X-Ray VisionJust five days shy of his seventy-ninth birthday, filmmaking icon David Lynch transcended to another plane. Rosie and Jason eulogize the legendary craftsman taking a look at his most celebrated films, the impact of Twin Peaks, and the enduring reach of his commercial work.
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Warning, Today's episode will contain some minor spoilers for various David Lynch films and television shows, notably Twin Peaks. There is no film, it's all an illusion. That's a David Lynch reference, so be warned. Hello, Naman's Jason Concepcion.
And I'm Rosday Nike and welcome back to X.
Ray Vision of that podcast or wed I'm deep. Okay, your favorite shows, movies, comics and pop culture coming from my podcast where we'll bring you three one two, three Godays episodes a week every Tuesday and Thursday for sure, and then an extra day thrown in there. You sometimes Wednesday, sometimes.
You never know when it's coming. And into episode, we have got our coffees and our pies, cherry pies, and we are here to honor the late David Lynch. As soon as he passed, we were in the group chat we were like, it's got to be done. So today we're gonna do it. We're gonna look back a time capsule of all the film and television works so you should add to your collection and check out and how they impacted us. And in the back matter, we're going to discuss what makes Lynch such an iconic figure in cinema and pop culture history.
But first previously on Well Rosie. David Lynch passed away recently and I'm here in La. You're here in La. There is currently a memorial, a public memorial of sorts at the La the Burbank Bob's Big Boy, where the filmmaker would often get lunch around two three.
Drink his coffee in his chocolate milkshake. You can see him to Luca Lake, I think regularly. That's one thing I think people don't understand about the magic of La is, like it is magical to be here. Generally there's palm trees, there's sun, there's beaches, there's mountains, there's there's you know, horrible fires that we were living through and sending our hopes and prayers to that. But like there is it's still a movie making town. Like you can just be hanging out and just see someone like David Lynch in a diner or go to a screening and see some like incredible artists that you never thought you would get to see in real life. Like it's pretty magical in that way. It still is a movie making town. And I think someone like Lynch because of his you know, unique form and play within film, but also his like strange accessibility and sincerity, Like people knew that you could just go that him and John Carpenter would be there, just like having lunch at Big Boy. Yeah, and now there's a very beautiful, very big probably soon to get too big. Might have to get it.
As soon to get too big. It might be too big as we speak, When did you first become aware of David Lynch the guy? Not just because I remember the I first saw Elevant man like as a child and that was the first one I saw, But I didn't know about him until years later. So when did you first become aware of him as a personality as a person?
Okay, so before I was even born. My mom always blames this for me being like weird. But she she went to the Rio Cinema in Dalston and when she was pregnant and they did a mom and baby screening of Blue Velvet and you could like take your kid and go and see it, and she'd had it was good, So she went and she was pregnant and she was like so mortified when Dennis Hopper like had the gas mask on and he was like I want to get back inside when he's like trying to, you know, And and she left, and she's always been like, you know, maybe that's why, like you like all this weird stuff because when you were in you I went to see Blue Velvet. But I when I was a kid, my best friend donoll we were just into like really weird stuff and I we had probably already seen the June movie, but I do really distinctly remember we went to see My Holland Drive at the cinema in two thousand and one, so we would have been thirteen, and we specifically like went to see that movie because we like David Lynch. We'd gotten old David Lynch movies out of the video store that we had where we lived in Hackney. And yeah, I remember really distinctly both of us just being like, WHOA, what like a crazy movie? And that was really another step towards my kind of cinephile story. So that was definitely it. And I still hold like a very special place in my heart for My Holland Drive, and I still get that feeling every time, like if you're driving in LA and you see My Holland Drive, I'm always like that's my Holland Drive, like the there is like I know this, It's from movies. So I would definitely say that was a big one. But I think the reason that we were even aware of who he was was probably because of Twin Peaks for sure.
I think for me, I first saw The Elephant Man as a kid. It was playing on cable all the time, and I was very, very affected by that movie. It's a tremendously one of the most beautiful modern black and white films, I think, yeah, and it is a heartbreaking film the end. It's about a man who is born with severe physical deformities to the point that he can't He has to sleep standing like sitting up because he lays down he'll suffocate. And he's kept in a like as a circus performer, like in a cage. But he's very sensitive, very intelligent, and as he says in the film many times, not an animal. He's mellows in this really affecting way, and it really it really it. As a kid, it really broke my heart. I was like, oh my god, this is one of the most sad things I've ever seen. And then of course I saw Dune, but I didn't make that this is all as a kid, so I didn't make the connection of you know, David Lynch and as as a director, and I don't think I had a tremendous idea about directors and what they did. So and then I saw Dune, which I loved as a kid. Although I found it tremendously weird.
It's very very weird, but very appealing to the eye of a child because there's so much great stuff going on.
That I thought it was great and I still think it's great. And then and then you're right, Twin Peaks was a sensation. But as a person, David Lynch, I want to say, this is sometime during the Twin Peaks run, And again I was very young, and I didn't have a lot of parental supervision, and I was always up late watching late night television, like starting in the fourth grade, fourth fifth grade, I just would stay up late and lunch like Letterman and Lynch appeared on and My he talked about Twin Peaks a little bit. And then I recall David's like, you brought something for us to see and he's like yeah, and he brings out like this collection of photographs and he had he talked about how he was walking around outside his house and he saw his line of ants, so he took a toothpick, and on the toothpick he mounted a ball of meat and cheese I think, and then he covered the meat and cheeseball with clay, and then you know, carved like eye holes and then a mouth and I think nose holes and like these little kind of like Shrek like ears out of clay, and the holes allowed the ants to get in, and then he mounted it right in the path of the ants and then just took pictures of like the ants going into the eye holes and like carving out the meat and taking it away. And I had never seen anything like that on television. Don't work television, I'm like, and it was I was like, Wow, what a tremendously weird guy. And I've always been fascinated by, like, truly sincerely weird people. And that was my first understanding of David Lynch's, like oh shit, he's weird. And then it wasn't until college that I watched Blue Velvet and was just blown away by the everything of it. We'll describe what that means in a bit, but I mean, what would you say, are the hallmarks of David Lynch. What would you say are the themes and the devices that many of his films have in common and the things that he would you can feel that he's interested in through his movies.
I think, like a sincere interest in the concept of like America and Americana.
Yeah, and that's right. It's a Midwestern guy from small town America.
What does it mean to be in America whether you're in a rural area, which Twin Peaks explores this kind of idea of like the idyllic notion of like nature and living with nature, and the dangers and the secrets that hide behind small town life, which is also very apparent in like Blue Velvet. But then also like Wild at Heart with Laura Dunn and Nick Cage, that is a movie that's very concerned with this kind of like over the top, violent, embellished kind of road trip version of what Americana can be, Like Las Vegas driving down Route sixty six. He was just a man who was very interested in telling a story about the place that he lived. And I think that that goes from anything from like Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, Lost Highway, Wild at Heart, More Holland drive. Obviously, then you're getting into the very specifically LA movies, but also the straight Story, which I think a lot of people have really been revisiting, which seemed at the time in nineteen ninety nine like this just absolute diversion from David Lynch's which was generally seen as controversial and shocking and very adult. And the straight story is just about a guy who drives his lawn mower across the country to see his friends. Yeah, based on a true story, and it's very ironically. It really reminds me of another one of my favorite Stone Cold widows, Berna Herzog. He wrote this book about walking across the country to see his friend who had cancer. And I think that there is this similarity of interest in both the tiniest stories, like what would drive somebody to do that? How much do you have to love someone? And there's this very affecting moment in the straight story that a lot of people have been sharing where the guy's like, oh, you came all this way from me, and he's like, yeah, I did. And it's kind of this acknowledgment of like humanity and friendship and male friendship and platonic love, and it's this really tiny moment in what is like a very vast story, and what was seen at the time is like why did he make this? But when you look at it in the context of the rest of his movies, I think it makes a lot of sense. I also would say, obviously like surrealism, especially if you're looking at like Eraise Ahead, which I think was another movie that I saw really really young that scared me. Everyone was like, oh my god, you don't want to see the erais Ahead baby, like nobody film. Yeah, Yeah, definitely, like wait what and that was from nineteen seventy seven. It feels very ahead of its sky. It feels very akin to like a Tetsuo The Iron Man, or like international cinema cinema from Japan around the same time, or in the late eighties.
In early twentieth century films like Metropolis.
Yeah, very that's definitely very in his vein, and I think that mixture.
I think is very much referenced in the opening of it too.
Yeah, oh man, I used to love that movie. Yeah, I would say, I think another thing that comes across in all of his movies. Whether he's acting in a movie, everyone's been sharing his performance as John Houston. In Spielberg's The Fableman's that came out recently, he had like a short one horizon. Where's the horizon? I think about it a lot now. Whatever is at the top, it's interesting, it's at the bottom of the bottom, it's interesting. The middle it's boring. Get out. But like I think something that shines through is also just like a sincere love for cinema. Like he loves movie making. He loves the he loves art granularly it can be. He loves how the light hits the set. He loves the mees on sen he loves the production of making a movie. He loves the people he makes movies with. There's those incredible pictures of him when he was trying to get Laura don an oscar for Mulholland Drive, and he's sitting with the cow just on the side of the street outside the Academy with the big you know, for your consideration, Laura Dunn, this was just a man who's crely loved his country, his job, his life, the people he worked with, someone like Kyle McLaughlin, who is just such a fantastic talent who he feels, you know, he wrote a piece recently, and it was such a beautiful read basically about how David Lynch created him, Like there's no version of him that exists today without Lynch.
Yeah, plucked him from obscurity, in his words.
Because he did June, he did Blue Velvet, he did Twin Peaks. He managed to craft this enigmatic kind of career out of just working with this man who saw something in him and who was willing to play with him on screen. And I do think that Twin Peaks probably changed the trajectory of David Lynch's career in obviously many ways, like you're making mainstream TV, your name is getting out there, but more so in like a way of crafting a very passionate fandom. Like I worked at a movie thing in London called Genesis Cinema, and I worked at the bar and we hosted the Twin Peaks fest right one year, and I got to meet matgen Amchik and Sherylyn Fenn and it was really incredible. But the passion that the fans have for that show, I've only seen a kin is like comic Con.
It's kind of amazing that it became a thing.
People dressed up, they queued up they paid for signatures. Especially when the show came out, people who loved David Lynch at first were very confused by it because it was straight. It was kind of a straight down the line at the beginning.
Yes, yeah, in the beginning, Yes, in the beginning, yeah yeah, yeah yeah, as a murder mystery kill the ponds, because you're right, there is this wonderful mainstream hook of the murder mystery, and then it just evolves.
Well, let's let's use this as.
A jumping up the plane to talk about his work. Let's talk about his work starting with his first full length feature film, nineteen seventy Seven's a raser Head. Very much an art film, very much a film. Another film that I think is one of the great modern black and white films. It's about this guy, a racer head who you know, goes about living his very strange life in a unknown kind of industrial industry city and he has a lot of kind of dreamlike things happen to him. He has a there's a child involved. But it's really a kind of collection of visual tone poems that are really quite striking. It feels as if you are having a full length dream, is what yes film is.
Like, I think it does establish that dream like nature that becomes a really big part of most of Lynch's films, especially Blue Velvet and Lost Highway, Amahalan Drive, and also I would say as well to a point June. I feel like a lot of what he did with June was like incredibly dreamlike and strange. But yeah, this was definitely the ultimate. Like when I was a teenager, you'd be like, oh my god, have you seen a rais ahead? Like you got to watch this, and we'd get it and everyone would freak out to see that a rais ahead baby, and I was I was overly scared of it as a child before i'd seen it, before realizing like anything, it's kind of you know these funny.
It's mostly very weird and funny.
Yeah, adults will always tell you like, oh, you got this is going to be really scary, and then you watch it and you're like, well, this is old. You know that I remember having that feeling.
Well, I will say one of the things that I think that is present from the start of Lynch's filmography, and it's right here one is the kind of dreamlike the dreamlike quality, the intertextual quality. What I think he builds that dream like feeling with takes of unusual length. I don't mean long, and I don't mean short. I just mean longer than you would expect for a two shot conversation or shorter than you would expect for like a reaction shot, and shooting from strange angles, like angles that almost look like you're observing a scene from on the set, but in a different way. And then also this juxtaposition of normalcy and life with something really scary and gross.
Like, yeah, definitely, And I mean I always remember reading Jennifer Lynch, who is now a filmmaker in Home Right, like David Lynch's daughter. She talked about how like she was born with like clubbed feet and had to have a lot of operations, and the kind of unexpected nature of her being born and then not being born disabled was like a big packed on the movie. But also so was living in Philadelphia, Like he loved Philadelphia, but he was living in Philadelphia in the seventies and he was seeing some stuff he was seeing.
Referred to it as a very racist place, but also he liked it.
Yeah, he was like he's really going through he was living in a what I think again, his love of like different sides of America and seeing this kind of industrial poverty stricken place.
Also, something I think about a lot with The Raizorhead is like af I thought it was gonna be like a twenty minute movie, so they greenlit it because only had twenty one page screenplay, but David Lynch obviously was like no, So it took like over five years to make, and he was basically living off the fact that his childhood friend Jack Fisk and Sissy Spacek were just donating money to him. So it's essentially that thing as well of like you probably never get David Lynch without having a benefactor who saw that it was worth making this movie and for years supported him in his ability to make this movie that would go on to obviously spark this massive Korea And I think as well as something that's really interesting about a rais Ahead is it couldn't feel more tonally different than The Elephant Man, which is a pretty straight down the line like loose of a bio drama. Yeah, yeah, But the interesting thing about it is Elephant Man also deals in ideas and notions of like disability and acceptance and finding acceptance in a world where you are different, So I think it's interesting to kind of see those themes emerge. But yeah, obviously, then Elephant Man becomes like this massive cultural success. It's nominated for many many awards. John hurt Is obviously absolutely fantastic. It's definitely one of those movies in the annals of like disability cinema, kind of like Freaks. Freaks is still pretty much the only major studio movie that's ever been made with a majority disabled cast until the Woody Allen movie Champions recently, which was more of like a Bobby Fairley comedy. So, I you know, good for the actors who got paid in that. I love that for them, But like Freaks was like that, it's imperfect, but for a lot of disabled people, there's a lot to love about it.
Or Revenge Film, I think exactly. It's a kind of our great revenge film.
Revenge film, and also a film that, even though it was sold on this notion of like, oh, look at the freaky disabled people, it actually humanizes the disabled people.
It's from their perspective. From me, take revenge, you.
Get it exactly. So you mentioned the Elephant Man.
Nineteen eighty Elephant Man, produced by Mel Brooks.
Yeah, which he did uncredited so people wouldn't think it was a comedy. And with the Elephant Man, it's another movie where you know, nowadays we have incredible actors like Adam Pearson, who you can currently see in a Different Man with Sebastian Stan, but you know, in the eighties they used John Hutt, they use prosthetics, and it still is a movie that is definitively a humanizing movie about risabilities. And I think that was like a huge moment. But then again, you get the next movie he does is Dune. You know, four years later that's crazy.
Well, what's fascinating is so Elephant Man is, along with the straight story, I think his most to your point down the line film. It's a yeah, beginning middle and beginning middle, there are Lynchian things in there. The dreamlike quality is really pushed to the periphery. If it's there at all, it's there because of the stark and beautifully rich black and white photography. What is very Lynchian is his depiction of cruelty, which is stark in the film. But it's a regular it's a quote unquote normal movie, and I think off of the strength of that comes Dune he is tapped to adapt and direct the adaptation of one of the great sci fi works, with the idea that Dune would become as you know, Return of the Jedi had come out in nineteen eighty three, so the movie industry is thinking, where's our next star wars. Here's a classic sci fi why don't we do that. Let's tap this guy, David Lynch, up and coming filmmaker, young filmmaker in the mold of George Lucas who was also an art film guy. THHX you know is a very strange film, akin to erase her head in its own way. So I think they were thinking, Okay, here's our big chance, and it doesn't quite work out the way either Lynch or the studio on it. Lynch has complained that they took his vision away, they took his power away. That said, well, I was saying this before we turn the MIC's onto Joell, I get it. This is a big studio picture. Like I remember as a young kid that they had Kyle McLaughlin in the full still suit get up on fucking a cover on Wheatie's boxes, like on cereal boxes, because the idea was that they were gonna market this as eighties Star Wars, here's the new Star Wars. They were gonna push that this way, and I think in order to do that, you kind of do have to take the film from David Lynch, who is gonna go fucking crazy.
Well, his original cut was like four hours long. Yeah, right, and also as well, you've got to understand, though, I will for David Lynch, who's coming into this right off the eight Academy nominations for The Elephant Man and then just like an art movie that he did for fun for five years, funded by his friends, he's coming into June that's been in production since like nineteen seventy one. Then in nineteen seventy four you get the Joderowski version where him and Dan O'Bannon essentially unintentionally collect all the creative team that would gone to work with Alien. When the Joderowski version fails, then in seventy six, and you know, Delaurentes is trying to do it, and then you know, and obviously you can watch the Joderarowski student documentary to find out about how that happened. But then Dino Dolaurentis came in. He hired Ridley Scott and then by the time that Lynch comes in, they've almost lost the rights. Then they get the rights back, and he is not necessarily in an ideal situation. Also, hilariously, speaking of Return of the Jedi, David Lynch actually did turn down the chance to direct Return of the Jedi, which is like still one of my favorite like what if movies of all time, and I love Return of the Jedi. But yeah, so he was really going through it. The movie came out, it was not necessarily seen as some great hit, but as always happened, it is now essentially like it got its own colleague following Yeah, one of my colleagues and friends that I made from set visits called Max. Every he did he wrote actually a book called a Masterpiece in Disarray, David Lynch's June and he interviewed David Lynch, He interviewed like Kyle, he interviewed bunch of people. He also found out that there had kind of been talk of Dune Too being made, and that there was kind of a screenplay that he had found he'd found like a treatment while he was in the archives at California State University. So there was meant to be a sequel. So I can't. I can imagine that was a tough situation. Max also interviewed me for that book, so if you want to get a copy of it, he interviewed a bunch of different people about their experiences of Doune. But yeah, I love that Dune movie. Virginia Madison is great. It's super weird. I do think we can say that when it comes to the adaptation and the nature of adaptations, Denny villanu has like created a Dune that feels much more akin to the books. But I think there is a lot of love and just absolute skill put into these movies and they just are inherently Lynchian in a way that's very enjoyable.
I think that there is first of all, the aesthetic look and feel, the still suits, the guild navigators, the weirdness of spice and its effects. All of that is a foundational stone to the Denny Villeneuve Dune films. Like you really could not have the those films without what lynch did. You know you could if you watch the Generraski movie. Obviously there's a lot of things in there too that were influential. But Grasci was like a con man.
Yeah, he's a fucking sucker.
Come on, he was never gonna make them. You watch that if you really want to want to worry about one of the most quixotic cinema like projects of all time. That said, I think Lynch's I think you're right, Lynch's Dune is iconic in its own way. Even the things that were changed, which as a person who loves the books and thinks the film news adaptations are wonderful, I don't love, for instance, the voice and the way the voice is basically the force in Lynch's version. And that said, like, there's a scene in which they're training like the Fremen and the use of the voice, and I think that's one of the most compelling scenes in the film. Like, even like the stuff that I didn't like was like really done in a weird and interesting way. It was not the franchise starter that people were thinking. And then two years later Lynch emerges with Blue Velvet, which I didn't see until college, but is I think the purest distillation of the things that Lynch wants to do with film that he's interested in, and a way to kind of process a lot of the things that he's been working on through art in various mediums, painting and sculpture since childhood. And it's I mean, the story is about a college student who comes back to the suburbs and discovers a world of darkness and violence just there below the surface. And I think that if there's one thing that Lynch is interested in more than anything else, it's that idea that if you scratch the surface of any idyllic town that looks perfect Norman Rockwell perfect, there's something really dark there. He says in David Lynch, A Life of Art, there's a documentary on David Lynch on Max. He tells this story about when he was a kid playing with his brother and they're playing in the woods and a naked woman comes out of the woods and this is clearly the product of a violent attack that had happened. She comes staggering out of the woods and it was very strange and scary, and his brother started crying. And he talks a lot about what he was feeling at the time, how he wanted to help, but he didn't know what to do because he was a kid. And he says, after this, we were in this small town, living in this tiny town with like two streets but everything was there, all the worst things, all the best things, all that. There was like a million little worlds in this little town. And that's really what this movie is about. And it has some of the most jarring and troubling scenes of insane, unhinged violence. Yeah, and particularly violence against women, which I think is something that Lynch wanted to show people in a way that said, look.
At this, this happens, This happens, Yeah, don't don't look away. And that's something throughout all of his work, All of this happens.
Yes.
Yeah, And I would also say, like, it's really interesting because Dune, as much as it is beloved now, it was like a commercial failure and it was it was didn't make enough money. It was seen. I think it was named the worst movie of nineteen eighty four, so he was coming off faster. Yeah, very UNFAIRM sure there was much worse movies. But then this movie had kind of been being passed throughund the screenplay for it. It was really violent, really sexual. People didn't want to make it. But then Dino di Laurentis, who came in, he was like, okay, you did do and like, let's make this movie. And I love that again, that huge scope of Dune gets you know, focused into this tiny, very personal project and also sparks that conversation and in American cinema about what is the necessity of violence in cinema? Is it necessary? Is it too much? Is there a point to even have the conversation? Should some things just be allowed to be violent? And now, obviously this scene is like one of the greatest American movies of all time. I think Cite and Sound Time, Entertainment Weekly, BBC Magazine, in American Film Institute, they've all ranked it as one of the greatest American films. And it does, I think, set a new bar for what Lynch is going to do after this. The surrealism of a rais Ahead, the humanity of Elephant Man, the weirdness of June, they all get channeled from here on out into this kind of exploration of the American dream and the American suburbs and the reality of what it looks like to live in America, to be sane in America, to be crazy in America. Yeah, and this is also I just have some incredibly beautiful movie and huge moment here because the music is by Angelo bad Lamente, who had gone to do the Twin Peaks music, which is some of the best music that's ever been made for TV or film. So yeah, Blue Velvet, I would say, if you are somebody you watch a lot of the stuff we watch, you watch Game of Thrones, Blue Velvet will seem relatively tame to you now, though it may still manage to shock you. But I would say this is a great place to start and see whether you would like Lynch as his general work. But I would also say, at the same time, he has almost a film for everyone, which I think is really interesting.
This movie starts with a scene that I didn't understand when I was first saw it, but that I get now as an encapsulation of, to me, the main thing that Lynch was interested in. So the camera travels to this you know, sleepy suburban, you know, idyllic everywhere kind of town, and it goes down the sunny streets of these beautiful like clapboard houses with the white picket fences, and then it goes past like laundry, and then it goes down and it looks at like a lawn, like a beautiful green lawn, and it goes into the lawn and down through the lawn, and then underneath the surface of the lawn there's like all these insects and worms and things and they're all churning and there's this sound of like whoa. And really that was what Lynch was getting at all the time. Yeah, like just below the surface there is this and that brings us to his I think, yeah, the magna. You're absolutely right. This is his kind of like breakthrough work. Twin Peaks, the television show that is ostensibly a murder mystery that aired on ABC from which is just absolutely bonkers. This was I recall dimly a sensation.
Yes, even in England, we were guessing kind of this idea of like, oh, it's this American soap opera, it's this new kind of and then suddenly people are like, oh wait a minute, it's like much weirder and stranger. Though ironically, poor David Lynch trapped himself because by pitching the show as a mystery, the network and the audience became obsessed with solving the mystery. There was a phone number that you could there was a phone number, and then you ended up in a situation where by season two you had to solve it. And then it becomes a problem because then people don't want to watch it anymore, and then the show gets canceled. But then, obviously, twenty five years later, which is what Dave Lynch you know, had teased at the end of the show, they did make season three Twin Peaks. The return, which actually had some ended up becoming some of the most iconic moments from Twin Peaks, whether it was the Michael Sarah appearance or whether it was him telling Denise, you know, the trans character that he was like where I told those clowns, you know when you became Denise, fix your hearts or die, which has become kind of a rallying cry in the trans community. I love this show because every time I watch it, I'm still like, oh my god, this is so weird. Like it's very rare that you can watch rewatch something multiple times, because I've seen it multiple times and still just be like, whoa, this is so crazy, Like how did this get put on TV?
I too, have seen it multiple times, and I will tell you that, sitting here now, I am still not entirely sure what happened, you know, especially as down the stretch of season one and into season two, it starts to get exceedingly dreamlike with the appearance of you know, yeah, the Giant and the small Man and the dreams, and then and then the Law of the Woman with the log Lady. There are many strange things. The appearance of Bob the demonic character like it is weird as hell. I like it, but definitely if you haven't seen it, definitely see it. But also don't expect the solving of it to be a straight force.
The solving of it is not The point was never the point and got trapped into that. The point is the vibe and the freedom and the budget that Lynch was given to make this truly otherworldly American soap op fora which is so unique and I mean so unbelievably influential, aside from the fact that it's been referenced in everything from like Twin Peaks to every late night I mean to Simpsons to every late night show to The Family Guy, whatever, but also for example, one of my favorite shows, which we all know is equally held in high esteme to Twin Peaks is Riverdale never exists. Without this show, never exists. Hannibal, NBC is never letting Hannibal, which, by the way, if you still haven't seen it. One of the most incredibly violent and strange broadcast shows to.
Every one of the TV.
On NBC every time that no way that exists without this. Another Brian Fuller show that everybody loves, Pushing Daisies, deeply inspired aesthetically by List launched the careers of sherylyn Fenn. Icon put Kyle McLaughlin on that big, big every person in America knew who he was and knew who Agent Dale Cooper was map outside of the college cinemas and the places that were showing Lynch's movies before this. Also mad Chinamcheck another one of my favorite actresses who was launched from this, and it did lead to one of the movies I think is one of the best movies, which is Twin Peaks fire Walk with Me, which was kind of David Lynch's follow up. And yeah, I mean it's it's so hard to try and talk about him in a tiny way or a short way because there's just so much substance to his work and what it has done. But we will talk more about David Lynch after a message from us bock am I back.
After Twin Peaks. Lynch really during Twin Peaks. Kind of off the heat of Twin Peaks, Lynch returned to the big screen with Wild at Heart, which I would describe as if you've seen the movie Badlands by Terrence Malick, is one.
Of the most influential movies of all.
Time, influential and beautifully shot movies ever, ever, ever, of all time about it's basically a Bonnie and Young Bonnie and Clyde story. Yeah, these two young ones, yeah, who just want to be together, and they reject the world and they want to go off and live on their own terms, and it all comes to a head in a kind of violent showdown. Wild at Heart is like that, but it kind of like the flips of the darker side of the coin. You have and Sailor. Who are these two crazy kids who just want to be together. There they're incredibly in love, they can't stop thinking about each other each other, but their lives are intertwined with various evil, violent, brutal characters, of which I think William Dafoe's Bobby Peru is like the most disturbing. And I like this film, but I will say I think this is the film where I'm like, Okay, that was too much violence.
You were like for Jason, you were like, this is too much for me. I mean it does open with like a brutal murder just in public, and then just there. It's not it's not gotting any I will say I love the aesthetic of this movie. I am a big fan, probably for many the deep seated reasons. I need to talk to my therapist about all these kinds of movies, like I love I love bad Lands by Terrorists Malik, I love True Romance, the Tony scool when in Tarantino movie. It's one of my all time favorite movies. I actually, in hindsight, when I was younger, I was a big critic of Natural Born Killers, and I felt like it was I thought it was cool, but I felt like I had a lot of problems. Now as an adult, I think it was like unbelievably pressy and fantastic movie. And I do really love this movie. In the scale of these movies that are essentially the same movie, this is low on the scale for me, just because there is a little bit the seediness aspect. Yeah, and I feel like there's less of the freedom trying to find freedom from like the constraints of society. But I love the way that it plays out kind of Wizard of Oz, Like we even get like an actual Glinda the Goodwitch appearance. I think Nick Cage's performance in this is so fantastic.
It's like a how to describe him. He's like the most like like if you took a boy scout and you put him in jail. Yeah, same time, and then somehow the boy scout like thrived in jail but kept that inherent goodness of a boy scout and then is released. That is Nicholas Cage's character in this film.
Yeah, he's he's so just delightfully in love and he loves romance. And I will say I really love Laura Dunn in this role. She never gets to play roles like this. It's it's unabashedly like sexual and sexy and free. And I also just like love the car asked. He brings together a lot of his favorite players Isabella Ussalini, Harry De's Stanton, sheryln Fenn and Will obviously Willem Crispin Glover, Diane Laddel, Laura Dunn. I'm a Nicholas. I'm just the true Nicholas Cage superstan so anything he's in. I do have affinity and a love for it. And he told a great story about this movie recently, which was at the can Film Festival dinner. The president of the Can Jury was obsessed with the scene where Nicholas Cage sings love Me Tender, which is like, there's a lot of Elvis Presley illusions in here. He's very inspired by Elvis and kind of has the swagger of Elvis. And she wanted him to sing it, like on this tape in this table in front of everyone, and he didn't want to do it. And then he said that Lynch like started banging on the table and calling him his nickname, Nicksta. Get up there and sing it, Nicksta, gone see it? And he sung it. And the film run the the Palm d'Or can and you know, Nick was like, I did my thing. But I love that story. I love how David Lynch kind of inspired these places. And again this puts both Laura Dunn and Nicholas Cage in a whole different.
Incredible performance by them, incredibly unhinged performance by Willem Dafoe.
Yeah, setting up a lot of his future performances.
Yeah, here's your spoiler for the podcast episode, he has maybe the gorious death that I've ever seen in a film.
Yeah, that's not like a distinct like torture porn movie or something.
I mean it is like, oh man, it is graphic and crazy. One thing that's notable about this film, which is not admit it's not my favorite Lynch. I think it's a little too you said it, it's a little too.
Like leaning into the seediness.
Yeah, it's a little too celebratory about the violence in a way and the sexual violence in a way that I think other Lynch films are not quite that.
You know, I'll say, Lynch, this is something a lot of people have been coming to. I saw Gia my del Tora talk about this, and I loved it because I think it's very true. He is an incredibly sincere man and everything he does is sincere. And what that means is in a movie like this, it doesn't necessarily have like the satirical edge of a natural born Killers, which I think when you watch it in an age of influences, you are just like, oh my god, this was like he was so all of ausd and was so ahead of his time with this movie. But so with Lynch, everything is much more sincere and as it seems, and I think in that case when he goes like extra violent or extra sexually violent, you don't there's no other way to read it. But it does fit into the kind of dream like world that he crafts.
One thing that is notable from this movie that actually I think he started with Dune is his penchant for out of left field castings of musicians, So he has Sting as Fade Ralpha famously in Dune. In Wild at Heart he casts avant garde jazz musician John Lourie as Sparky.
Yes, one of my all time favorites.
I'm a great film starring John Lourie. Go see that film, and that continues with his next film, Lost Highway, A I think like a really cool.
This is actually one of my favorite dark This is one of my noir that I agree.
This is one of my favorites as well. That casts Henry Rollins in the movie and other interesting musician casting, and is also notable for having like Robert Blake in what is clearly his strangest role before going to prison for murder.
Yeah, I know, and it really is like it feels very timely. Also, just like you know what David Lynch had aside from the you know, great understanding of music as a musician himself. He did all the music originally on a rais Ahead, and he would direct many music videos, and also Trent Rezna helped with the soundtrack for which obviously establishes then you know his great career that he's had as a scorer of incredible movie soundtracks. But also he understood the great American tradition of the character actor Gary Busey movie he knew, and with Willem Dafoe in You Know, Wild at Heart, he understood how having an unexpectedly brilliant short performance or almost a cameo, even a passing performance could just absolutely add so much substance and to a movie. I love Lost Highway. We show this one a lot in the bar where I worked at the cinema. If the FBI is listening, we had permission, I guess. But yeah, it's great because I find it's funny because at the time people were like, it's very incoherent. I find this movie very easy to follow, but it's essentially neo noir. Mysterious intercom message Dick Laron is dead, and then you start to kind of explore via VHS tapes and strange parties, this kind of cee the underbelly of Hollywood. That is this really cool, super rad, neo noir. I also deeply love Patricia Arquette. And we know there's a lot of Bill Pullman fans out there, a lot of women who love Bill Pullman. They've never gotten over him after his starring role as a dad in Caspar. But yeah, I love this movie. I think it's really really fun, really strange. I think it streamlines to the two versions of David Lynch. It is a really interesting story that hooks you, but it is also a dreamlike narrative that is totally viby, that makes you question what you've seen. But by the end I feel like, oh, okay, I understand what's going on. It's kind of like a Mobius strip of a movie. Yeah, I really like that one. I think it was underrated at the time, but you know what, I love that he went from one of his weirdest scene at the time as like strangest movies, and then he was like, I'm making a straight story, baby, it's happening.
We go right to nineteen ninety Nine's the straight story which I think if you wanted to tell if we wanted to tell you what film to watch, if you wanted to just watch a quote unquote watch.
Normal with Your Family by Walt Disney, by the way, which again huge change of pace after many De Laurenti's kind of art house space movies.
Yeah, this is a movie that feels like this is David Lynch doing a Richard Linkletter film. It feels like that, a very grounded story about a man who his only means of transportation, for various reasons because of his age and because of his history, is a riding mower that he then dedicates himself to driving some two hundred plus miles to see his brother, to see his brother who he can't see otherwise. And it's a beautiful, small, very sparse story about this man and the way his life interconnects with other people. It is an extremely sincere movie to your point. And it's a beautiful It's a beautiful, wonderful film.
It really is. And also I love that it was. Roger Ebott was like such a huge fan of this movie, and he was kind of like even comparing the dialogue to Ernest Hemingway, he was like, this is masterful, authentic, true dialogue E. But it was like an original Lynch because he felt like everything was too violent, everything was too over sexualized. So I love that this kind of opened up the audience. Once again, there's probably hundreds of thousands of people who've watched this movie and had no idea that it was directly Oh for sure, you don't know, this could be anybody.
This could be Ron Howard.
Yeah, it really could be Ron Howard, but it probably wouldn't have It still has that little bit of grit, and it still has your Harry Dean Stanton, your sissy spacek, you know. And I yet I was not a fat obviously. I was like a kid when this movie came out, and I was very much in the mindset of, like, I don't like boring things like Boo Walt Disney. I was like twelve, I was very contrarian. But as I've grown older, I find this to be like a very sweet movie. I love a movie about male friendship. Magic like XXL really changed my life because I was like, oh, a movie that is sincerely about men just being friends and how important it is to have like healthy male friendships is like an incredibly powerful thing, And yes I am talking about Magic Mike EXXL. The strip of movie truly one of the greatest movies ever made, and that made me kind of revisit other great male friendship movies. And I love this and I think the ending of this movie gets me every time, especially now Harry Dean Stanton has passed. And yeah, I mean I love that movie. It's it's a real sweet.
Wonderful story about a guy that loves his brother. Hold on helicopter going over. Next up two thousand and one's mal Holland Drive, which I think is very much in the vein of Lost Highway.
Yeah, it's part of that kind of triptick of movies. He did Lost Highway, Mahalan Drive inlands Win Empire, the La triptych.
The La triptick, the kind of constant you know, focusing on not even necessarily the underbelly, but like the other side of La, that's not cool, that's not seen up in the hills, the dark side of the valley.
What we do rich people do in the hills when you can't see them, Like what happens? What are the parties that you're not getting invited to? Like, what are the strange interactions.
This film again with the interesting casting of musicians. It has a wonderful performance by Billy Ray Cyrus, father of Miley Cyrus, country star in his own right. He gets to beat the fucking shit out of Justin throw in a very I think funny scene. This is another movie that it feels very like Lost Highway. People will say, oh, it's weird, it's a little confused. This is like one of the more again, I think one of the more normal.
I think, especially if you are someone who's watched a lot of movies. Yeah, you understand the kind of the context and the things that it's taking from and the road that it's going down. And it's very much in that kind of persona in mar Bergmann space. It's like what does it mean to be a woman? Like? Are all women the same? Are women different? Can you just become another person? Like? Very interesting, cool stuff. Also extremely gay movie. I realize now that me and Donald both gay. We were like we were went to see this movie and we're like wearing like blonde wigs. Afterwards, like oh my god, Like we're in more Holland Drive. It's like, oh yeah, this is like extreme queer cinema in its own way, kind of a way that has been like, you know, found love. Also, Angelo bad Lamenti, he's in this movie, the the incredible composer. Speaking of great musicians. Yeah, I think this is a fantastic movie. I think it's a really interesting movie about la I think that Justin Thureau is like probably not the actor he is if he doesn't have this experience, because he's another person as a writer and actor who shows up in really unexpected places.
And I think it's a fun role for him too, because he's I think a striking looking guy, a great looking guy, the kind of person that you would think, oh, that's a star of like a soap opera or the lead of a of a network television drama. And he's just like getting bamboozled and slapped around.
Yeah, exactly, and.
Willing to do it. And to your point, it is really very much about what weird and mundane things are the rich people up to up there in the hills where no one can see them. They're they're having scuffles in their driveway, They're having like weird arguments. They're talking about things in boardrooms where you can't have access to. Yeah, and it's very much about that.
I A.
So this is like a pre reality TV time as well as you think about it. So it's like now a lot of that mystique has gone selling Sunset you're seeing inside the houses or whatever, But back then it was definitely played in to this mystique, and I yeah, I loved that. I remember thinking it was like so enigmatic and brilliant. And also I love that all the people in this movie, from Naomi Watts to Justin Throw, they all have like completely different versions of what they think this movie is about, which I think is just so good. I'm like, that's how you know you made like a super weird and fantastic movie.
And then finally, his final film, two thousand and six is Inland Empire. Very different movie structurally, but also like the other two movies in this La Trio is kind of based around a crime mystery. That's the hook that gets you into it.
He was very good at hooking people with a simplistic notion, right of like there's a woman and something bad is gonna happen to her. But I think it has a very similar vibe to Mulholland Drive when it comes to the themes of like becoming a different person and like can a movie change your life and make you completely disassociate and reimagine who you are. And this is also his one movie about making movies, Yeah, which I always think is really really interesting.
Yeah, this is the first time he's really I mean, it's it's it's in Lost Highway, It's yeah, yeah, it kind of intersects a little bit, but this is really the film that is I mean, and it's in Mulholland Drive too, But this is really the film that is about what the artist has to do to try and make a piece of art in m m a Hollywood type of system that is in many cases set against him.
And also just like how exploit it of the Hollywood system can be. I feel like, I'm not this feels like a final movie, you know. It feels like somebody who maybe needs to think about what he's going to do. Then he did a lot of incredible stuff. He also was getting very into, like or at least publicly, transcendental meditation, which I learned he introduced Shaka Khan to I mean, what a duo like very legendary. But yeah, this is a really interesting movie, quite a somber movie, I would say as well, not that many of his are like full of laughs, but like you said, there are it feels like a good humor, but this feels, yeah, it's it's very somber. And after this break, we're going to do a speed run of quick questions about Lynch and our recommendations for where you should start, and we're back.
Okay, first question, what makes Lynch unique in the world of cinema.
To you, Rosie, I am gonna say it is that sincerity, whether it's on screen, and he's just really believes that every single thing that he's putting on screen is really important. It's not ironic, it's not purposefully campy. These are things he thinks are important to be a part of the story. And also off screen, I think a lot. And I relate deeply to a story that he told, which was about how he was driving down the side of like a highway and he saw these five woody woodpecker stuffed toys like hanging up at the side of a shop and he felt like he needed to save them and bring them into his life. And then, of course, in a classic Lynch turn, he was like, and then they became like, you know, too powerful and I had to let them go or whatever. But that sincerity of you know, I remember being that person who like sees a plush toy in like a CBS looking sad and being like, I don't want but for some reason this is connecting with me, and I need to take it home because otherwise I'm gonna feel guilty that I like that sincerity. I like his love of cinema. I think his love for making stuff and the sincerity with which he does to me is very unique. What about you any Yeah?
For me, it's his dedication to art as a and the idea of creativity in the context of film and television, and the way he was able to bring a lot of these different things into a mainstream context in ways that still seem crazy that they were successful. The intertextuality, the different ways to tell stories, the hidden meanings, the dream within a dream, the plot within a plot. Are we watching a story that is about someone's dream of what happened? Has everybody already died?
You know?
All of these things are valid questions when watching a lot of Lynch's work, and as navel gazing and annoying is some as stuff like that can be. His doesn't feel like that. It feels like a situation in which the whole is more important than any one piece of whatever the story he's creating us. It's the entire vibe, the photography, the performances he has. His films have this like glossy look like they just put a lot of like vasoline on.
The lens, old school thing that he loves to do.
All of that together, the violence, juxtaposed with the beauty, juxtaposed with the sincerity, juxtaposed with the lying, the evil, maniacal faces, all of that together creates a feeling that I think is is really unique. And it's about creating these emotions and feelings and vibes within the viewer that leave you thinking where even if you don't quite understand the movie or the TV show what have you, you're thinking about it, you know, And I think that's a hard thing to do. It's like Donnie Darko was a movie that it had an incredible moment in time and I didn't know what was going on, but then I heard the directors talking about what actually goes on in the movie, and then I never thought about that movie. Again. Lynch's movies are not like that where you know, it's like you're still trying to figure out and you'll ask other people who have seen stuff. But what do you think is.
Happy conversations people are still going to be writing about. I mean, that's our next question is, like, how do you think his legacy will endure? I do think he will now be seen as one of the great American directors, which I think was not necessarily set in stone. But I do think the odd generation, this generation of critics of filmmakers, was so impacted by him and by his presence. I think he's going to be seen as one of the great Los Angeles filmmakers. And I also think you're right. I think the best thing about Lynch and his legacy and how it's going to keep going is because people are going to keep having those conversations. Film students are going to keep writing about these movies. People are going to keep discovering new things or exploring new spaces within his work or new ways it makes them feel. And I think that that is really really exciting. What do you think his most significant work is.
I mean, I'm just gonna say what I think. For me, it personally, it's blue Velvet because it's shocking, it's visually compelling. The performances are incredibly powerful and stark, and I think it's shot beautifully.
Like The Early is a stunning movie.
Wat just shot so well with the deep shadows and when he was using color, the rich colors, and I just think that that movie is just during amazing.
Sl brings Isabella Rossalini to her acting phase and she's just so absolutely fantastic.
Just amazing film that for me is the is the one. If I was to tell if someone was asking me if I had to see one Lynch thing, I'd be like, see blue Velvet.
Yeah, I was gonna say, that's actually perfect because my if I was mine is I'm going to double them too. What is his most significant work and what would I tell somebody to watch. I'm going to go with Twin Peaks because I think it's even though it is inaccessible on the first watch of like trying to understand what Lynch might have been doing or the strangeness. I think you are experiencing it as it was meant to be experienced, which is just a random viewer on TV watching it. So if you are a newbie, you are the audience that was intended for. And I think that you will very quickly be able to understand whether or not you enjoy Lynch's work, his themes, his vibes, the strangeness, the unsettling nature, the gorgeous production design. Are you somebody who values narrative over vibes, maybe it won't be for you. Or are you someone who can get hooked into a character and follow them down the rabbit hole? So I think that both of those are I think that one answers both of those. I think Twin Peaks is his most significant work in my opinion, and I also do think it's a good place to start if you are a newbie for Twin Peaks. This is something we didn't touch on very much, but let's quickly talk about what's your favorite Lynch advertisement? Because he did a lot of weird ads.
So this is a thing that many directors, you know, directors name directors Spike Lee, Wes, David Lynch, et cetera. You look at their Fike Jephy, Spike Jones, You look at their Spike Lee Spike Jones. You look at their filmography and it's like they really smoothe every five years.
How do they make the money.
How do they make money? The answer is they to their film commercials, and many of them are wonderful. David Fincher, Michael Bay. You know, commercials and videos is how a certain generation got their start, and it's how an older generation kept the lights on, really and you know, a lot of them are really interesting. I think there's one from Adidas which I forget the name of, but it's Adidas the Wall in which a runner. They were promoting like a new soul tech cushioning technology at the time, and this is an issue for runners, and you just see like this man like run up into the clouds, these kind of red tinged clouds. I also think his like His Obsession by Calvin Klein commercials are kind of iconic, like for the era, those were always on beautiful black and white and it would have that tagline an obsession.
Yeah. Mine that I always think about are the PlayStation two, ads Heed It, the Third Space and the idea is it was meant to be like when you're an early adopter of technology, you see the world differently. But they're just super weird, very very erase ahead esthetic. Yes, lots of black and whites, heavy shadows. I always remember watching those and just thinking like, how cool that they got David Lynch to do that, which I kind of never really realized is also part of bringing a director on, you know, is to be you get to promote it and say, hey, look at our adverts for our adverts. It's part of the pr game. But yeah, those always stood out to me. Okay, what is your favorite random place that David Lynch shows up in another project?
I mean, you mentioned it earlier, we talked about it earlier, but I do think part of the reason that Lynch I think one of the most important recent co signs of Lynch was Lynch his cameo in The Fableman's I think that that was its signalled Hey Spielberg, who is like the biggest exactly? That's that great box office mainstream like Titan of a Our Hitchcock r like john Ford. You know, he co signed Lynch with that cameo. Not that he needed it, but I do think that there's a certain like segment of the pop culture audience that was like, oh, I guess David Lynch is not just a weirdo like he's and so that one is my favorite.
Yeah, He's not just a weirdo. Now he's like in this space where also he's playing a character. Yeah, I love that one. I think that's a great pick. I'm gonna pick the opposite end of the spectrum, which is in a show that I don't particularly like love or watch, but I love that it happened when somebody was just like called him and was like, hey, do you want to be in the Cleveland Show? And he was like, yuh. That to me is like the peak of David Lynch and why his weirdness is not just like an affectation. It is also like just that he's a true stone called Widow. And I love him and Jason as the musician in our well one of them, because we also have Aaron Now who's a truly fantastic musician. But what is your favorite piece of Lynch's work with music, whether like a music video or the work that he's done himself, Like, what what is it for you that stands out on the side of things?
I think Chrisiazik's Wicked Game.
Yeah. I love that song so much and that video is so iconic. I'll I watch it.
Infinitely, absolutely, And at the time it was the song of like mm hmmm, it like erotically charged, like Moms in the Suburbs.
Was like very they were getting off to it. And I think that is another thing that people don't understand about Lynch, is like it can often be seen as like violence against women, this, that, But there is a huge female fandom for David Lynch who find the work sexy, you who find it cool, And I think that's what he was able to direct into.
And so that's that clearly his most iconic video work, right And also definitely it is the thing that makes me think, along with those Calvin Klein ads in this beautiful black and white, that I wish he would have done more black and white after Elephant Man in eraser Head. But it was also clearly a thing where like we're not giving you money if you want to make this fi. Yeah, but I but I wish that he had made more black and white pictures because I think his black and white photography is beautiful, gorgeous.
Yeah, I agree, that's my favorite. I will again give that shout out to Trent Rezna working on Lost Highway soundtrack, because like that man has gone on to soundtrack some of the greatest movies, like especially if you like Electronic a weird movie soundtracks. The Girl with the Dragon Tatto, the American remake version has such a fantastic score. So yeah, Jason, I'm so glad we got to talk about David Lynch. This is so nice to just swing in to create as well and just chat to you about it. Well.
Coming up next we're swinging into your friendly neighborhood Spider Man, and next week the Brave New World kicks off. The President is the Hulk already on the hot one, I mean not hot one, but you know, by te not sexy, not saying that sexy, but by temperature. We'll say more.
About the.
That's it for this episode. Thanks for listening.
Bye.
X ray Vision is hosted by Jason Concepcion and Rosie Knight and is a production of iHeart Podcast.
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