The Atlantic's web video content is branching out past things directly related to articles in the print magazine to include, for example, David Lynch talking about where his ideas come from:
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David Lynch on Creativity
14 Jun 2008 03:59 pm
Comments (18)
The most frightening phrase ever posted on the Internet:
"David Lynch talking about where his ideas come from"
Others might not agree, I found that thoroughly enjoyable.
It always seems to me that the most obvious place where his ideas would be a dream diary - his movies, the weird ones anyway, seem just like dreams to me - but he never mentions that, and this is no exception, so I guess not.
Anyway, my favorite Lynch quote (as best I remember): "What kind of country is this where human scum can run across my lawn and I go to jail if I shoot them?"
I'm not necessarily a David Lynch hater, but I think that entire take on the creative process was utterly ridiculous. It sounded nice, but it made no sense and seemed like something a 5-year-old would say.
I enjoyed this, and I disagree with Brett. Other than the transcendental meditation, which I don't understand, this was clear to me and not an attempt to be cute or obfuscate.
It is interesting that artists and common folk can't really direct creativity. One has to set up a situation and let it happen. One thing I've seen repeatedly in my own experience, is that I will be working on a problem. I'll then put it consciously aside and do something else, like go to my car to drive home. Suddenly, what appears to be a solution will pop into my head. What seems to be happening is that a non-conscious part of my mind continues working on the problem even when my conscious mind is off doing something else. I suspect this is close to what Lynch is talking about.
I also liked the part about Van Gogh.
How do I get access to the financiers of The Emperor Who Has No Clothes?
"David Lynch talking about where his ideas come from"
Easy. His ideas squirm like syphilitic hagfish from the purulent yet life-giving vagina of his mind.
At least, that's what Eraserhead would lead one to believe.
By the by, that Lynch quote I gave above was not one of his characters. It was him, in an interview.
There's a really interesting youtube on the making of Eraserhead, but I don't feel like looking for it.
Is this the video you were referring to, godoggo?
I love David Lynch's movies and I find it very fascinating to hear him talk about his movies and his ideas.
He ruined "Dune" and "Blue Velvet" was the only movie I ever walked out on.
I really don't care where he gets his ideas from, because wherever it is, it sucks.
What he is saying in this interview does agree with my own experience about how ideas come forward, but he doesn't talk about the roles of craft, discipline, work and tradition which seem to be necessary to the impulse and actualization.
-He's certainly had his misfires but compared to the vast wasteland of safe formulaic crap--sequels of sequels of sequels, rehashes of 60s sitcoms etc etc ad infinitum--that is most filmmaking, I admire the guy. I guess I fell pretty hard for his stuff when I first saw Eraserhead back in the midnight movie days, the dark ages before home video where you really had to seek this kind of thing out in small art-house theaters like the old Orson Welles in Cambridge or the weird little hole-in-the-wall Provincetown Theater down the alley and up the stairs off Commercial Street. Maybe my first experience of his films had been the silly TV show or the botch he made (so CLOSE to being fantastic) of Dune I'd be a lot less sympathetic toward his failures. By the way, very few have seen the brief sitcom he created called On Air, the first episode of which is bar none the most screamingly funny thing I've ever seen on television (and I include such epics as The Germans episode of Fawlty Towers and Dan Ackroyd doing Julia Child with a cut finger on SNL). Later episodes not so much, but that first one is worth hunting down.
-For me the clip raises a side issue, relating to the vast sludgeland of mainstream movie making, though: why has the last ten years or so of Nick Cage's career descended into such massive unrelenting suckage? I loved him in his earlier stuff like Wild at Heart and Raising Arizona. But recently... ugggh. What a waste.
Lynch didn't "ruin" Dune. The book is pretty silly crap to begin with. Lynch gave it a fantastic style.
A movie you walked out of isn't as informative as knowing the movies you've sat through.
Lynch didn't "ruin" Dune. The book is pretty silly crap to begin with. Lynch gave it a fantastic style.
Not to get into a long thing about this, but... When I first learned Lynch was going to make the movie I thought the marriage of his dark, baroque and idiosyncratic style with this intensely imagined and--yes, in its excesses, rather silly--future world would produce something that would potentially transcend the limitations of the novel. I think he failed--the Lynchian stylistics exaggerating the silliness rather than transmuting it. I think the problem was that Lynch really just didn't "get" the novel, the key thing that Herbert was obsessed about in Dune and a lot of his other writing. The whole concept was that you had a revolutionary movement that overthrows an occupying imperial power through the highly advanced human skills developed by living within--and exhaustively understanding--a harsh yet beautiful ecosystem.
For all its overwrought--not to say pretentious-- "philosophical" trappings, it's that idea that gives the story any claim to a deeper resonance. Without it, all the rest is just space-opera grandiosity. But Lynch just totally drops that dimension out of the story, substituting a gadgety weapon thingy to explain the triumph of the insurrection. It's a horrible mistake that pretty much eviscerates the point of the story. The WHY of why the bad guys are evil, and the WHY of why the good guys are good is really pretty interesting, but it's been almost completely eliminated from the movie. Instead of grabbing hold of that kernel of originality and marrying it to his own idiosyncratic visual sensibility, producing something wonderful and strange, Lynch ends up delivering just another silly space opera, Star Wars but with a weirder look and feel. Such a shame.
I agree with DrBB. Lynch totally didn't get "Dune", even though Herbert said he didn't mind it. And the casting - and most of the acting - was pretty terrible. Kyle MacLachlan, particular, is probably one of the worst actors in Hollywood - even Keanu Reeves is better - and he's in most Lynch endeavors, which tells you all you need to know about Lynch.
The "Dune" story was the first of a series - and the later novels especially the last two or three before Brian took over were the best of the lot. The concepts began to center on human development rather than the environment, which was good for me because I was mostly bored with the whole "environment" thing being the central concept. Not to mention that the whole thing fit into my Transhuman thing - although Herbert's universe mostly eschewed applying technology to human development, preferring to rely on genetics. Still, there was plenty of human enhancing technology around. The Tleilaxu were an interesting group.
Overrated: The David Lynch film catalog
Underrated: The Angriest Dog in the World
Comments closed June 28, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
The Elephant Man and The Straight Story are two of the sweetest-natured movies ever made. And yet he's known for his weird stuff.
Posted by Jeffrey Davis | June 14, 2008 4:08 PM