The David Lynch Thread - Here's the thing with that champ: It's short for champion.

[Patrick Bait-man]

.llef hcnyL divaD

 

[Pets.com Sockpuppet]

Thanks for all the responses, I'm glad season 3 is good. I'll have to pick up the blu ray set sometime this month and start going through it again.

 

[2025 A.D.]

Thanks for all the responses, I'm glad season 3 is good. I'll have to pick up the blu ray set sometime this month and start going through it again.

FYI, to you and anyone else who may not know, the Twin Peaks: From Z to A bluray set is getting a re-release. It's discounted to 55 dollars right now on amazon(and wherever else it's being sold, probably). It's on preorder and coming out in a couple of days. You might wanna grab it.
It's honestly a pretty incredible deal. It includes the original series, FWWM + Missing Pieces, and the new series with tons of special features, including a massive amount of behind the scenes footage that's very much worth seeing if you're a Lynch fan, or if you're someone who's at all into filmmaking, really. This set specifically has a significant amount of new footage on top of all the BTS stuff that's on the regular S3 bluray. Also, two episodes in 4K (the original Pilot, and Part 8 of S3).

 

[a hapless toad]

Thanks for all the responses, I'm glad season 3 is good. I'll have to pick up the blu ray set sometime this month and start going through it again.

Yo I upgraded my sound system to rewatch the 3 blu-ray because Lynch was a sperg in all realms but he really got in to sound as well as visuals. I did not regret it. The audio is an important layer to S3 so watch with the best quality sound available.

FYI, to you and anyone else who may not know, the Twin Peaks: From Z to A bluray set is getting a re-release. It's discounted to 55 dollars right now on amazon(and wherever else it's being sold, probably). It's on preorder and coming out in a couple of days. You might wanna grab it.
It's honestly a pretty incredible deal. It includes the original series, FWWM + Missing Pieces, and the new series with tons of special features, including a massive amount of behind the scenes footage that's very much worth seeing if you're a Lynch fan, or if you're someone who's at all into filmmaking, really. This set specifically has a significant amount of new footage on top of all the BTS stuff that's on the regular S3 bluray. Also, two episodes in 4K (the original Pilot, and Part 8 of S3).

 

[fagnarok]

The other night I saw Lucky, which was directed by an unrelated Lynch, featured David Lynch in a main supporting role, and starred Harry Dean Stanton in (iirc) his final role.

It was maybe my favorite DL performance, possibly surpassing even Gordon Cole, because it was so perfect for the film it was in. Sam Sheppard was originally supposed to play the character, but I can't imagine him in the role.

The movie itself is fairly "Lynchian" in spirit and aesthetics, especially whenever Lucky stares at a red light, but it lacks some of the wacky absurdist stuff from Lynchian storytelling. So it's almost accessible even to normies and people who don't like the overarching aesthetics of David Lynch.

But I'm only saying "almost accessible" because it's about a cantankerous old fart coming to terms with the fact that he isn't really living, but also isn't going to die just yet.

Perfect viewing for anyone who might also be reading this thread right now.

One of the screenwriters even showed up at the theater and gave a charmingly awkward impromptu talk before the screening. It wasn't sold out like all of the other Lynch screenings at that theater have been, so was an absolutely peak viewing experience and well worth dragging arse out of the house for!

 

[Patrick Bait-man]

The other night I saw Lucky

I literally watched it the other night too, are we soulmates?

 

[2025 A.D.]

Yo I upgraded my sound system to rewatch the 3 blu-ray because Lynch was a sperg in all realms but he really got in to sound as well as visuals. I did not regret it. The audio is an important layer to S3 so watch with the best quality sound available.

Yeah, the importance of sound in Lynch's work really can't be overstated. He used to say sound is *at least* 50% of a movie. Granted, not all filmmakers (actually very few) have as much respect for sound design as he did, but it definitely applies to his films. It is an audio-visual medium and he employed both elements to the fullest extent. And S3 is a prime example. If you watch it with sub-par audio, you're missing a lot more than you know. The sound is fantastic.
I mean, he even tells you at the start: Listen.. to.. the sounds..

 

[Bear Powers]

Yeah, the importance of sound in Lynch's work really can't be overstated. He used to say sound is *at least* 50% of a movie. Granted, not all filmmakers (actually very few) have as much respect for sound design as he did, but it definitely applies to his films. It is an audio-visual medium and he employed both elements to the fullest extent. And S3 is a prime example. If you watch it with sub-par audio, you're missing a lot more than you know. The sound is fantastic.
I mean, he even tells you at the start: Listen.. to.. the sounds..

Can't agree with this enough. His work with Alan Splet is fantastic. It's part of the reason why I think Lynch's Dune will always be superior to any others, even if it can be a bit of a mess.

All of it right from the beginning is just glorious to hear. The oscillating hum of the spacing guild ship to the ambient hum/roar in the throne room, the guild translators....I could go on for the whole movie. His work with Splet in non sci-fi such as Blue Velvet is equally amazing. I hate how lazy movies and other media can be with their sound. Canned/unmodified library sounds are like fingernails on a chalkboard for me, I hate it.

 

[2025 A.D.]

Can't agree with this enough. His work with Alan Splet is fantastic. It's part of the reason why I think Lynch's Dune will always be superior to any others, even if it can be a bit of a mess.

All of it right from the beginning is just glorious to hear. The oscillating hum of the spacing guild ship to the ambient hum/roar in the throne room, the guild translators....I could go on for the whole movie. His work with Splet in non sci-fi such as Blue Velvet is equally amazing. I hate how lazy movies and other media can be with their sound. Canned/unmodified library sounds are like fingernails on a chalkboard for me, I hate it.

Agree 100%. Just to add, let's not forget Dean Hurley, he's done great work with Lynch too in the later years.

 

[Commander X]

Of interest to me is this New Yorker article published back when about Mulholland Drive was being developed as a series for ABC, and what went wrong.

David Lynch wanted to make a TV series unlike any other. The network said it was eager to get beyond the formulas of prime-time programming. What could go wrong?

When Lynch was making "Twin Peaks," in 1990, he had mentioned the idea for "Mulholland Drive" over dinner with Krantz at a Hollywood restaurant called Muse; they commemorated the moment by signing a paper placemat. Krantz, who was then a television agent known for having "packaged" "Twin Peaks"--that is, having assembled its creative team-taped the placemat to his refrigerator and kept nagging Lynch about the show.

In the intervening period, however, Lynch developed serious doubts about television. "With all the commercials and its terrible sound and picture," he said recently, "TV is a hair of a joke, really." In the early nineties, after ABC abruptly cancelled a sitcom Lynch co-created, "On the Air," he angrily painted a plywood board with the words "I WILL NEVER WORK IN TELEVISION AGAIN." In recent years, he had made only one film, the poorly received "Lost Highway," and seemed perfectly happy painting, composing music, and puttering in his home woodshop.

Mulholland Drive had the early, enthusiastic support of ABC execs. They were willing to put up lots of money. But then, all of a sudden, the programming powers that be got it into their heads that maybe Lynch was a little too quirky, a little too original. "We want something that stands apart from formulaic network television - wait, not that much!"

ONE day last August, David Lynch drove his 1971 Mercedes to Century City to pitch "Mulholland Drive" to Jamie Tarses, the president--until her resignation last week--of ABC Entertainment, and one of her senior deputies, Steve Tao. The executives were in a receptive mood: "Just the title alone had us really excited," Tao told me. "David Lynch's 'Mulholland Drive'! "Tao and his colleagues were enthusiastic about the prospect of developing a show that would be both a critical and a popular success--that wouldn't be just another knockoff of "Friends." As Tao saw it, "Quite frankly, there is a plethora of sameness on TV. David Lynch's television stands out. A show by him could be one of those large events--like Monica Lewinsky's interview with Barbara Walters--that people gather together to watch. We're trying to create appointment television."

Which is funny to read because the late Jamie Tarses had been made president of ABC (1996-99) because over at NBC she was seen as the rising young exec who had helped bring hits like Friends to TV, and was hired with the hopes she'd do the same for ABC...and she didn't. It was already pretty bad for network television back then (though it's gotten worse since) at a time when there'd been talk just a couple of seasons before that in the 1990s, network TV was entering another Golden Age, of quality TV shows, of "appointment television", network TV series that were so popular people would make time to watch them at their scheduled airtime instead of recording them.

Television is a bastion of tradition. Susanne Daniels, the president of entertainment at the WB, told me, "One reason we bought 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' was that we had been talking about 'Kolchak: The Night Stalker' and how it was scary and funny at the same time, and we wanted to recapture that." Peter Roth, the president of Warner Bros. Television, says he often pages through television nostalgia books and circles shows that could be profitably updated Proudly recalling one of his achievements when he was at Fox, Roth said, "I circled 'Kolchak,' and then had lunch with Chris Carter, and out of that conversation came 'The X-Files.' Every top-ten show has been seen before. The trick is to repackage and contemporize to make a modern hit. 'E.R.' is derived from the likes of 'Medical Center.' 'Ally McBeal' is 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show."'

The urge to recycle can blind executives to the commercial potential of material that is truly new: NBC, CBS, and Fox all turned down "The Sopranos," which became a huge hit on HBO this spring. "The networks' main problem," says Dean Valentine, the president and C.E.O. of the United Paramount Network, "is that under perceived pressure from advertisers they're all chasing the eighteen-to-thirty-four demographic. Way too many shows are 'Friends' clones-urban, affluent, twenty-seven-year-old yuppies who wear black knit shirts and just want to get laid. Most of America doesn't fit that bill, and so they've defaulted to watching cable."

In a rapidly changing marketplace, the old formula of relying on the old formula is increasingly unreliable. The big three networks, which now attract less than fifty per cent of television viewers in prime time, may well be headed toward obsolescence. Steven Bochco, the respected producer who created "Hill Street Blues" and "N.Y.P.D. Blue," says, "I liken the networks to a guy who, as he loses more and more hair, invents a more and more elaborate comb-over in denial: 'We're stemming the tide.' 'No one else can do what we can do.' 'We still reach more people than anyone else.' Yap, yap, yap. In fact, we're getting our brains beaten out."

However, the execs initial enthusiasm began to fade. The show was too slow, the suits told Lynch. What the hell does the thing with the guy by the dumpster mean? And who's the funny looking broad?, they asked.

All in good time, trust me, Lynch said. However...

During the third week in May, all the networks make expensive, theatrical presentations of their prime-time schedules to the advertising community in New York City. ABC's presentation was held on May 18th, before a packed house at the New Amsterdam Theatre, in Times Square--the home of Disney's long-running musical "The Lion King." It began with a peppy dance tribute to ABC's lineup, which featured a giant Rockettes-style kick line. Before long, Jamie Tarses walked out in a pin-striped suit and read confidently from a teleprompter, promising the advertisers that ABC's lineup was already surpassingly strong and stable, and therefore the network would premiere only six new programs. She started to announce the new schedule, and each night's lineup was concluded with a fifteen-second perp walk across the stage by the stars and future stars and soon-to-be-cancelled would-be stars of that night's shows. Then the downtown magician David Blaine rose from beneath the stage in a coffin and did some of his glum card tricks.

At last, Tarses got to the schedule for Thursday, which was where Krantz thought "Mulholland Drive" should go, as counter-programming to the NBC juggernaut of "Friends" and "E.R." Tarses began by making some of the same points that Krantz had made to the network. "NBC is down eighteen per cent on Thursday night," she said, adding that "we're going to go young, we're going to go bold, and we're going to go up." ABC's plan was to please advertisers by lowering the median age of the network's viewers, which currently stands at forty-one--well above the coveted demographic of eighteen to thirty-four. (Fox's median age is thirty-three; the WB's is twenty-six.)

ABC went with Krantz's argument, but not with his show. Instead, its strategy for "going young" on Thursdays was to air a new drama called "Wasteland" at 9 P.M. "Wasteland" was created by Kevin Williamson, the writer responsible for the "Scream" movies and the WB's popular show "Dawson's Creek." At the New Amsterdam Theatre, Tarses rolled a few minutes of tape that showed six twenty-somethings living in New York City, wearing black knit shirts, gliding around to the Smash Mouth song "All Star," and contriving to have sex with one another. In a weak year for new shows, "Wasteland" is distinguished chiefly by its similarity to such other new "Friends" clones as Fox's "Time of Your Life" (five twenty-somethings in New York), the WB's "D.C." (five twenty-somethings in Washington), the WB's "Jack & Jill" (six twenty-somethings in New York), and NBC's "Cold Feet" (three twenty-something couples somewhere or other).

The network had planned to air the two-hour Mulholland Drive pilot later that season, something Lynch was not enthused about. Meanwhile, "Wasteland", which got quite a bit of hype since it was from the creator of "Dawson's Creek" lasted three episodes before it was cancelled and the rest were aired on some branch of Showtime a couple of years later.

 

[BrunoMattei]

The other night I saw Lucky, which was directed by an unrelated Lynch, featured David Lynch in a main supporting role, and starred Harry Dean Stanton in (iirc) his final role.

It was maybe my favorite DL performance, possibly surpassing even Gordon Cole, because it was so perfect for the film it was in. Sam Sheppard was originally supposed to play the character, but I can't imagine him in the role.

The movie itself is fairly "Lynchian" in spirit and aesthetics, especially whenever Lucky stares at a red light, but it lacks some of the wacky absurdist stuff from Lynchian storytelling. So it's almost accessible even to normies and people who don't like the overarching aesthetics of David Lynch.

But I'm only saying "almost accessible" because it's about a cantankerous old fart coming to terms with the fact that he isn't really living, but also isn't going to die just yet.

Perfect viewing for anyone who might also be reading this thread right now.

One of the screenwriters even showed up at the theater and gave a charmingly awkward impromptu talk before the screening. It wasn't sold out like all of the other Lynch screenings at that theater have been, so was an absolutely peak viewing experience and well worth dragging arse out of the house for!

I thought David's best role was on Louie:

 

[Samuel Fuller]

Probably nothing people here didn't already know, but Lynch's The Elephant Man, a true masterpiece of film, is getting a 4K release from Criterion soon.