Lynch on Lynch

Review

I don’t often read interview books, especially on film. I tend to not really enjoy books about movies/movie industry/etc (thinking about the Francis Ford Coppola book), for reasons I don’t understand. But, David Lynch is my favorite director, and what sets this apart is that I can hear his voice when I read him responding to Chris Rodley’s questions, and sometimes that’s good for a big laugh. I don’t have complicated thoughts on this – if you’re a fan of Lynch, it feels like required reading. Very glad I picked it up.

Notes

This is an interview book in which the questions from Chris Rodley are written in italics. At times, Rodley italicizes Lynch’s words to show emphasis/excitement (you can practically hear Lynch’s words). My emphasis will always be in bold. If I’m noting from Rodley’s introductions to each chapter, I’ll precede those with (intro).

• p2 (intro) - [Lynch’s] mistrust of words, particularly in their efforts either to interpret or fix meaning, is something that surfaces constantly in his conversation. The autodidact in Lynch is very strong.
• p4-5 - So there was something in the air that is not there any more at all. It was such a great feeling, and not just because I was a kid. It was a really hopeful time, and things were going up instead of going down. You got the feeling you could do anything. The future was bright. Little did we know we were laying the groundwork then for a disastrous future. All the problems were there, but it was somehow glossed over. And then the gloss broke, or rotted, and it all came oozing out.
  • TB: Lynch is talking here about the 1950’s. This is something you hear pretty commonly from that generation, particularly the men (particularly the white, straight, men). It reveals some privilege that comes across several times in the course of these conversations, which took me a little by surprise.
• p8 - I learned that just beneath the surface there’s another world, and still different worlds as you dig deeper. . . . There is goodness in blue skies and flowers, but another force - a wild pain and decay - also accompanies everything.
• p9 - He turned me onto this book by Robert Henri called The Art Spirit that sort of became my Bible, because that book made the rules for the art life.
• p16 - Did [the Wild at Heart scene in which there is a car crash sequence] emerge as anything like what was written? No. But that’s true with everything I do. You see fate working sometimes. And sometimes it can be working against you, and sometimes it can be working for you. And you see that you have to do your part.
• p20 - You know what dogs are like in a room? They really look like they’re having fun. . . . Human beings are supposed to be like that. We should be pretty happy. And I don’t know why we aren’t.
• p25 - [David Cronenberg] looks and sounds like a regular, balanced guy and yet he creates disturbed, cinematic nightmares.. . . . is he basically a madman who, in order to function, assumes the manner of a regular guy? Or is it because he’s basically a regular guy that he needs to let rip in other, very public ways? He’s both things. That’s just the way it is. The stuff that comes out in the work is, I think, a lot more truthful than the way you are just walking around. It’s like the tip of the iceberg’s walking around and a lot of the time it doesn’t have anything to do with what’s going on inside.
• p78 - Magicians keep their secrets to themselves. And they know that as soon as they tell, someone will say, ‘Are you kidding me? That’s so simple’ It’s horrifying to me, that they do that. People don’t realize it, but as soon as they hear or see that, something dies inside them. They’re deader than they were. . . . It’s horrifying!
• p89 (intro) - . . .[Mel] Brooks was hoping to raise several million dollars . . . for the project. ‘Freddit said: “Who is this David Lynch?’ and Mel said: “That just shows what a fucking idiot you are!”’ [Stuart] Cornfeld laughs when he remembers what happened when Silverman asked to read the script: ‘So Mel says: “What the fuck do you mean, let you read it? Are you telling me that you know more about what makes a successful motion picture than I do?’”
  • TB: Another Mel line from a few lines later: “We are involved in a business venture. We screened the film for you to bring you up to date as to the status of that venture. Do not misconstrue this as our soliciting the input of raging primitives.”
• p93 - And then the doors flew open and Mel [Brooks] advanced very quickly to me with his arms outstretched – almost running! And he embraces me and says, ‘You’re a madman, I love you! You’re in.’
  • TB: On Mel Brooks reaction to seeing Eraserhead.
• p94 - A phone call can be an amazing thing, because the voice is not even coming through air so much, it’s right against your head.
• p95 - They didn’t like any kinda dream thing. They wanted to fiddle with it. They can’t leave it alone. They want to worry. There are many things to worry about with every film. You think, ‘Well, maybe audiences won’t go for this, or maybe they won’t go for that. We’ve gotta cut it out.’ But Mel was able to, you know, stop these things.
  • TB: On the production of The Elephant Man.
• p99, discussing his attempt to do John Hurt’s makeup for The Elephant Man - It was like those ‘Four Dark Days’ following Kennedy’s assassination. I had the same number of dark days. It was so bad that I would go to sleep and have nightmares. And, you know when you wake up from a nightmare, how thankful you are? Well, I would wish I could go back into the nightmare! Because it was worse being awake! And that’s the only time I really considered suicide as a way to stop the torment.
• p109 - One of the things I like about photography is the machine of the camera. it’s really a fantastic thing. Everyone who’s ever taken a picture gets a thrill when it comes back from the lab. It forces you to see that moment but in a different way. And sometimes, usually because of some screw-up that you didn’t count on, it really jumps and becomes a magical moment. Again, you’re not completely, 100 per cent, in control. There are a lot of processes, and I like these processes, because there are more opportunities for accidents.
  • Interesting to think about this in comparison to his later remarks on digital film making. Then again, making a movie and making a photograph are different things.
• p135 - Do you use any techniques, ‘tricks’ or ways to help gel an idea when you’re writing? Sometimes I like listening to music, or reading technical manuals. Something like that. Or scientific or metaphysical things can trigger ideas. I wrote the script [of Blue Velvet] to Shostakovich: No. 15 in A major. I just kept playing the same part of it, over and over again. sometimes just going out into the street and seeing a building or something makes all the difference. You have to expose yourself to different things.
  • TB: My hypothesis that Lynch and Cormac McCarthy have more shared DNA than one might think continues to hold up. I remain convinced that the best possible McCarthy adaptations of Blood Meridian or The Road would have come from the mind of David Lynch.
• p136 - The early drafts [of Blue Velvet] were terrible, so I wrote at least two more. The fourth draft was almost finished, and I was sitting in a building waiting to go into an office in some studio. I don’t even know why I was there. I was sitting on a bench and suddenly remembered this dream that I’d had the night before. And the dream was the ending to Blue Velvet.
• p139 - The ending of [Blue Velvet] suggests many things: order is apparently restored and we’re back where we began – with the happy family. Jeffrey asleep on the garden lounger might even imply that none of this really happened. But the sense of happiness is ambiguous. That’s the subject of Blue Velvet. You apprehend things, and when you try to see what it’s all about, you have to live with it. So there’s light and varying degrees of darkness.
• p198-199 - The thing I love most is absurdity. I find real humour in struggling with ignorance. If you saw a man repeatedly running into a wall until he was a bloody pulp, after a while it would make you laugh because it becomes absurd. But I don’t just find humour in unhappiness – I find it extremely heroic the way people forge on despite the despair they often feel.
• p207 - You seem to be talking from a very pessimistic point of view. No, I’m such an optimist I can’t tell you! But we’ve got to overcome a lot of inertia; we’ve got to be optimistic that it could all turn around.
  • TB: this is heartwarming, but it does follow a rather long train of thought in which he describes a situation that sounds like the beginning of Beau is Afraid.
• p216 - I don’t know what a lot of things mean; I just have the feeling that they are right or not right.
• p227 - Mystery is good, confusion is bad, and there’s a big difference between the two. I don’t like talking about things too much because, unless you’re a poet, when you talk about it, a big thing becomes smaller.
• p233 - You can’t have a movie where everyone’s telling nice little stories and knitting.
• p238, on CGI, presumably around the time of Lost Highway’s production - I don’t really think the technology is quite there yet. With Terminator II, they used it in a most beautiful way and it worked in the film, but a lot of people are just doing it because it’s new.
  • TB: the thought of Lynch watching T2 really cracks me up.
• p248 - People say all kinds of things when a film is done and put out into the world. All that stuff is the hole, and the work is the doughnut. They say ‘Keep your eye on the doughnut and not on the hole.’ I’m trying to keep my eye on the doughnut.
• p271 - Do you then get anxious about how this idea is going to fit in with everything else? No, because you’re just in that world yourself. . . . Somewhere along the way, when it looks like it’s taking some sort of shape, the rest of the ideas all gather round to see if they can fit into that shape. Maybe you’ll find out that thing isn’t going to work, so you save it in a box for later.
• p288 - I think people know what Mulholland Drive is to them but they don’t trust it. They want to have someone else tell them. I love people analysing it but they don’t need me to help them out. That’s the beautiful thing, to figure things out as a detective. Telling them robs them of the joy of thinking it through and feeling it through and coming to a conclusion.
• p294 - Also, it’s not done until you see it all together. If you see the film reel by reel you’re kidding yourself! So when you finish a mix, you see it all at once. Make sure you don’t have any guns in the room the, because it’s a nightmare. . . . I love getting movies to where they’re really right for me. That part is just beautiful. It would be fantastic to be able to make them and never put them out.