PREVIEW： The Career of David Lynch： Part II
Summary
In Part 2 of our premium director series on David Lynch, we cover Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, and Lost Highway. In this episode, we discuss the themes and narratives of these three films, and why they are so important in the larger context of David Lynch's life and career.
Transcript
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Hello and welcome to part two of this premium director series on David Lynch, the follow-up
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to our Stanley Kubrick series. If you've not watched the first episode we would recommend
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going back and watching that where we covered some of David Lynch's early career, Eraserhead,
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Elephant Man and Dune. Now we're following up in this episode with Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart
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and Lost Highway. Now we know Twin Peaks actually falls chronologically in there, it falls in
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between Blue Velvet and Lost Highway, it was done before Wild at Heart and then there's also the
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film Fire Walk With Me but because Twin Peaks is such a large, expansive, time-consuming work
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and also because Chloe's not actually finished it yet, we are going to save that for another episode
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possibly where we cover the straight story in Mulholland Drive, maybe we'll include it in
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Inland Empire as well. We've not decided as of yet but these are the films we're talking about today,
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we will be going over full spoilers with the narratives of these so be warned if you've not
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watched any of them we'll try and get the editors to put a time stamp in the video if you want to
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skip over any of the analysis that we give so that you can save yourself from that but as I mentioned
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in the first episode these are films that you really can experience even if you know the basic
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narrative plot threads and whatever analysis that we can give to you will only be supplementary to
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whatever analysis and feeling that you get from the films which are very much experiential
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so take that as a warning and I'm your host Harry, here's Josh. Hello. And here's Chloe, proper horror show.
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Nice to be back. I hope you've all got your coffee ready at home watching this. I've gone for a refill,
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I've got myself a lovely black coffee here as David would want and shall we just go straight into it
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from where we were so we were previously talking about Dune in the first episode where we were saying
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about how it was a complete failure both artistically and financially and David Lynch was left outside of
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the studio system which I and I think we all agreed was quite a good thing so that he wasn't left a
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director for hire doing more projects like Elephant Man and Dune as good as Elephant Man was and it
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allowed him the freedom to be able to make his own original projects which is much more interesting.
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We will also say we're going to head off at the pass quite a lot of the leftist critiques and
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interpretations of his work we covered a little bit of that in the first episode like the fact that his
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work is overwhelmingly and oppressively white and also that his work could be seen as a critical of
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or reinforcing the patriarchy and Chloe has happily found a nice cancerous quote for Josh to read of
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the kind of analysis that we hope we won't go into here. If you're wondering why we aren't going to
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quote from these books too much here's a little extract from David Lynch's American Dreamscape by Mike Milley
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so it says although it is not a literary work containing direct allusions to this literary
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tradition a razorhead functions as a hysterical text and its apparently singular impact and resonance
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benefit heavily from the viewers affiliation affiliating sorry identifications with this
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literary tradition. I don't think many people have an understanding of that. Viewing a razorhead as a
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hysterical text in dialogue with hysterical literature such as the yellow wallpaper and the work of Sylvia
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Plath reveals these works to be battles for identity and autonomy waged in space and through language
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spaces these protagonists are forced to occupy reveal the invisible force that creates a hostile social
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reality that are normally obscured by the boundaries of the social order. In these works the new and the
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visionary discourse of the so-called hysterics squares off against the dominant discourse of the patriarchal
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order in not only physical space but also emotional psychological and artistic space as the protagonists
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pursue a space separated from these hostile social realities that will acknowledge their autonomy over
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their bodies minds and art. These pursuits while irrational and mad on the surface transcend the oppressive
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binaries of the patriarchal order and access a plane of existence beyond rationality one defined by
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municipality and possibility. To which I say what a load of old horseshit. That was gibberish. Can you
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make heads or tails of that? Yeah yeah there were sort of 1900s literatures about the experiences of women
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being treated and pathologised as madness and therefore a film in a post-industrial landscape about a chap who
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gets a monster baby is the same thing. Hysteria was basically a medical condition from the 19th century
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whereby it was basically diamaging women. I'm aware of that but the analysis that he... was it a salty woman that wrote that?
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No that is a salty chap. Oh no that's a simp. Okay a simp wrote that. I feel he got lost in the
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weeds of his own analysis there trying to fit in as many high concepts as possible because that went from
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something that I was following to something that was complete gibberish very very quickly. So is he
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suggesting that Henry from a razor head was some kind of patriarchal force of domination? He's the most
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passive character in the whole film. Yeah. So it's a bit absurd isn't it? And also if that man's... I assume
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that man who wrote that isn't a father because all fathers will know that the woman does go a little
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bit crazy in the first few months of having a child. You both go a little bit crazy in the first
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months of having a child but the woman in particular because they're the ones who most of the responsibility
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falls on. Very strange analysis. We'll try to avoid being quite so bad here and with that let's begin
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our talk on Blue Velvet which was the next film after Dune. The first film that he had done since
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Eraserhead which was a purely original idea of his own and really started to bring his filmmaking back in
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line with that dreamy abstract tone that Eraserhead premiered that was so influential for filmmakers like
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Stanley Kubrick. Really quick turnaround actually as well between Dune which was such a huge production
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and this obviously much smaller. It was released only two years after Dune which given that Dune was
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such a monumental failure is quite impressive. Sometimes directors end up in the wilderness for
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quite a while. There's quite a lot of determination that must have got in there. Can you elaborate,
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explain some of that for us? Sure. I'd say one characteristic of David Lynch is that he always
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had many many projects on the go, many ideas ready to pop off. With Stanley Kubrick there are sort of a
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limited number of ideas that went anywhere towards being a project. So we could talk about
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pretty much every unrealized project he had with Lynch. There are so many out there that he just
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has these quick collaborations with someone, tries to get it to go somewhere, it doesn't go somewhere,
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it gets dropped. And dozens and dozens of these, you know, One Saliva Bubble comes to mind,
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Ronnie Rockets we've talked about. I mean except that was a constant struggle that's worth talking about.
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There are so many but the chap has lots of ideas which is why I think when he was in a situation where
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he had a loyal producer friend in Dino De Laurentiis who he had made Dune with and okay, it was a failure
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but they had come out of that with a strong working relationship. When Dino says that we want to do
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something with you again, Lynch was ready to go. You know, he'd got no shortage of ideas that he could
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make and Blue Velvet was there just sort of, he didn't need to cast around for something or wait
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for something or research for years to find the perfect project. It was just an idea that had been
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with him for a while to do. How long, is there an indication of how long he'd had the idea? Because
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Blue Velvet seems like the real kickoff point for the rest of his career. It really incorporates a lot of
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the themes that would later be expanded on in Twin Peaks. It has quite a few, well quite a bit of the
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cast that would later go on to be regulars in his work, mainly Kyle MacLachlan who'd been introduced in
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Dune and then Laura Dern here. Obviously it had Jack Nance and a few others. And then again it sort of
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sets the pace for the rest of the dreamy abstract stuff even if it has a much more straightforward narrative.
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Because Blue Velvet was the first film that I watched by him. And my dad had gone on for ages
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about how good it was. And I'd always heard that he was this really difficult, confusing filmmaker where
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you watch his films, you've no idea what's going on, the plot makes no sense. And I watched Blue Velvet
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and I was like, that was simple. In terms of like the linear cause and effect narrative that you're seeing
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in front of you, it's really a very simple film. The abstraction was in the details in between
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the use of imagery and the kind of subtext and symbolism that you can take from it, which was one
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of the things that made it so interesting. And it's really, really with maybe parts of Twin Peaks and
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Fire Walk with me that he really starts delving into pure abstract narratives. And then Lost Highway
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goes back to, say, Eraserhead with being pure abstraction from beginning to end. So I really, really like Blue Velvet.
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That's a very good description of it. A basic narrative that's super easy to follow. In fact,
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spelled out at multiple points. This, I mean, it's kind of unique for Lynch that he will just take a pause and
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give someone, in case you're lost, this is what has happened. Like, I'm thinking of when Kyle McLaughlin's Jeffrey
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returns from his first encounter in Dorothy's apartment and just exposition dumps on Laura Dern's character Sandy,
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just to catch everyone up. It feels like it's easing you into his later works by being like,
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OK, here's what I'm going to do for the rest of my career, but simplified just a little bit so that
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you're not scared off entirely, even though you've just met Frank. Yeah. You know, maybe the start of
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part two, before we get into these films that have much more depth to them, maybe there's a good time to
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say this. There's an idea about Lynch that he's deliberately obscure, and that is a trap that I
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fell into when I first started looking at him a bit more. A few bits where I'd sort of said,
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he's just being goofy here. And since I've come to appreciate that there's a lot more going on
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in how he makes films the way he makes them. Blue Velvet is a really good example of how
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he wants to help you understand the film. He's not going to change how he makes it,
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but he will help you out. He will give you clues. There is a very blatant bit where Sandy,
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Laura Dern's character, basically spells out the symbolism for you in her bit about Robins,
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sort of telling you how the film is working. Yeah, which directly informs the end of this as well.
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Yeah. And if you can take that, you can go a little further in and start looking more symbolically
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at how things are happening. So he's given you a little hand. I can also think of Mulholland Drive.
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If you get the Criterion Collection DVD, there are liner notes in there where Lynch doesn't tell
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you what is happening, but he gives you about 20 questions that are meant to point the way.
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Yeah. It's asking things like, what's the name of the film that this character is working on?
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Yes. And if you pay attention to that and put all of the other clues together, it gives you
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a pretty clear indication of what he's actually trying to get at.
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Exactly. He's not being deliberately obscure, exactly as you said in part one, Josh. He wants
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you to think. One of the aspects is, he wants you to think. If you think about it, I think
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you will feel it more deeply. It will work for you more if you've done the work of making the film
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make sense to you. Even if that sense is not the same as we found when we discussed Erase Ahead.
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Well, it's the difference between being told something and experiencing it for yourself.
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In many ways, cinema tells you things, but in having to work for it, you go part of the way of
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towards experiencing it in a sense. And so you get a more elevated experience, both intellectually
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and emotionally, and you get more from it because you're personally investing your time and mental
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energy into it. And that does open us up to a bit of a danger here. Are you aware of the chicken kit?
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Nope. Right. So this is one of David Lynch's little art projects that he did the first one
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of while he was in Mexico making Dune. He got a fish, he dissected it, laid it out as if it were a
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kit to be assembled, and put instructions such as reassemble fish, submerge in water.
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And he did a, I believe, a rat kit. He definitely did a chicken kit. He was interested in a dog
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kit as well. It's just something he did in his spare time because he's a creative guy.
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I think I maybe overanalyzed that. In making the fish kit, he's sort of saying,
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if you dissect something, if you take something into its components so that you can understand it
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thoroughly, you'll have that thorough understanding. But it's not going to work.
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Well, it's similar to taking apart a radio to understand how it works stops the music, doesn't
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it? It removes its function. Great analogy. There is a slight worry here that if we are
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picking apart these movies which are presented in an abstract way, that we might kill them for people.
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I so worry about that. No, I can understand that fear, but the best that we can do is present our
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own interpretations and analysis. That's the thing. I mean, I don't think that Lynch was presenting them
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in such an abstract way as to prevent conversation. I think he was presenting them in an abstract way to
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inspire conversation and thought about it. If he wanted to completely kill the conversation,
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he'd have just told you what the films were about himself. To paraphrase Carl Sagan, understanding the
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universe through maybe a scientific, analytical lens doesn't make the magic disappear. It makes you
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appreciate it all the more. I like to think in those terms that taking a closer look at something makes you
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appreciate what makes it beautiful, what makes it relevant, what makes it important.
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And the whole point of these sorts of things isn't necessarily to say, okay, we've understood this
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thing. We can put it in a little box and ignore it now. We've figured this film out because I think that
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the idea is if you've got a quality piece of art, you can revisit it and the magic isn't lost.
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And you can find something more in this as well.
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I very much found this with Kubrick's films that many of them I've watched many, many times.
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I haven't had the opportunity with Lynch simply because I've watched most of his films very recently
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for this. And I imagine if I go back, there will be a greater wealth of things to appreciate about them.
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And so giving people, I'd like to think of this sort of analysis as giving people a fertile
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Yeah, we are, we can't, we literally cannot be exhausted in this. I mean,
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there are four hour analyses that don't cover everything. So hopefully, yeah, I like that idea
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that we will give people maybe some inspiration for ways to think about it, and then they will
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And hopefully if you've not actually watched any of these films, inspiration to actually go and
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watch them as well, because they're well worth it. And again, the more I talk about the films,
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and the more I hear other people's interpretations, I just find myself getting more interested in them,
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to be honest, because it shows that there are just these different ways of thinking about them
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that I hadn't considered, even if I don't necessarily agree with the interpretations,
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as I don't with some of that person's interpretations.
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But yeah, Blue Velvet, very straightforward plot. Jeffrey has come home from his time at university
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because his father has suffered a heart attack. While he's back home, he is walking through a field,
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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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