Topic: The thread for discussion of David Lynch media (Read 8324 times)

KvP · « **on:** 26 Jan 2008, 15:21 »

Right, so I got the gold box set of Twin Peaks for Christmas ("I think this is a great definitive Twin Peaks Gold Set..." - David Lynch) and by golly, it's bloody amazing. At least, the first 13 episodes have been. I've decided to delve deeper into the oeuvre of this David Lynch fellow. Last night, I watched Wild at Heart, a movie about young love in a world gone mad. It features Nic Cage back when he was something to see, and Laura Dern's boobies.

I think I've fallen in love with the eccentricities and fever dreams of this mad man. So I'm thinking of visiting Mulholland Drive next. Or should I watch Eraserhead? Or Inland Empire? Or Lost Highway?

Give me some input. There's bound to be some Lynch fans aroundhere.

TheFuriousWombat · « **Reply #1 on:** 26 Jan 2008, 15:25 »

Watch Eraserhead and Mulholland Dr. before Inland Empire. IE is an amazing but grueling viewing experience so make sure you're up for it before you start watching. It will seriously fuck with you.

Cartilage Head · « **Reply #2 on:** 26 Jan 2008, 16:22 »

WERE YOU BLONDE

Ishotdanieljohnston · « **Reply #3 on:** 26 Jan 2008, 18:04 »

have you seen Blue velvet yet? You have to see that. Lynch is the man. See Lost Highway before Mulholland Drive. I swear Twin peaks is the best thing thats ever been on TV.

De_El · « **Reply #4 on:** 26 Jan 2008, 21:27 »

Eraserhead, Blue Velvet.

And if you're curious, The Straight Story is really good, but weird and unusual for David Lynch in that it is what it says it is: totally straightforward and normal.

KvP · « **Reply #5 on:** 27 Jan 2008, 13:13 »

You liked Fire Walk With Me that much? I haven't heard a lot of good things about it, but being as in love with Twin Peaks as I am, I'm definitely curious to see it.

Anyway, a deal is made, and I have a goal, albeit a distant one. My buddy in film school really wants to see Blue Velvet, so we'll tackle that first, and then Mulholland Drive. The local independent theater was playing Inland Empire for awhile, but I felt that it probably wouldn't have been a good starting point for Lynch.

As for the TV show Twin Peaks, I've gotten to the point where Lynch left the show and the Laura Palmer storyline is resolved. This, for those who don't know, is where the show famously starts to lose focus and starts to suck. It's getting pretty tedious, I have to say, although I'm told the upcoming Wyndom Earle storyline helps get things back on track.

Jackie Blue · « **Reply #6 on:** 27 Jan 2008, 14:55 »

I would agree that Fire Walk With Me is one of his best films.

"Chug-a-lug, Donna!"

I wish he would release a DVD with both of his short-lived TV series On the Air (a fantastic comedy set in the Golden Age of radio programming) and American Chronicles (a documentary series about weird little things).

KvP · « **Reply #7 on:** 27 Jan 2008, 18:22 »

Has anyone drank David Lynch's brand of coffee?

I'm trying to track down that Julee Cruise album that has all its lyrics written by Lynch. She was pretty good on the Twin Peaks OST (which I posted in the mediafire thread not too long ago)

Jackie Blue · « **Reply #8 on:** 27 Jan 2008, 19:26 »

A friend of mine attended a Lynch seminar on filmmaking here in Knoxville quite some time ago, shortly after Lost Highway. He got to talk to him after the lecture, and according to Lynch, "here's how you write a movie":

"Put on a pot of coffee, get a six-pack, and roll the biggest joint you've ever seen. By morning, you'll have a script."

He claimed that is exactly how he wrote Lost Highway.

Joseph · « **Reply #9 on:** 27 Jan 2008, 19:41 »

That's genius.

Since the joint would get bigger and bigger every time.

So that way you would achieve artistic evolution, see?

De_El · « **Reply #10 on:** 27 Jan 2008, 19:57 »

Provided you've seen Up in Smoke that might get really difficult.

Johnny C · « **Reply #11 on:** 27 Jan 2008, 19:59 »

Without cheese, there wouldn't be an Inland Empire.

KvP · « **Reply #12 on:** 27 Jan 2008, 20:57 »

Cheese is made from milk.

I remember that, Lynch going around with his cow, and a print of Inland Empire in the trunk of his car. I was hoping he would come around here, but we just got a print shipped to us

tomselleck69 · « **Reply #13 on:** 27 Jan 2008, 21:41 »

By all means, try to track down On The Air (torrents useful here). Second only to Twin Peaks on my personal Lynchometer.

Ishotdanieljohnston · « **Reply #14 on:** 28 Jan 2008, 16:11 »

Actually I think they have a copy of that at my Uni library.

KvP · « **Reply #15 on:** 01 Mar 2008, 21:08 »

So I just watched the Twin Peaks series finale.

Holy shit, is what I have to say about that.

bryanthelion · « **Reply #16 on:** 02 Mar 2008, 15:50 »

I didnt like Inland Empire, like at all.

Loved eraserhead though.

KharBevNor · « **Reply #17 on:** 02 Mar 2008, 19:55 »

Man, the thing about Lynch is, he's a shit film-maker. It's important to remember that he trained as a painter. Eraserhead is his best work, and that's something more like some surrealist installation/painting on the screen. Very unique, very rich, very imaginative. A firm favourite of mine.Then it's pretty much downhill in chronological order. I tend to think that The Elephant Man was almost good in spite of Lynch: the high level of creative input of other people on his first 'proper' film seems to have reigned in his worst tendencies, and a good film was produced. Dune, well, we all know about Dune. Then, he started writing his own stuff, and shit hit the fan. Blue Velvet is a perfect example of what Lynch does well, and where he falls down. Visual set-pieces (like the opening) are brilliant, pretty much all the scenes with Dennis Hopper are awesome, but a lot of the rest of the film is just excruciating, like it was chopped together from some Made for TV movie. After this it gets worse, in my mind, with the possible exception of Lost Highway, which has more good points than, say, Mulholland Drive, which was a dreadful film. The thing about Lynch is, there are certain aspects of his work that are brilliant, auteur genius level: his use of sound and music, and certain of the metaphorical, bizarre visual setpieces in his films are astounding. Unfortunately, he shows a recurring inability, to my mind, to wrap these elements together into a decent film. It's not even that his plots are bad, it's just that he has almost no grasp whatsoever of dramatic tension or pacing. By Mulholland Drive he's just throwing in plot twists because it's his style. As he's continued, and creative controls of him have relaxed, he's become more and more fascinated with his own cleverness and seems to have forgot what made his films good in the first place.

Twin Peaks is pretty good, but the majority of Twin Peaks was written and directed by people who were not David Lynch. Once again, his worst tendencies were contained, his deficiencies masked.

Alex C · « **Reply #18 on:** 03 Mar 2008, 05:15 »

I've seen roughly 60% of Lynch's stuff, and by that I mean that I have seen every movie he's released, but only 2 all the way through to the end; I always end up losing interest and finding something better to do. So basically, what Khar said, with an even greater emphasis on "learn2pace moar."

KvP · « **Reply #19 on:** 03 Mar 2008, 15:22 »

I don't disagree with what you write here, Khar, but

Quote from: KharBevNor on 02 Mar 2008, 19:55

Twin Peaks is pretty good, but the majority of Twin Peaks was written and directed by people who were not David Lynch. Once again, his worst tendencies were contained, his deficiencies masked.

This is wrong. Going through Twin Peaks it's readily apparent that, while Lynch was never a permanent fixture on set even when he was involved with the show, he was the guy who made the show good. When Lynch left in the second season the show became really awful, even when Mark Frost and Robert Engels and all the show regulars were still on. All the things that people think about when they think about Twin Peaks - the hallucinations and dream sequences, the disjointed dialogue, the White Lodge / Black Lodge mythology - Lynch was responsible for. When he left, it wasn't the same. When he came back to direct the final episode he managed to mostly redeem the show despite the mediocre (Windom Earle) and outright terrible (James' out-of-state romance, Billy fucking Zane, Andy's daddy drama, Jean Renoit) plot threads that had pretty much killed it following the resolution of the Laura Palmer storyline and Lynch's departure. I don't buy that the show was good in spite of him at all.

bryanthelion · « **Reply #20 on:** 03 Mar 2008, 17:53 »

How was carnivale though? I hear he was involved in that series.

KvP · « **Reply #21 on:** 03 Mar 2008, 17:58 »

He wasn't, but it was heavily indebted to Twin Peaks (as are, to varying degrees, the X-Files, Lost and other mystery serials) It also features the Little Man From Another Place, whose name escapes me and I am too lazy to research.

tomselleck69 · « **Reply #22 on:** 04 Mar 2008, 04:43 »

Michael J. Anderson!

For the record, yeah Carnivale is completely awesome. If you enjoy Twin Peaks, there's a good chance you'll enjoy Carnivale. They're not built from the same mold, but they have a lot in common (tons of americana, gradually building mysticism, personified good and evil and an ending that pisses you off because there is clearly so much more to be told).

wm_star · « **Reply #23 on:** 04 Mar 2008, 05:09 »

Quote from: KharBevNor on 02 Mar 2008, 19:55

It's not even that his plots are bad, it's just that he has almost no grasp whatsoever of dramatic tension or pacing.

Wow - Khar, I was reading your post, disagreeing with most of what you said, but wasn't going to comment because of course, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and at least you were making a technical critique instead of taking a personal affront at his films, and Lynch is definitely not for everyone. But the statement above made me almost gasp out loud because I could not possibly disagree more. I think Lynch has an absolute flair for dramatic tension, like almost no other film-maker. Yes, in Blue Velvet, the scenes with Dennis Hopper are great and fun and kinda creepy, but the scenes with Isabella Rossellini (the girl who wore blue velvet) are entirely filled with tension - they are the crux of the film. And Wild at Heart, which is one of my personal favorites because it's just a great little romantic comedy, David Lynch style, has two intensely dramatic scenes - the moment with Laura Dern and Willem Dafoe, when he asks to use the head in her motel room ("Bunnies hop back fast; you hop back slow"), and the moment where Diane Ladd (as Dern's mother) smears lipstick all over her face - are both terribly tense and creepy. And don't even get me started about Bob in Twin Peaks. *shudder* There are a million more examples, too, all of his movies are fraught with dramatic tension (except maybe The Straight Story).

I agree with you that his use of sound and music are essential to the creation of his movies and shows, and to those dramatic scenes in particular, but that's how he rolls, as it were. He uses sound and music to create dramatic tension, and he does it brilliantly. I'll be the first to admit that he's not going to be the film-maker that everyone loves, he's too weird and a little bit kitschy, but I completely disagree with the comment that he has no grasp of dramatic tension. I think he does dramatic tension better than anyone else.

And, imo, the very best Twin Peaks episodes were the ones he directed - it's so easy to tell which episodes were directed by him, and they are in every case the best episodes of the show.

KvP · « **Reply #24 on:** 17 Apr 2010, 13:35 »

Word on the street is that there is a Mulholland Drive 2 in the works. As I was saying on the Facebook, I believe there was a line of dialogue in Fire Walk With Me that stated something was going to happen 20 years in the future, and it is now 20 years since Twin Peaks debuted. So I'd rather have more Dale Cooper, all things considered.

look out! Ninjas! · « **Reply #25 on:** 17 Apr 2010, 18:00 »

Can you sequel Mulholland Drive? I can't think of anything left over from the film that could be used reasonably in a sequel; and I disagree with the comment in that article that it might work because Mulholland Drive was originally conceived as a TV series - it lost that element as soon as it became a movie with a conclusion.

KharBevNor · « **Reply #26 on:** 19 Apr 2010, 06:42 »

I'm fairly certain I wouldn't even bother watching Mullholland Drive 2. My comments on Lynch from two years ago stand fairly firm.

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Author Topic: The thread for discussion of David Lynch media (Read 8324 times)

wm_star