David Lynch

[soundchaser]

Song + music video is where I'd put my money.

[therewillbeblus]

Song + music video is where I'd put my money.

Yea, gotta set that expectation low

[Cipater]

His record label, Sacred Bones, shared the video on Facebook.

[Cipater]

Not unexpected, announced is a new album out August 2 on Sacred Bones, in collaboration with Chrysta Bell.

[beamish14]

New self-directed music video

[yoloswegmaster]

Lynch himself confirms in a new interview with Sight and Sound that he has emphysema from smoking and is now homebound as he can't afford to get sick. He says he is open to working remotely on any new project, even if he doesn't like it.

Link for anyone who wants to read the article

[beamish14]

Lynch himself confirms in a new interview with Sight and Sound that he has emphysema from smoking and is now homebound as he can't afford to get sick. He says he is open to working remotely on any new project, even if he doesn't like it.

Link for anyone who wants to read the article

I wonder if he really needs a cash injection after his recent divorce, which is #4 for those keeping count (tied with Martin Scorsese). It’s truly miraculous that the smoking and copious amounts of artery-clogging food have not done more to him at this point

[therewillbeblus]

But Transendental Meditation, man

[pianocrash]

Lynch himself confirms in a new interview with Sight and Sound that he has emphysema from smoking and is now homebound as he can't afford to get sick. He says he is open to working remotely on any new project, even if he doesn't like it.

Link for anyone who wants to read the article

I would advise Lynch to work out a pay-to-play scenario in which he is supplanted by Scorsese regular/dead ringer J.C. MacKenzie as his stand-in for any location shoot, albeit with a live audio and visual feed for Lynch to feed him dialogue & direction.

Also, KTLA could probably do well with an injection from a local weather correspondent, even if it's done Ghoulardi-style once a week.

[beamish14]

Lynch himself confirms in a new interview with Sight and Sound that he has emphysema from smoking and is now homebound as he can't afford to get sick. He says he is open to working remotely on any new project, even if he doesn't like it.

Link for anyone who wants to read the article

Also, KTLA could probably do well with an injection from a local weather correspondent, even if it's done Ghoulardi-style once a week.

I’m still waiting on their AI-created Hal Fishman to chastise us young people for living in the 21st century in his 5 minute weekly editorial block

[yoloswegmaster]

New tweet from David Lynch:

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Yes, I have emphysema from my many years of smoking. I have to say that I enjoyed smoking very much, and I do love tobacco - the smell of it, lighting cigarettes on fire, smoking them - but there is a price to pay for this enjoyment, and the price for me is emphysema. I have now quit smoking for over two years. Recently I had many tests and the good news is that I am in excellent shape except for emphysema. I am filled with happiness, and I will never retire.

I want you all to know that I really appreciate your concern.

Love,

David

[colinr0380]

Lynch elaborates on this in his latest interview in Sight & Sound (September 2024, Page 32):

I ask him if his relative isolation at home makes the idea of going back on a film set feel daunting. Does he want to do it again? "No. I'll tell you, I've gotten emphysema from smoking for so long, and so I'm homebound whether I like it or not. I can't go out. And I can only walk a short distance before I'm out of Oxygen.

"Smoking was something that I absolutely loved but, in the end, it bit me. It was part of the art life for me: the tobacco and the smell of it and lighting things and smoking and going back and sitting back and having a smoke and looking at your work, or thinking about things; nothing like it in this world is so beautiful. Meanwhile, its killing me. So I had to quit it.

"And now, because of Covid, it would be very bad for me to get sick, even with a cold. So I probably would be directing from my house. And because of Covid, they've now invented ways where you can direct from home. I wouldn't like that so much. I like to be there amongst the thing and get ideas there. But I would try to do it remotely, if it comes to it."

[Finch]

Lynch's team are a bit irritated that Sight & Sound and other media outlets implied the emphysema has led him to retire from filmmaking. They're still trying to get various projects off the ground. If Lynch wants to direct on a set away from home, it can be done; they'd just have to work out the exact logistics of making it as safe as possible for him. They could also construct sets at his home or within an acceptable travel distance. I read elsewhere that Huston directed The Dead in conditions similar to Lynch's, watching from a video monitor set up at a remove from the set.

[beamish14]

Lynch's team are a bit irritated that Sight & Sound and other media outlets implied the emphysema has led him to retire from filmmaking. They're still trying to get various projects off the ground. If Lynch wants to direct on a set away from home, it can be done; they'd just have to work out the exact logistics of making it as safe as possible for him. They could also construct sets at his home or within an acceptable travel distance. I read elsewhere that Huston directed The Dead in conditions similar to Lynch's, watching from a video monitor set up at a remove from the set.

Huston was mostly wheelchair-bound by the time he made Prizzi’s Honor. On The Dead, he needed an oxygen tank

[clownmeat]

I'm wondering if anyone happens to know if Frost/Lynch's On the Air was restored before the passing of Lynch. The last thing I heard was from a few years ago when Sabrina Sutherland said they were negotiating with CBS to remaster and release On the Air and Hotel Room.

[Stefan Andersson]

I'm wondering if anyone happens to know if Frost/Lynch's On the Air was restored before the passing of Lynch. The last thing I heard was from a few years ago when Sabrina Sutherland said they were negotiating with CBS to remaster and release On the Air and Hotel Room.

On the Air, all 7 episodes, "newly digitized from studio tape masters", April 4 at the Billy Wilder Theater:
https://www.cinema.ucla.edu/events/2025 ... r-marathon

[beamish14]

I'm wondering if anyone happens to know if Frost/Lynch's On the Air was restored before the passing of Lynch. The last thing I heard was from a few years ago when Sabrina Sutherland said they were negotiating with CBS to remaster and release On the Air and Hotel Room.

On the Air, all 7 episodes, "newly digitized from studio tape masters", April 4 at the Billy Wilder Theater:
https://www.cinema.ucla.edu/events/2025 ... r-marathon

Mark Frost was supposed to be there, but his name has been removed

[Finch]

Matt Fogerholm interviews Sabrina Sutherland

What are your hopes for David’s unrealized projects, particularly “Unrecorded Night,” potentially being shared with the world in some form?

Nobody else could direct it, but I think even in its written form, “Unrecorded Night” is really wonderful. It’s an incredible story, and I really think that it’s the best thing he’s done. He and I worked on it for several years. We went through all of his old writing and organized all of the things he has. There is so much writing and scripts of David’s that was never published. For “Unrecorded Night,” he took things that had already been written and kind of combined them, while also writing new stuff. We started preproduction and got shut down, but then during COVID, we continued working on the script even after he started his YouTube channel. David wanted to change a whole bunch of the script, so we turned it from what it was during preproduction to what we ended up with before he passed away.

We have an archive that hopefully will be placed in a good institution, and we have some incredible things in it. Next month, we’re going to have an auction for some of his stuff that’s more nondescript, but most of his personal things will be in the archive, including his writings. As we were going through what he had written, I told David, “We should really publish these things.” Some of his old scripts like “Ronnie Rocket” are online, but there are so many different versions of it, and he has so many handwritten notes and drawings. Having all of that in a book would be so great. In an institution, it can be seen by scholars, but published, it would get out to a wider audience, which would be nice.

[beamish14]

I really hope his archives get a touring retrospective and coffee table book a la Kubrick and Tim Burton

[Matt]

I'm sure Taschen, who have done several huge, lavish "archives" books for filmmakers (Kubrick, Chaplin, Bergman, Almodovar, Tati), would leap at the chance to do a Lynch volume.

[Matt]

It kind of breaks my heart to look at this stuff, but a lot of David Lynch's personal effects (including his own 35mm prints of Eraserhead and Inland Empire!) are being auctioned by Turner Classic Movies/Julien's Auctions on June 18. Online bidding is already underway.

[hearthesilence]

Olivier Assayas's Summer Hours was all about this. Very sad.

[Beloved Aunt]

Quick question/small favor to ask, what do people think are the best analyses/criticism on Blue Velvet and Fire Walk with Me? Thanks in advance for your responses

[The Curious Sofa]

Michael Atkinson's Freudian analysis of Blue Velvet in his BFI Classics book reminded me why I find interpretations of Lynch's films reductive and unsatisfying. Lynch is perhaps the ultimate filmmaker whose work resists interpretation, as it is designed to work on an intuitive level rather than offering itself up to intellectual puzzle solving.

[ianthemovie]

Not sure exactly what you're looking for in terms of analysis or criticism, but Frederic Jameson has a section discussing Blue Velvet in his key book of critical theory, Postmodernism. Justus Nieland's book on Lynch for the Contemporary Film Directors series has some interesting takes on Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks/FWWM, looking at Lynch's use of uncanny spaces, objects, and textures, though (like Jameson) it can be dense and dry if high theory isn't really to your taste. Dennis Lim's book on Lynch is well-written and perceptive (and very readable), though it's more of an overview of the history of Lynch's career rather than deep analytical dives into the films themselves. J. Hoberman briefly analyzes Blue Velvet in terms of Reagan-era nostalgia for the 50s in his book Make My Day. Robin Wood also briefly analyzed Blue Velvet in Hitchcock's Films Revisited in relation to Hitchcock's work, to which he compared it unfavorably. I don't agree with his conclusions but it's an interesting take. All of those are worth reading IMO.

Some of the most impassioned observations on Fire Walk With Me--and one of the earliest attempts to defend it on an artistic level, written back in the mid-90s when it was thought be an unrecuperable failure--can be found in David Foster Wallace's essay "David Lynch Keeps His Head." It's a long, long essay, mostly about the making of Lost Highway, but it's also about Lynch in general and spends a fair amount of time discussing Twin Peaks/FWWM. Not rigorous academic analysis by any means, more like impressions/observations, but they're well articulated and a sheer pleasure to read assuming you can get on board with DFW's writing style.

I actually quite like Michael Atkinson's BFI book on Blue Velvet, by the way; some of his observations draw on concepts from Freudian psychoanalysis but I wouldn't say it's a reductive interpretation. To me his writing is sensitive to the nuances of Lynch, as well as to the limits of "explaining" it.