David Lynch Appreciation

[johnokagain]

The guy makes good movies...I have always loved Blue Velvet, definitely my favorite.

Well, i'm here in New York staying with my friend and he has quite a few Lynch movies as well as the complete series of Twin Peaks.  I watched Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive for the first time the other night, and have been working my way through Twin Peaks.  I can't say i exactly get or understand Lost Highway or Mulholland Drive completely, but they were both very entertaining. 

Lets talk about these movies, post favorite scenes, etc.




I love Roy Orbison.

[juuhnuuh]

i strangely liked mulholland drive tried to understand it that didn't really worked for me still enjoyed some great lesbian scenes.

[lenny]

Dune is still one of my all time fav's.

[Sleazy]

I've liked all his movies, huge fan. I saw wild at heart when I was about 17 and it had a huge impact on me and then Blue Velvet and then got into Twin Peaks. Later I studied some film in school and learned how to analizes themes and symbolism in film and I really started enjoying his films more after that. I never remember the analasys years later but it's always fun working it out when you first watch his films.

After watching Lost Highway when it first came out in theaters, I had the rare pleasure of talking with a friend who had also watched it in theathers and understood themes and it was fun to compare notes. We had pretty much the exact same opinion on the themes and what different things were about in the flim and we both predicted that the main charater would be released from jail when we watched it. And both of us told the people that were with us in the theather about the prediction to try and "prove" you could read the film's themes in a consistent way. A lot of people think your making that shit up and we had both gone with sceptical friends and it was cool to get togehter afterwards and be like "whoa shit, that's exactly what we got from it".

some favorite scenes

road rage from Lost Highway



"I want to apologized too you gentlemen for refering too you as homosexuals" from wild at heart



siccor sex from Blue Velvet



any scene from Twin Peaks with the midgit that talk in reverse but in forward. i've heard that they accomplished that by having him say his lines backwards and recording it, then playing them back in reverse and having him lypsync them and that was how they got that weird effect on how he talks.

[Dude Dudestofferson]

Eraserhead.


































Yow.

[Nancy Chin The Manicurist]

David Lynch talks about watching film on a cell phone...







blue velvet creates such an amazing atmosphere (even more-so with subsequent viewings). I dig more of Lynch's older work (eraserhead to twin peaks).

GUMMO and blue velvet definitey made me a fan of roy orbison.

[Nancy Chin The Manicurist]

some of his commercials:

[Nancy Chin The Manicurist]

any scene from Twin Peaks with the midgit that talk in reverse but in forward. i've heard that they accomplished that by having him say his lines backwards and recording it, then playing them back in reverse and having him lypsync them and that was how they got that weird effect on how he talks.

nah, they film the whole scene backwards....movements, dialogue...everything. Then played in reverse. No lip syncing.

[Sleazy]

OK, I knew it was some kind of setup where they did the lines backwards then played it forward but the result was amazing.

[ccc333]

I just want to see naomi watts naked and touching herself he granted me that.  go david lynch!

[Gatoraids]

Big fan, his movies are some of the creepiest with out being "scary" movies.

[Matze]

i strangely liked mulholland drive tried to understand it that didn't really worked for me still enjoyed some great lesbian scenes.

[j0rdan]

amazing. i've only seen lost highway, blue velvet, the elephant man, and muholland drive. all four are too sick though. one of the highlights of my 22 years on this earth was having sex while the lesbian scene from muholland drive played. at the rate my life is going that may be my highlight at 62 as well. but yeah, the robert blake scene from lost highway creeps me out still....     

i also agree with the In Dreams scene from blue velvet, i downloaded that song after i saw the movie for the first time and it's become a staple.

that's crazy you said that, I had sex while watching Lost Highway and was pumping to Rammstein haha

[johnokagain]

[MEOW]

by far my favorite director of all time. i love how he doesn't answer any questions about what things "mean"... he just wants film to be an amazing experience, and it can mean one thing to one person and a completely different meaning to the next.

i can't pick a favorite, but blue velvet, fire walk with me, mulholland dr., and wild at heart are four of my top ten favorite movies ever.

kinda bummed about how he's going all digital now, inland empire just wasn't the same feeling i usually get from one of his films, and i think it's because of it being digital. maybe if i rewatch it, i don't know..

[Bobby Peru]

I think my name makes it clear how I feel about this man. If you don't recognize my name, I highly recommend getting a bunch of buddies together and watching Wild at Heart.

I watched and rewatched parts of Mulholland Drive and figured some stuff out, but I had to find a write up on the internet to fully understand it. It actually does make sense if you check it out. As for lost Lost Highway however, I'm still in the dark.

I love all the movies of his I've seen, and though I have a special place in my heart for Wild at Heart, I have to say Blue Velvet is my favorite.

By the way, is Fire Walk With Me good? I've heard bad things, but I recently finished all Twin Peaks episodes, and do want to see it, but I'm a little worried.

[Gatoraids]

I saw Fire Walk with me before I saw the tv show and really enjoyed it. I think it is worth seeing just because it ties up some of the tv show questions.

[Blue Fescue]

Blue Velvet was filmed in my town.  My friend lived in the building Isabella Rosilini's apartment was in.  Everytime I walked up the stairs I would look down and expect Hopper in his mask to be staring up at me.

I also lived across from the bar that is in the movie, it was sweet.

[johnokagain]

Blue Velvet was filmed in my town.  My friend lived in the building Isabella Rosilini's apartment was in.  Everytime I walked up the stairs I would look down and expect Hopper in his mask to be staring up at me.

I also lived across from the bar that is in the movie, it was sweet.

one of the creepiest things I can imagine...looking down a staircase and seeing him staring up at me.

[ice nine]

im about done the first season of twin peaks, though ive been so stupidly high for each one that i forget most things by the time they are brought up again. still crazy enjoyable, my friend owns pretty much everything by him, so in the next few months il be caught up i think. lost highway does have an explanation online just like mullholland drive, i found lost highway way easier to get something from though.

also everyone should check out his early experimental shorts, they come in a dvd set, if anyone has it online or knows where to download it let me know please. everyone should watch 'the grandmother', he did as much of it by himself as possible, its one of the scariest things around

[Sleazy]

I think my name makes it clear how I feel about this man. If you don't recognize my name, I highly recommend getting a bunch of buddies together and watching Wild at Heart.

I watched and rewatched parts of Mulholland Drive and figured some stuff out, but I had to find a write up on the internet to fully understand it. It actually does make sense if you check it out. As for lost Lost Highway however, I'm still in the dark.

His films are really hard. I actually would prefer watching them at home so that I could take notes. It's so hard to keep up with all the themes and imagery and even if you do, a week later you've forgotten it all.

[Sleazy]

I think trying to make sense of his movies is a mistake.

I think he was talking about meaning from a plot prespective, not from a thematic one.

You don't have too look any further than the thematic foreshadowing that he does too know that his films have lots of themes which are usually more dominate than plot.  Predicting plot points based on themes is easiest way to validate that a director is actually creating a film with "meaning" too me and this something that I've done with his films with others as I mentioned above and we all had the same interpretation and were able to predict the same plot elements based soly on the themes (or meaning). I'd guess when he says his films don't have meaning he's talking about form a plot point a view and not from a themes point of view which is entirely accurate as his films are nonsensical from a plot point of view. For example in blue velvet when the main character says something like:

"and in the distance i heard a sound. and then over in the distance..."

and the action transfers to another location that is in the distance but has nothing to do with the sound that he heard. that actually makes no literal sense. it was quickly obvious that the sound was completely irrelevant except for bringing in the idea of "in the distance" and allowing for a transition. but literally that transition was non-sense. imagine an action film where the bad guy is found because the protagonist hears a sound off in the distance and the bad guy also happened to be off in the distance; not the same location as the sound, just also off in the distance. In a blockbuster film, everyone would surely notice such a rediculous happening but in a Lynch film it goes unnoticed by most. Thematically i'd imagine it was an important transition and had some kind of meaning too it but plot wise it was without real meaning.

Lynch is well versed in film and I promise that there are tons of coherent  thematic goodies in his films there just usually isn't a coherent plot. So to understand the meaning of his films, you'd first have to understand themes and how they work. To say he has no meaning too it and that his films are basically just a glorified music video of guilty pleasures seems too greatly over simplify and depreciate his amazing work.

[Nancy Chin The Manicurist]

i love how he doesn't answer any questions about what things "mean"... he just wants film to be an amazing experience, and it can mean one thing to one person and a completely different meaning to the next.

i definitely respect him for that. He leaves the interpretations up to the viewer..which is EXACTLY what films are supposed to do. He isn't obsessed with divulging all his secrets in self-indulgent DVD director commentaries.

I love all his past talk show appearances, too (especially the ones on Jay Leno). He's just as vague and mysterious in the interviewee chair as his films are.