David Lynch

[beamish14]

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.

I honestly think his estate might still be in debt, and they need an influx of money. Still, I hope that some buyers will be generous enough to donate items to archives.

[hearthesilence]

He had quite a bit of property and obviously serious health problems. It wouldn't be surprising if there were tremendous expenses that needed to be settled for both.

[beamish14]

He had quite a bit of property and obviously serious health problems. It wouldn't be surprising if there were tremendous expenses that needed to be settled for both.

His divorces, child support payments, multiple people on his payroll, and the disastrous theatrical release of Inland Empire didn’t help

[Beloved Aunt]

I wonder, now that Mean Old Man Lynch is no more, whether that will open the door to scholarly/analytical extras on physical releases of his work...? I also really hope that unfilmed scripts of his will be allowed to be filmed by other people.

[The Curious Sofa]

I wonder, now that Mean Old Man Lynch is no more, whether that will open the door to scholarly/analytical extras on physical releases of his work...? I also really hope that unfilmed scripts of his will be allowed to be filmed by other people.

What a truly awful idea.

[Beloved Aunt]

Really? You don't think there's literally anyone who could do a good job at that?

[brundlefly]

Harlan Ellison's "burn everything unfinished" rule always seemed best.

Unless Lynch had specifically noted that x person should be allowed to do something, then no one should be allowed to do anything.

[yoloswegmaster]

Jennifer Lynch provides more clarification on the auction:

The archives, of unspeakable value, will be given/solf to a school or museum. This auction is for things from his homes. Personal furniture. Things he built. Things he loved. As his first born daughter, I can tell you that we would not be having an auction for his archival material. That collection is beyond magical. Wherever it ends up, I recommend seeing it. Dad was prolific. Filled with the joy of doing and creating. All aspects of his work featured there. Auction is equally special but vastly different.

i-D magazine also stated that the auction was done at the behest of David Lynch's wishes.

[The Curious Sofa]

Really? You don't think there's literally anyone who could do a good job at that?

Of course not. His style and themes were deeply personal, which is what made his films so unique. Any attempt to replicate them would result in an empty simulacrum. And why would a talented filmmaker working in a similar register want to do that anyway? They have their own vision to pursue.

[beamish14]

Really? You don't think there's literally anyone who could do a good job at that?

Of course not. His style and themes were deeply personal, which is what made his films so unique. Any attempt to replicate them would result in an empty simulacrum. And why would a talented filmmaker working in a similar register want to do that anyway? They have their own vision to pursue.

Lynch didn’t really follow contemporary filmmakers. He wouldn’t have gifted anyone else the ability to direct something he shepherded

[The Curious Sofa]

Lynch's screenplays weren't literary masterpieces, they were the scaffolding for a particular sensibility which came to fruition in its execution. There are different filmmakers, some, like Fassbinder who started in the theatre, wrote brilliant screenplays that have been adapted for many theatrical adaptations, others, like Lynch's are based on intangible qualities that only come together via his execution. I I'd be happy to see a great adaptation of Ronny Rocket, I just have no faith it will be commissioned or in the unlikely case that it does. will be anywhere near as good as what Lynch would have done.

[Matt]

It's one thing for a still-living filmmaker to pass off a project to another as Kubrick did A.I. to Spielberg. It would be another thing entirely for a filmmaker to film an unrealized dream project or unfinished project of a late filmmaker, especially one as idiosyncratic as Lynch. It seems to me it would be a tremendous insult to the man's memory for someone like, oh, let's say Ari Aster to come along and make something like Ronnie Rocket when Lynch himself tried for years to get it made. I don't think anything Lynch was unable to realize in his own lifetime was a matter of "oh, if I only had the time..." The man literally could not get his projects funded. Not a single feature since 2006. Not even a short film. No one was interested in giving him the money. That should be to the eternal shame of every film financier and studio executive on the planet.

[Matt]

General discussion about unrealized/unfinished projects and adaptations moved here.

See also our threads on Shakespeare adaptations and other theatre adaptations.

[Robin Davies]

I wonder, now that Mean Old Man Lynch is no more, whether that will open the door to scholarly/analytical extras on physical releases of his work...?

What's with the "Mean Old Man"?

I also really hope that unfilmed scripts of his will be allowed to be filmed by other people.

As Lynch occasionally said - NO NO NO.

[Roger Ryan]

We have plenty of Lynch analysis in the Criterion release of Lynch/Oz, too much of it failing to find a proper context to illuminate what Lynch made uniquely his own (Karyn Kusama’s take on Muholland Drive is the exception - she meets that film with the respect it deserves). Also, Lynch was no Woody Allen when it came to home release bonus features - every film was loaded with extras. Twin Peaks - The Return alone has 11 plus hours of behind the scenes footage that tells you everything you need to know about how Lynch created his movies.

[Finch]

I also don't particularly want to see someone else filming his scripts. He was too idiosyncratic a director and the final result would often be different enough from even the final shooting script (which Unrecorded Night wasn't in any case, as per Sabrina Sutherland's latest interview) that you couldn't just hand the script to a director and say make it as Lynchian as you can and try second guess what he might have changed. I'm not saying it's theoretically impossible that someone else could make a work as good as he might have but you could probably count the number of people who are similar in style and creative approach on one hand. Kiyoshi Kurosawa creates an atmosphere that is as unnerving as Lynch's and his sound design is just as unsettling. Had Lynch lived and allowed other filmmakers to direct one or two new episodes of Twin Peaks or Unrecorded Night, Kurosawa might have been totally fascinating. But Kurosawa is also already so his own unique brand, why would he risk the potential backlash of taking on a Lynch script and possibly failing to translate that into a film where at least the majority of the critics and audiences, not to mention his estate, would be satisfied? Ditto Jane Schoenbrun, who as I write this, is the only American filmmaker that comes to mind. The expectations and the pressures would be enormous.

I don't know. It just feels too raw right now, and I think as far as Twin Peaks is concerned, I don't see MacLachlan and Lee wanting to continue without Lynch, ditto Dern and Watts who would almost certainly decline participating in any new seasons out of loyalty to Lynch. I'd certainly not be interested in anything from Noah Hawley.

[pianocrash]

I wonder, now that Mean Old Man Lynch is no more, whether that will open the door to scholarly/analytical extras on physical releases of his work...?

What's with the "Mean Old Man"?

I also really hope that unfilmed scripts of his will be allowed to be filmed by other people.

As Lynch occasionally said - NO NO NO.

While I, too, was taken aback by Randall's statements, I remembered in another thread where they referred to themselves as "moi", and now, for the most part, I cannot imagine hearing everything they post as read out loud by Miss Piggy (with respect to all persons involved, including Steve Whitmire, but not Noah Hawley).

It's not perfect, but that's life

[Zot!]

If you want more "sanctioned" Twin Peaks there are the books by Scott and David Frost and the "Diary" by Lynch's daughter. Otherwise the last thing we need is the Disney franchise version of Lynch material. I think he left behind a very formidable body of work as it is.

[diamonds]

Cinematographer Peter Deming offers up a few vague details about Unrecorded Night

It’s definitely its own original thing, and how it was formatted, I don’t really know. It was going to be a lot of episodes, because David really liked what he called ‘the continuing story.’ Because I tried to… you know, I really love the feature stuff, but he was like, ‘I’m not going to make any more movies. I’m just going to make longer stories because I love the longer story.’ In fact, Twin Peaks: The Return, we weren’t really sure how many episodes there were doing to be until it got into post-production, because it wasn’t really written that way; it was written as a 550-page film. So how that was sliced and diced really was a post-production question.

Unrecorded Night was the same way. It took me three sittings to read it because it was so thick, but it was definitely not Twin Peaks. It was definitely a really interesting… mystery, I would say. Yeah, it’s too bad. [Laughs] It really is. Because it would’ve been good.”

[…] I kind of saw it as… you know, he loved to make films about Los Angeles. He wasn’t trying to hide the setting. Lost Highway, while not implicit, was certainly implied. Mulholland Dr. was obvious. INLAND EMPIRE was obvious. To me, this was another LA canon for him, and one that sort of mixed in filmmaking and Old Hollywood a bit, and it was just, maybe, number four in that line of products.”

[midnitedave]

James Hoffmann, coffee YouTuber and cafè shop owner, won David Lynch's 1970s coffee maker at the estate auction and tests it out.

[hearthesilence]

James Hoffmann, coffee YouTuber and cafè shop owner, won David Lynch's 1970s coffee maker at the estate auction and tests it out.

Surprising it made such bad coffee, but I guess Lynch liked it enough.

[Stefan Andersson]

Unrecorded Night will probably be published by Jennifer Lynch; Sabrina Sutherland hints at a published Lost Highway script:
https://www.reddit.com/r/davidlynch/com ... we_access/

https://thefilmstage.com/david-lynchs-s ... published/

[Matt]

The Lost Highway script was already published by Faber & Faber in 1997, but could obviously stand to be reprinted because copies seem to be very rare now. I had a copy and probably sold it to Half Price Books for 25 cents at some point in the 2000s.

Sutherland's comments in that second link just seem to be confirming a possible Unrecorded Night script to be published, nothing about Lost Highway.