With 1980’s The Elephant Man, David Lynch was taking a big step forward in his career in just about every conceivable way. He was tackling complex subject matter rooted in historical biography — the story of Joseph (known as John in his film) Merrick, a severely deformed man who lived in nineteenth-century London. He was dealing with a much bigger budget than with his stunning, avant-garde debut, Eraserhead, as well as a fixed and finite shooting schedule. He was also in charge of a full professional film crew instead of an intimate core group of collaborators filling multiple roles.
This personal site has been dormant for far too long, as I plied my craft at various publications. But now… I’ve written a book! It’s called The Dreamer’s Path: Twin Peaks and David Lynch the Actor, and if you like David Lynch, cinema or even just things that are interesting and objectively cool, I think you would quite enjoy it. Much, much more on it soon, but it’s an exhaustively researched deep dive into every on-screen performance from Lynch, exploring how this unique and heretofore unexplored part of his enormous creative output intersects with his broader embrace of “the art life,” and the fullness of what that came to mean to him over the course of his life. All the notable hits receive loving treatment, by way of 70-plus exclusive interviews, plus relevant excerpts from my numerous conversations with Lynch over the years. But do I also grapple with the notion of performance art, and whether Lynch appearing in public with a cow “counts” as a performance? Yes, yes I do. Click here for more information, by all means, and/or feel free to reach out to me via the contact form at the top of the page.
Few American auteurs inspire quite the same level of excitement among devoted fans as renaissance man David Lynch — he of the many landmark films and Twin Peaks, certainly, but also a dazzling variety of paintings, music, and, yes, daily weather reports. So social media was understandably abuzz over rumors, and then some actual reporting, indicating that David Lynch might premiere a new film at the upcoming 75th annual Cannes Film Festival, taking place May 17-28, 2022.
During a conversation Tuesday with me about the theatrical re-release of a remastered version of Inland Empire, for a Q&A that will run later this week, Lynch discussed the possible debut of his next feature — which would be his first since 2006 (that is, if you don’t count Twin Peaks: The Return, which he has described as an 18-hour film).
“I have no film at Cannes, no,” said Lynch. “In fact, no one has ever even asked me that. You’re the first person that’s actually asked me, ‘David, do you have a film at Cannes?’ I say no, I don’t have a film at Cannes.” For the full write-up on this (non-)news, over at the A.V. Club, click here.
Though based upon Barry Gifford’s novel, director David Lynch’s Wild at Heart takes on a deranged tone and feverish temperature all its own. The winner of the 1990 Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, the movie — equal parts unhinged road trip and American Gothic head trip — follows the careening love affair of Nicolas Cage’s snakeskin jacket-clad Sailor and Laura Dern’s gum-smacking Lula, two headstrong delinquents whose passion for one another is “hotter than Georgia asphalt,” in the latter’s inimitable words.
Of course, love is never easy, and in Sailor and Lula’s case it’s endangered by Lula’s psychotic mother (Diane Ladd, Dern’s real-life mom), who puts a hitman on Sailor’s scent when they hit the road and elope — one of but several shady characters looking to do them ill. Sexy, surreal and yet also strangely, almost indescribably affecting, Wild at Heart is eminently watchable because it shocks and disgusts even as it makes you laugh and lean forward with tension. It’s also studded with some wonderful (and wonderfully unsettling) supporting performances, notably from Willem Dafoe, Grace Zabriskie and Crispin Glover. Most notable, however, is the brand new transfer and mix of the movie, supervised by the notoriously meticulous Lynch himself. Cruddy VHS tapes can now be slapped up on eBay, though why anyone would bother to bid on them when taking a look at, say, the crisp improvements in the dark night scenes set in Big Tuna is beyond me.
The disc’s extras are headlined by a superlative and fairly comprehensive half-hour making-of documentary that includes new interviews with Lynch, Cage, Dern, Gifford, Dafoe, Ladd, Glover, director of photography Frederick Elmes and many more. “Leftovers” from this main doc are then divvied up into nine more two- to four-minute segments under the banner of “Del’s Lunch Counter.” A featurette on the “specific spontaneity” of Lynch’s colorful, abstract direction, a music-set image gallery, a DVD introduction of sorts from Lynch detailing the release’s color-timing and remixing process, the theatrical trailer and several TV spots also follow.
There are the few nagging issues left unfulfilled, particularly for hardcore Lynch fans. Some sort of material on the film’s wonderful score and music — be it an interview with frequent collaborator Angelo Badalamenti or the inclusion of either of the two music videos for Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game” — would seem to have been a no-brainer, but neither are anywhere to be found. Additionally, it’s always slightly irritating when deleted and extended scenes are explicitly mentioned and discussed in interview material, and then left out. But these miscalculations of omission aside, Wild at Heart is still a sterling catalogue release, with a flowchart of the movie’s characters for your dunderheaded roommate and a nice slipcase to boot. Now fans need only await a proper release of Lost Highway to bring Lynch’s oeuvre more fully up to the digital age. A- (Movie) B (Disc)
