David Lynch has passed away. What strange words to be typing. We, like many others one suspects, expected him to be around always, and maybe he is…he’s before and after, or perhaps there’s no actual no
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Incredible, incredible opening scene, incredible opening scene. And then like the scene that that's immediately followed by. Brady Corbett's got some opinions.
Let's do David Lynch.
It's a lot there. There's a lot there, and I think great. The Brutalist is like, oh yeah, they used to make movies.
They were about things, and maybe it's an exploration of a thing, and maybe you don't have answers, but let's talk about the thing. Which reminds me, let's talk about David Lynch because the show has started. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm Jett Loe.
I'm Gareth Higgins.
The Conversation never ends. And this is The Film Talk, and it's our conversation about David Lynch, who, as you all know, passed away last week. And Jett, I'll say this.
I saw the news of his death, and I burst in the tears. Yeah. I burst in the tears, and I pondered that.
Yeah, me too. It's only happened for me with one other artist. I've never met David Lynch.
And I think it's because of two things. One is not just the work itself, and by the work, I mean the films and the TV series, but also, you know, the short films and the paintings and the coffee and the weather reports.
But I'd also include the second thing, which I might say the person or the persona that showed up in interviews, because the way that man talked, I don't know if his interviews were an affectation or they were just unfiltered, lich as it were.
You know, he's called Jimmy Stewart from Mars for a reason. There was a kindness and a guilelessness in the way he talked, which is in contrast to the bleakness of some of the elements of the stories that he told.
I can't say that I felt like I knew him, but maybe I did have a little bit of a parasocial relationship with him, and so I felt real sadness when he died.
I can't say that I felt a sense of, oh my goodness, we're not going to get another David Lynch film because I think we were so abundantly provided for by his work.
110 directorial credits, 110.
Yeah, Brett. That's what I felt, and I thought about you because you're one of the people who really helped me care about, and I'm not going to say understand, but appreciate and receive the works that David Lynch. That's my initial reaction.
What about you?
Well, I cried as well.
The only other two filmmakers that I cried about, I sobbed like a baby when I heard that Roger Corman died, we talked about that on the show, and I was on the underground, I was going to work for a very famous, I remember the world's best selling
British novelist, who I worked for for a time, I'm on the underground and across from me, someone opened up the newspaper, The Guardian, and it said Stanley Kubrick died, and that affected me, and Lynch, and I thought about Stanley Kubrick, because I
saw it on his death report in the newspaper, and as soon as I saw that, it reminded me, oh, you got famous, he made his bones with that photo of a newspaper guy, you know, a newspaper kiosk looking mournful with the headline that FDR had died, and do
you know how I found out about how David Lynch died? I live up in the mountains in New Mexico, I'm driving through the mountains, and I knew, I had seen that there was a little radio station in this town called Madrid, which is a funky town in New
Mexico, which is like the nearest town to where I am, like Madrid, funky is an understatement, and I found it on the dials, I made a note, I'll post it, I'm going to tune in to the radio station, just to, you know, it's like 10 watts of pure music
power, what have you. Like funky is like probably a little cinder block building with a little antenna, right? I'm driving to the winding mountains, it was kind of misty New Mexico, 7,000, 8,000 feet up, and it's like a sort of kind of jazzy music
Why did you cry?
Why did I cry?
So there's two things, right? There's the work, and then there's the man, as demonstrated in his videos, the people are on threads, which I'm gotta get off all social media, folks. Don't do it, don't follow us at all.
For God sakes, Jett underscore Loe, the threads. Don't do it. And it's just been filled, the whole timeline has been filled with Lynch.
The algorithm is delivering this. The algorithm is delivering. And the baby's it's birthing.
As all of Lynch's interviews, hundreds, thousands, his sayings, his musings, his pronunciations on things, pronouncements on things. Obviously incredibly influential to people.
His, I think he was so tapped into the unconscious that that made him conscious, utterly conscious. He was utterly conscious and that has had a great effect, very positive effect on people. Hearing about his musings on art.
But his films, look, be very clear, I'm old guy now, right? And for younger listeners and viewers, they may not understand the impact that he had.
In the middle of the 80s, America was under this Reagan fever, conservative fever, kind of born in the USA, misquoting, misusing the Bruce Springsteen song, Top Gun, Raw Raw White Man.
And in the middle of that, in the mid 80s, was a film released called Blue Velvet. And it was like a meteor had hit, a quality meteor, not that terrible Henry Fonda film, with terrible drunken cameo, I'm sure, by Trevor Howard.
But a serious meteor that had said, all this is baloney. There is something else going on here in our deep unconscious national life. And Blue Velvet was a critical and a commercial success, not a huge commercial success, but a critical success.
And then a couple of years later, a few years later, we had Twin Peaks, which utterly changed the culture. It's hard to explain to people. Imagine something as popular as Big Bang Theory, but it's a David Lynch film.
And that was Twin Peaks. It made a huge impact. And David Lynch showed that there is a different kind of culture possible, that you do not have to subscribe or participate in the way they wanted you, a sick culture.
And that's part of, I think, the sadness for Lynch's death, is that he represented a healthiness in what other people might call depraved images, in that exploration of the underside, of the unconscious, was a desire and an achievement of health.
And I think that's why I cry, because one of the great teachers, not that I subscribe to, for instance, Transcendental Meditation or anything, but one of the great teachers, not just one of the great artists, had passed away. Does that make sense?
It does make sense to, and I do, and I appreciate you bringing up this issue about what you might call depraved and that blue velvet in particular, which is white, it literally opens with a white package fence and says, let's face reality here.
I also understand why some people in engaging with his work may be so affected by the darkness in it that they maybe don't get to experience the rest of it, or they make a conscious judgment that the darkness overwhelms.
One star review from Roger Ebert. One star. Ebert was not engaging.
So I respect people who felt that, but it makes sense to me when somebody like Naomi Watts or somebody like Nora Dern or somebody like Isabella Rossellini, who not only acted for David Lynch, but was partnered to him for some time.
I mean, this is a complicated guy and, you know, probably not the easiest person to be partnered to or married to.
But when women who've worked with him talk about him being the best person and running the kindest sets and awakening a sense of awe and wonder in the work.
And then when my couple of dear friends, Sarah Mason and David Dark in Nashville, who helped me see that Twin Peaks is nothing less than the light and shadow of the story of America. And I do mean, I mean America is a myth.
I normally would say the US or the United States, but America, the myth. And within that story is the light, is the light. Twin Peaks at one level is the most romantic vision of the world.
The music is the most romantic and luscious.
Incredibly romantic filmmaker.
I completely hear it when people say it's a film, or it's a TV series lasting over a quarter of a century. That's about violence against women. And I can't second guess women for whom that's the story.
But for me, actually, it's a series that is dedicated to honoring the legacy and the memory of one young woman. The entire thing is about the search for Laura Palmer.
And every character in the show is either trying to honor her memory or running away from it.
And frankly, everybody in the show is trying to honor a better story of what America could be, or running away from the darkness and the bleak underbelly that exists within the American myth.
He did make two films that are more, as it were, explicitly of non-ironically heartfelt. Non-ironically heartfelt.
I don't know if his films were ironic. I know we don't have much time.
Ironic's the wrong word.
Yeah, because I don't think, I think maybe he's misjudged as being ironic. I don't find him ironic at all.
Yes, and maybe you can help me with the word, and I'll just briefly say, of course, the straight story and The Elephant Man are films you can show to children without any qualms, and they awaken the childlike within.
The Elephant Man awakens compassion for marginalized people and for people who have been excluded and rejected. And the straight story awakens a sense of just be a decent person above all else. Just be a decent person.
And I don't think that the person who made those films and infused those films with so much of a sense of himself could be the bleak person that some people hold onto.
I think this was a person who believed in beauty, in joy, in dreams, and he fueled my dreams for a long time. And I'm grateful that I still have, would you say 110 directorial credits? I haven't seen two-thirds of what he's done.
I mean, you could just watch his shorts.
Look at something he made when he was 21, a fictitious Anison commercial. It's like a minute long, made in 1967, starring Jack Fisk. Who's Jack Fisk?
I don't know, have you seen There Will Be Blood? He was the production designer of that and Close the Flower Moon and so much more. You can look at that.
You can watch his Comic-Con message. He had to deliver some videos, you know, a promotive project. I get probably Twin Peaks' return to Comic-Con.
I mean, that, it's great. It's a lot of fun. So, yeah, I don't know who thinks he's bleak because he's such a romantic filmmaker.
Their films are full of such joy and the absolute pleasure, abundant pleasure taken in the idea of transcendence and transcending the bleakness that I can't think of anybody better. I know you got to go.
Well, I got to ask you one-
I'm here to answer all questions.
We can leave it here. Yes. This is the lens when I go back and watch more of his films, or particularly more of his shorts and his TV stuff.
Do you think in that transcendence that he's saying before, do you think there's a god in Lynch's work, like a divine figure, or is he leaning into humans just haven't manifested their foolish yet?
I don't. Yeah. When you say there's a god, that to me implies separateness to a separate figure.
And with Lynch, I get it, is a whole. He was a painter. So you think about a painting, now don't look at a separate element of a painting.
You look at the painting as a whole, that whole being the universe, the whole being existence.
So I don't think of him as somebody that is grappling with the idea of the god, a god, but I see his films delving into the mysteries of existence in total, so there is nothing separate. That person over there is me.
I may not realize it because I'm not conscious. Maybe if I meditate or if I create art, I will realize that person is me and that we are all part of the same thing. That's what comes to mind.
Also watch Mulholland Drive.
Well, watch any of his stuff.
Watch episode 8 of Twin Pigs Return.
Where should you start and go be gentle, be gentle with people who haven't.
Yeah, where do you start? Here's the thing, I saw people who were in the order to watch his films. Watch them in the order that he made them.
Watch the Fictitious Anderson commercial from 67. Watch The Alphabet, which is great. The Grandmother short film.
Then just watch Elephant Man. I'm sorry, watch Eraserhead, then Elephant Man. Dune.
I love me. I'm a huge fan of Dune for a bunch of reasons. We don't have much time.
Watch them in order. He's a fantastic romantic filmmaker. Now, I had to stop Twin Peaks Return episode 8.
For the same reason I stopped reading Ishu Gouraud's The Unconsoled. It's like, it's too good.
I can't.
I can't right now in this state of mind that I'm in. So I'm going to have to go back. I'm going to have to return to Twin Peaks to return to keep on going.
Watch them all when you have the time. He's a deeply romantic, brilliant artist. I think a lot of people are finding out that maybe he was kind of a brilliant human as well.
What are we going to talk about on the next show?
We'll talk about an interesting film. We'll talk about a film that has something to say about things.
We'll talk about a film that appears to have been made in potentially 1966, and that if you go to see it, that is The Brutalist, you might feel like you've been transported back there.
To when movies mattered.
It's a film about which I have a mixed feeling.
Well, it's a rich, heady stew. We will be talking about The Brutalist. Folks, thanks for listening to Gareth and our musings.
I could go on. I got some notes here. We haven't gotten to my notes.
I could go on for an hour, but as you can see, if you're watching the video of this, I'll put the video on the YouTubes. Gareth is in some swanky hotel room, so I think he's leading some retreat of some kind.
We're doing Lynch lighting. We're doing Lynch lighting.
I kind of felt like being in the darkness. And after the show is over, I'm going to step into the light. Folks, thanks for listening.
I've been Jett Loe.
I've been Gareth Higgins. We'll keep talking.
Next time. Thank you, David. Thank you.
You made the world a better place. He did.