David Lynch (1946-2025)

[flyonthewall2983]

As brilliant and terrifying as Lost Highway is, I find some of his musical choices there questionable (though not the use of Lou Reed's cover of "This Magic Moment" which is wonderful).

The Smashing Pumpkins song particularly makes it feel like its out of another movie. Marilyn Manson can fuck straight off (never liked him time proved me and a bunch of Midwestern Karens right), how he ever got in that sphere of talent is maybe the most 90’s thing about the whole movie.

David found an interesting colleague in Trent Reznor, whose work would feel indebted to his movies even if they had never met or indeed if Reznor kept his influences to himself a bit more. Nobody could do what Angelo had done but I believe if he was making something now he could get something just as authentic from Reznor/Ross.

[Finch]

I am so glad I'm not the only one who can't stand about half of the Lost Highway soundtrack. I don't mind Smashing Pumpkins but Rammstein in particular and the Manson stuff is like fingernails on a chalkboard and only adds to the movie feeling very abrasive (WAH is shrill, LH feels mean-spirited) to me. In a way, I find this and Wild at Heart more disappointing than Dune because he had full creative control and final cut on those two.

[Finch]

Frederick Elmes tribute

[beamish14]

Frederick Elmes tribute

Surprised he doesn’t mention doing second unit work on Dune.

I’ve always wondered what was his vs. Herbert Cardwell‘s on Eraserhead

[Fred Holywell]

David Lynch 1946 - 2025 | TCM Remembers

[hearthesilence]

Henry Rollins discussing what it was like to be on set for David Lynch's Lost Highway, and it sounds like it's the most awesome gig anyone could have.

One footnote about the part where Rollins discusses Lynch blasting music on set as they were filming to get the actors (like Rollins) in the right mindset for the scene. (This is after Rollins discovered that Lynch blasted music in between set-ups for what seemed to be his own enjoyment.) It is indeed a brilliant move, one that would physically shape how actors felt and looked and behaved, and Rollins wonders where he got the idea, but as I posted in a John Ford thread, Ford used the same trick himself per John Wayne in Peter Bogdanovich's Directed by John Ford. And who should Lynch play in his final public role yada yada yada...

[colinr0380]

I love the soundtrack to Lost Highway which is clashing and abrasive in a way that a film about toxic masculinity should be, with its (first) main character someone who sublimates his guilt for his own actions onto convenient figureheads of evil (such as Manson's pop star figure) that he can 'save' women from as the hero figure! From the wild jazz to the Rammstein; from Manson to Bowie; from Reznor to Badalamenti; its all contrasting and clashing together to build a portrait of someone who has committed the most heinous crime but still wants to be the hero of their story, and to be loved. Someone who just loved too much, to a deadly extent. It is interesting that this comes after the principle focus on the victim's experience in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, and what makes Lost Highway such a powerful masculine 'yin' film to Mulholland Drive's very similarly themed but even more romantically tragic and moving feminine 'yang'.

Plus, I have a suspicion that Lost Highway's soundtrack highly influenced Chris Morris' darkly comic-horrific Blue Jam radio show and subsequent Jam series. One particular cue in the party scene of Lost Highway gets blatantly used in Jam's sketch that particularly deals with violence against women and a man having two 'different' personas (NSFW).

[The Curious Sofa]

Although most of it is not the kind of music I listen to at home, I also think the abrasive rock tracks fit Lost Highway perfectly. Until Blackstar came out, I'm Deranged was my favourite post-70s Bowie song. Lost Highway is the Lynch film I still think is underrated, when it came out it felt like a major step forward to me (Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, and the original Twin Peaks series and film all are of a piece), the first in a trilogy of films about fugue states and shifting identities and probably my favourite of the three.

[Robin Davies]

Lost Highway is the Lynch film I still think is underrated, when it came out it felt like a major step forward to me.

Me too. It blew me away when it came out, and seemed to be his most consistently satisfying film since Eraserhead. Astonishingly, he then got even better with Mulholland Drive and Twin Peaks: The Return. A truly amazing talent. Nobody left alive even comes close.

[colinr0380]

Inland Empire for me is Lynch's love letter to the importance of actors and how multi-faceted they can be. About how they can inhabit and embody all kinds of roles from depressed house frau to streetwalking, tough talking hooker and everything in between depending on what the world requires of them at a particular time. Maybe with the actor themselves being confused and upset about where they are or what they are supposed to be doing in the process. I also find it quite touching that it may also be his way of trying to move away from the "Director" manipulating their subjects to produce a standard commercial 'narrative', or adaptation, and towards the new collaborative world of the audience taking more of a role in the media they are interacting with. Of people in bedrooms (such as the Polish woman) with only the flickering light of the TV for company who need the escape of fiction and to have their worlds seen and acknowledged through the abstraction of fiction rather than in directly blunt and cruel, with real-world consequences, reality. And most importantly to let someone know that they are not alone in the world. That moment of Laura Dern and the Polish woman meeting in the hotel room is the beautiful heart of that film, or at least the equivalent of Laura Palmer meeting her Angel.

[Finch]

Appreciate the replies re Lost Highway. I guess I just prefer the empathy and compassion shown in FWWM. I like the thought of toxic masculinity (see also Bobby Peru in Wild at Heart) as a way of looking at Lost Highway but ultimately I just find it and WAH way too blunt and unpleasant to lose myself completely in them the way I do with FWWM, MD and Eraserhead. I want to revisit The Elephant Man, a film I've always more admired than loved and not seen in a long time.

[dadaistnun]

Lovely piece in the NYT by Kyle Maclachlan.

[colinr0380]

I do agree with you about Wild At Heart, Finch. That's the one Lynch film that feels the most flippant, and by that measure feels like it becomes the most violent and cruel of all of his films because the sweetness tips over the edge from being naive and earnest with an edge of sarcasm but also with a core of truth into feeling more cynical and calculated - an artificial 'uber-cool' posture than something deeply felt. Maybe the best and worst thing that happened was it getting over elevated into the mainstream by its Palme D'Or, because that made it into a problematic touchpoint for new audiences (I'd never recommend Wild At Heart as a first Lynch film! I may even recommend Inland Empire first! And I love that Laura Dern worked with Lynch again in the 'later era' of his films) but also into the end point of that kind of era in Lynch's filmmaking before he could turn into the next Tarantino.

But I think it sheds interesting light on the rest of the filmography as an important transitional film from Blue Velvet towards the later films. Similar to but pushed to an even greater extreme than in Blue Velvet there is a complete split in Wild At Heart between the 'baddies' and the 'goodies' and never the twain will meet, despite our main characters being 'tempted' by the dark side of life. The bad guys are utterly destroyed (often in humilitating ways that undermines their posturing), whilst the good characters get rewarded with the unsullied, naive fantasy worlds that they were always yearning for. That then develops in Twin Peaks, its prequel film and the subsequent films into exploring both the victims and their abusers much more deeply and in a manner that feels much more as if there is a symbiosis between the two, and an empathy for all involved.

[pistolwink]

Some of the mook rock in Lost Highway should be embarrassing, and it certainly isn't stuff I'd listen to on my own, but it works completely within the film.

It's easy to forget now, but there was a sizable Lynch backlash in the early-mid 1990s owing to his overexposure ca. Wild at Heart, Twin Peaks (which was hyped up enormously) and the prequel film, plus a whole host of public appearances, music, etc. etc. A lot of people were tired of what they saw as Lynch's shtick and Lost Highway didn't stray far enough from it to wake too many up. Mulholland Dr. wasn't just a masterpiece but a real critical comeback for him, even though it actually was the last big theatrical release he would have (something that kind of shocks me to think about).

[hearthesilence]

This is true. It didn't help that Siskel & Ebert was lording over film criticism for mass audiences, especially in Chicago, because they pretty much trashed everything he did in the '90s until the atypical feel-good (though tbf a genuinely good film) The Straight Story, and even then lead actor Richard Farnsworth may have gotten most of the credit. But that was the early impression I got in the '90s, a guy who made a fluke TV phenomenon that fizzled out after one season who then churned out films that the general public seemed to dismiss or ignore. He did not have the aura of being one of the greatest filmmakers in cinema. Had he stopped making films in 1999, it's almost certain the mainstream press wouldn't have given his death very much coverage even though Eraserhead and Blue Velvet alone should have secured him a place in the pantheon.

I'm actually not a big fan of the three films that came out after Twin Peaks landed, they all have substantial flaws IMHO, but they're not bad films at all. Wild at Heart has a great cast that delivers (especially Cage), Fire Walk with Me has a great, underrated performance by Sheryl Lee that rises up to the challenge of making Laura Palmer a full-blooded character, and Lost Highway sets the stage for his later masterpieces.

[The Curious Sofa]

The Elephant Man and Twin Peaks S1 were the only projects critically embraced at the time. As an outlier, The Straight Story was received warmly but it wasn't until Mulholland Drive that critical opinion caught up with Lynch's sensibilities. Everything else till then was either hugely divisive (Eraserhead, Blue Velvet) or largely met with hostility (pretty much the rest). I suppose that is the case with idiosyncratic talents ahead of their time, only Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove and the job-for-hire Spartacus found widespread contemporary critical approval.

I was a Lynch fan from Eraserhead onwards but there are a few films it took me a while to come around to (Dune, Wild at Heart, Fire Walk with Me) and I'm still waiting for the penny to drop on The Straight Story and Inland Empire. This may (or may not) happen soon as I'm now working my way through all of Lynch's films and I'm planning to re-watch all or at least everything Lynch directed on Twin Peaks.

I started last night with Eraserhead, which I have watched numerous times after its release, but had not seen for at least two decades. I wondered if it would hold up, or if it would look relatively crude compared to Lynch's later work. I was completely drawn in, Lynch's aesthetic and worldview were fully formed from the start.

[MichaelB]

The Elephant Man and Twin Peaks S1 were the only projects critically embraced at the time.

Blue Velvet might want to have a word with you there.

[The Curious Sofa]

The Elephant Man and Twin Peaks S1 were the only projects critically embraced at the time.

Blue Velvet might want to have a word with you there.

Despite Oscar nominations, Blue Velvet was one of the most polarising films released in my lifetime, it was accused of misogyny and of course, the most influential film critic at the time loathed it and he was not alone. It stirred up debate like no other film at the time. How is that not "divisive"?

[Finch]

Test screenings for BV yielded some of the worst feedback ever at the time. Peter Greenaway and Woody Allen highly spoke of the film when it came out but yes curious sofa is right, BV didn't have a smooth reception either if still better than everything in between Peaks season one and The Straight Story. The Palme D'Or for Wild at Heart was absolutely a mixed blessing. People were ready to give him a kicking and it didn't help that FWWM sharply diverged from what most were wanting from a Twin Peaks feature then, even accounting for the fatigue with the show itself.

[MichaelB]

It got plenty of rave reviews as well - and "best film of the decade" raves at that.

[The Curious Sofa]

It got plenty of rave reviews as well - and "best film of the decade" raves at that.

I described the reaction as "divisive", along with that to Eraserhead, which doesn't preclude good reviews. Pauline Kael loved it, Roger Ebert hated it. Mark Kermode talked about leaving the cinema halfway through, though unlike Ebert, he later changed his mind. (I've always found that odd for someone obsessed with a film about a 12-year-old girl masturbating with a crucifix).

It caused a lot of heated debate, both in the media and among audiences. I had arguments about it myself, as I was studying film (experimental film and video, at Saint Martins in London) at the time. I had a couple of tutors, both Godardians who taught non-narrative film, who hated Blue Velvet. They saw it as misogynistic and degrading to Rosselini's character, to the actress herself and to women in general. I saw it as "sexuality is complicated" and thought Dorothy's predicament was complex and tragic.

[colinr0380]

This is true. It didn't help that Siskel & Ebert was lording over film criticism for mass audiences, especially in Chicago, because they pretty much trashed everything he did in the '90s until the atypical feel-good (though tbf a genuinely good film) The Straight Story, and even then lead actor Richard Farnsworth may have gotten most of the credit.

Speaking of which, the great "Vanilla Skynet" channel, which has been creating auteurist-themed playlists of all the Siskel & Ebert shows has a video devoted to the Siskel & Ebert reviews of Lynch's films, albeit it appears that Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me never turned up on their show.

[Shanzam]

Sad news, I'm somewhat comforted by the fact i have yet to watch the third season of Twin Peaks.

[Maladroit Aggregator]

Sad news, I'm somewhat comforted by the fact i have yet to watch the third season of Twin Peaks.

It is truly extraordinary, and I say that as someone who can take or leave the first two seasons. He casts an even wider net than usual as far as influences (Tati, Brakhage, etc.) and still makes it all his own. And the last few episodes are real and unexpected emotional gut punches.

[Shanzam]

Sad news, I'm somewhat comforted by the fact i have yet to watch the third season of Twin Peaks.

It is truly extraordinary, and I say that as someone who can take or leave the first two seasons. He casts an even wider net than usual as far as influences (Tati, Brakhage, etc.) and still makes it all his own. And the last few episodes are real and unexpected emotional gut punches.

Twin Peaks was my first encounter with Lynch's work, I watched it sometimes in the beginning of 2010s but still vividly remember the details about the characters, the setting and the soundtrack. And Lynch's music outside of film is great too. Looking forward to season 3.