PREVIEW： The Career of David Lynch： Part III
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Summary
In Part 3 of our special series on David Lynch, we continue our exploration of his work by discussing The Straight Story, Mulholland Drive, and The Inland Empire. We're joined by returning guest Chloe Proper of the horror show Chloe's Proper Horror Show to discuss all three of Lynch's works.
Transcript
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Hello and welcome to our special director's series, continuing our journey into David Lynch's work.
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This is part three. If you've not watched part one and two, I'd recommend that you do that now
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because we are going to be carrying on from where we left off when we had just talked about Lost
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Highway. Now we're going to be talking about his works, The Straight Story, Mulholland Drive,
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and The Inland Empire. I'm your host, Harry, joined today by Josh and special guest and
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returning friend of the show chloe proper horror show thank you for joining us again today thank
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you for having me back yeah so i think this will be a very interesting episode because we've got a
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real mix of stories right here even more so than in the very first one when we were talking about
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his work on eraser head you know the daring art house debut surrealist film suddenly going into
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something much more normal and mainstream with the elephant man and then going to the high budget
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mainstream commercial and critical failure that was Dune. Now we have what I would consider to be
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his masterpiece, or at least what's commonly known as his masterpiece in Mulholland Drive,
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kind of bookended by his simplest story, I would say even simpler than Elephant Man,
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and what many consider to be the truly impenetrable, most difficult and abstract
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inland empire which is obviously it's a it's a three-hour labyrinth of a film many people see
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it as impenetrable i'm going to be making uh kind of a hot take with it and i'm interested to see
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how you both have responded to that one in terms of how critically uh you assess it and whether you
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enjoyed it or not i have a feeling from discussions we've been having beforehand that josh was
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probably not a big fan of it i don't know if chloe would have been either yeah but i i think
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i think it's got its merits i can understand why people hate it it's not my favorite but still i
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think it's got its merits but first let's get into the discussion with the straight story which many
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people consider to be a bit of a like the unusual odd man out of lynch's filmography simply because
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it is so simple it's a straight story some might say i have to say it i mean i'm sorry for one it's
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based on a true story i didn't know that which is yeah it's based all the more wholesome alvin
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straight was a real man who in the 1990s the early to mid 90s did embark on a journey across
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midwest america about 250 miles on a ride on lawnmower so that he could see his brother who
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suffered a stroke apparently it was in the news around 1994 and lynch's longtime collaborator who
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he had a child with mary sweeney had been following the story on the news decided to write it up as a
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script had mentioned it to david a few times but he had not actually signed on to it he had not
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been going into it with the expectation that he was going to be directing the script that
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mary was writing he just eventually read it one day and said i think i need to direct this yeah
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i think like uh with wild at heart where monty montgomery who was a sort of worked with him on
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ads and tried to get him to produce other films uh helped steer him towards a story in this one
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mary sweeney fell in love with the story first developed it herself and then took it to david
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Lynch when he was fully when it was fully formed and he just fell in love with it and I think you
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can see in there all the things that he did fall in love with it for it is a real sort of I don't
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know is it too corny to say like a love letter to the American Midwest is that too corny it is
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no I think that's fair and I think that he's always had a sweet spot for that part of the
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world hasn't he I think that that's part of the reason it appealed to him in the first place is
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that it's sort of a rebuttal of what you might find at the American coasts where they think
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they're all high and mighty and they think they're better than everyone else and yet
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you see this very wholesome story play out where people might not have much but they're very
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wholesome, they care about one another and it's talking about virtues in a place where people
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tend not to think of it in America at the very least. Yeah it's the story of Alvin Strait and
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his fortitude, his independence, his desire to go at his own way while also having to still rely on
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the help and charity of complete strangers who reveal themselves to be you know kind and generous
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people. But it is also like you say a love letter to that part of the country which even at the time
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people were making notes may not exist in the same way that he's portraying it and it is really a
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shot against those who would say that lynch's work is all cynicism twin peaks and blue velvet is all
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about how the little white picket fence town in midwest america is actually just a hot bed of
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disease and vice and dirt underneath you know they always cite the opening shot blue velvet
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it. Whereas I think this is a much truer and clearer example of what Lynch actually feels
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about that part of the country. What people miss with that interpretation, though, is that
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he uses the white picket fence and the sort of wholesome town with a dark underbelly to give you
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some sort of stakes in caring about its preservation. It has to have some virtues to that
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for you to care about it being threatened in the first place and so it's sort of necessary to tell
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that story that there's something worth saving and if anything i think lynch excels at showing
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the more wholesome interactions between people like particularly in in twin peaks there are loads
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of interactions in there where i'm just like that is incredibly wholesome um and it's sort of where
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you see it reach its height in many cases and so i think that it's really missing the point
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well there's the beautiful scene which we'll get into in the last episode when we talk about twin
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peaks in the second series of twin peaks with bobby talking to his father major briggs where
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all of the animosity all of the distance that had grown between them melts away as major briggs
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gives this beautiful speech to his son about the dream that he had. Straight Story feels like the
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spirit that motivated that scene, because that was a Lynch-directed episode, stretched out to
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about an hour and a half. There's no cynicism that some would accuse his films of having in this
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film. There's no way that you can try and inject cynicism. And that's not to say there is no
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darkness in it. There is the scene where Alvin is sat at the bar speaking to another old-time
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about their mutual experiences in the war and how it shaped them and how it traumatized them.
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There's Alvin's own struggles off of the back of that with alcohol. And there's the implication
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towards the end there when he's sat at that bar and he decides, I'm going to have my first beer
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in about 10 years. And you get a little bit of that lynchian darkness slip through implied when
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the bartender asks do you want another one and there's that dark rising atmosphere in the audio
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and the sound of the wind and it's always a sign of trouble in lynch's works
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another beer this will do me fine i wonder could you point me to lyle's place i haven't seen him
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in an awful long time and he decides to stay on this path that he's started because the road that
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he's traveling is not just the road to his brother it's the road to redemption and that part of
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redemption started with him choosing to let the leave the alcohol behind now he's in greater
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control of himself he's able to have his drink and leave it i also like having a sort of hero's
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journey story where it's an elderly man i think actually that makes it more powerful than if it
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wasn't because it's demonstrating well he's already got to this stage of his life and he's still got
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a long way to go and it sort of to my mind illustrates well you know you've got to continue
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pushing the frontiers of being a good person right up until you you know you die and so i think that
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it elevates the the message behind the whole thing no certainly what were you going to add
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I noticed you picked up your book the cinema of David Lynch indeed indeed it was just when you
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I think you both mentioned about the sincerity and the lack of cynicism in this academic
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collection of essays there is quite a lot of pondering over whether or not Lynch is dealing
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with parody or pastiche or kitsch or neo kitsch and i'm not going to try and dissect the definitions
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of those but it's just quoted a lot it's just a load of academic buzzwords for people who i think
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are trying to read their own cynicism into works that don't contain it like like with
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with blue velvet and that opening shot that all of these types of people would say
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is reflective of like oh the secret darkness of the of suburban america that they're reading their
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own image of suburban america into a work that doesn't actually contain it i think that's much
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more reflective of like in this room to dream which is the semi-biography semi-autobiography
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of his life and work he mentions that he had a great childhood he had no issues growing up he had
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uh close relationship with his mother his father may have been able to be there a bit more but was
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everything that he needed him to be says you know he wasn't always physically but there but the
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feeling of love and support was always there from his father even when he wasn't there physically
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so lynch attaches a lot of deep beauty and meaning to those places of small town america
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and what i would imagine is actually going on there is that i can just picture in my mind
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a young lynch admiring a white picket fence and then looking down and then just noticing that
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there's all of this dirt and mud and the worms and the creatures crawling underneath it and
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probably just thinking to himself how much more beautiful the white picket fence, the innocence
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and the sincerity makes it that the two clash with one another and the two complement one another
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because he, being a proponent of transcendental meditation, you hear a lot of speech of
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balance within Twin Peaks. He believes that balance brings it all together and creates a
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bigger picture that allows for true appreciation of the good in the world.
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And of course, contrast in filmmaking elevates both things, doesn't it, by comparing them to
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one another. So there's also a sort of cinematic device there.
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Yeah, certainly. And the straight story is also interesting because before we came on,
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I mentioned that despite the fact that I would say it's a simpler story than The Elephant Man,
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you know, The Elephant Man has a larger cast of characters, it has these questions of morality,
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it has these questions of, not to say that The Straight Story doesn't have any of these questions,
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but in terms of the pure linear narrative, there's more going on in The Elephant Man.
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Straight Story is literally just the guy decides that, you know, I'm on my last legs,
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my brother's on my last legs we had a massive argument 10 years ago over something that i can't
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even remember now i can put that behind me it's something small that doesn't matter anymore i can
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put it behind me so i'm gonna go on this journey goes on the journey faces a few hardships meets
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the beautiful kind and generous people of the midwest and gets there so it's a simpler story
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but i would still say stylistically it feels more like it has the lynch directorial touch
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The Elephant Man is shot in a much more conventional
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It wasn't a project that Lynch got started on to begin with.
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Brooks was like, hey, you want to start in Hollywood?
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This has much more of the Lynchian audio design.
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there's lots of shots where the camera is kind of floating dreamily through a scene it has more of
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that dreamlike quality it's got a pace you would never get away with in a mainstream production
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no certainly not it's what like an hour and 45 minutes something like that it's quite a short
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film but it still takes its time with all of the scenes this is a this is a story that could be
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told in 30 minutes usually well i mean if you're following an old man on a very slow lawn there
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it'd be very strange stylistically to then make it very quick it would be very jarring you've sort
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of got to drag it out to emphasize the themes in the story don't you that that's exactly you
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um alvin is given many shortcuts uh you know the why not just you know this guy who he takes him
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in when his lawnmower breaks breaks down and says look i can just drive you there and he's like no
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i've got to do it myself i think it's very notable he says that to a younger man because it's like
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the young man probably doesn't quite get it that he is on a journey it has to take time and we have
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to feel it alongside him and he has a number of encounters with younger men like where there's
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the cyclists who will go past him that he sees that he stays overnight at the campsite that
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they're all staying out with and they're all obviously they're all cycling they can move
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faster than him by the pure power of themselves on a bicycle rather than having to rely on
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something with an engine uh so he's staying with them and they're throwing the ball about they're
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like oh what's the what's the worst part about being old that kind of morbid curiosity that
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young people have and he's like oh it's the just remembering when you were young that's that's the
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worst part and it's almost like he accepts his limitations he knows his limitations but he's
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still the same guy on the inside as he was when he was fighting the war when he could still do
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all of these things by himself so he has to prove to himself that he can even if it takes longer
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that's something lynch talks about is he thinks age is rather externalized the body the corpus
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and internally your spirit stays the same age he really believes that i mean and you could kind of
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see that he you can understand why he really identified with the story when you start to read
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this about some of the struggles that he had making the return where the return was this
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grueling five or six months um shoot where they were just doing everything all at once for all
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18 episodes and he was involved in every aspect of it he was doing 12 hour days 17 hour days
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when he turned 70 and the struggles that he was you know sometimes he would get there and he would
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have a head rush and he would be old and he got really sick producing and directing it so he'd
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have to lie down. But he felt that he had to be the one in control of it all. This was his
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directorial stamp on something that was unfinished business for him. So you could say that actually
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the production of The Return was Lynch's own personal straight story. Unfinished business
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where he couldn't let the physical limitations of age keep him from doing what he needed to do
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for his own sake and for the sake of the people that he loved around him.
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i think that's a really good take on it yeah something that comes out in the making the
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straight story is he says uh richard so richard farms with the chap playing alvin got younger
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as they were making it so like literally the effort made him feel more alive more reinvigorated
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i think lynch probably got that even though it was a struggle the fact that he was working on
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something he cared about that he needed to do gave him the energy um there's another really
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nice aspect to this as well as uh farnsworth coming back in who had come out of retirement
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and there's quite a few people who will come out of retirement for david lynch yeah especially for
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the return big ed not starred in anything since the straight story yep i i loved i loved seeing
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him turn up i didn't know he was in this that wasn't neither did i yeah this was this was my
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first time watching this film actually i'd watched all of his films multiple times prior to this
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but for some reason i'd i'd managed to miss the straight story every single time and this was
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you know a real it was like it was like a little little treat a little delightful treat nestled
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amongst all of the darkness of a lot of his other works this one shining little gem yeah uh one of
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the other people who came back and i have to shoehorn this in uh since you mentioned the elephant man
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we have a returning collaboration with freddie francis now he turned up a lot in i want to say
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part one probably uh when we talked about the elephant man and june freddie francis is an
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english filmmaker associated with a lot of the um questionable quality 70s horrors that i adore
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um he but the bbfc had some big problems with exactly call back to our first videos together
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watch the history of the bbfc on the website if you haven't already indeed indeed great conversation
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um so freddie francis had kind of stopped working dune was a bit of a sour note obviously
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they hadn't really as i understand done anything since dune so coming back and freddie francis was
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like 80 now david lynch was 53 when he was making the straight story if i can work that out correctly
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so these are people are quite advanced in years but they came back together for this
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and freddie francis and a lot of people from the very early days jack fisk production designer and
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brother of uh lynch's second wife mary fisk uh sissy spacek who had been a sort of helping make
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a raise ahead or around when he was making a raise ahead actually getting to star in this as well as
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a lot of people from his really early years came together for the straight story i had this wonderful
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final collaboration it's it's really lovely yeah it was it was interesting seeing sissy spacek in
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this because at first i i mean i think the only other thing i've seen her in is of course carrie
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the brian the palmer stephen king adaptation i didn't recognize her at first in this because
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it's 20 years after carrie had been shot but also the she gives such a convincing performance as
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somebody with a kind of i don't know developmental disorder perhaps you'd call it uh that i thought
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it was a classic case that lynch had just found somebody who spoke like that normally
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and put them in his film because there's so many stories in this particularly when you get to like
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mulholland drive of there's just well i mean the twin peaks as well you know frank silver a set
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designer who just got caught in one shot that lynch is like you are now the main villain of my
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entire show you are the you are the the key to all of this you know the blue lady in mulholland
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drive at the end when they're in the theater that's again just like a costume designer or a
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set coordinator or something and he's just like can you get would you look good in a blue wig
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get a blue dress made up for her right now what was that about lynch impressions earlier oh that's
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fine i make an exception for myself of course yeah cory glazer just a i think costume or script
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supervisor and then just told she she's like no no i can't do i can't do it and then lynch says
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in a voice i'm not gonna do you'll be great up you go yeah it's it's really lovely reading all
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of the stories from on set of all of these people who worked with him basically making him sound
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like he was not to be too punny here he was like the dream director he's like the director you hope
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to work with no wonder so many people always came back to work with him he wouldn't shout he wouldn't
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raise his voice he wouldn't make you do take after take after take he was like the the anti-stanley
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kubrick where stanley kubrick would make you do a hundred takes just to agitate you so he would
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get the right performance out of you lynch rarely did more than between one and three takes because
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he cast in a way that he knew he could get an automatic performance out of them because
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he would see the character in the actor he would cast in that way that he knew he didn't really
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have to do much so he would guide them through he would be sat really close to you on set giving
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you instructions of what to do mad genomic and twin peaks gave us a little story in this about
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how he had her sat in the front cabin of a lorry and he's he's like sat underneath the seat of the
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lorry giving her instructions right then and then he's just like now lift your eyes up so that you
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can look at the top of the cabin now draw your eyes along the top of the cabin and then bring
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them down here and she just followed everything that he said and she's like david what's what's
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my motivation for this why am i doing this and he goes it looks good it looks good so he like he was
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able to make these people really comfortable on set he would if it was your last day on set in a
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production no matter who you were he would get everybody to come around and give you a thank you
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and give you a round of applause is this wonderful experience so again i just thought sissy spacek
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was not sissy spacek i thought that she was some kind of slow person that he'd met in the street
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and decided to cast in his film she was convincing yeah she was very convincing if if i did have one
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little complaint about the film it was that her manner of speech the affect was a bit annoying
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oh i found it a bit annoying even my cold heart wasn't that um impatient with it in the first
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30 minutes there are quite a few scenes where she's kind of giving exposition and it was kind
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of one of those feelings like of all the characters to have explain this david you're you're making
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fun of me with this but as well you know i can understand she was endearing she was sweet
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and it kind of came back around when there's this beautiful scene when he alvin's set out on his
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journey in full he's had a false start his original lawnmower cracked out on him so he goes to big ed
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and he gets a John Deere and then he's on his journey in strength and he's sat out camping in
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a field in the dark and this girl comes up and he gives the story when they're talking of how
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she's one of his four or five daughters and she had a litter of children herself and she was away
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from them because I think she was working they were being looked after somebody else
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and there was a fire one of the children got burnt no one died but the state as a result
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took her children away from her because given her mental state they or at least her manner of
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speech they thought she was an unfit parent so that kind of wrapped her story back around because
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you only see her i think once in the rest of the film i think after that the purpose of her
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character in the narrative is that it's something that he's doing it all for in the first place
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right that he's being healthier he's making amends he's making things right because he's got
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her at home and it's sort of not necessarily stated but it's always sort of in the background
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um of every scene to a certain extent is that you know you know she's at home waiting for him and
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when he finally gives her a call it's a very sort of significant moment it's almost like a milestone
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and so it adds emotional weight to it i think and um before i forget it's also worth mentioning i
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wonder how much John Deere paid him for this film. It surely wasn't enough because the amount of
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free advertising they get throughout the whole thing was sort of unprecedented. The maker of
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incredibly reliable, well-trusted tractors John Deere, that John Deere. Some of the farmers down
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my way might have a thing or two to say about it. Some of the most reliable ride-on lawnmowers that
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you can find across the entire country. Well you notice that first tractor craps out but luckily
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but it was quite sweary and and very final um he basically hates it and then i watched straight
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story after knowing his opinions on it was like hang on a minute well it was just part of the
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story it had to be that way because it was that way uh whereas i now that you mention it i think
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about all of his other films and there's like no very little no recognizable products basically in
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any of them in straight story not only do you have you know big ed selling him his own tractor
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from the 1960s the guy who helps him when his tractor breaks down also works for john deere
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so it's just like it's sort of like john deere workers are like a secret society like the
00:26:17.900
freemasons but just of wholesome people who help people in need well honestly after after reading
00:26:23.680
this bloody thing right okay my new conspiracy right is not that you know uh there are certain
00:26:30.100
secret cabals or particular groups pulling the strings behind hollywood right not not the ones
0.68
00:26:36.460
not the ones you're thinking of get your hands off the keyboard stay out of the comments right now
00:26:40.940
no the secret cartel running hollywood is the maharashi yogi oh yeah and the transcendental
00:26:48.200
meditation practices. Everybody. They're all in on it. Michael Cera. Michael Cera practices
00:26:56.120
transcendental meditation. Richard Boehmer, who played Ben Horne in Twin Peaks, they got along
00:27:02.360
because they practiced transcendental meditation. Harry Dean Stanton didn't meditate, but he was
00:27:07.720
into Taoism and Buddhism and all of this. It's a little bit of a sort of California-y thing,
00:27:13.040
isn't it more than anything i think because meditation is pretty common in sort of more
00:27:19.720
artsy circles anyway like whenever i go to a sort of indie music festival there's always some sort
00:27:25.100
of meditation thing and i'm like i'm far too hungover for that but um yeah i think it's more
00:27:33.000
just a convergence of of character than anything else with shared interests you know how you sort
00:27:40.320
find that no i think it's the maharashi pulling the strings behind the scenes david lynch like
00:27:45.860
just happens to get into it in 1973 and then he manages to get a racer head made kickstarts his
00:27:51.780
entire career gets loads of other people and then by the time you get into the mid-2000s he's going
00:27:56.940
on 16 country speaking tours with a guy called bobby roth about about meditation transcendental
00:28:03.320
meditation it's big india again pulling the strings well he was living in the netherlands so i
00:28:08.620
I assume the Dutch have something to do with this as well, as always.
0.98
00:28:17.020
There's the Maharashi pulling the strings, and behind the Maharashi, the Dutch.
1.00
00:28:27.200
No, but one of the other enduring themes throughout this that we've already touched on was the, again, summed up really beautifully in the scene under the stars.
00:28:38.620
when he's speaking to that young girl who is running away from home because she's got an
00:28:43.600
unwanted pregnancy we assume she's going to go through with the pregnancy she just doesn't want
00:28:48.540
to have to put up with the disappointment from her family all of the expectations that come from that
00:28:54.060
it is the theme of the strength of family like you say he's doing this for his daughter he's
00:29:00.120
doing it partially to show her that no matter where her children are there'll still be that
00:29:04.940
connection because he's still got that connection with his brother even after all of these years
00:29:09.640
the strength of bond that they built up through their time growing up together and also he's
00:29:17.000
showing this young girl that listen they might you might have made some mistakes but the biggest
00:29:24.040
mistake that you could make right now is leaving abandoning your family and taking on this journey
00:29:41.520
And then I picked up a bundle of sticks and put
00:29:59.460
like yourself josh he picks up this bundle of sticks and he tries to break them and he says
00:30:06.860
you're saying he's a bushcraft fan okay that's what it is well lynch was very into woodwork it's
00:30:16.100
what him and uh what was it it was what him and uh you know roy orbison got along with after they
00:30:22.240
made blue velvet and orbison eventually turned around on the film and said you know this is
00:30:26.720
good and then they did a remake of in dreams together it's woodwork that brought them together
00:30:30.400
and on the basis of this being about nature and family and woodwork when bundled together
00:30:38.140
in way you could say as a classical fasci you can't break them when they're all bundled together
00:30:46.320
like that when i put it like that what did what did david lynch mean by this woodwork makes the
00:30:52.680
good work certainly certainly does i think that that scene is a particularly good example of it
00:30:59.420
just being a wholesome bit of messaging it enclosed in a film because that little lesson
00:31:05.520
there is just unequivocally good advice just doesn't need to be in context of the film it's
00:31:11.700
just like that's just wholesome and good and i'm glad lynch included that if you would like to see
00:31:17.660
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