In honor of the East Coast release of INLAND EMPIRE (at Manhattan's IFC Center), today's links consist entirely of some essential online writings about and sites dedicated to the film's writer/director, David Lynch. Check back later today for our own take on Lynch's latest.
1. "David Lynch Keeps His Head": Author David Foster Wallace's Premiere Magazine profile, written around the time of Lost Highway (1997).
["An Academic Definition of Lynchian might be that the term "refers to a particular kind of irony where the very macabre and the very mundane combine in such a way as to reveal the former's perpetual containment within the latter." But like postmodern or pornographic, Lynchian is one of those Porter Stewart-type words that's ultimately definable only ostensively – i.e., we know it when we see it. Ted Bundy wasn't particularly Lynchian, but good old Jeffrey Dahmer, with his victims' various anatomies neatly separated and stored in his fridge alongside his chocolate milk and Shedd Spread, was thoroughgoingly Lynchian. A recent homicide in Boston, in which the deacon of a South Shore church reportedly gave chase to a vehicle that had cut him off, forced the car off the road, and shot the driver with a highpowered crossbow, was borderline Lynchian. A Rotary luncheon where everybody's got a comb-over and a polyester sport coat and is eating bland Rotarian chicken and exchanging Republican platitudes with heartfelt sincerity and yet all are either amputees or neurologically damaged or both would be more Lynchian than not. A hideously bloody street fight over an insult would be a Lynchian street fight if and only if the insultee punctuates every kick and blow with an injunction not to say fucking anything if you can't say something fucking nice."]
2. "David Lynch": Jared Rapfogel writes about the director's body of work for Senses of Cinema.
["To my eyes, there's a kind of gulf between Lynch's pre- and post-Twin Peaks films, a precise moment in his oeuvre where a transformation occurs, which can be pinpointed almost to the second. I've always fancied it as Lynch's response to success, to his realization that the products of his imagination were being embraced by the public at large. That may be too convenient since the change begins with Wild at Heart, which Lynch filmed before Twin Peaks hit the air and made him a media darling. Still, what I perceive is a point at which Lynch's style becomes self-conscious and reflexive, when Lynch starts striving to be “Lynchian.” There's no question of his betraying his own sensibility, of forcing himself into the conventional Hollywood mold. It's a more forgivable, but still insidious matter of forcing himself into a self-created mold, of pandering not to the general audience but to his own admirers."]
3. "David Lynch Foundation For Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace": Lynch's own website dedicated to the study and practice of Transcendental Meditation.
["Someday, hopefully very soon, “diving within” as a preparation for learning and as a tool for developing the creative potential of the mind will be a standard part of every school’s curriculum. The stresses of today’s world are taking an enormous toll on our children right now. There are hundreds of schools, with thousands of students, who are eager to relieve this stress and bring out the full potential of every student by providing this Consciousness-Based education today."]
4. "Desire Under the Douglas Firs": Lynch scholar Martha P. Nochimson on Lynch's Twin Peaks.
["There is a kind of readiness that is standard in the Television Mystery Tradition (TMT). The basic model for the TMT is not the erotically stunned investigator but ever-ready Sherlock Holmes. Like Holmes, the standard television detective is not seduced into his narratives; he enters them with a passion to dispel any illegibility represented by any body of crime which is not a disruption in his life but rather its raison d'etre. For the Holmesian television detective, lack of clarity is the desirable aspect of mystery, an intellectually aphrodisiac opportunity for orgasmic restoration of clarity. If this seems a contradiction in terms, let doubters observe the quivering of Jeremy Brett as Holmes contemplates a jumble of clues. But again the fit is incomplete. Cooper is Holmesian only in his predisposition for mystery; he is far too sensually stimulated by Douglas firs, among other Twin Peaks delights, to qualify as a man of cerebral lust."]
5. "Lumière et compagnie": Lynch's 55-second short film made with an original Lumière Bros. camera.
["Premonitions following an evil deed."]
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"Links for the Day": Each morning, the House editors post a series of weblinks that we think will spark discussion. Comments encouraged.
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
L(ynch)ks for the Day (December 6th, 2006)
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3 comments:
I think it's a serious limitation of Rapfogel's piece that he writes "there's a kind of gulf between Lynch's pre- and post-Twin Peaks films, a precise moment in his oeuvre where a transformation occurs, which can be pinpointed almost to the second" and then never pinpoints the precise moment.
Glad I'm not the only one who noticed that -- I was starting to think my reading comprehension had gone to pot....
I've read DFW's piece on Lynch many times, and, sorta like a Lynch film, I remember something different about it each time. He captures Lynch's essential weirdness well, and fairly, I think, but also does a good job of championing Lynch's central importance to contemporary oddball American cinema. I know a lotta critics (including my good friend and reviewing sparring partner Ben Livant) find Lynch inscrutable at best, decadent at worst, but I remain a believer. For good and for bad, he casts a long shadow, old Dave does.
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