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Matt wrote:

jindianajonz wrote:Ironically enough, he's never seen a David Lynch movie, and given his taste (he loves Remember the Titans, United 93, and everything that falls strictly in between) I really don't think he would care for any of them.

Try The Straight Story. That's a "dad" movie if there ever was one.

Agree. Also, your dad would probably get a kick out of just seeing Lynch's performance as "Gordon Cole" in either TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME or the original TV series.

Matt wrote:Try The Straight Story. That's a "dad" movie if there ever was one.

It's seriously an "everyone" movie. I don't remember a single friend or family member I didn't recommend that one to, including my octagenarian grandma -- and they all loved it. It's the ultimate rated-G 4-quadrant feel-good family friendly movie (except with actual deep feeling instead of bullshit faux emotional sentimentality), produced by Disney no less, and they were too dumb to know what they had and market it accordingly. Probably the most underrated of all of David Lynch's films. Anyone who can afford it ought to import the beautiful region-A Blu-ray from Japan.

For those in Chicago, the Gene Siskel will be showing two of the three episodes of Lynch's Hotel Room tomorrow night. Novelist, poet, and sometime Lynch collaborator Barry Gifford will be there.

Cagliostro wrote:For those in Chicago, the Gene Siskel will be showing two of the three episodes of Lynch's Hotel Room tomorrow night. Novelist, poet, and sometime Lynch collaborator Barry Gifford will be there.

The way you've phrased this, the fact that it is October, and that it is associated with David Lynch made me believe (for longer than I care to admit) that the ghost of Gene Siskel would be screening these episodes.

Hey, who knows; his ghost may even be there . . . .

Barry Gifford wrote both of those episodes actually, and they're pretty good too. "Blackout", in particular, is a very atmospheric work, and "Tricks" includes a great performance by the fantastic Freddie Jones. The third episode of Hotel Room may be a utterly mediocre, but a DVD/BD release of this show is long overdue.

Hopefully the whole four hour thing.

And now, for an allegedly true story about David Lynch. And I'm a great admirer of his work. But...

Lynch was in Minneapolis (I'm assuming for some retrospective, I made a half-assed attempt to find out, really). He visited the Loring Cafe (now deceased, was off and on one of the better restaurants here) and was a total d--k to the staff. Paying his bill, he left. Unfortunately, he forgot his very expensive camera. A few staff members took the camera into the restroom and, well, perhaps Mr. Lynch was inspired when he finally developed the photographs, after he returned to pick up the camera, in a great panic.

Related to me by a former waitstaff member, but they were pretty much always on drugs ('cept for the kitchen staff, thank God!)...

Or perhaps they overreacted to him wanting to be left alone for a meal? I'm always a little weary of the whole famous person "total dick to everyone at X" story

Especially if everyone at X is on X.

"David Lynch total dick to waitstaff who just wanted to be in his next movie, even though they really prefer Jim Jarmusch."

Re-watched The Straight Story (1999). Very powerful & compelling. David Lynch is one of the few directors who could make a film about an elderly man taking a cross-country trip on a riding mower & make it interesting enough to watch. That being said, material like this is the last thing I ever thought Lynch would direct, but I guess that was the whole point....

The naturalistic acting by Richard Farnsworth as Alvin Straight was superb - I felt he was basically playing himself, which made this all the more realistic...

Kudos to Sissy Spacek - her acting in this film was incredible. I especially liked the scene where she ticked off the reasons her father Alvin shouldn't make the trip, which included her matter-of-factly imitating what he sounded like when trying to stand up...priceless.

One of the most poignant & sad scenes was when Alvin was having a beer with another WW II veteran, and discussed the tragedy that he was involved in during the war...It seemed evident that he had never mentioned this to anyone before. The silence that followed that confession spoke volumes.

Alvin Straight: Well, the worst part of being old is rememberin' when you was young.

I always really liked the piece on The Straight Story - I think he makes some pretty good points about what's lurking beneath the surface of this G rated Disney picture that brings it in line with some of Lynch's obsessions:

http://www.davidlynch.de/quarterstraight.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Definitely worth a read.

Lynch in love with celluloid again but won't reveal if he is working on a new picture in a TV interview with Italian television a month ago

I finally watched Dune, the only Lynch feature I hadn't seen, and I actually really liked it. I avoided the film for so long partly because its reputation as this awful disaster, and also because I have no tolerance for so-called "space operas." But I found it thrilling and fascinating to see Lynch's inimitable style grafted onto a typical, mythical sci-fi type film; the result is unlike anything I've ever seen -- it may even be the weirdest of Lynch's films, in a way. Anyway, the film looks and sounds amazing, with art direction, camera-work, sound design, costuming and make-up all producing one of the most vividly realized, lush, sensuously textured worlds in cinema. All the sets, with their bizarre architecture, stick in the mind, as does the incredibly creepy and hauntingly rendered character of the Reverend Mother. The film is just a feast of this bizarre, baroque dreaminess for the first hour -- in the second half, unfortunately, we get some relatively dull battle scenes which have a palpable sense of disinterest on the part of Lynch. The ending was sudden and not particularly satisfying; the end credits and their music even worse. But overall I really, really liked it and can see myself visiting this world again in the future. Of course there are more flaws I could point out, the dialogue is laborious and ponderous and endless (yet also kind of hypnotic after a while), but I found the visual/aural aesthetic and overall sense of being lost in this dreamlike Gothic industrial space-world to overwhelm most flaws. Certainly not up there with Fire Walk With Me or Blue Velvet (Lynch's two greatest films IMO -- the former is especially astounding), nor Lost Highway or The Straight Story (also masterpieces), nor maybe Mulholland Drive, too (a flawed gem which I used to love). But I'll definitely take it over the sporadically interesting mess of Inland Empire, the schmaltz-fest that is The Elephant Man, the noxious posturing of Wild at Heart (his nadir), or even the unpleasant -- if masterful -- Eraserhead (which I admire but don't much enjoy).

I'm digging throught the Twin Peaks Blu-ray set. Watched the deleted scenes from Fire Walk With Me today and loved the way it was edited together. Made me wonder if something similar could be put together for Mulholland Drive. Any idea how much of it was left on the cutting room floor?

I've never gotten around to watching it, but the original TV pilot for Mulholland Dr. has been floating around on the internet for a while and contains quite a bit that didn't make the feature (or even goes off in a different direction that might or might not be suited for editing back in).

Oedipax wrote:I've never gotten around to watching it, but the original TV pilot for Mulholland Dr. has been floating around on the internet for a while and contains quite a bit that didn't make the feature (or even goes off in a different direction that might or might not be suited for editing back in).

I've seen it and it would make a decent bonus feature for a potential Criterion release. There are only a few moments where footage differs from what appears in the finished theatrical version (scenes are edited in a different manner, however). There is one complete scene taking place in a hospital between the two detectives that I thought was good, but wouldn't have fit in the reworked film and one superb image (the jewelry box filled with pink paint is submerged in an overflowing sink) that should have stayed in the released version in my opinion.

The other major difference between the Mulholland Dr. pilot and the movie is that the voice on Diane Selwyn's answering machine is not Naomi Watts in the pilot.

It should be noted that Lynch's original cut of the pilot is not the one in circulation. He was forced to cut several minutes out to try to bring it within the length ABC demanded. ABC ended up turning it down anyway and it was that experience that made Lynch swear off TV (until now).

flyonthewall2983 wrote:Working on a memoir to be released in 2017

The press release he sent out is hilarious. "There's a lot of bullshit out on the internet about me". Wonder what his 4 ex-wives will say, too