Flags fly at half mass today at Kindertrauma Castle as we have lost one of the true greats, the incredible David Lynch. The world is a lesser place for sure and it’s easily said that there will never ever be any one like him again. We’re all luckily to have lived in the same time period as him and to enjoy the riches of watching him explore his singular vision over the years. He has left us with so many great works of art from paintings, to film and to extraordinary television. As a trauma-monger, let me say, nobody has ever scared me right down to the core like Lynch! Bob in TWIN PEAKS! Defoe (and Fenn) in WILD AT HEART! Blake in LOST HIGHWAY! Hopper in BLUE VELVET! That alley ghoul in MULHOLLAND DRIVE! Lynch really knew exactly the button to push in me to make me feel like I was in mortal danger and/or losing my mind. And then on top of that he was hilarious! So funny and so loved and so admired by seemingly everyone he collaborated with and supported. What an all around great guy and incredible artist and the epitome of never selling out and proof you don’t have to be a jerk to be successful. R.I.P KIng, and endless thanks for all your extraordinary work.
Here, here! I heard the news last night and it was certainly a shot in the nuts.
This society always sidelines unique people, like David Lynch, as it demands uniformity of thought.
More and more interesting people are dying and fewer and fewer are being born; we are seeing and feeling the results in every aspect of existence, film/art in general, certainly being one such avenue in which the effects are glaring.
Now you can say that's not true, that's not the case, Robert Eggers and Lee Whannell and Ari Aster and all these types of people are just as good, if not better than someone like David Lynch; you can say that, but, you are of course wrong.
I leave you with this to think about:
Hear, hear!*
A true genius lost. I can't think of another filmmaker who has affected me the way Lynch has over the years. Even his more obtuse works are never anything less than fascinating to watch. I'm glad you mention his humor, Uncle. The off the wall comedic moments in his work make the horror all the more intense. The scene in the original Twin Peaks where Leland/Bob kills Maddie is one of the most horrific things I've ever seen on network TV or anywhere else. And yet Ray Wise's line delivery of "Leland says you're going back to Missoula, MONTANA!" is comically over-the-top. It doesn't make the scene any less tragic but maybe it works to lessen the horror of witnessing such a gruesome murder just a little. I'll miss his vision. RIP
Ghastly1, I’m very proud to say Lynch graduated from PAFA. the same art school as myself. It was very cool knowing he had walked the same halls and surely smoked cigarettes in the same designated spaces! Everything he has to say about art is inspirational. I saw a clip where Roger Ebert was talking to him and said that he didn’t understand Mulholland Drive but he understood it emotionally and Lynch says something like “Then you understood it perfectly” He really knew how to cut through the chaff and follow his inner creative voice.
DekesYellowBikini,
Mulholland Drive is like an emotional wrecking ball to me no matter how many times I watch it and then there’s that Ann Miller scene that’s pure John Waters. It’s really impressive how he was able to harness such extremes of tragedy and hilarious weirdness. I remember taking a friend to see Mulholland after crying all through it the first time (That rendition of Orbison’s “crying” in the theater just as everything begins to crumble KILLS me) and my friend laughed at the part featuring the miniature oldsters which I found horrifying! That Bob going over the couch scene was the scariest thing I've ever seen on television, I feared he'd come through my TV! Then again I was also freaked out when Joan Chen got trapped in a doorknob! Wtf?!! Only Lynch! It’s like he’s operating on infinite dimensions at once.
BTW today would have been his birthday. His family is requesting everybody meditate for ten minutes at noon!
Unk,
I'd like to think at the time he attended PAFA, he was able to smoke freely and openly throughout the premises. I heard they have stopped awarding degrees, just this year.
I don't think I've seen that clip with Roger Ebert, but it would be interesting to see, especially considering Ebert (that fat jawless git) booed his winning the Palme d'Or.
When you went there, were they doing the "you can only smoke outside or in such and such designated places" thing or could you smoke wherever you wanted? Did you like going there? Was it worth it; did you actually learn anything?
I liked David, because he was a salt of the earth type. He came from small town America and despite working in Hollywood, never betrayed himself or his values. Unlike most denizens of Hollywood and what I will euphemistically call "An Empire Of Their Own types" he was genuinely, organically connected to America and it's people. He wasn't subversive, he didn't hate them or himself or where he came from and wasn't trying to undermine and destroy his (and their) heritage.
His films had weird imagery and all that, sure, but that is tangential. People, I think focus too much on that. His films for the most part, basically point out something simple (but profound) and fundamental which is apparently difficult for most people nowadays to comprehend, let alone accept, but was generally known by people in the past.
That being, beneath the (relatively) bucolic, pleasant surface of culture and civilization, there is a not so pleasant, tumultuous nature which always has been, is and always will be operative and which needs to be perpetually recognized, confronted and combated in order to achieve this relative stability of culture and civilization. Further, failing to do so, will lead to the inevitable downward sliding into of stupid, mindless barbarism; nature red in tooth and claw.