Steven Spielberg knew what he was doing when he cast David Lynch as John Ford men of fable; Already in 2022, the director, like Ford, had become a living monument of cinema, bigger than his films. Seen Lynch in 2007 at London’s BFI Southbank in a pre-publication interview. inner empireKeeping this fact in mind, I wrote: “Seeing him speak before a packed room, in that silver coat, that black suit and that buttoned shirt, without a tie, as if I felt like a witness to history, like seeing Picasso, Churchill or Fred. Astaire.
the elephant man Producer Mel Brooks improved when I spoke to him later in 2008. Describing their first meeting at Bob’s Big Boy Diner in Burbank (because Lynch only ate lunch there late, usually at 2:30 p.m.), Brooks said, “He just looked . like when Charles Lindbergh flew over the Atlantic. He was wearing a white button-down shirt and the same leather jacket that Jimmy Stewart wore when he played Lindbergh. Spirit of Saint Louis“.
When I met Lynch later that day, I was concerned that he was one of the few people who had set travel plans when it came to smoking. Even John Waters said he smoked so much. was cigarettes – he had already given it up a long time ago. (“The only thing the government told me was the truth,” he later said. “That does I’ll kill you.”) But the smoking ban was still six months away, and Lynch had turned it into an amazing art: lighting a cigarette without realizing it, putting it in your mouth and without blinking or blowing a millimeter of ash. I could talk for five minutes straight.
Part of the reason for the distraction was his voice, a cheerful, familiar tone that alternately tells you everything and nothing, a fatherly tone that contrasts with the beautiful darkness that his films achieve so restlessly and effortlessly. The first time I met him was approx. true story In 1999 I asked him what messages he left on his answering machine. Better yet, he said, “We’re at the armory right now, we’ll get back to you.”
In fact, the reason Lynch’s legend has endured is that he knows the value of mystery, and his reticence in interviews (or whatever the opposite is) is a form of fan service. When I spoke to Lynch beforehand Twin peaks: the returnThe show’s publicists asked that there be no questions about the characters or the plot. Now this is considered It was ridiculous for what was supposed to be a start, and Lynch destroyed my attempts to figure anything out. “It’s a total secret, Damon, you know,” he said, enjoying it. “You have a good sense of humor about it.”
Funnily enough, I wasn’t an immediate fan. I loved it draft However, when he first arrived in the UK in the early ’80s, he was largely seen as a herald of the post-punk spirit that would emerge in the wake of the Sex Pistols. I didn’t even notice it Dunewhich I hate and was taken by some of my friends who somehow thought I would like it too Return of the JediIt was from the same director. But blue velvet It was a life changer; In my first week in London, I saw it at the Lumiere in the West End (which, of course, is now a hotel). He arrived in Great Britain as the success of the fightHis producer, Dino De Laurentiis, is also impressed, calling Lynch after the first audition and telling him, “David! This is disaster“.
A few years later, I interviewed the late Jules Cruise, who I wrote about blue velvetThe closing song, “Secrets of Love” (which was originally intended to be The Cocteau Twins’ cover of Tim Buckley’s “Song to the Siren”). The cruise provided me with a unique portal into Lynch’s mind that I have never forgotten; I asked him about the song “Rocking Back Inside My Heart” and, in profoundly Lynchian fashion, he thought it was “Something for Isabella,” referring to his partner at the time, Isabella Rossellini. It was “something.” so very much in the spirit of their work together. A similar idea came to me from Lynch’s daughter, Jennifer, who told me while promoting her film. Follow-up I think his normally placid father was horrified when he tattooed some random Chinese calligraphy on his wrist: “How do you know what that is? half?!” – said. (If I remember correctly, this translates to something about eggs and luck.)
I was not big wild at heart but I loved the pilot twin peaks and most of the first series. I admired but didn’t always love his work, even after that, even on his early ’90s TV show. In the airuntil I saw something surprising Mulholland Street At a press screening in Cannes in 2001, my friend Shari got into a seat fight with a crazy journalist. The passengers took his pass and ushered him out, but by then the room was full, so they brought out a couple of chairs, which I had never seen before, and we sat in the back. Every time Naomi Watts and Laura Harring quietly said Mulholland Drive, Shari would nudge me and whisper, “It sounds like they’re saying Oxford Street.” Almost 25 years later, it has not lost its potency as a hallucinogenic Hollywood noir film. Sunset Boulevard for the 21st century.
Next movie, crazy inner empire– “complementary piece” Mulholland StreetI preferred that to what I described as the ‘evil twin,'” he said, “It seemed like ages, but looking back, it was only five years. When Laura Dern was on the verge of a nervous breakdown as an actress, she arrived with a new kind of freedom and energy; Lynch was and is not inspired by the digital revolution completely versus home theater if it’s good enough. “I think the best thing is the overall experience in a big darkroom,” he said. “Great image, great sound. A cough at the right time or at the wrong time, a spilled bag of popcorn, someone walking in front of the screen, those things break it and it’s a nightmare, so it’s the last thing: the big room. But now you can have a big screen and great sound in your house, you can turn off the lights, get all your stuff ready, look at it and enter that world.
This may explain why Lynch put so much effort into an unusual job. Twin peaks: the returnan astonishing spectacle that its moviegoers have come to support as an 18-hour movie. People often talk about Lynch’s work in terms of its influence: the lengths to which he is willing to go and the contrasting strangeness of his images. However, it was a demonstration of his creativity. atmosphere: moods that no one has found words to describe even now.
In fact, despite all the eccentricities of his film…blue velvetWhatever Frank Booth the Amazing The lost trunkthe chilling Mysterious Man, or wild at heartA sailor practicing kung fu in a snakeskin jacket… Lynch wasn’t trying to be controversial. In fact, the opposite occurs; as he demonstrated in 1999 with his family success true storyin which an 80 year old man travels 240 miles to see his brother in a John Deere tractor going 5 mph.
“What people say about my films is that they are experimental,” he said. “I will say true story It was my most experimental. When I read a script that I didn’t write, I read it and I felt these things and I thought, “Wow, that’s a beautiful feeling. How do you get that feeling in movie theaters? “Because many times you see people crying on the screen, but you don’t want to cry. When you have something that makes you feel real, that’s the power of cinema.
