The One and Only David Lynch

David Lynch, one of the most creative and original American filmmakers we will ever know, died this week and it prompted numerous conversations between my husband and me about his work. They weren’t profound analyses but more reminiscences of our gleeful shared reactions of awe to the signature style and singular way he told stories in each successive piece of work. For us, the first time seeing a Lynch film was always an exciting, brain-breaking experience, partly because there was no telling where he would go or if you could even fully understand where it was he took you after just one viewing.

Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive were his most lauded and our favorites, but there is also something to be said for Lost Highway (Note: Robert Blake popping up from out of nowhere to haunt you takes on new meaning in the 21^st century), Wild At Heart, The Elephant Man, Eraserhead (Note: His mind-bending first film, which prompted producer Mel Brooks to recruit and fight for him to direct one of Lynch’s most traditional and excellent movies, The Elephant Man) and The Straight Story.

And where do you start with the original Twin Peaks TV series and all of the various incarnations of that world? Can you imagine that this was a weekly show on ABC in 1990? Before the explosion of cable programming, and at a time when the term streaming was basically used to describe a state of consciousness?

We’d dance with you in the Black Lodge anyday

None of my students can, and to this day many of them are huge fans of the show. Though when I try to explain how both its audaciousness and Lynch’s determination to have it remain in a fugue state amid so many unanswered questions that drove network executives completely bonkers, they do usually meet me with a Twin Peaks worthy half-smile.

That is, of course, the real victory. That somehow the idea of this kind of boundary breaking insurgence that so annoys the gatekeepers (Note: Especially when it becomes so provocatively successful) will continue, albeit in a different form.

I wonder what the network had to say about Log Lady

Granted, that’ll take a bit of time. Which is what must’ve prompted my husband to say at the end of our Lynch discussion, “We should just push pause for the next four years.”

Among other things.

Speaking of which, I decided that the first film my thesis screenwriting students would view this semester would be Blue Velvet, the breakout film that cemented Lynch’s visually alluring, darkly comic and disturbingly dramatic approach to creating a narrative you at times wanted to but couldn’t look away from.

On the surface it’s a boy-meets-girl story that starts when a college boy, who is home visiting his sick father, finds a severed ear among the many blades of grass in a field near his house and decides to bring it to a detective that turns out to be father of said perfectly wholesome teenage, blonde, hometown high school girl.

with the great Laura Dern and Kyle MacLachlan

Naturally, they’re both warned time and time again to leave the real crime behind this ear alone, if for nothing else than the sake of their reputations. But like almost every film before it about such people, they can’t. Sure, they may be good, (Note: Perhaps too good) at heart but that’s the real issue. What Lynch posits is that even the good among us are curious about the bad and, on the right day, might even indulge in a bit, or even a lot, of the bad. Especially when we’re teenagers. So these two decide to take it upon to themselves to investigate and what they uncover in their small town is a whole lot of bad that, up until that point, we’ve seldom been shown in such iconoclastic, nightmarish and yet bizarrely believable detail by a mainstream American filmmaker to, at times, such strangely comic effect.

I was privileged to be at one of the first screenings of Blue Velvet in L.A. 38 years ago (Note: Yikes! And… Yikes!!) I took a friend and we knew nothing about it other than it was a mystery.

And yes, those were the days when you actually could know absolutely nothing about a movie by a major filmmaker.

No spoilers at all but for those who don’t know it begins with slow motion shots of a small town where everything is a bit off and almost artificial, as if John Waters and Fritz Lang had a child, named it Lynch (Note: This would be possible under a full moon in a Twin Peaks adjacent world) and decided to give it carte blanche creative control of an opening sequence.

A lawn mower accident in a 1950s town that exists in the 1980s with period-looking people who speak in halting, stilted dialogue out of a B-movie melodrama? It was hilariously bad in a purposeful way but most of the audience didn’t know what to make of it. Yet my friend and I couldn’t stop cracking up and had to stifle chuckles that we were sure Lynch himself would have approved of because of all the dirty looks we were getting from those around us.

But it didn’t matter because as the film unfolded my friend and I quieted down naturally since what we were seeing was like nothing we’d ever seen before, especially at a Hollywood screening, and, by the end, we were not necessarily sure if we wanted to see it again. Themes of rape, drugs, sadism, violence, with smatterings of raw, offensive language no major studio head would willingly give a green light to. Except, well, it was all to a point, in service of something and, let’s face it, a small group of people…somewhere… had to have approved.

Lucky for all of us.

Nothing could be better than entering his strange and wonderful world

By the time the film was over not only did my friend and I want to see it again but, after its release, so would millions more filmgoers. Not to mention, Blue Velvet would also go on to win many major critic awards, land on numerous top 10 best lists and become the cult favorite of the year, eventually winning Lynch (who also wrote the screenplay) his second Academy Award nomination as Best Director.

I watched the movie again last night (Note: My fifth or sixth viewing since its 1986 release) and, once more, I was fascinated, upset, amused and extremely uncomfortable. But sadly I also wasn’t sure if any director in Hollywood could get away with it today. Maybe an indie person somewhere, but would it even gain any sort of mainstream acceptance before being deemed problematic, demeaning, offensive, triggering and cancelled?

I’m not sure.

What I do know is that its incorrectness was used to shine a light on the disturbing, the ugly, the tawdry, the overlooked and the self-righteousness of unexamined societal goodness. A David Lynch-told story, to me, always served as a bit of a disinfectant. As if to say, no one and nothing is THIS TRULY GOOD, and yes, the world can be quite that BAD. But none of it will go away if we bury it. We need to confront it – them – the baddies – out in the open and risk our reputations in order to come out the other side with insight. At least that will give us enough familiarity with the bad to recognize it and perhaps prevent it from happening if we ever see it again.

My words, not his.

What I love most about Lynch’s work is that he asks you to give yourself permission to go through the darkness and not be repelled by it. To tolerate the quixotic because, like life, not everything gets instantly answered or is made apparent for you. It needs to be absorbed, over time and through various moods, endured until the totality of it slides open a window of understanding that finally allows you to say, Oh, I get it. Now, I get it.. I finally get it.

This is why I just decided I’m showing Blue Velvet to not one, but two, classes this semester and why I will probably get crap about it from someone. It may not be p.c. on the surface but it’s the most p.c. journey you will take overall. It doesn’t hide what it is but, at the end of the day, is an advocate for good, in all of its tawdriness. Meaning actual, real life good – not some technicolor movie version of it.

Would that our 2025 world could be that way. Well, it can be. Lynch gave us a sort of existential playbook of self-discovery that we can watch over and over and over again to guide us. Though the end of time. As opposed to the end times.

Isabella Rossellini – “Blue Velvet”

01.12.25

by notesfromachair

City on Fire

January 11, 2025

Greetings from fiery Los Angeles.

I am one of many thousands of people who had to evacuate their home with little notice and in mere minutes. To say it was shocking surreal, horrendous and many other adjectives I can’t think of at the moment, and probably wouldn’t do it justice at all, does not tell even a fraction of the story.

But I am also one of the lucky ones who survived, and whose home and immediate neighborhood stands pretty much untouched in comparison to what’s left of the Mad Max terrain in the former gorgeous towns of Pacific Palisades, Malibu, Altadena and others.

Thanks to the L.A. Fire Department, the response of local officials and the fact that the winds had died down enough for it to be tackled by air, the massive flames in the hills of Hollywood, aka the Sunset Fire, were contained relatively quickly. Though if you lost your home, or someone close to you, this doesn’t mean very much at all.

Over four decades, I have grown to love Los Angeles as much as my hometown of New York City and that’s really saying something. I can’t really tell you exactly why other than to say L.A. is part of California and that people have been coming to California for years for the freedom to be who they are and live the way they choose. It’s a mirage of sorts but not fully. There is something about the vastness of the state and what has become its melting pot of a population during the many years I’ve been here that has more and more made that mirage a bit more real. I mean, you might not get what you want but you have a ton of space to do it in and a vast number of tribes you can sample if you’re looking for a place where you can truly belong.

Also, if you don’t like it you can always leave. Literally no one will judge you for it. Out here most of us eventually learn that it’s up to an individual to make themselves happy. California won’t do it and especially L.A. won’t make it happen for you. You have to figure out how to make it happen.

This is one of the many reasons these L.A. fires have been so devastating for me. Watching it happen is like watching the beauty of all those dreams and all that stunning space get fried to a crisp in real time right before your eyes. Everything is ephemeral but the breadth and randomness of such mass destruction feels unusually, and most particularly, cruel.

Which does not mean we don’t feel that and more for all kinds of cruel destruction. No one has the market cornered on those type of regrettable feelings. In fact, maybe if there were more recognition of the latter, the world wouldn’t feel like the hateful place it all too often does these days.

Still, watching firefighters from neighboring states and countries flying in to help the people of L.A. has been quite something. Not to mention how quickly the American Red Cross, World Central Kitchen and dozens of other organizations and volunteers have opened outlets, service areas and phone lines to help us begin to cope and, eventually, recover.

But here is what is NOT helpful. Playing the Blame Game.

I get the country is divided and L.A. is an easy and often willing target (Note: Yes, we’re in on the joke. Duh). But you’d think an estimated $50 billion in damages from the largest city in a state that sends more money than any other to the federal government, would be enough to satiate the naysayers at this point.

Because I don’t trust myself to 1. Explain this properly and 2. Not go on a tangential, unhelpful and hysterical tirade in this sensitive moment, I want to instead share a very wise social media post from my friend Michael Colleary. This weekend he very smartly and very succinctly explained what happened in L.A. in an effort to offer some truth and reality to friends, family and acquaintances from out of state who have been hearing and reading all kinds of things. It goes as follows:

Dear FB Friends – I have received many messages and emails particularly from friends and family on the East Coast, asking after our safety. A million thanks for your care and concern. I would like to answer a few questions I have been asked repeatedly, particularly about fire hydrants and firefighting crews and LA’s overall response to the fires.

Let me try to provide a little perspective for those of you back East …

The Palisades fire began as a wilderness brush fire at 10:30AM on January 7th.

Driven by 80 MPH winds – hurricane-fast winds – within 24 hours it had burned 12,000 acres and hundreds of structures.

Any chance of LA fire crews – the best trained and most experienced in the world – containing it, let alone extinguishing it, drop to zero because air tankers and water-hauling helicopters can’t fly in 80mph winds.

So, to recap: 24 hours, 12,000 acres burned.

For my New York friends: Central Park is 850 acres. So, imagine a firestorm that incinerates 14 Central Parks in 24 hours. Or more to the point perhaps, imagine a firestorm that blows through Central Park, incinerating every blade of grass FOURTEEN TIMES in 24 hours.

For my NJ friends: our hometown of Montclair gets off a little better. At 4,000 acres, it would have been reduced to ash only THREE times in 24 hours. Imagine every single resident of Montclair becoming homeless on one night. Imagine the violent energy required for that to happen. Because it did, 3 times over.

And Palisades is only one of the massive fires burning here. The Eaton fire has burned 14,000 acres on the eastern edge of LA.

And it’s still going. As of this minute, the Palisades fire is closing in on 40,000 acres. That’s bigger than San Francisco (thankfully most of it is – for the moment – in remote canyons teeming with scrub foliage; yes, LA is that huge).

As shocking and overwhelming and devastating as this has been for so many thousands and thousands of people – my sister and brother-in-law lost their home; his niece and nephew both lost homes in separate fire areas – it is excruciating to hear these endless lies and blaming and gibberish about how DEI and budget cuts somehow caused or contributed to this absolute apocalyptic disaster.

No city, no county, no state, no country on the planet would or could be prepared and equipped to confront what’s happened here.

Because what has happened here is much closer to a volcanic eruption than a “brush fire.”

Our neighborhood is now within sight of the Palisades fire which overnight spread to Brentwood. Shan is packing her clothes. I have to go inside now and get my mother – already evacuated once with just the clothes on her back – up and ready to go should we be ordered to leave.

Friends, I know there’s not much you can do from far away – aside from donate to the Red Cross, etc.

But I humbly ask that – if you hear someone spreading the all-too prevalent lies being spewed for political score-settling – tell that person – from me – to STFU. Because they have no idea what’s really happening here.