mr Lynch.

Right. Off to the thread on Lynch's great masterpiece, INLAND EMPIRE....

[Cde.]

Blue Velvet completely blew my mind and was all that I could think about for days when I first saw it. I think it's absurdity of the clash between the idealised 50s movie world and the naive romance within and the ridiculous (and yet still discomforting) villainy brimming beneath the surface that really spoke to me. The madness of Lynch films makes them much more realistic than most people generally acknowledge.