Excuse the Intermission
Alex and Max take you on a journey through film with this discussion podcast about movies.
Excuse the Intermission
Celebrating the Visionary Legacy of David Lynch
The world of cinema has lost a true visionary with the passing of David Lynch, and we are here to celebrate his extraordinary legacy. Lynch's films are a masterclass in storytelling, marrying the surreal with the deeply personal, and his influence stretches far beyond the silver screen. Join us as we recount how his work has touched us personally and professionally, particularly his ability to maintain an authentic style that defies Hollywood norms. Alongside insights from luminaries like Guillermo del Toro, we explore the many layers to Lynch's genius that have inspired generations of filmmakers and artists.
Throughout the episode, we pay tribute to Lynch's unique collaborations, especially with composer Angelo Badalamenti, which added profound emotional depth to his projects. We share behind-the-scenes stories from iconic sets such as "Mulholland Drive" and "Twin Peaks," illustrating how Lynch used music as an emotional compass for his films. His impact isn’t limited to fellow filmmakers; musicians like Trent Reznor and bands like The Mars Volta have also drawn inspiration from his atmospheric style, proving Lynch’s reach across multiple creative fields. This exploration uncovers the spiritual connectivity between Lynch and those he inspires, emphasizing his enduring legacy.
Our journey through Lynch's filmography reveals his mastery in creating unforgettable cinematic moments, from the intense performances in "Wild at Heart" to the reality-bending narratives of "Lost Highway." We dissect the dark spiritual themes that often pervade his work, highlighting the subconscious and moral complexities he so brilliantly weaves into his storytelling. As we reminisce, we look forward to upcoming tributes, including exciting events in Tacoma, where fans can gather to celebrate this extraordinary filmmaker. David Lynch may have left this world, but his influence continues to inspire and challenge all who encounter his work.
How's it? I'm Alex McCauley and I'm Max Fosberg, and this is Excuse the Intermission a discussion show surrounding David Lynch, one of the greatest American filmmakers, sadly passed away last week. The imprint in which he left on those around him and those who engaged with his work was profound, as evident by the outpouring of admiration that we've seen over the last week. Kaylee is back in studio with us to help us celebrate the life and career of David Lynch, a conversation that begins on the other side of this break. Okay, max and Kaylee, what a bizarre week it has been. News broke last Thursday, january 16th, that David Lynch had passed away after being housebound for the last couple of years with emphysema. What we now know and have learned is that he actually passed away on January 15th.
Speaker 1:David was born on January 20th 1946 in Montana and spent much of his youth in the American West. A decorated filmmaker and an artist whose work has been widely celebrated and reexamined since the news of his death. I really don't know how to approach this episode. Those who know me know that David Lynch was my favorite director and really someone who I consider a storyteller above anything else. It has been that way for the better part of 20 years. The news of his passing affected me in a way that I've never felt before, in terms of a celebrity or person who I didn't actually know. Max, you were, I believe, the way I found out about this, and I'm grateful for that. My phone was populated with birthday wishes for the first couple of hours on the 16th, and then the text quickly became something else Once word began to circulate. What did you think when you saw the news of David Lynch's passing?
Speaker 2:Uh, I was, I was very surprised, I was, was, I was really worried that it was like directly connected to the fires in la, um, but also just like, very sad, right like, uh, you know the what la has gone through during that week, uh, in in term of the, in terms of the fires, and then also to have David Lynch, who is very much like an icon of LA, not only, obviously, of cinema and film, but he had lived in LA for a very long time in the Hollywood Hills, if you watch any sort of documentary. He had that really cool house built into the hillside with the outdoor painting and sculpting studio. He was just a real big piece of that town. And so I've heard other people say and read what other people have been feeling in that you know, it was just like, like just a terrible cherry on top of what what that city is is going through to lose one of their all time icons and greats and and someone who really loved that area as well. But, yeah, very sad, I'm not going to sit here and and say that I was, you know, a Lynchian head, like maybe the two of you. You know, I think what.
Speaker 2:Blue Velvet was probably the first David Lynch film that I ever came to and that one really sticks with me because it was a very I was young and I remember my dad very vividly sitting me down and being like we're going to watch Blue Velvet by this guy, david Lynch. A lot of his films are very complex, very challenging to watch, but after his passing and seeing all the support and love for him and then also kind of doing my own little exploration into his work and his life and just things about him and clips and stuff, like he was a true, true artist and yeah, it's just sad because you's. It's sad because you know I think I was saying this to you, alex like this could be like the start of. You know, this could be the first, the first pin knockdown, uh, of the start of of those great seventies filmmakers, auteurs, um going, and that's really sad yeah, I think that's that's tragically true.
Speaker 1:Um kaylee, what did you think when you saw the news?
Speaker 3:um, I excuse me, um, I felt like it couldn't be true, I think, in a way where it's just like I just couldn't believe to like imagine him gone. I think I like took for granted just him making more films because every single thing he makes is so unique and and just powerful and I just, I love, you know, as, as a filmmaker like I am so inspired. I reference him all the time in the sense of how painterly he is and like his, his, um, his, really his passion for making the frame look a certain way and the way he edits. Obviously he's not an editor, but the way he has his films edited, um, I just think the way he makes films and the way he sees the world is so unique and he's never been somebody that was trying to be a hollywood filmmaker, was trying to be a Hollywood filmmaker or trying to be somebody. He was always just wholeheartedly himself and like, in a way, I learned to do that for myself as an artist through seeing him and seeing his confidence and seeing, like, the really fantastic films he was able to make by breaking out of these kind of those walls. And you know, like Max was saying, the films are challenging and but always such great payoffs.
Speaker 3:Like you know, as in the same sentence, as like he was this very unique man, he also knew film. You know he knew films. He knew you can feel like I was talking about lost highway in my review. Like you know, you can feel like I was talking about lost highway in my review. Like you know, it's very tropey and there's like these, like he knows cinema and you know I, I don't know, I just him passing, I think I'm just sad there's not going to be more and it's um, which is obviously a very consumer way of experiencing it, and I just I think that also, yeah, it is an era. It's an era like that type of filmmaking. It does feel like that type of filmmaking is getting further and further away from what our film industry is now.
Speaker 3:You know, things like Poor Things, or you know someone like Yorgos, you know, brings that type of energy back and that's really refreshing and exciting. But you know, I think that's the first filmmaker of our time that has even brought that type of energy to cinema. So just his energy and the way he saw the world, you know, I really started to like the more I go into, like listening to him and like I just think he was a really great person and like I feel that there is loss there of just someone who really loved the world and someone who knew what they wanted and um treated people well. You know, and I think also in the film industry that is, uh, can be a dime, a dozen it's not everyone and like just watching him work and and seeing the way he communicates with his people and kind of the like, the like truly magic, I think he to me, when I think of movie magic, I think of david lynch in some ways.
Speaker 3:You know, we were watching an interview this morning and he was talking about um how like having two days to shoot his film was so he was so angry about it because he's just like then we don't have any time to dream, we don't have any time to make this, you know experiment yeah, experiment yeah exactly.
Speaker 3:And so, yeah, that type of filmmaking, you know, even for me, going into making a film, you know you make a schedule and really you need coverage, really you need a wide shot, medium shot and you know, over the shoulders of each actor and that's all you need to create a scene. But I feel like he was always breaking those boundaries and really getting you know. When you read Catching the Big Fish which I know, alex, you're also a big fan of you see that he literally is pulling you into his meditative state and I just I think that is such an inspiring way to make films and you know, no one will ever make films like he did and that was really my feeling about it. And, yeah, I just really hope he's resting well. I mean, emphysema is terrible.
Speaker 3:I've had a lot of people in my family be sick of emphysema, and passive emphysema it is from smoking. So, not to laugh at that, but you know smoking is really bad for you. So, yeah, I mean it's interesting to see that and I'm also. I smoke weed. Every day I do smoke weed, but yeah, it's just like you know, it's interesting how it's bad for your health and it's just like I wish he was still here and you know when. Maybe cut that, I don't know, but yeah, I just think that he died that way, I guess yeah it does feel like very him though he is.
Speaker 1:He is unapologetically himself, even down to the fact that he was smoking well into his 70s, well into already being diagnosed, and when you see the clips of him on set and he has a heater in one hand and a bullhorn in the other, that's what everyone loved him for. It's been really. It's been really great seeing all the different actors and the creatives who have worked with him time and time again. He was, of course, one of these filmmakers that you know established a team very early on in his career and you've seen so many different people, whether it's Laura Dern or Kyle McLaughlin, and they've come out and they've said, especially Kyle, I owe my entire career to this man, and you know that there's, I am sure that there was never a day in their relationship where Kyle felt indebted to him via the interactions that he and David would have, because David is such a giving person at least everything that I've read and seen about him and so I. My heart breaks for all those people too that did know him on a personal level, because I can't imagine what a gaping hole that is to not have him in their life anymore, just to connect some weird dots in my own personal relationship with David Lynch.
Speaker 1:Here we are recording this on January 20th, so this would have been his 79th birthday. This is also my sister's birthday today, january 20th, and I always said to her I think that is so cool how you and David share a birthday. It's always fun to kind of Google the the different celebrities, athletes, whoever they may be, that you share a birthday with and see if there's anybody there that you kind of feel aligned with. And so her always sharing a birthday with David Lynch was very, very cool. And then for the news of his passing to come out on the 16th, my birthday, and then to find out that he actually probably passed away January 15th. I have a weird relationship with those two days because I was a midnight baby on January 15th because of hospital accommodations and the doctors and nurses wanting to best serve my mom and post-pregnancy there, they let her put down on the birth certificate January 16th for me so that she could stay all day the 16th, all day the 17th. And so the fact that this kind of happened for him you know his passing on the 15th, 16th and that being my birthday just feels like one of those universe winking at you kind of moments, Just feels like one of those universe winking at you kind of moments. The fact that he shares birthdays and death days now with both my sister and I, who are huge Twin Peaks David place in Washington and is become such a such a destined.
Speaker 1:The North Bend area has become such a destination, like an international destination for fans. They make the Mecca to North Bend to tweets cafe, to the Salish lodge, to see Snoqualmie falls and that being, you know, 40 minutes away. And I've done it a handful of times, most recently, most recently, um, on my way to Leavenworth this past holiday season. So, having just been up there and experiencing all that, when obviously no one could know that this was right around the corner, but everything just feels in the most once again, like perfectly lynchian way, so surreal right now and I still haven't really processed all of that yet, and so I don't.
Speaker 1:I don't know if this episode needs to be like you know. It's not like I asked you, max, or we were going to maybe have Erica come on. Erica wants to get through a lot more David Lynch material before she kind of gives her full thoughts on it. Kayla, you're well versed, but like I don't know. I've seen a lot of people logging stuff. I was able to do the international pilot of twin peaks the other night and that's the only thing I've engaged with. I haven't watched a movie, whether it's a lynch movie or anybody else. I haven't engaged in anything since his passing. Like things just feel so weird still so like we can talk about his films here. In a little bit We'll talk about twin peaks, but like this isn't a list episode, this isn't some sort of you know, like gamification of someone's career. Like this just feels so heavy still to me.
Speaker 3:I totally agree and honestly I feel like just from your story and you know I have I have a weird thing, a small weird thing as well. I think that he was a spiritual being right and that's in his work, and so I think that him leaving is is is very spiritual for people that experienced his films, because I think that was the wavelength he was experiencing life on and he very much believed we're all connected. He very much believed that, um, you know, there is a higher, higher sense of self, that, um, you know, there is a higher, higher sense of self that you can access, you know, and that was something he really believed in, that you know, through him, I also believe and I had never heard of transcendental meditation before David Lynch.
Speaker 3:Yeah, my mom my mom actually, um, as a gift and not because it's funny, because she is not a David Lynch fan she offered it to me because she just was like she had read about it because she's a health nut and she had like wanted to get into it and ended up getting us a workshop to do to go do it. So I'm trans transdental meditation trained and I, you know, I read Catching the Big Fish a little bit before that. So I was like, oh hell, yeah, I'm in, I would love to come do that and learn this and it is an amazing process and it's like you, um, it's, it's really 20, 22 minutes a day, 20 or so two times a day. 22 minutes is the transcendental meditation process. I think he did it a little bit more than that. You can do it as much as you want to, um, but yeah, I mean, I think it really helps. You just sit with yourself and you and you do access the dream state. I do notice that when I sit and I, the way you know, because you have a mantra right, there's certain mantras. They have like three different mantras through transcendental meditation and you get given one by your coach and so, yeah, I think through those mantras you really are able to access a higher sense of, higher state of being. But yeah, I think for so yeah, he, he's magic and I love that he passed that on. You know, that's also was the early the Beatles were kind of the first transcendental meditation people before David Lynch was, but it's a really, really powerful tool. I think what happened to me with David Lynch is my art director.
Speaker 3:I'm working on my, my short film, blood Moon. She came over to set dress the apartment and Catching the Big Fish was sitting on a table somewhere and she picked it up and I was like, oh, have you read that? She's a big film nerd too. I mean, she should be on the pod at some point because she's a huge film nut. Max met her at Seattle Film Institute and she picked it up and I was like, have you read that? And she was like no. And and she picked it up and I was like, have you read that? And she was like no. And I was like, oh, you have to borrow it. Keep it as long as you want. I do want it back. I do want it back, but keep it as long as you need to. It's a really fast read. I mean, it's such a cool.
Speaker 1:The book is so such a fast read. It's one of those great classic.
Speaker 3:And the whole page just him saying I'll never tell you what that means, and then just into the page. I love that. Yeah, we should just go. If you have it in your, in your place, here we should go read some, read some passages.
Speaker 1:There'll be. There'll be time for a reading of that here very soon.
Speaker 3:I would love that, um, but yeah, so she borrowed that the day before so that we did that set dressing that day. And then when I so when I saw that it happened, you know I was thinking of him that day before and just how much he meant to me when I handed that book off to this young filmmaker you know a little bit younger 22, 23 someone who's really scared of being able to make it in the film industry, someone who's very creative and she's a freaking genius.
Speaker 3:In my opinion, i'll'll have to send this to her now. But yeah, it's so. Yeah, just to give that to a young filmmaker and say, like, take this and like, learn from this man who, who never questioned it Right, he lived in Hollywood Like Max was saying he knew he was like, this is what I want to do. And he was there doing it his entire life. And you know, that's just to me, just one of the ultimate filmmakers who just stuck with it and stuck with who he was. And we love we all love him for that. We love his sensibility.
Speaker 3:And one thing I don't know if you guys all you guys saw this Instagram reel. Guillermo del Toro has a little talk he did on him via TIFF and he says he's like all those little like things that feel tongue-in-cheek and david lynch's stuff. He's like no, he's a very wholesome guy and he he means it, like he means all these things like to us they come off as this funny, like ironic thing and guillermo's like he's not an ironic man and, yeah, I thought that was very interesting, like way to look at his films and the way who he is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Well, when I tell people to watch, or if someone tells me they're watching twin peaks or they're asking what's twin peaks all about, I let them know that David Lynch and making twin peaks was just as interested in making a daytime soap opera as he was some surrealist nightmare murder mystery about this high school prom queen that gets, that gets killed in a small town, and that is I'm not being tongue-in-cheek by saying that at all like that is. You watch, yeah, twin peaks and it is just as campy as days of our lives. But then there's also this nightmarish quality to it as well and and it once again just feels wholeheartedly, him and he is equally invested in in looking at both aspects of of kind of small town America through those different lenses.
Speaker 3:Yeah and uh. Del Toro also brings up in his thing of um. David Lynch is one of the ultimate paradoxical thinkers, right Like that. That paradox of doing the daytime soap with these dark images, like that is a very like strong choice to juxtapose these two things that don't really go together but they do in his world and he's able to make them feel so together and feel and like they. They seem like they're meant to be together in the way that he portrays them yeah, right, you think about laura dern talking about the robins and blue velvet.
Speaker 1:Very similar in that. You think about Laura Dern talking about the Robins in Blue Velvet. Very similar in that sense. Think about the opening shot of Blue Velvet white picket, fence roses, someone cutting their grass Again, just like the American dream, and then straight into the Beatles. A severed ear, yeah.
Speaker 2:The dark and the light. Yeah, yeah, he was. You know. I watched the art life, the, the documentary on on david I. First of all, I don't know how I didn't know this, but the fact that he lived in washington for for a time, in spokane, um, during his childhood uh montana to boise, idaho to spokane yeah that's kind of the pipeline and and the real influence for Twin Peaks. Yeah, and that also kind of brings him.
Speaker 2:He's a hometown hero here in Washington right 100%, yeah, which is really cool, but he is such a, I think another thing I didn't really realize he is such a painter, right like he. That's. What he wanted to do was to be a painter and and an artist. And uh he, just he, at one point he was like, oh, what, what would a moving painting be? Uh, and you know, he kind of explains this in the documentary, but I mean that that leads to him going down the rabbit hole, quite literally of film.
Speaker 2:And, yeah, just such a unique artist, I think. Another thing Kaylee and I were watching this morning was some behind the scenes of Mulholland Drive and there was an interesting interview with uh angelo the uh his, his composer angelo about the bottle of minty yeah, who he worked with, I think almost on everything.
Speaker 2:and uh, he was saying that you know, david comes to him and tells him about an idea, and tells him about the feelings of this idea, and then he goes and writes the music and before anything is ever shot or made, and then David will listen to the music and then key in on like one piece of the music and really just like dive deep on that piece to the point where, like he's playing it on set for the, for the actors to kind of move to and get the rhythm of to.
Speaker 3:you know, and he actually just records him playing it on the piano and then takes it on the set.
Speaker 2:I think that's, that's really, really unique and again, just a very like different way of approaching cinema and and filmmaking and and and very, you know, I don't know if it's surreal, but like very artistly, right, right, like it's honestly and artistly, um so artistically, artistically. Yes, thank you honestly and artistically, um, and and I think that's something that you can see throughout his whole work is that he is so, um, vulnerable and keyed in on his emotions and he puts those into, uh, the films, and I think that's what makes them special.
Speaker 1:There's a very similar interview with um balda lamenti on a twin peaks behind the scenes foot, a little interview where he's talking about the theme for Twin Peaks kind of the Laura Palmer theme and very similar where he composed all this music and then he and David meet and he says play that part again, and then he just keeps going slower, angelo slower slower, slower, and then that's how they arrive at this Angelo slower, slower, slower, and then that's how they arrive at this, you know, obviously iconic theme and I just think it's so interesting how all those little behind the scenes tidbits that we've that we've gotten all these different special editions.
Speaker 1:You know, criterion's re-released just about every single one of his films now on Blu-ray. Many of them are getting 4K releases now about every single one of his films now on Blu-ray. Many of them are getting 4K releases. Now Record store days around the country, year after year, are getting re-releases of his soundtracks and the scores for his different films on vinyl.
Speaker 1:You look at the artists in different communities that work in different mediums but who are still kind of all part of this one artistry that have been influenced by him Probably the two, if Lynch is, and he is the most impactful filmmaker to me in my life.
Speaker 1:The two other musicians who are probably the most impactful to me are Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails and then the Mars Volta psychedelic rock band, and both of them, coincidentally enough, have cited david lynch's work as huge influences on their life. Um, trent's first job on a quote-unquote like film set was the music supervisor for lost highway and and then you look all the way into um, you know the future of his career and he works with him on the score for the return on the soundtrack for Twin Peaks. The return is incredible the Mars Volta site Amputexture, which is this incredible album as the musical equivalent to David Lynch's Twin Peaks. And so that's something that I've been doing a lot this week, kind of in my like mourning and grieving processes, not really engaging with David Lynch's work per se, but all these other different artists who have been influenced by him, because you can just again, it's this like spiritual connectivity that you can just feel between people. I just think it's really remarkable.
Speaker 3:I love that and I think just the way he heard music and the way he placed music, incredibly, I mean, and like you know, like the slower, slower and I'm picturing it from Olin Drive too, like this, this kind of like noir-y, and I love you said Trent Reznor and hearing like I hear that influence. I never thought of that or knew that, but like you, feel that kind of like that ambience, that like inching, inching, kind of like not electronic, because his stuff doesn't always sound electronic, but it has this like drone, drone type of ambient feeling and it just changes the way you experience the scenes. I mean just the way the music is used and, um, it's so part of the scenes like his, none of his ones would be without the music.
Speaker 1:I mean like the twin peaks, stuff like this, these I just think of bill pullman wailing away on the tenor sax in lost highway and the strobe lights and everything that feels that feels directly pulled out of like a mars volta album. But of course that predates them and their work and so it's almost like you know, had had they have worked with him on a film before, something like that's the kind of thing that would be in it, but then just to kind of hyper-focus in on on the music in that movie, then it just hard cuts back to the house, yeah. And then it's the absence of sound, and I always think about that too with him, where, like the absence of sound and how attention to detail he was with lighting and seeing people something that I've heard him talk about many times before is people walking out of the darkness into the light or fading from lightness into darkness, and how he would just focus so much on being like that black isn't black enough. And and I think about so many different moments in his movies I tell this to people all the time the scariest film I've ever seen is Twin Peaks. Firewalk with me and now it comes with a huge prerequisite of having. You need to see the first one and two seasons of Twin Peaks. You don't need to see the return before you watch the movie. But if you have seen the first two seasons of Twin Peaks and you know what's coming in Firewalk with me because it is a prequel, then that's going to be the scariest thing you ever watch because you have spent 27,. I don't even know how many episodes I think it's about 27, 28 episodes in this world and you've never seen the things you were about to see.
Speaker 1:And so like that evil on screen all of a sudden and you just don't know how he's going to communicate it. And there's so many times where the camera is just moving around corners. In the palmer household you have the different shots of, like, the ceiling fan spinning and you know that that means that there's this electricity in the air and that the currents are circulating and that bob and the spirits from the black lodge are like present and they're there and so you know something's coming. But once again, it's never going to be a jump scare with a musical cue. It's going to be a tv flickering and, all of a sudden, bob crawling in through Laura Palmer's window and you're going to be stuck with that image and there's no escaping it.
Speaker 1:I think about any racer had the woman who lives in the apartment across the hallway from Jack Nance and there's a scene where he opens his door because he hears her outside and her door is just open and once again Lynch just holds the camera on that blackness of her open door frame and finally she steps out of it. And this is a gorgeous woman, but it is terrifying, it is so scary and I just I just think about how I've never seen another director be able to do that before. And it's just, it's, it's dreamlike, it's surreal, it's all these different adjectives that you know have been used to death to describe his work. But it truly is. It truly is special and once again, I don't feel like it transcends just the medium of filmmaking. Like he's, like he's a painter, he's, he's this visual artist, he's a storyteller, like that's how I always end up describing him, because just no one else does it like him.
Speaker 1:I mean I think him because just no one else does it like him. I mean I think that. I love that. You said your ghost earlier, because I thought of him as well and I thought, yeah, who can kind of like? And again, this is not the point of the episode, but I was sort of thinking like who can kind of like carry the torch now for for that like really aberrant, surreal, sort of like upsetting but provocative and and and also very satirical and very like funny in a dark, twisted way. And I think about like I bet you, david Lynch loved the lobster. Yeah, you know, the killing of a sacred deer feels a lot like Blue Velvet.
Speaker 1:And so I am very happy that we still have a few people out there, but he is a true one of one. Yeah, david Lynch.
Speaker 3:I love what you're saying about. I mean, yeah, touched on the lighting. I mean the way his scenes are lit are just unbelievable. It was very interesting watching the behind the scenes of mohan drive because the light it doesn't look like that right. The scenes don't look the way they look in his film because they're so like starkly lit and I love that. And also I'd love that you talked about how he builds tension. I think that he has because he, because of that whole thing where max touched on of him being challenging, he's not scared to challenge you. He will push the tension really long. He will edge the fuck out of you where he will like the diner scene in winkies.
Speaker 1:yeah, totally, so many people are like that's the scariest scene I've ever experienced in a movie, and it's broad daylight.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. On Friday in class that was the first thing our professor did was like everyone sit down, turn off the lights. We're going to watch the scene from Mulholland Drive in honor of David.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's such a good. I love Mulholland Drive.
Speaker 1:What was the reaction to that?
Speaker 2:yeah, it's such a good I love. What was the reaction to that? Uh, you know, I I think I was like one of maybe four people in the class that had seen that scene before. Um, and uh, so wild, yeah, I don't know people were. I mean, we we broke it down. You know it was a lot of technical talk, but talking about the sound and the use of sound in it, where, like, at first you like hear the, you can hear like kind of the background playing, but then as soon as he the noises in the diner Exactly, yeah, the noises in the diner, but as soon as he starts talking about the dream, all sound kind of goes out, and then there's just like this low, like frequency that humming scene or hum yeah, kind of Brown noise, yeah.
Speaker 2:That just plays throughout. And then and then, even when you go outside, you don't hear any, anything outside, um, even the, even the characters are muffled, um, throughout that. And then also the camera how the camera know it's an ots shot, uh, you know basic coverage of of two people having a conversation, but the camera's floating, right, and that even that little, uh, you know change from a from a regular, you know any other director would have done, you know, just on the, an on-the-sticks OTS, right, but the fact that it's floating gives you that dreamlike feel. And then, something I also picked up on was like any other director in the world would have set this scene at night, you know, but again to do it during the day, just like, adds another, because it's broad daylight, like it tricks you into thinking like, oh well, nothing, nothing weird is going to happen. Like it's it's the day, but really it, yeah, he, he's so good at like lulling you into this deep, dark world, yeah.
Speaker 1:Is there a favorite performance of yours from any of his films and or properties?
Speaker 3:I was thinking of this as we were talking. We're talking about Mullen Drive. Mullen Drive is one of the best. I mean I changed my letterbox tops this week to Mullen Drive and Wild at Heart because we haven't touched on Wild at Heart yet, because that's one of my all-time favorites. Love that soundtrack Once. Quickly going back to his music stuff, I love how films he does not. They don't have to have one voice, like they'll have one type of style like you have, like these crazy, always the crazy, metal moments, and then there's like these ambient moments too, and like they bring like beautiful, like old soul.
Speaker 3:He's always got some like old jazz jazz and old soul and like, oh, just all these different types of music that are just all freaking fire. Such good music. But Wild at Heart is one of my favorites. Nick Cage in that jacket, that's freaking. I would love someday in my Richville maker days maybe to have that jacket. I mean I love him driving up and like. That film to me also is like a really good entry level Lynch, because it's just a little bit more fast-paced.
Speaker 3:It kind of just gets into it and there's more of like the relationship is really easy to latch on to because it's like young love which you don't really get in the other ones as much. This like kind of classical young love thing going in and Laura Dern and also just Laura Dern and Nick Cage, like to see them work together, is just so epic there's great star power.
Speaker 1:That, I think, makes it palatable for a lot of people. Yeah, even if you have Nick Cage wearing snakeskin jackets. Yeah, but it's a symbol of his individuality. Yes, yes.
Speaker 3:Because I'm trying to remember how it all. That's the thing I'm really. I always remember and that's why I think that's why a lot of people that love David Lynch that maybe don't remember every single scene or every single thing like his, like we talked about on the last episode when these images are burned into your brain forever, like Nick Cage in that that skin snake, skin jacket driving up, and you know, that image is burned into my head forever, regardless if I remember the whole movie and that's so. Yeah, how does that?
Speaker 1:I'm jealous because mine's fucking Bobby Peru's teeth. Willem Dafoe's character yes, I was thinking that too, and that's what's burned into my head from that film and the puke a different film, blue Velvet.
Speaker 3:The puke on the carpet in that one is really burnt into my head. In that scene with Laura Dern, like that is just so ballsy and just so strange and disgusting and it has all these greater implications to it of like what she's going through and what this man is putting her through and it's just, it's so amazing how much that puke speaks so the puke is your favorite performance puke is my favorite performance. Solid following uh nick cage in wild heart. Solid following Nick Cage in Wilderheart.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think when I think of the performances from his movies, I mean it's a little cliche to say, but Jack Nance in Eraserhead is, and I, you know, I don't even know. Did Jack Nance ever really do anything else? Jack's.
Speaker 1:I mean outside of, outside of Lynch, David Lynch stuff.
Speaker 2:I don't know if there's anything as notable yeah, I, I think I think his performance in that and that's a movie again that, like took me probably three times to get through because it was just so scary, it was so nightmarish and frightening to watch, and I think a lot of that is anchored by jack nance's performance in that. Um, but then also, you know, re-watching lost highway this weekend. Everything that bill polman is doing in that movie is just near perfect and it's so insane to think that this comes out, I, I believe, a year after he plays the president in Independence Day.
Speaker 1:Independence Day 96. 96. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And you know, bill Pullman I really think is such a. You know we talked a lot about him on the Wes Craven episode, because Serpent the Serpent and the Rainbow, serpent and the Rainbow.
Speaker 1:He's great in that.
Speaker 2:He's fantastic in that the Serpent and the Rainbow, the Serpent and the Rainbow. It's great in that. He's fantastic in that he is such a great performer and I really, really love everything he's doing in Lost Highway.
Speaker 3:I'm stealing the mic back for one quick second Because, okay, wild at Heart, because then all of a sudden the whole story I'm like I remember more than the beginning with this is the mom, the mom in the fucking lipstick. That is a really good performance too in wild at heart. When it starts to go ham, she's so mad anyway. Yeah, just another classic like that scene.
Speaker 1:I if there was a period of my life that scene was bookmarked on my computer so I could just go to it and get that high of her energy and that insanity, yeah a lot of a lot of people have returned to wild at heart in in this wicked moment that we're having right now, because David Lynch and there's, of course, the kind of room two, 37 ish documentary that came out a few years ago called Lynch slash Oz, where there's an and much like how I stand on room two, 37, where I think a lot of that film is interesting and exploring some very bizarre similarities and coincidences between Kubrick and conspiracy theories and all these different things. Much can be said the same about Lynch Oz and how basically all of David Lynch's movies circle back to the ideas and the themes of the wizard of oz. Well, now, in wild of heart it's very apparent and that's kind of like the skeleton key for that whole idea, if you really believe in it. Because quite literally, um, I never knew that cheryl lee, laura palmer comes down as glinda the good witch at the end of that and talks to you know, know, nick Cage, as he's starfished out on the cement at the end of the film. Um, kind of brings him back to life, and so there's, there's a lot of stuff going on in there and and again. That I think just kind of speaks to his obsession with old Hollywood and and kind of the, the classic American experience, if you will, and so I. I love that too, because there's so many different ways to interpret his work. Um, you know lost highway, my favorite film of all time.
Speaker 1:I went back and I listened to our conversation that we had with our buddy, derek Nunn, at Edison square this past year when we, when we did the live show, and you know that's more for kind of the themes of of that movie and and I even said it on there and I'll say it again here that's the most challenging film I've ever watched, where I I experienced it in a new way every single time, where sometimes I feel like I I really quote unquote get it at the end of it, and another time I see something. You know, then the next time I watch it and I might see something new, and I'm challenged again and I'm not quite sure which reality is. Is the one true reality? And and which doppelganger of Patricia Arquette's is? Is in the world that we're living in? And Dick Laurent is dead. You know that famous opening line like, yeah, which reality is that coming from? There's so much going on there.
Speaker 1:I love Robert Blake's performance too. Is the mystery man in that movie, very similar to to the Bob character in Twin, twin peaks, and so, um, I love it for that. I think you know lynch is said too, and there's all the red curtain stuff and lost highway as well. That lost highway and twin peaks kind of take place in the same universe where, where you do have like this astral projection going on and people can almost jump back and forth between bodies and things of this nature. And so my favorite, my favorite movie of his, definitely lost highway, but but that's not to say that my favorite performance is is in that film. I really do think that just the it's so hard to to try to, you know, pick a quote unquote favorite but I do think that, just like Kyle McLaughlin as an actor in David Lynch, stuff is incredible and it's probably my favorite because I've never really thought that a director and an actor could or something on a football team where you're just kind of like I trust Belichick and Brady to do it right every single time.
Speaker 1:You know I trust Lynch and McLaughlin every single time. And you know Dune's a real interesting one. I think it's kind of been reclaimed for taking that Frank Herbert book the first one and really trying to almost adapt an inadaptable story. And now Denny's done it his own way and obviously with the accommodations of 21st century technology he's been able to do a lot more. But I still think that everything that happens in Blue Velvet and in Twin Peaks you know Kyle also shows up in Firewalk with me there for a little bit but there's just, there's something about those two together and the agent Cooper character. I mean like I'm looking around the room right now and kind of everywhere I look I see Kyle McLaughlin all of a sudden and um and and I do I do just think that, like twin peaks, it's the best story ever told on film.
Speaker 1:Um, you know, when I got the twin peaks box set, it was like my junior year of high school, so 2007 is when my mom gifted that to me and I have it next to me right here. This is like the most important piece of physical media that I've ever received. Like it it without sanding, sounding trite or anything like that Like it truly changed me as as someone who was really starting to get into to movies and into filmmaking and, um, you know, just the the entire kind of like creative Hollywood process and and so I I'm indebted to twin peaks and in that agent Cooper character is is just incredible. I mean, like just the way he describes coffee. I describe coffee like that like once a week now when I'm talking to people, you know, you can't say like it's damn fine coffee you know, without people kind of knowing what you mean at this point, and so, yeah, again, like I said, that's.
Speaker 1:The only thing I was kind of able to revisit was the international pilot to that, and it felt just like slipping back into a warm pair of sweatpants.
Speaker 2:Is the international pilot different than what we received over here?
Speaker 1:The international pilot is two hours long and it runs like a film where you have a closed ending where Laura's killer is found out and brought to justice. So yes, it's very different. He basically takes the first 15 episodes of what was designed for the television series and put it into a movie.
Speaker 3:Oh, wow, I mean I love what you're saying on kyle mclaughlin. I think that, like you know, I was talking to one of my director friends about. He made a very interesting surrealist film called soft boy and we were talking about how you work with an actor and you know they're in a surrealist world but you tell them to play it straight and I think that kyle mclaughlin kind of he defines like the interesting middle point between those two things when you're doing surrealism. Where I very much feel like one thing I love about watching him and the Twin Peaks I have watched is that you do have this feeling that he's in on the joke a little bit, like there's this little like it's this in-between.
Speaker 1:He's playing it straight but you do have this little feeling of he's right because, because all of a sudden they're like in the middle of solving this murder case and he gets the rest of the police department and, you know, the doctor and someone from the hotel, and he gets him out there and he goes. Okay, I had a dream last night about a giant. The giant told me to come out here and throw stones at this rock, you know, and he delivers it so straight. Yeah, but it's absurd, it's completely pulled from the mind of david lynch. Yeah, and, and just that relationship between the two of them, that trust to communicate it, it's great.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's so inspiring. Yeah, and like, also, it's cool seeing him in other work, like I love that David Lynch found him and, you know, seeing him in other films oh, I can't remember this title. There's this really great movie with, I want to say, possibly Natasha I'm so bad with actor names sometimes but anyway, he's in this other film where he plays this like teacher who these girls kind of their friendship gets destroyed by this professor that one of them sleeps with, and Kyle MacLachlan plays it. So he's just brilliant.
Speaker 3:Interesting and yeah, I really suggest it. I'll find the title. But it's like me you, one of those ones with the weird pronouns Me, you and um. It's like me, you, one of those ones with the weird pronoun me, you and us or something, but um. But yeah, just like, he's just a really great actor and I think it's really cool, like what they were able to accomplish together and um other other things that that made me think of with the classic hollywood things like mulholland drive, going back to that of like um, how gilda or how the, the or not gilda, what's the yeah, the gilda poster and and so she makes her name Rita, and like just these little homages, like I love that.
Speaker 3:You know, I think that you know even someone like Eggers, another filmmaker now, who makes these kinds of very singular films in his own vision. But yeah, I feel like that is one of the most fun things about watching these types of filmmakers and these people who are so singular minded in the way they think and also that they think in movies, they think in movie language, because that is their life and their passion and you feel that through the films. And um also wanted to point out that spiritually, I am from kansas and so also this weird thing where it's like I grew up watching wizard of oz, because that farm in the black and white like that was something that was, you know, two or three hours from where I lived, and so it just feels like right now I feel like I'm in a trippy dream sequence just thinking about that. I'm just like it's all connected, everything it's all like so strange. And also Wizard of Oz, just how it has been this influential thing. And also Wizard of Oz, just how it has been this influential thing. And I think that David Lynch, to me, is influential for artists, for the real artistry in this world. I think he will always be someone that people look back on like Wizard of Oz, because Wizard of Oz was also very, you know, to bring color in and do all the things that it did. I mean, we're just so lucky, as I feel like that's it's so amazing to be an artist because we we stand on shoulders Right and we it's so inspiring to stand on the shoulders of people like this. And yeah, that's really interesting.
Speaker 3:I did not know that that was. I knew Gilda was in there, that from different things. I don't know why I said Gilda earlier Cause, that's Rita. Is that right, though, okay?
Speaker 2:So, rita and I'm so Bad at Life You're tangling your own brain up.
Speaker 3:I think I am. It's okay though, but yeah, I love that he references all that stuff and it's really fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's really interesting too that, even though you know his last feature film was in 2006 with Inland Empire, I mean he he's still like during the pandemic his weather reports were like some of like the greatest content that was coming out and like just kind of reintroduced himself to a whole new generation of people. Think he was just trying to pass the time, or maybe he was really. He got really interested in weather and and because I wouldn't put that past him, but like he, he was able to make a mark even though he wasn't doing you know, feature work. I guess, right, like you know, it's really sad to think that 2006 was the last time he did a feature film, because he was ever present, and so I think that's really special too and kind of goes to the point of like he might very may well go down as the most influential filmmaker artist of of the 20, 20thth and 20, maybe 21st century well, and even on that last film on inland empire in 2006, he's still trying to break new ground.
Speaker 1:I mean, that was we talk about this all the time because we love these movies that use that early, those early sony cameras with the digital photography. It's, it's michael mann, yeah, it's david lynch, it's. It's like those are like the three movies right there, like miami Vice, collateral and Inland Empire, that were all of a sudden like shooting with digital so that we could capture again the lighting in a different way that we've never seen before. And there's a ton of that in Inland Empire. So, even though, yes, that was nearly 20 years ago now, still incredibly innovative.
Speaker 1:And then everything he did with the return, you know, I think the return is really challenging and for some people at the beginning of that series it wasn't exactly what they expected. But then you get this. As you know, the world of twin peaks would would in only the way that a world like twin peaks can allow for you get this completely alternative, um, this alternate like universe in which there's like a bad Dale Cooper, you know, because that's black lodge, white lodge. We know this. Um. So I I think that that was great for him to really be able to get a lot of stuff out um with with that, but it is. It is too bad because now we're starting to see things, like you know, netflix has said that oh, we were working with, you know, david Lynch on trying to get some sort of prestige TV thing made here and we were close and all this other stuff, and so there's a huge career to go back and revisit and celebrate, of course, but it is.
Speaker 1:It is kind of sad knowing that. And this is the thing about artists and and I think why I was so affected, kaylee, why, why everyone else is so effective or affected by this, is because you know, creativity has, it knows, no age, and so when someone with a mind like his passes away, and then you just kind of you do know, even if you didn't expect there to be anything else, now we just know there's not going to be anything else and it's really, really sad. I don't know if you were with us when we were talking about this, max, but I kind of compared it to Kobe Bryant and when Kobe passed away and the two different feelings that I had on that, because while Kobe was still incredibly influential and you could say that he did so many amazing things for basketball and everything like that. But and it's I don't know if this is like morbid to talk about another human being like this, but you know when, when you know them as like an athlete and then they've they've retired from their sport, they're still a figure in the community.
Speaker 1:And Kobe was getting into film, actually had won an Academy Award for a short film Right Like Kobe. Kobe was still doing so much good work in the Los Angeles community and obviously an extremely important figure globally just for the sport of basketball. But when you know them like as a basketball player first and now, that's just the only way that we can view things from the outside, not knowing the person personally. When he passed away and of course he passed away long before his time it just kind of didn't feel real at first.
Speaker 1:But then it's like, oh well, it's not like I'm watching laker games and kobe's not out there all of a sudden, like he already wasn't out there yeah with with david lynch or with any you know musician or anybody else when all of a sudden they're gone and then you just realize like we're not going to get any more of the thing that they could still possibly do right now is is a really weird place to find yourself in.
Speaker 2:There's no real retirement. No there's no, there's no real end. It's just ask Clint yeah, you end, yeah, yeah, yeah, so it's yeah. That is. That is sad and depressing to think about. Yeah.
Speaker 3:But it's like you have to process these things when people pass, whether it's someone you know and and you do get. I think that filmmaking is like it's very intimate and, like I said, you know, we get this part of him through his work and, um, yeah, I, I think it is. It is strange. I think that's interesting comparison with kobe and, yeah, the, the athletes. I mean yeah, because it's just like what they're doing and the way it affects you and the way it's influential, like we were just talking about. I want to touch on because I figured out my little brain issue I was just having. So Glinda is the good, good witch in Wizard of Oz. Of course, gilda is a film noir film, a very famous film noir film that Rita Hayworth stars in. So if you've seen Mullen Drive and you know movies, you know that she sees Gilda the poster and then,
Speaker 3:names herself Rita, because she knows it was played by Rita Hayworth. So that's why I got so confused. I was saying Gilda and Glinda and I was like wait, who what? Anyway, just wanted to point out they have very similar names. But yeah, this is just, it's really. It's interesting he was making something with Netflix. He was going to make more stuff. I'm also really excited to like get through the rest of Twin Peaks, because I did really like that show. It's just, you know, freaking content overload in this world. It's just one of those things I haven't gone through. And then Inland Empire I mean, I was watching the trailer for that this morning. It's so much like Mulan Drive and Lost Highway it seems like I mean, you've seen it, alex, would you say? Does it have a lot of those similar amnesia parallel universes I also want to touch, yeah, I think the parallel universe thing I'm writing, the film I just wrote and I'm getting ready to direct is parallel universes, which, I wonder, is weirdly a subtle Lynch reference as well, without even meaning to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, it's a lot like moholy drive in the sense that it's about an actress and it's got one of the best taglines ever for a movie just a woman in trouble and that is laura dern in this film. And I would say that inland empire is I think it's his film in which he is trying to unpack the most ideas and connect the most things that might not make a ton of sense all at once, because quite literally in the film we break out into the scene of the rabbits, the puppeteered like rabbits, and that's an entirely different short film that you can just watch separately. Cool, the, the rabbits um. I think. Yeah, I think it's called the rabbits um, and so there's a lot going on in that movie. That that megan, because, like I told max, when max was like gonna watch inland empire tonight, I'm like, well, maybe you'll watch like the first hour because like it's, it's really good to almost like kind of break it up.
Speaker 1:I'll never forget the first time I watched. It was my sister and I and it was like on a sunday and we started it at 12 o'clock and it ended at three and it was around. It was like around this time and so you know, around three o'clock in the winter time, twilight kind of is in that like early afternoon, and we just kind of sat there and like sort of let the room get dark or whatever, like as we talked about it, and then we were just like whoo, like, what an experience. Like, do do we understand it all? No, of course not. Like how could you? At first blush, but I would I would definitely say that it is.
Speaker 1:It is nightmarish in the way that, like Lost Highway and and the the worst parts of like the Black Lodge and Twin Peaks are where you have these, these mystery people kind of coming into Laura Dern's life and delivering messages that feel like they are from another timeline and letting her know that, like your, your soul is kind of in danger right now. Your soul is kind of in danger right now, and just the way that the movie plays out. You do get a lot of that, but some really fun performances in there. Still, I just love the different people when I'm thinking about all the different people that he has collaborated with and for people who have strong careers outside of his work, but like Harry Dean Stanton, who is no longer with us, and every single time that you got to see them together was incredible, justin Theroux, every single time that they collaborated incredible.
Speaker 3:I was telling Max we need to get him to just throw sunglasses from Mulholland Drive.
Speaker 2:We're going to LA. We got to get him.
Speaker 3:He's already got the kind of spiky hair thing. Sometimes we could do that. This is the girl. Yes, this is the girl. That whole like storyline is so awesome and he's I love him in that. That's also a great performance he's such a douche bag in the best way, in the best way that's the kind of asshole I want to hang out with.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, not even he's like I'm not going to let the producers fuck me over. He's the avatar for David her jewelry like yeah, dude, he's the best in that movie. I love him. Goes to talk to the cowboy. Oof, the cowboy in mahalan drive. Yeah, that's a wild one.
Speaker 1:I do think that when I'm the next movie that I'm going to like return to once, once kind of this whole, once all this processing has returned or is over with, is, I will go back to moholan drive because I do think, you know, if we're talking like entry point for a lot of people, blue velvet's probably the one that's most often cited because it is very straightforward. You have these ideas of of the human experience that feel almost spiritual, but there really is none of that in the actual context of the film. It is just this like sort of neo-new war of this guy who comes back home from college because his dad's sick and he gets caught up in this seedy underbelly of the town that he lives in. I mean, you just have some incredibly wild performances, especially dennis hopper, of course, famously, and so I do think that that's a great one. Moholy drive is just phenomenal.
Speaker 1:That like he was nominated for best director and that movie was legitimately in the oscar race that year that's like the one time really yeah where, where that movie had almost an equal level of prestige behind it as it did, like cult fascination and so for, for people who I think are ready to go to like the next step, without maybe like committing to an entire two seasons of twin peaks, a prequel movie and then the return, like probably maholen drive, yeah, and then that's where you can get something else. That when I went back and listened, something I said about, about lost highways, that like lost highways, the movie you end at, um.
Speaker 1:I think, inland Empire, you can say the same thing too.
Speaker 3:I felt really ready to like swallow it, cause I just watched it this week and I was like okay, I've cause, I've seen. Yeah, having seen Mulholland first really made it much, much more palatable.
Speaker 1:Yeah for sure. And then I think you can somewhere in between all of those you can kind of sprinkle in like OK, now I feel like I'm ready for Eraserhead. It's always great to watch a director's like first feature film. The shorts are fun to plug in, the documentaries and stuff are great as well. The straight story. You can probably watch it anytime and and almost maybe feel like you're not quite watching a David Lynch film and almost maybe feel like you're not quite watching a David Lynch film. So maybe that's a good entry point for someone who isn't into like the surrealist, horror kind of subgenre of his films. And so there's so many different ways, I think, to experience his work and you can literally almost just like do it all through literature, Like you can just read his books, his autobiographies, the books that have been written about him. There's so much out there to kind of consume, and so that part about his career is great as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I want to. I would like to dive back into the films a little bit because there is these like I'm curious, like thematically, with parallel universes. We can start with Lost Highway or Mulholland Drive. I'm curious, like, thematically, with parallel universes, we can start with Lost Highway or Mulholland Drive. But I'm just curious to hear what your take is on, like what these films are about at their core maybe, or, like for me, like Mulholland Drive with this parallel universe.
Speaker 3:Spoiler alert if you have not seen Mulholland Drive, you know she starts in this universe where this woman shows up at her apartment that she's borrowing from her aunt and she falls in love with this woman, essentially through their detective work trying to figure out who she is. So Rita quote unquote has had amnesia because she gets to a car crash. Because she gets to a car crash, um, and then later, kind of as we go, we start to more and more get pulled into the second universe. That, weirdly, is present in the first universe a little bit, because he kind of crosses over because naomi uh betty, is naomi watts's character auditions for his film in in the main universe, but then we start to we're I think it's on the set that kind of looks like dogville, that that set where they're sitting in the car. That's when you all of a sudden, there there's something going on with her and him and betty is not the actress but rita is.
Speaker 3:And then you kind of segue into this other universe, um, where she is in a relationship with justin throes character, I think his name's adam in the film, um, and you know, and obviously betty is just jealous and hurt and ends up killing herself. Like what is this? What is, what does that mean? What does that story mean to you? Or like do you, what do you think? What do you think the parallel universe is? How do you think that folds the story in a way that that means something to?
Speaker 1:you For as spiritual as I know David Lynch was and for as much credit as we have given him and for as much credit as everyone has given him for being able to kind of tap into this dream state that helps us explain feelings that we have as humans, kind of without words but with only pictures. He also understands that there is this evil inside of all men and I use men in a sense to describe the entire human race that there is an evil in all men that if you succumb to it, then you have opened the door, this, this spiritual door, this like again, this kind of like astral field, um, for for all these negative influences to come into your life, and so that's certainly in moholen drive, it's certainly in lost highway. I think it's best explored and explained in twin peaks, with the use of the black lodge and the white lodge.
Speaker 1:And once you have opened that door you're kind of always there, and then that's when timelines really start to blur so kind of this darkness in the entertainment industry almost too 100 get it from lost highway and mulholland yeah, 100, and and I do think that it's it's done really well um, through through the different characters in Twin Peaks, because you have some characters who are just so wholeheartedly good and their presence in the White Lodge can almost like help save souls who have been lost.
Speaker 1:His other films that certainly represent that, but I do think that there is.
Speaker 1:There's this message that he's trying to get across that like for his, for his quote-unquote fun as like accessing your dreams and for as awakening as that can be like there is also a great danger in it as well and it can manifest itself completely 100 through through through greed, through your through through your ego, through pursuing your career to the to the extent which becomes unhealthy and starts to like eat away at your subconscious and and make you less of a person who is, like spiritually sound.
Speaker 1:And so I think that that's kind of a through line through all of his films, going all the way back to eraser head, which like deals with one of the biggest dilemmas ever of just like becoming a parent and like how Right and like how that can fuck with someone's psyche so much and make you start hallucinating all these different things and not trusting the people around you. I think he just he's, throughout his entire career he's done an incredible job of of, through his films, helping people better understand, sort of just like what your subconscious is trying to tell you through all these, through all these different characters that he shows us. So that's always been my read on most of his work.
Speaker 3:That's really inspiring and I think like I had never thought of it that way. I think that I kind of gotten so I can be very as a writer get very like stuck in the plot.
Speaker 3:I have the plotting right when I'm reading off the plot points like, okay, this is what's happening, but sometimes finding that deeper meaning can be hard uh, because, like in moholy drive the naomi watts character, she's having so much fun trying to figure out this mystery when I was describing it to max, max and I rolled out of bed Like he was like describe Mulholland Drive to me and yeah, I mean the whole that first opening sequence of her and like she's so perfectly cast with that blonde hair and like just her smile as she gets off the airplane, getting out of the cab?
Speaker 1:Yeah, getting out of the cab.
Speaker 3:It's iconic and like just, he's so great at juxtaposing, like the way he had her perform, that it's so juxtaposed of like this sunny day in la and all the magic and um, yeah, and it's really really cool, just just yeah, I just I love that about his work.
Speaker 3:Right, it has more and more, so, you, you have spent the time to think about these films, clearly maybe too much the time to process, and if you give them that, I think that is where you, where you get the, that's where seeing multiple drive I just want re just rewatched Mulholland Drive a month ago so that was game-changing. Just rewatching it a second time totally changed the way it made me feel, because, also, it's like less when there's not a surprise, then you can actually process more.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's why his films are so interesting, because there's always more to process, but you're not as concerned. From like scene to scene, you can start to look big picture.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah and so then inland empire the reason I really started this conversation, this part of the conversation, because I'm like inland empire I do not understand why the second story happens like. So he starts out he's in the jazz band, he's convinced his you mean lost highway.
Speaker 2:Lost highway. What did out? He's in the jazz band, he's convinced his. You mean Lost Highway. Lost Highway. What did I say? You said Inland Empire, inland.
Speaker 3:Empire. Oh, oops, okay, lost Highway. I'm excited to see Inland Empire, so I think it's on the brain, lost Highway. He starts out.
Speaker 2:He's, you know, his, his lady. I don't know if it's wife or girlfriend. He says that's why I married you. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Right. So his wife is cheating on him Pretty much. It's not known who knows. He thinks she is right and I think maybe that's part of it Again, those evil, intrusive thoughts.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so he's having the evil intrusive thoughts and then he kills her, he goes to jail, and so this is like one of the craziest like turns like film turns is when he's sitting in the cell and then we switch actors, right, like that's literally how it happens. Like I feel, like was I love that about David Lynch's films that if you don't pay attention to every frame, all of a sudden you're somewhere else and all of a sudden you're like in another universe and like you're like, oh, oh, shit, I need to pay attention. And so because, yeah, he's saying something, he's in attention, um, and so because, yeah, he's saying something, he's like in pain, though, right, he has this weird like pain transformation in the cell and he's like calling for the, the guards, to come help him. And then you're in this other universe and is this guy just get let out? How does the other? Because they can't figure out who he is. Right, the guards are part of this, part of the universe.
Speaker 3:He's an innocent man he's an innocent man like you're not the person we put in jail, we don't know who you are, and so they let him free. And so then he is this auto mechanic. And then you kind of I guess this is what I'm getting to the heart of this so the auto mechanic, you kind of start to realize that he has been cheating on his girlfriend with Patricia Arquette, which is where the timeline of it Different version of Patricia Arquette's character, and then also in the beginning is it correct that Bill Pullman's character is he has a vision of the girlfriend in the second universe in the beginning. So there's a part when he's thinking his wife is cheating on him and he's getting kind of crazy and he's going to murder her.
Speaker 3:I think he has like a vision, and one of the visions he pictures that woman yelling on the front porch like the, the girlfriend yelling on the front porch he does yeah, yeah, and so is it kind of like bill pullman's character has to, like he has to pay, like someone has to pay for what you've done, or like I don't know.
Speaker 1:I just couldn't figure out, like what, how the two stories connected on a deeper level, or what what these two stories meant to each other I've, so I've always read it as he, the bill pullman character, has split personality disorder and once he is in the jail cell he lets almost like, if you think about, let's just say, like norman bates in psycho, the anthony perkins character, once mother has completely taken over.
Speaker 1:At the end that's kind of what lynch has happened here in the jail cell.
Speaker 1:Is that the bachelor getty character, this, this young kid who bill pullman has um kind of created in in his mind as someone who, a woman who looks a lot like his wife obviously still played by patricia arquette, but that she would be having an affair with um, he gets to become kind of that person and then, in only the kind of weird, crazy way that, like lynch, can tell a story, the physical manifestation of his split personality comes to be true. And so then that's why, all of a sudden, once that reality of his has completely crumbled, the bathslar getty character is back in the world, the the timeline that we started in, and that's why they're like we're gonna let you out or whatever. And then it's not until that incredibly sensational um, you know, backwards burning cabin scene with the mystery man where everything gets. You know the, this mystery man who has access to like this, this kind of black lodge type of um place where time and space doesn't necessarily exist, he's able to kind of reverse everything.
Speaker 1:And then you get both Bill Pullman almost looking like um, you know, it looks like it comes out of the pod and the fly like Jeff Goldblum or whatever after having sex there on the desert ground, um, kind of comes back out reborn, and then I love the way the movie ends with you know him just like driving off like a bat out of hell into the desert because now he's he's on the run again as this murderous wife killer. So that's kind of always been how I've read Lost Highway. I also just fucking love Lost Highway because of Robert Lagoia just being like, or Loja just being like hey, kid you like pornos?
Speaker 3:Holding up the tape and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:That whole sequence is crazy. He's so fucking funny in that movie. Patricia Arquette is just like as sensual as anyone's ever been on screen in that movie just like incredibly again, and that's why I think that's like I always come back to that as being like one of the most challenging, if not the most challenging movie that I've ever seen, because, like, talking about it right now I feel like I have a good kind of sense of what happened. But the next time I watch it and I'm I'm again probably just going to be like god, what's going on in that hotel in the middle of the desert when like fucking ramstein's just playing in marilyn manson's on screen?
Speaker 3:in the snuff film like just insane just so good, max's thoughts, because max was really overwhelmed after we watched it. At least that was my read on Max. But I do want to touch on one thing where you know he just gets quiet. Max doesn't get quiet very often and so but one of my favorite, one of my I think this might be top five Lynch moments was in Lost Highway, when in the party, when I think Robert, I don't know his- Robert Blake.
Speaker 1:Robert Blake is the mystery man. Comes up.
Speaker 3:Mystery man comes up and he's like call your house.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And then it's his voice on the other end because he's at the house, so intense it's such an epic moment and I was like I fuck with this.
Speaker 1:Give me back the phone. Yeah, it's frightening. Give me back the phone.
Speaker 2:So good. The funny thing about about lost highway uh, because I have lived with alex multiple times in my life. I have watched the like first 45, 50 minutes of that movie a lot, and so like, yes, robert blake is is extremely terrifying in that, in his face and, uh, the way he speaks, and then he is like a conjurer of this black magic or dark energy or whatever. But then so, sitting down and watching the whole thing through this weekend with Kaylee, it is such a it is such a stark turn and it it at first it really bummed me out, cause I was like I was loving what Bill Pullman was doing, uh, and then this Charlie Sheen looking kid comes onto the screen and it was like I you know is not as compelling uh as a performer for me when I'm watching it.
Speaker 2:Um, however, coming out of that and then letting it sit longer and thinking more about it and just how unique of it is, and then hearing, obviously honestly, sitting here and listening to you two who are are both scholars and in lynch, uh, kind of talk our way through it. It is. It seems like such a a great and almost necessary choice, yeah, uh, for that film to, and also again, I think it just goes back to lynch. You know you were talking earlier about how you get so into the plot of things and lynch does not give a fuck about structural. He likes structure, but not not. You know, it's not confined by, not confined by by narrative plot.
Speaker 2:He is he again. He is such a, it's like a dream Surrealist. Yeah, he is, he is such a. You know, it's so funny too, cause I I just took I think it was last quarter, I took an experimental film class and the last class, uh, of the quarter. You know, we we talked about current experimental filmmakers and you know, one thing that was really hammered home was that a lot of people miss interpret lynch as an experimental filmmaker.
Speaker 2:He's, he's not, he's above, he's above that and not not he's not above that, but he uses experimental techniques, but he is a surrealist artist he is yeah, like a um, like a, like a right, like Salvador Dolly. Yeah, I love that comparison In films.
Speaker 3:But yeah, willie, Willie Irma also made that comparison, yeah.
Speaker 2:But yeah, lost Highway is a very challenging film to watch, but but again, you, you get back. Once, you know, once there's really good stuff in that middle section, especially with, with, with. Once there's really good stuff in that middle section especially with the mob boss. Yeah, and then getting to that beach and seeing how it all climaxes and ends, and then when you say getting to the beach, you just mean the sex scene.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah, nothing happens there, the like desert, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2:The desert, yeah yeah. Sex in the sand was just. I mean, that is the most surrealist thing. Yeah, yeah, if you can turn off all the lights, if you can put your phone down and really, really commit to what you're watching on screen, it it will, uh, it will be pleasurable, it will be, it will you'll? You'll walk out, uh, after seeing the film you know, uh, with with something new.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's. I think every single one of his movies results in an experience unlike anything else. And that's not to say that a filmmaker like your ghost, you know watching one of his movies for the first time. Or you know going back and finding any type of subgenre you're in and then, okay, who are kind of the maestros of of what this is, you know, or whatever, and then really getting a thrill out of watching their work or whatever.
Speaker 1:But walking out of a david lynch movie is is something special, because you want to immediately talk to somebody else who has seen the film and get their read on it. Where, like you know and I love it's we've done so many different iterations of like a david lynch episode on this podcast. Before we did the david draft with the davidronenberg and the David Fincher films. Now Cronenberg is a little closer to what I'm talking about here. But, like the first time you watch seven, you can love the fuck out of seven or gone girl or anything like that, but you don't necessarily need to like talk to somebody to figure out what it was about. Right, right, um, it's. So it makes for a great bar conversation when all of a sudden you're just like boy, girl, the dragon tattoo.
Speaker 1:That's some crazy shit there in the middle, but but it's not like you can sit down and like we could literally do. I don't know how long we've been going for but we could go for an hour 20 on every single one of his movies. Yeah, you know and I don't know how many people you can say that about, so it's pretty special.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm feeling very emotional right now, just like feeling the conversation.
Speaker 1:This has been so cathartic for me, guys, I have not talked.
Speaker 3:I feel like being with his films. I just feel him and I feel him so strongly and just to. I feel like that there will be a closing, to like have talked about these films and, um, yeah, these, these films will always be here. Thank god, that's. One of the beauties of filmmaking is that you do make a print and it's there forever it's there forever for everyone to be, to feel it, to feel what you felt, and it'll always be here and I'm really grateful that they're here and we get to talk about it.
Speaker 1:I also just want to give. I want to give a shout out to everybody who did it. I'm not kidding, it was the weirdest birthday and just overall like one of the days of my life this, like this past week when he did tragically leave us because my phone literally went from just like birthday wishes and good vibes to all of a sudden like wow, I just heard the David Lynch news and you were the first person I thought of, or like you and your sister were the first person I thought of and you're the biggest David Lynch fan I know. And like what do you think about this?
Speaker 2:And da, da, da, da, da and then at the end it'd be like oh, and, by the way, happy birthday.
Speaker 1:I'm just like spiking with my emotions, just like up and down, up and down the entire day. It was so wild, but again, like that, just that did have some sort of like, um, you know, like, almost like a validating impact though on me, though in my relationship with his work, where I'm like I'm so happy that multiple people were like alex is the david lynch guy, I know I need to check on him, um sort of. And then you get people that give to remind them to watch these films, because multiple people where like alex is the david lynch guy, I know I need to check on him, yeah, um sort of.
Speaker 1:And then you get people that give to remind them to watch these films, because I think they also weirdly, his stuff can weirdly be missed if you're not a film buff pretty much anybody who's not a film buff can miss these films or he's one of those presences in hollywood and in like just american filmmaking, and you know, his work's been celebrated internationally, of course, as well, but that now is the perfect time. Like no better time than now. Yeah, we'll just think twin peaks and that's it.
Speaker 3:They think they've watched it they've watched twin peaks, and there's so much more, so much more thing. I just want to um touch on one other quick thing on the village because max was talking about him being from washington and you know, max and I'm moving to LA, but it's like moving here, I don't know, like nature once again, the spirituality, the nature in Washington, this obviously a lot of people that listen to this podcast are Washingtonians, so they all, we all know but, I, think that, like just internationally, I think people don't understand that those films and those thoughts and those ideas came from this place and when.
Speaker 3:when I moved here as a writer cause I really moved here, cause I wanted to write here and make my own films here it's just, there is a creative force in this, in this rainforest we live in. You know, I was saying to Max, I'm going to like really miss listening to electronic music and running through the rainforest right there's like just the the, the moss and all the beautiful things here and I just I love to Sheriff Truman.
Speaker 1:I got to ask you, what are these great trees you got around here?
Speaker 3:Douglas, fir Douglas fir and so great. It's just inspiring to know that he was inspired by this place and I felt that too. I felt that too here, and I love that about his work, and that you feel that that's where that dreamlike state comes from is being somewhere like this because we are part of the earth and you feel that in this place because of the way the climate and the greenery is.
Speaker 1:So I can only encourage you maybe not in the next mean, it would be really special to go there right now, but, like, if you, if you've been waiting on doing the, the Mecca, to North bend and to tweets cafe, which is the double R diner, and to go to the, the waterfalls and stuff like, go do it now. You know, like be once again, you know like be with like-minded people and be in that community. Um, I think that's that's probably a really special place right now, with just like a lot of good energy, a lot of good vibes that that he would love. I want to shout out a couple of things happening here in Tacoma which I've already been in contact with the organizers for. That are going to be sort of celebrations of life for David Lynch at Edison square, a place that we love here in Tacoma, on South Tacoma way. On February 7th they are organizing something called in dreams, which will be a tribute to the career of David Lynch. I know that the organizers are trying to get a lot of different type of artists and people together to help celebrate his life and career. So if you or yourself are interested in participating in that, I know that they are looking for all sorts of different performers and artists and there's going to be a huge celebration along with like dance performances.
Speaker 1:I threw out the idea. I was like you should have people there, you should contact a tattoo parlor and have people doing like flash tattoos. You know, like a hundred dollars, yeah, Just like a little flat rate, and you can get some, get an owl on you or some mountains or whatever it may be, like something like that. That's where I would love to do. You know fingernails? Yeah, the Laura Palmer hands. My sister has a tattoo and I need to get that tattoo now to match her. But but, yeah, I mean book readings. I think you know interviews. You know Max, you and I might be asked to kind of help participate in some sense to interview some filmmakers or even be talked to about our relationship to his work. So I'm really looking forward to that at Edison Square.
Speaker 1:And then the Grand Cinema this upcoming weekend is programming a special Weird Elephant David Lynch block which I will be hosting. Weird elephant david lynch block which I will be hosting. So blue velvet is going to be on january 24th at 8 30, followed by eraser head um at 11 pm and then the next day, saturday, january 25th, moholy drive will be at 8 30, followed by eraser head at 11 20. So to david lynch double features. I'll be there, I'll be doing the trivia, I'll be doing all the stuff before the shows, Um, and just hanging out with all the lunch homies here in Tacoma and in this rounding, you know, Puget sound area. So any final thoughts?
Speaker 2:Uh, go go watch David Lynch's stuff. Go, go do it, go to the elephant stuff.
Speaker 3:Grand cinema is so fun, it's so it's such a hood I haven't been. I'm really excited. I want to go to that because I haven't been to one of the weird elephants.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I go to a lot of matinees over there, but yeah, I usually don't leave the house after dark, and so this is big that. I'm going to go there.
Speaker 2:I definitely am going to come down and see Eraserhead one of those nights Nice.
Speaker 1:Very cool, very cool. Um yeah, just what a life, what a career to celebrate. Um, again, truly just a, a one-on-one artist that will be greatly missed but also greatly celebrated for what he's accomplished. Okay, so no easy, easy pivot out of here. But as for what's next, here on the pod we have our most anticipated films of 2025, where max erica and myself will list off the movies that we can't wait to see over the coming year. Kaylee, you got anything that's big on your list coming up this year?
Speaker 1:I'm really about keeping track of what's coming superman, you're gonna be there day one for david corn sweats debut I had so much peace this year, with only deadpool, deadpool, wolverine coming out and only having to hear about that.
Speaker 3:Just such peace. I just I don't know. I don't need any superhero movies. I don't even want another Batman movie and I love the Batman movies. I don't even what is coming out. I'm excited for the Leo PTA thing, that's not this year, though I don't think it is going to be this year. Yes, so, many things get planned for like 2026 right now. There's a few things I'm excited for the Bong Joon-ho, Robert Pattinson.
Speaker 1:That may be 2026.
Speaker 3:That's the one that got pushed.
Speaker 2:That's slated for March right now, oh amazing.
Speaker 3:So those are the two, I think big, big ones that are on my brain, that's great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's great. Get the rest of your thoughts on that next week, max, along with Erica's. Until then, please follow Excuse the Intermission on Instagram and the three of us Kaylee included, so four of us on Letterboxd to track what we were watching between shows, and we will talk to you next time on ETI, where movies still matter.
