David Lynch Retrospective

Just 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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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
And I'm Rosday Nike and welcome back to X.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
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.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
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

(01:17):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
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

(01:49):
filmmaker would often get lunch around two three.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
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

(02:14):
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

(02:35):
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

(02:57):
too big. Might have to get it.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
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

(03:19):
a person?

Speaker 2 (03:19):
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,

(03:40):
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

(04:01):
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

(04:24):
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

(04:44):
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

(05:05):
reason that we were even aware of who he was
was probably because of Twin Peaks for sure.

Speaker 1 (05:10):
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

(05:31):
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

(05:52):
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,

(06:15):
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.

Speaker 2 (06:30):
It's very very weird, but very appealing to the eye
of a child because there's so much great stuff going on.

Speaker 1 (06:36):
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,

(06:57):
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

(07:18):
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

(07:40):
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,

(08:04):
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.

(08:25):
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.

Speaker 2 (08:34):
I think, like a sincere interest in the concept of
like America and Americana.

Speaker 1 (08:42):
Yeah, and that's right. It's a Midwestern guy from small
town America.

Speaker 2 (08:47):
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

(09:11):
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

(09:35):
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

(09:55):
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,

(10:19):
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,

(10:41):
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

(11:01):
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.

(11:24):
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.

Speaker 1 (11:36):
In early twentieth century films like Metropolis.

Speaker 2 (11:40):
Yeah, very that's definitely very in his vein, and I
think that mixture.

Speaker 1 (11:46):
I think is very much referenced in the opening of
it too.

Speaker 2 (11:50):
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,

(12:14):
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

(12:35):
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,

(12:57):
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

(13:20):
that exists today without Lynch.

Speaker 1 (13:22):
Yeah, plucked him from obscurity, in his words.

Speaker 2 (13:25):
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

(13:46):
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

(14:07):
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.

Speaker 1 (14:23):
It's kind of amazing that it became a thing.

Speaker 2 (14:26):
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.

Speaker 1 (14:41):
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.

Speaker 2 (14:56):
Well, let's let's use this as.

Speaker 1 (14:57):
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

(15:17):
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.

(15:38):
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.

Speaker 2 (15:55):
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

(16:17):
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.

Speaker 1 (16:35):
It's mostly very weird and funny.

Speaker 2 (16:37):
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.

Speaker 1 (16:47):
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.

(17:07):
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

(17:28):
this juxtaposition of normalcy and life with something really scary
and gross.

Speaker 2 (17:37):
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

(17:59):
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.

Speaker 1 (18:10):
Referred to it as a very racist place, but also
he liked it.

Speaker 3 (18:13):
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.

Speaker 2 (18:26):
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

(18:51):
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

(19:14):
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

(19:38):
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

(20:04):
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

(20:26):
about it.

Speaker 1 (20:27):
Or Revenge Film, I think exactly. It's a kind of
our great revenge film.

Speaker 2 (20:31):
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.

Speaker 1 (20:38):
It's from their perspective. From me, take revenge, you.

Speaker 2 (20:41):
Get it exactly. So you mentioned the Elephant Man.

Speaker 1 (20:46):
Nineteen eighty Elephant Man, produced by Mel Brooks.

Speaker 2 (20:50):
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.

(21:13):
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.

Speaker 1 (21:22):
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

(21:44):
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

(22:06):
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

(22:29):
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

(22:50):
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,

(23:11):
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.

Speaker 2 (23:17):
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

(23:37):
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,

(24:00):
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

(24:21):
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

(24:44):
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

(25:06):
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,

(25:29):
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

(25:52):
these movies and they just are inherently Lynchian in a
way that's very enjoyable.

Speaker 1 (25:57):
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

(26:20):
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.

Speaker 2 (26:32):
Yeah, he's a fucking sucker.

Speaker 1 (26:34):
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

(26:57):
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

(27:19):
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

(27:41):
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

(28:02):
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.

(28:24):
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.

(28:44):
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.

(29:06):
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.

Speaker 2 (29:26):
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.

Speaker 1 (29:36):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (29:37):
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

(29:58):
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

(30:19):
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

(30:41):
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

(31:01):
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,

(31:22):
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

(31:43):
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.

Speaker 1 (31:55):
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

(32:15):
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

(32:36):
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

(32:58):
ABC from which is just absolutely bonkers. This was I
recall dimly a sensation.

Speaker 2 (33:08):
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

(33:30):
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

(33:51):
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

(34:11):
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

(34:32):
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?

Speaker 1 (34:44):
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

(35:06):
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

(35:29):
it to be a straight force.

Speaker 2 (35:30):
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,

(35:51):
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

(36:14):
you still haven't seen it. One of the most incredibly
violent and strange broadcast shows to.

Speaker 1 (36:18):
Every one of the TV.

Speaker 2 (36:23):
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

(36:44):
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

(37:05):
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.

Speaker 1 (37:38):
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.

Speaker 2 (37:57):
Of the most influential movies of all.

Speaker 1 (37:59):
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

(38:20):
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

(38:42):
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.

Speaker 2 (39:02):
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,

(39:23):
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.

(39:46):
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

(40:06):
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.

Speaker 1 (40:17):
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.

Speaker 2 (40:39):
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

(41:00):
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

(41:22):
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

(41:44):
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

(42:06):
how David Lynch kind of inspired these places. And again
this puts both Laura Dunn and Nicholas Cage in a
whole different.

Speaker 1 (42:16):
Incredible performance by them, incredibly unhinged performance by Willem Dafoe.

Speaker 2 (42:23):
Yeah, setting up a lot of his future performances.

Speaker 1 (42:27):
Yeah, here's your spoiler for the podcast episode, he has
maybe the gorious death that I've ever seen in a film.

Speaker 2 (42:35):
Yeah, that's not like a distinct like torture porn movie
or something.

Speaker 1 (42:38):
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.

Speaker 2 (42:52):
Like leaning into the seediness.

Speaker 1 (42:55):
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.

Speaker 2 (43:06):
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,

(43:27):
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

(43:47):
other way to read it. But it does fit into
the kind of dream like world that he crafts.

Speaker 1 (43:52):
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.

Speaker 2 (44:15):
Yes, one of my all time favorites.

Speaker 1 (44:18):
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.

Speaker 2 (44:32):
This is actually one of my favorite dark This is
one of my noir that I agree.

Speaker 1 (44:39):
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.

Speaker 2 (44:55):
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

(45:18):
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

(45:43):
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

(46:04):
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

(46:27):
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.

(46:48):
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,

(47:10):
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.

Speaker 1 (47:29):
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.

Speaker 2 (47:40):
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.

Speaker 1 (47:54):
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

(48:18):
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,

(48:42):
wonderful film.

Speaker 2 (48:43):
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

(49:05):
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.

Speaker 1 (49:16):
This could be Ron Howard.

Speaker 2 (49:19):
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

(49:40):
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

(50:03):
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.

Speaker 1 (50:21):
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.

Speaker 2 (50:32):
Yeah, it's part of that kind of triptick of movies.
He did Lost Highway, Mahalan Drive inlands Win Empire, the
La triptych.

Speaker 1 (50:40):
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.

Speaker 2 (50:55):
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.

Speaker 1 (51:06):
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

(51:26):
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.

Speaker 2 (51:38):
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

(52:02):
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

(52:25):
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

(52:46):
a writer and actor who shows up in really unexpected places.

Speaker 1 (52:50):
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

(53:11):
just like getting bamboozled and slapped around.

Speaker 2 (53:15):
Yeah, exactly, and.

Speaker 1 (53:18):
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

(53:41):
about things in boardrooms where you can't have access to. Yeah,
and it's very much about that.

Speaker 3 (53:47):
I A.

Speaker 2 (53:48):
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

(54:08):
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.

Speaker 1 (54:23):
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

(54:43):
gets you into it.

Speaker 2 (54:45):
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

(55:09):
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.

Speaker 1 (55:17):
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

(55:38):
make a piece of art in m m a Hollywood
type of system that is in many cases set against him.

Speaker 2 (55:49):
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,

(56:10):
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.

Speaker 1 (56:49):
Okay, first question, what makes Lynch unique in the world
of cinema.

Speaker 2 (56:54):
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

(57:17):
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,

(57:40):
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?

Speaker 1 (58:02):
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

(58:23):
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?

Speaker 2 (58:40):
You know?

Speaker 1 (58:41):
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

(59:04):
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.

Speaker 2 (59:21):
The lens, old school thing that he loves to do.

Speaker 1 (59:26):
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

(59:53):
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

(01:00:13):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:00:27):
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.

(01:00:50):
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

(01:01:10):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:01:19):
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

(01:01:42):
it's shot beautifully.

Speaker 2 (01:01:43):
Like The Early is a stunning movie.

Speaker 1 (01:01:46):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:02:02):
Sl brings Isabella Rossalini to her acting phase and she's
just so absolutely fantastic.

Speaker 1 (01:02:09):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:02:21):
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

(01:02:44):
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

(01:03:06):
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

(01:03:26):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:03:38):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:03:58):
How do they make the money.

Speaker 1 (01:03:59):
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

(01:04:21):
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,

(01:04:43):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:05:02):
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

(01:05:23):
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?

Speaker 1 (01:05:44):
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

(01:06:12):
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

(01:06:32):
a weirdo like he's and so that one is my favorite.

Speaker 2 (01:06:36):
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.

(01:06:57):
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

(01:07:18):
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?

Speaker 1 (01:07:27):
I think Chrisiazik's Wicked Game.

Speaker 2 (01:07:29):
Yeah. I love that song so much and that video
is so iconic. I'll I watch it.

Speaker 1 (01:07:35):
Infinitely, absolutely, And at the time it was the song
of like mm hmmm, it like erotically charged, like Moms
in the Suburbs.

Speaker 2 (01:07:47):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:08:09):
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.

(01:08:29):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:08:44):
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,

(01:09:05):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:09:12):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:09:34):
About the.

Speaker 1 (01:09:37):
That's it for this episode. Thanks for listening.

Speaker 2 (01:09:39):
Bye.

Speaker 1 (01:09:41):
X ray Vision is hosted by Jason Concepcion and Rosie
Knight and is a production of iHeart Podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:09:46):
Our executive producers are Joel Monique and Aaron Cortman.

Speaker 1 (01:09:50):
Our supervising producer is Abuzafar.

Speaker 2 (01:09:52):
Our producers are Common Laurent Dean Jonathan and Bay Wag.

Speaker 1 (01:09:56):
A theme song is by Brian Vasquez, with alternate theme
songs by Aaron Kaufman.

Speaker 2 (01:10:00):
Special thanks to Soul Rubin, Chris Lord, Kenny Goodman, and
Heidi Our discord moderator M.