Lynch’s Affinity for Laura Palmer

by Tony Dayoub

This is the fourth post in a four-part series. Catch up on parts one, two, and three.

Joel,

David Lynch hasn’t released a full-length theatrical feature since 2006’s Inland Empire. This offers us some perspective on his filmography and Fire Walk with Me’s place in it. It’s but the first of a series of films depicting a woman whose dual nature is a signal of internal dissonance. What most intrigues me is how jarring it feels compared with his work up until then, a considerable achievement given the almost mischievous disdain Lynch has for traditional narratives. Even though he started his career with Eraserhead, a stubbornly surreal work, his next two films–The Elephant Man and Dune–both strike me as stabs at legitimacy, a director bringing his unique vision to projects which might allow him mainstream success. Blue Velvet, which looks at the frighteningly dark underbelly of shiny, wholesome small-town America, is the first work that truly feels Lynchian. Then comes TV’s Twin Peaks, which continues along those lines. And right before Fire Walk with Me, Lynch directs Wild at Heart, a noir romance that hints at Lynch’s penchant for the surreal intruding on reality, this time in the form of characters from the movie The Wizard of Oz.

The Back Door to the Black Lodge

by Joel Bocko

This is the third post in a four-part series. Catch up on parts one and two.

Tony,

Entering the world of Fire Walk With Me for the first time, I was thrilled by its air of uncertainty. Lynch's rhythms and images provoked and perplexed me: the static-filled TV set where we would expect the show’s opening theme song; the plastic-wrapped corpse of Teresa Banks floating downstream, unclaimed and unloved; the FBI meeting in a skimpy Oregon airfield, sour-faced Lil (Kimberly Ann Cole) offering coded information via a wiggle, stitch, and blue flower. And then we were off to Deer Meadow, to investigate Teresa's murder. You've already described the Bizarro World qualities of Twin Peaks' doppelganger town, but perhaps even more unsettling than what Lynch shows us there is how he introduces us to it.

CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL POST AT LOST IN THE MOVIES

Poetry Becomes Prose in Fire Walk with Me

by Tony Dayoub

This is the second post in a four-part series. Catch up on part one here.

Joel,

I was not one of those fans who felt that the show quickly “descended into camp,” as you put it, with the resolution of who killed Laura Palmer. Like Special Agent Dale B. Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan), I was so in love with the town and its denizens that I relished any tangent from the relatively straight line David Lynch and Mark Frost had so far led us along. Remember, Lynch and Frost had never meant to resolve the mystery, hoping instead to use it as a backdrop for spinning off other storylines, like a traditional soap. Sometimes, these tangents went nowhere, or at least nowhere of interest–most notoriously in the very noirish storyline where James Hurley (James Marshall) is seduced by a femme fatale and set up for her husband’s murder. Other times, I was as delighted as the show intended viewers to be, no matter how silly the subplot (yes, I admit that I adored the inane romance between Lana and Mayor Milford). Staunch supporter that I was, I enjoyed how sprawling and diffuse the show’s mythology had grown–Black and White Lodges, Bookhouses, dwarves, giants, owls and all.

Twin Peaks Is Dead, Long Live Laura Palmer

by Joel Bocko

This is the first in a four-part series between Joel Bocko and Tony Dayoub. Joel has the first post.

"When you told your secret name, I burst in flames, and burned..."
-"Floating", written by David Lynch, 1989

Tony,

Let's talk about the final day of Laura Palmer's life. Not the night with its cocaine binges, woodland orgies, and bloody murders, but the morning before, as depicted in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. Remember that soggy bowl of cereal, abandoned by the trembling teenager while her father tries to cheer her up? Or Laura's jittery mother steeling herself with a cigarette, her blank, exhausted inner state almost as ugly and jagged as her daughter's raw wound? And who can forget the ferocious hatred in Laura's eyes, years in the making, as she growls at her astonished father in her bedroom: "Stay...away from me..."? By the time we are submerged in Laura's woozy afternoon at high school, her disorientation overpowers us. Swooningly subjective dips and pans, time-lapsed clocks intercut with blurry crowds, high-angled perspectives pinning Laura to a ground that is sliding away beneath her feet–if these are not the most adventurous techniques David Lynch has ever employed, they are among his most compassionate. We've burrowed deeply into Laura's consciousness, losing ourselves on a death trip that few were willing to take.

CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL POST AT LOST IN THE MOVIES

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me

by Tony Dayoub

Almost 25 years ago (if you don't count its festival debut), Twin Peaks premiered on ABC and changed the TV landscape forever. Just over 2 years later, David Lynch's theatrical follow-up, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, was a crushing failure at the box office. How did a property so popular that it got Lynch on the cover of Time Magazine fall so precipitously in the interim? It's just one of the topics we'll be discussing when Lost in the Movies' Joel Bocko and I get together.

Joel kicks off the conversation next week. Laura Palmer is getting ready to visit. Why don't you?

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me at 20

by Tony Dayoub

Months before Twin Peaks' national TV premiere on ABC, its pilot debuted at the Miami Film Festival, where one reviewer correctly predicted its ultimate fate:

...the series may lay an egg on television because of its drawn-out and deliberate pacing, brutality, sex with violence and a hint of something else... something deadly, yet unseen and probably repulsive.

True enough in the long term. But short term, its first 6-episode season—in which FBI Special Agent Dale B. Cooper (Kyle Maclachlan) comes to town to investigate the murder of homecoming queen Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee)—managed to enthrall the nation. The season finale, a cliffhanger in which Cooper is shot in the chest at point blank range by an unseen assailant, was sufficiently newsworthy to prompt Saturday Night Live to invite Maclachlan to host the show's 16th season premiere and propel the show's co-creator, David Lynch, onto the cover of Time magazine in anticipation of Peaks' 2nd season premiere. What are the chances either of those occurrences might ever happen again?

Now It’s Dark

From prose to poetry: the Blue Velvet: 25th Anniversary Edition Blu-ray

by Tony Dayoub

The first thing that comes to mind when I think of Blue Velvet, surely one of the most significant films of the last 25 years, is something rather ordinary for a movie with so many shocking and memorable images. It is the opening shot. Not the saturated opening shot of the red roses against the white picket fence of the film proper, mind you. I mean the fade up into the image of blue velvet flapping as if being blown by some mysterious wind. Composer Angelo Badalamenti’s timpanists roll right into the plaintive violins of his main theme, paving the way for a solitary clarinet repeating their melody. Initially, the clarinet’s crisp intrusion into the lushness of the violins is as transgressive as that of the film’s main character, Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) into the nightmarish beauty of his sleepy hometown, Lumberton. But eventually, the clarinet blends in with the violins, achieving a harmonic unity not unlike the one the naïve Jeffrey does when he gets simpatico with the twisted underbelly of his innocent-looking small town and its frightening denizens.

UPDATED: Blue Velvet 25th Anniversary Blu-ray Giveaway

by Tony Dayoub

One of my all-time favorite films, Blue Velvet, is now available for the first time ever on Blu-ray. A week from today, I should have a review up at my other outlet, Nomad Editions: Wide Screen, where I'll focus on the 50 minutes of lost footage that appears on the disc as a bonus feature.

To celebrate this release, I am happy to give away a free copy of the new 25th Anniversary Blu-ray (courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc.) to each of the first FIVE people who can correctly answer a question related to the bonus footage (hint: if you go back through some of my recent tweets you can easily find the answer). But first, the rules:

Nicholas Ray Blogathon: Bigger Than Life (1956) and Its Influence on Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992)

by Tony Dayoub

In his films, Nicholas Ray often contemplates the psychodynamic turbulence hidden behind facades of normalcy. Bigger Than Life, with its focus on the degradation of patriarch Ed Avery (James Mason) speaks to the repression which plagues the seemingly typical fifties nuclear family. In this way the movie looks forward to those of another director, David Lynch. Though Lynch has explored similar themes throughout his work, most notably in Blue Velvet (1986), it is in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me where Bigger Than Life's influence is most strongly felt.

Bigger Than Life (1956) and Its Influence on Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992)

by Tony Dayoub

In his films, Nicholas Ray (Rebel Without a Cause) often contemplates the psychodynamic turbulence hidden behind facades of normalcy. Bigger Than Life, with its focus on the degradation of a patriarch, Ed Avery (James Mason), speaks to the repression which plagues the seemingly typical fifties nuclear family. In this way the movie looks forward to those of another director, David Lynch. Though he has explored similar themes throughout his work, most notably in Blue Velvet (1986), it is in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me where Bigger Than Life's influence is most strongly felt.

Writings on Cinema

I've always meant to talk about this, and thanks to MovieMan0283, of The Dancing Image, now I get my chance. In discussing books that have influenced his exploration of cinema, he tagged me to do the same, saying:

In his fairly regular comments on this and other blogs, Tony utilizes a strong sense of history and a passion for context in discussing a given film. I'm curious as to where this information came from; and for whatever reason, I have trouble guessing his favorite books (except, of course, for Guide for the Film Fanatic, which he explicitly mentioned earlier today when responding to my Great Movies post...).

I post this quote because it speaks to the way I look at all film. If one looks at cinema as art, whether its a crappy flick like Drop Dead Fred (1991) or a shining instance of world cinema like The Conformist (1970), then one must never forget to look at it in context. Art does not exist in a vacuum, and so, neither does cinema. A cinematic work is an expression influenced by the forces extant at the time of its creation. It is always a reaction to the current politics, economy, cinematic movements, or artist's biographical circumstances. Often times, this reaction does not reveal itself to the film's creators. It can even evolve with the passage of time. Hindsight has definitely changed the regard for many a film, and still continues to do so. But it is a rich area for those of us who "read" films to mine. So in perusing the documents that I've chosen - because they have held the greatest sway over the way I look at movies - consider that all of these have something to offer in the way of contextualizing cinema. Guide for the Film Fanatic by Danny Peary (1986) - This is the book that never leaves my side. Better known for his Cult Movies book series, Peary is into sports writing now (he is a writer-researcher for The Tim McCarver Show), but I just found some recent film-related posts by him at Brink. Film Fanatic has a bit of a cult following around the intertubes, and with good reason. Peary's concise reviews are illuminating in a scholarly way while excising the pretentious language that readers often get mired in when reading a journal. His often quirky takes on well-dissected classics may sound eccentric at first, but he is usually able to back up his claims with some persuasive points. Here's his take on Taxi Driver (1976):

Film is a reworking of John Ford's The Searchers, with De Niro assuming John Wayne's Ethan Edwards role. Again we have a war veteran, a social misfit, an outcast, who is obsessed with rescuing a young girl (after failing to rescue a young woman) from her long-haired lover - although she is happy where she is - in order to purify his own soul (on the pretext of purifying the girl's soul). Like Ethan, he was on the non-victorious side in what he believes was a war of liberation. That's why they are so fanatical about liberating young girls from foreign camps.

And his humor can be devastatingly acute, evident in his very positive - yet mildly sarcastic - review for The Terminator (1984):

Still, the film has appeal to the soldier-of-fortune crowd and guys who like to crush beer cans on their head. They consider the Terminator their (fascist) hero, enjoy the spectacular gunplay, and are aware that the film is punctuated by pain.

Peary's best quality is to treat all films democratically. Be they the cult films he specializes in (Pink Flamingos), porn flicks (Deep Throat), or canonical cinema (Citizen Kane), all merit a slot in his book - which covers over 1600 titles. Film Comment (1990-2000) - Though I still pick up the occasional copy (the latest one has a great piece on Jarmusch's The Limits of Control by Kent Jones), the high point in this journal's lifetime is the 10 years in which Richard T. Jameson was the editor. Published by the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the issue pictured above (July-August 1991) is a great example of the quantity of greatness one could find in each square inch of this seminal magazine. Here's a short rundown of some of the stories found in this issue's pages: An analysis of Delusion (1991) by Donald Lyons; a tribute to Billy Wilder by Andrew Sarris; an exploration of Graham Greene by David Thomson; a Brando appreciation by Richard Schickel; Nestor Almendros on Sergei Eisenstein; Scanners' Jim Emerson on Hanna Schygulla. And I only randomly picked this issue up from my basement. Under Jameson's watch, the magazine's annual roundup of the best films and notable performances (as put forth by numerous critics polled) was frequently upstaged by "Moments Out of Time," a roundup of the best cinematic moments of the previous year, by Jameson and Kathleen Murphy (both now contribute to Parallax View) which they now publish over at MSN Movies. The 100 Best Films to Rent You've Never Heard Of by David N. Meyer (1997) - Well, the title may be a bit of an overstatement if you are a serious film buff. The style in which the book is presented, in which each film is sub-categorized by attitude and mood, is a little too EW for me (Meyer, in fact, did write for Entertainment Weekly). But the films recommended in this book are spot-on in terms of their cult appeal. From foreign classics like Godard's Contempt (1963) to American neo-noir like Mann's Thief (1981), his choices run the gamut of cinematic genres. And he focuses on details others miss, as when he discusses the latter film, "Caan's thief is as American as can be: He distrusts language, derives his identity from his work, and has a chip on his shoulder the size of Mount Rushmore." Currently Meyer posts film reviews at The Brooklyn Rail. Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman (1983) - Academy Award-winning screenwriter Goldman describes how one should approach screenplays:

I write screenplays to be read. So does Jo Jo, The Dog Face Boy, obviously. What I mean is that, from the very beginning, I've tried to make my screenplays reading experiences, much like a book or play. So I don't mess around much with intricate camera instructions. (At least i don't think I do. I talked to a star once who said, "You goddam screenwriters - putting in all that camera crap - trying to direct the picture is all you're doing. I hate all that camera crap. Just put down the words, I'll do the rest." I later had occasion to read a screenplay this star had done. It was so full of "camera crap" you could throw up.)

Goldman's sage advice, dishy anecdotes, and practical writing instruction merge to form a helluva read. And makes you long for the days when screenwriters were actually conversant with the English language rather than just spitting out reconstituted scenes from films they have watched. Easy Riders, Raging Bulls by Peter Biskind (1998) - Did I say Goldman was dishy? Biskind, a former executive editor at Premiere and former editor in chief of American Film, offers more gossip in one page than Goldman does over the course of his entire book. Some may have a problem with this, but I find it relevant to establishing the evolving mores of the time while covering the close camaraderie of the film school generation:

Brian [De Palma] brought his friends over, and others came as well. On any given weekend, [Actress Jennifer] Salt found herself cooking for De Palma, [Steven] Spielberg, [Peter] Boyle, [screenwriter Jacob] Brackman, John Milius, Richard Dreyfuss, director Walter Hill, Bruce Dern, writer David Ward, and so on. Even [Bob] Rafelson occasionally came to the beach. They grilled steaks, ate spaghetti, tossed salads. Recalls Salt, "I was always thinking, Should it be chili and the three-bean salad and the cheesecake, or should we barbecue chicken - Oh, Steven doesn't like it when I cut up zucchini in the salad, Marty [Scorsese] likes the chili - that was where I was at. I cooked for these boys, gave lots of parties, made them take drugs and take their pants off and get down." Adds [Margot] Kidder, "The reality was that we always got the drugs and we always got the food and we basically served our guys, the whole time putting down the notion that we as women would do that. There was a real contradiction in what we perceived ourselves to be doing and what in fact we were doing."

Enlightening and gripping, Easy Riders brings the seventies American film movement into focus by revealing how the changing times left their mark on the new Hollywood. Pictures at a Revolution by Mark Harris (2008) - In the age of "New Media," where trained journalists are losing ground to many of my fellow bloggers - some of who are quick to print unsubstantiated rumors - EW writer Mark Harris' book stands as a paean to the rewards of good research. His meticulously footnoted volume looks at the beginning of the New Hollywood through the prism of the Best Picture-nominated films of 1967, the year in which many say the release of Bonnie and Clyde launched "the seventies" if not literally, then in spirit. Here, Harris sets the record straight on Pauline Kael's "discovery" of the film:

Kael's statement that "the whole point of Bonnie and Clyde is to rub our noses in it, to make us pay our dues for laughing," her understanding that "we don't take our stories straight anymore - Bonnie and Clyde is the first film demonstration that the put-on can be used for the purposes of art," and her awareness of the "eager, nervous imbalance" in which the movie intended to hold its audience all seemed uncannily in synch with the intentions of Robert Benton and David Newman. It was no accident. Though she didn't disclose it in the piece, she had taken the screenwriters out to lunch before writing her essay and gotten an earful of their motives, their admiration for the French New Wave, and their storytelling strategy. Her remark that "though one cannot say of Bonnie and Clyde to what degree it shows the work of Newman and Benton... there are ways of making guesses" was deeply disingenuous but very much in line with her pooh-poohing of "the new notion that direction is everything." Unsurprisingly, she made it clear that she didn't see the movie as Arthur Penn's accomplishment, although she praised him for the staging and editing of the dance-of-death sequence, which she called "a horror that seems to go on for eternity, and yet... doesn't last a second beyond what it should."

Pictures at a Revolution is a great book to read before you move on to Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. Catching the Big Fish by David Lynch (2006) - Here we get a glimpse into the artistic mind, from a film director whose very impenetrability seems to be part of his allure. Through his exploration of transcendental meditation, and the effects it has had on his own creativity, Lynch reveals tidbits of interest to any of his longtime admirers. On his first film:

Eraserhead is my most spiritual movie. No one understands when I say that, but it is. Eraserhead was growing in a certain way, and I didn't know what it meant. I was looking for a key to unlock what these sequences were saying. Of course, I understood some of it; but I didn't know the thing that just pulled it all together. And it was a struggle. So I got out my Bible and I started reading. And one day, I read a sentence. And I closed the Bible, because that was it; that was it. And then I saw the thing as a whole. And it fulfilled this vision for me, 100 percent. I don't think I'll ever say what that sentence was.

Well the guy has to preserve some of his mystery. But who knew the Bible had ANY influence on Eraserhead. A quick read, this seeming trifle ends up being deeper than it looks. Anyone can join in with their own lists, either on their own sites or the comments section. Please link to myself and The Dancing Image if you follow up with a list at your own site. I would like to tag the following folks: Campaspe the Self-Styled Siren who, in all honesty, I'm most excited about if only to find out where she gets so many of her wonderful Old Hollywood anecdotes from. Ed Howard at Only the Cinema. Ed is a prolific writer, and I'm willing to bet, an avid reader. Fletch at Blog Cabins, because I can never predict what his reaction to a movie will be. Sometimes it's right in line with mine. Other times he is on the opposite side of the spectrum. Jon Lanthier at The Lanthier Powerstrip, whose eclectic tastes and articulate form of expressing himself always lures this writer to his site. T.S. at Screen Savour, a silent movie and Hitchcock devotee that has an astute sense of what goes into great cinema, regardless of genre or era.

The Year 2001: Counting Down the Zeroes - Mulholland Drive (David Lynch)

David Lynch's Mulholland Drive began life as a TV pilot for ABC, the same network which aired Twin Peaks - Lynch's greatest mainstream success. It would be interesting to see how each show would fare in today's television landscape, one where serialized shows like Lost have succeeded, in part because ratings expectations are much lower and cable's serials lead the pack in competing for viewers' attention. In any case, the TV network was not ready for a mysterious drama set in Los Angeles where the central MacGuffin was two women's search for one's forgotten identity. So Lynch did something similar to what he did for the European theatrical release of the Twin Peaks pilot. He fashioned a lengthy ending, tying up the open-ended plotline, and got the rights to release the film theatrically. Naomi Watts plays Betty, a stereotypical Midwestern woman who moves to Hollywood to become an actress. Naive and overeager, she is determined to prove herself in the corrupt industry town. Meanwhile, a woman receives a head injury in a car accident on Mulholland Drive. Dazed, she finds her way into the apartment that Betty is moving into. Betty runs across the enigmatic accident victim in her very own shower, a woman struggling to remember her identity who starts calling herself Rita (Laura Elena Harring) after spotting a poster of Gilda in Betty's apartment. Subplots and seemingly unrelated characters intrude on the central plot. No doubt these were to be coherent subplots on the prospective TV series. One such storyline involves rising movie director, Adam Kesher (Justin Theroux), whose luck turns for the worse after being threatened by two heavies seeking to cast one Camilla Rhodes (Melissa George) as the star of his next picture. These plots would have continued and tied in to the main story had Mulholland Drive gone to series. Instead, Lynch uses them to fold the movie in on itself, tying Camilla and Adam to Rita in the film's climax, bringing up questions of identity and reality versus surreality, themes that recur often within Lynch's work, but are distilled here to their purest form. One can almost see the invisible line that Lynch draws at the point where Mulholland Drive departs from its relatively conventional TV origins to the surreal realm in which he frequently wanders. It is about an hour and a half in when the movie metamorphoses from a neo-noir Nancy Drew to a haunting exploration of the obsessive ardor Diane Selwyn (Naomi Watts again) feels for Camilla Rhodes (Laura Elena Harring again). Diane awakes into a nightmare of a life, as if the first part of the film was a desperate dream formed by her fragile mind to put things right in her sad existence. Whereas Betty and Rita make love after bonding over the mystery of Rita's identity, Camilla rebuffs Diane, choosing director Adam instead. The promise Betty displayed as an actress in the first part has evaporated, with Adam giving the lead role in his film to Camilla rather than Diane. Identities transmute into new ones. The real merges with the surreal in the most necessary way yet for a Lynch film. The director even finds moments to comment on the part he plays as a master of ceremonies in these proceedings, as evoked by the stage magician that helps usher in the tonal shift at the point of departure in the film. Consciously or not, Lynch refers to other works of his including those that have yet to be: once, when he enlists Rebekah Del Rio to sing her version of Orbison's "Crying" (Blue Velvet's iconic scene where Dean Stockwell mimes to Orbison's "In Dreams"); once again, when the electrical surges of the magic show help to transmogrify Betty into Diane (Lost Highway, Twin Peaks); and finally, when the actress' descent into madness foreshadows the insanity of Nikki Grace (Laura Dern) in Inland Empire (2006). Mulholland Drive is the apotheosis of Lynch's filmography, transcending its humble TV beginnings to become one of the best films of the decade. This post was first published at Film for the Soul for its continuing series on the best movies of the 2000s, Counting Down the Zeroes, on 5/17/09.

Happy Valentine's Day From Sailor and Lula

In answer to Glenn Kenny's Facebook query, "...what's your favorite V-Day image?" after posting his own right here.

DVD Review: Lost Highway - David Lynch's Disturbing Film Finally Makes It to DVD

by Tony Dayoub


Lost Highway, one of my favorite David Lynch films, has just been released on DVD for the first time since its theatrical release 11 years ago. It was the last of his films that was left to be released on DVD. This effort is one of his weirder ones, but I love it because of how revelatory it is of Lynch, the artist.