The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - PREVIEW： The Career of David Lynch： Part II

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to part two of this premium director series on David Lynch, the follow-up

00:00:05.080 to our Stanley Kubrick series. If you've not watched the first episode we would recommend

00:00:09.280 going back and watching that where we covered some of David Lynch's early career, Eraserhead,

00:00:14.400 Elephant Man and Dune. Now we're following up in this episode with Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart

00:00:20.740 and Lost Highway. Now we know Twin Peaks actually falls chronologically in there, it falls in

00:00:28.280 between Blue Velvet and Lost Highway, it was done before Wild at Heart and then there's also the

00:00:34.640 film Fire Walk With Me but because Twin Peaks is such a large, expansive, time-consuming work

00:00:40.540 and also because Chloe's not actually finished it yet, we are going to save that for another episode

00:00:46.380 possibly where we cover the straight story in Mulholland Drive, maybe we'll include it in

00:00:51.220 Inland Empire as well. We've not decided as of yet but these are the films we're talking about today,

00:00:56.560 we will be going over full spoilers with the narratives of these so be warned if you've not

00:01:02.080 watched any of them we'll try and get the editors to put a time stamp in the video if you want to

00:01:06.100 skip over any of the analysis that we give so that you can save yourself from that but as I mentioned

00:01:11.560 in the first episode these are films that you really can experience even if you know the basic

00:01:17.260 narrative plot threads and whatever analysis that we can give to you will only be supplementary to

00:01:22.640 whatever analysis and feeling that you get from the films which are very much experiential

00:01:28.160 so take that as a warning and I'm your host Harry, here's Josh. Hello. And here's Chloe, proper horror show. 1.00

00:01:37.040 Nice to be back. I hope you've all got your coffee ready at home watching this. I've gone for a refill,

00:01:43.440 I've got myself a lovely black coffee here as David would want and shall we just go straight into it

00:01:50.400 from where we were so we were previously talking about Dune in the first episode where we were saying

00:01:55.200 about how it was a complete failure both artistically and financially and David Lynch was left outside of

00:02:02.400 the studio system which I and I think we all agreed was quite a good thing so that he wasn't left a

00:02:07.920 director for hire doing more projects like Elephant Man and Dune as good as Elephant Man was and it

00:02:12.800 allowed him the freedom to be able to make his own original projects which is much more interesting.

00:02:18.960 We will also say we're going to head off at the pass quite a lot of the leftist critiques and

00:02:24.080 interpretations of his work we covered a little bit of that in the first episode like the fact that his

00:02:29.520 work is overwhelmingly and oppressively white and also that his work could be seen as a critical of

00:02:37.680 or reinforcing the patriarchy and Chloe has happily found a nice cancerous quote for Josh to read of 0.55

00:02:46.480 the kind of analysis that we hope we won't go into here. If you're wondering why we aren't going to

00:02:52.640 quote from these books too much here's a little extract from David Lynch's American Dreamscape by Mike Milley

00:03:00.800 so it says although it is not a literary work containing direct allusions to this literary

00:03:09.040 tradition a razorhead functions as a hysterical text and its apparently singular impact and resonance 0.96

00:03:15.920 benefit heavily from the viewers affiliation affiliating sorry identifications with this

00:03:21.440 literary tradition. I don't think many people have an understanding of that. Viewing a razorhead as a

00:03:27.760 hysterical text in dialogue with hysterical literature such as the yellow wallpaper and the work of Sylvia

00:03:34.560 Plath reveals these works to be battles for identity and autonomy waged in space and through language

00:03:41.920 spaces these protagonists are forced to occupy reveal the invisible force that creates a hostile social

00:03:47.920 reality that are normally obscured by the boundaries of the social order. In these works the new and the

00:03:54.160 visionary discourse of the so-called hysterics squares off against the dominant discourse of the patriarchal

00:04:00.400 order in not only physical space but also emotional psychological and artistic space as the protagonists

00:04:07.280 pursue a space separated from these hostile social realities that will acknowledge their autonomy over

00:04:14.000 their bodies minds and art. These pursuits while irrational and mad on the surface transcend the oppressive

00:04:19.680 binaries of the patriarchal order and access a plane of existence beyond rationality one defined by

00:04:26.480 municipality and possibility. To which I say what a load of old horseshit. That was gibberish. Can you 0.99

00:04:35.040 make heads or tails of that? Yeah yeah there were sort of 1900s literatures about the experiences of women

00:04:42.160 being treated and pathologised as madness and therefore a film in a post-industrial landscape about a chap who

00:04:51.840 gets a monster baby is the same thing. Hysteria was basically a medical condition from the 19th century

00:05:00.560 whereby it was basically diamaging women. I'm aware of that but the analysis that he... was it a salty woman that wrote that?

00:05:08.640 No that is a salty chap. Oh no that's a simp. Okay a simp wrote that. I feel he got lost in the

00:05:15.440 weeds of his own analysis there trying to fit in as many high concepts as possible because that went from

00:05:22.960 something that I was following to something that was complete gibberish very very quickly. So is he

00:05:27.920 suggesting that Henry from a razor head was some kind of patriarchal force of domination? He's the most

00:05:36.080 passive character in the whole film. Yeah. So it's a bit absurd isn't it? And also if that man's... I assume

00:05:42.160 that man who wrote that isn't a father because all fathers will know that the woman does go a little 0.96

00:05:46.880 bit crazy in the first few months of having a child. You both go a little bit crazy in the first

00:05:51.840 months of having a child but the woman in particular because they're the ones who most of the responsibility 1.00

00:05:56.400 falls on. Very strange analysis. We'll try to avoid being quite so bad here and with that let's begin

00:06:04.800 our talk on Blue Velvet which was the next film after Dune. The first film that he had done since

00:06:12.320 Eraserhead which was a purely original idea of his own and really started to bring his filmmaking back in

00:06:19.680 line with that dreamy abstract tone that Eraserhead premiered that was so influential for filmmakers like

00:06:28.800 Stanley Kubrick. Really quick turnaround actually as well between Dune which was such a huge production

00:06:35.920 and this obviously much smaller. It was released only two years after Dune which given that Dune was

00:06:42.880 such a monumental failure is quite impressive. Sometimes directors end up in the wilderness for

00:06:48.880 quite a while. There's quite a lot of determination that must have got in there. Can you elaborate,

00:06:53.360 explain some of that for us? Sure. I'd say one characteristic of David Lynch is that he always

00:07:00.000 had many many projects on the go, many ideas ready to pop off. With Stanley Kubrick there are sort of a

00:07:07.600 limited number of ideas that went anywhere towards being a project. So we could talk about

00:07:12.880 pretty much every unrealized project he had with Lynch. There are so many out there that he just

00:07:19.040 has these quick collaborations with someone, tries to get it to go somewhere, it doesn't go somewhere,

00:07:23.920 it gets dropped. And dozens and dozens of these, you know, One Saliva Bubble comes to mind, 0.72

00:07:30.800 Ronnie Rockets we've talked about. I mean except that was a constant struggle that's worth talking about.

00:07:36.880 There are so many but the chap has lots of ideas which is why I think when he was in a situation where

00:07:42.800 he had a loyal producer friend in Dino De Laurentiis who he had made Dune with and okay, it was a failure

00:07:50.560 but they had come out of that with a strong working relationship. When Dino says that we want to do

00:07:56.480 something with you again, Lynch was ready to go. You know, he'd got no shortage of ideas that he could

00:08:03.840 make and Blue Velvet was there just sort of, he didn't need to cast around for something or wait

00:08:09.520 for something or research for years to find the perfect project. It was just an idea that had been

00:08:15.120 with him for a while to do. How long, is there an indication of how long he'd had the idea? Because

00:08:22.560 Blue Velvet seems like the real kickoff point for the rest of his career. It really incorporates a lot of

00:08:31.360 the themes that would later be expanded on in Twin Peaks. It has quite a few, well quite a bit of the

00:08:37.040 cast that would later go on to be regulars in his work, mainly Kyle MacLachlan who'd been introduced in

00:08:42.560 Dune and then Laura Dern here. Obviously it had Jack Nance and a few others. And then again it sort of

00:08:51.920 sets the pace for the rest of the dreamy abstract stuff even if it has a much more straightforward narrative.

00:08:57.600 Because Blue Velvet was the first film that I watched by him. And my dad had gone on for ages

00:09:03.680 about how good it was. And I'd always heard that he was this really difficult, confusing filmmaker where

00:09:09.440 you watch his films, you've no idea what's going on, the plot makes no sense. And I watched Blue Velvet

00:09:14.480 and I was like, that was simple. In terms of like the linear cause and effect narrative that you're seeing

00:09:20.560 in front of you, it's really a very simple film. The abstraction was in the details in between

00:09:28.960 the use of imagery and the kind of subtext and symbolism that you can take from it, which was one

00:09:36.000 of the things that made it so interesting. And it's really, really with maybe parts of Twin Peaks and

00:09:44.320 Fire Walk with me that he really starts delving into pure abstract narratives. And then Lost Highway

00:09:51.120 goes back to, say, Eraserhead with being pure abstraction from beginning to end. So I really, really like Blue Velvet.

00:09:59.440 That's a very good description of it. A basic narrative that's super easy to follow. In fact,

00:10:07.680 spelled out at multiple points. This, I mean, it's kind of unique for Lynch that he will just take a pause and

00:10:14.880 give someone, in case you're lost, this is what has happened. Like, I'm thinking of when Kyle McLaughlin's Jeffrey

00:10:22.080 returns from his first encounter in Dorothy's apartment and just exposition dumps on Laura Dern's character Sandy,

00:10:29.840 just to catch everyone up. It feels like it's easing you into his later works by being like,

00:10:38.400 OK, here's what I'm going to do for the rest of my career, but simplified just a little bit so that

00:10:44.240 you're not scared off entirely, even though you've just met Frank. Yeah. You know, maybe the start of

00:10:52.000 part two, before we get into these films that have much more depth to them, maybe there's a good time to

00:10:58.640 say this. There's an idea about Lynch that he's deliberately obscure, and that is a trap that I

00:11:04.720 fell into when I first started looking at him a bit more. A few bits where I'd sort of said,

00:11:11.840 he's just being goofy here. And since I've come to appreciate that there's a lot more going on

00:11:19.040 in how he makes films the way he makes them. Blue Velvet is a really good example of how

00:11:25.760 he wants to help you understand the film. He's not going to change how he makes it,

00:11:30.720 but he will help you out. He will give you clues. There is a very blatant bit where Sandy,

00:11:39.680 Laura Dern's character, basically spells out the symbolism for you in her bit about Robins,

00:11:46.800 sort of telling you how the film is working. Yeah, which directly informs the end of this as well.

00:11:52.240 Yeah. And if you can take that, you can go a little further in and start looking more symbolically

00:11:59.200 at how things are happening. So he's given you a little hand. I can also think of Mulholland Drive.

00:12:06.480 If you get the Criterion Collection DVD, there are liner notes in there where Lynch doesn't tell

00:12:12.320 you what is happening, but he gives you about 20 questions that are meant to point the way.

00:12:18.000 Yeah. It's asking things like, what's the name of the film that this character is working on?

00:12:23.760 Yes. And if you pay attention to that and put all of the other clues together, it gives you

00:12:28.000 a pretty clear indication of what he's actually trying to get at.

00:12:31.840 Exactly. He's not being deliberately obscure, exactly as you said in part one, Josh. He wants

00:12:38.080 you to think. One of the aspects is, he wants you to think. If you think about it, I think

00:12:43.280 you will feel it more deeply. It will work for you more if you've done the work of making the film

00:12:50.880 make sense to you. Even if that sense is not the same as we found when we discussed Erase Ahead.

00:12:56.320 Well, it's the difference between being told something and experiencing it for yourself.

00:13:00.800 In many ways, cinema tells you things, but in having to work for it, you go part of the way of

00:13:07.600 towards experiencing it in a sense. And so you get a more elevated experience, both intellectually

00:13:14.240 and emotionally, and you get more from it because you're personally investing your time and mental

00:13:20.800 energy into it. And that does open us up to a bit of a danger here. Are you aware of the chicken kit?

00:13:28.000 Nope. Right. So this is one of David Lynch's little art projects that he did the first one

00:13:37.200 of while he was in Mexico making Dune. He got a fish, he dissected it, laid it out as if it were a

00:13:47.120 kit to be assembled, and put instructions such as reassemble fish, submerge in water.

00:13:52.080 And he did a, I believe, a rat kit. He definitely did a chicken kit. He was interested in a dog

00:14:00.160 kit as well. It's just something he did in his spare time because he's a creative guy.

00:14:05.760 I think I maybe overanalyzed that. In making the fish kit, he's sort of saying,

00:14:14.960 if you dissect something, if you take something into its components so that you can understand it

00:14:20.080 thoroughly, you'll have that thorough understanding. But it's not going to work.

00:14:28.400 Well, it's similar to taking apart a radio to understand how it works stops the music, doesn't

00:14:35.440 it? It removes its function. Great analogy. There is a slight worry here that if we are

00:14:42.720 picking apart these movies which are presented in an abstract way, that we might kill them for people.

00:14:48.560 I so worry about that. No, I can understand that fear, but the best that we can do is present our

00:14:56.880 own interpretations and analysis. That's the thing. I mean, I don't think that Lynch was presenting them

00:15:02.320 in such an abstract way as to prevent conversation. I think he was presenting them in an abstract way to

00:15:08.880 inspire conversation and thought about it. If he wanted to completely kill the conversation,

00:15:13.680 he'd have just told you what the films were about himself. To paraphrase Carl Sagan, understanding the

00:15:21.920 universe through maybe a scientific, analytical lens doesn't make the magic disappear. It makes you

00:15:30.880 appreciate it all the more. I like to think in those terms that taking a closer look at something makes you

00:15:37.520 appreciate what makes it beautiful, what makes it relevant, what makes it important.

00:15:43.360 And the whole point of these sorts of things isn't necessarily to say, okay, we've understood this

00:15:51.440 thing. We can put it in a little box and ignore it now. We've figured this film out because I think that

00:15:57.440 the idea is if you've got a quality piece of art, you can revisit it and the magic isn't lost.

00:16:02.480 And you can find something more in this as well.

00:16:05.360 I very much found this with Kubrick's films that many of them I've watched many, many times.

00:16:11.520 I haven't had the opportunity with Lynch simply because I've watched most of his films very recently

00:16:16.560 for this. And I imagine if I go back, there will be a greater wealth of things to appreciate about them.

00:16:24.320 And so giving people, I'd like to think of this sort of analysis as giving people a fertile

00:16:30.320 substrate to grow their own interpretations.

00:16:33.840 Yeah, we are, we can't, we literally cannot be exhausted in this. I mean,

00:16:38.640 there are four hour analyses that don't cover everything. So hopefully, yeah, I like that idea

00:16:46.240 that we will give people maybe some inspiration for ways to think about it, and then they will

00:16:51.280 connect and they'll come up with their own.

00:16:52.960 And hopefully if you've not actually watched any of these films, inspiration to actually go and

00:16:57.200 watch them as well, because they're well worth it. And again, the more I talk about the films,

00:17:01.920 and the more I hear other people's interpretations, I just find myself getting more interested in them,

00:17:06.560 to be honest, because it shows that there are just these different ways of thinking about them

00:17:10.080 that I hadn't considered, even if I don't necessarily agree with the interpretations,

00:17:15.920 as I don't with some of that person's interpretations.

00:17:20.480 But yeah, Blue Velvet, very straightforward plot. Jeffrey has come home from his time at university

00:17:30.240 because his father has suffered a heart attack. While he's back home, he is walking through a field,

00:17:37.120 fine, well, kind of like a back road behind the town. He finds an ear in a little patch of grass.

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The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - August 20, 2025

PREVIEW： The Career of David Lynch： Part II

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