in every sense of the word. it’s almost a pervy excitement, as well as the regular kind. i think he knows that people have this sort of reaction to his movies, and if i were to say anything definitive about david lynch that would likely be it. beyond that i am uncomfortable with the very idea of dissecting anything he does or says, because it’s like cutting up the frog in biology class so you can see how it works. that may do for frogs, but it doesn’t do for art. you either like it or you don’t, and there’s really no in between, and you can laugh at people because you think their taste is shit (and it probably is) but that knowledge of ‘this is crap’ or ‘this is great’ isn’t entirely useful for anything else, unless you count getting flushed with excitement and pleasure at seeing something so wonderful appearing before your eyes that you could be living inside a dream as being useful, which i do.
this also relates to a very long winded essay i am continually writing about high and low forms of art and culture and how they are essentially equally important, with nothing to separate the high from the low, and this also ties into david lynch, but that’s a matter for another essay, because this one is about tender and perverse imagery. (i stole that ‘tender and perverse’ bit from a jess franco movie and if you caught the reference good for you, you win at movies. seriously. if not, you lose. seriously.)
and now i’m all off the plot. so.
some of my most favorite images in films come from david lynch movies. i’m making a list of all of them now, and all of them cause this perverse excitement. so here we go; but i know i’m forgetting tons of stuff. to do it properly i should be sitting here watching all the films, but i want to get this out there.
the lady in the radiator singing to henry that in heaven, everything is fine
henry poking the baby to death and its subsequent screaming
frank booth wanting everything to be dark
dorothy vallens’ obvious pleasure at being slapped the very first time we see frank
ben singing in dreams
sherilyn fenn stumbling along a desert road with half her brains spilling out of her head looking for her lipstick
bobby peru and lula in the hotel room
everything about fire walk with me. i can’t stress this enough. it is probably my favorite film by lynch, i never saw twin peaks and don’t care about it in the slightest, the movie makes perfect and beautiful sense to me and it hits every button i have wonderfully. everything laura does is enchanting and horrifying. for that matter nearly everything that everyone does in the film is enchanting and horrifying. besides it being my favorite lynch film, it is possibly my favorite film ever made—which is saying a lot, and if you don’t like this film then you definitely fall into the aforementioned group of people who are being laughed at because you have shitty taste in life and fail it forever.
the curtains in fred and renee’s place
fred meeting the mystery man at the party—“you invited me. it is not my custom to go where i am not wanted.”
alice’s highly enforced striptease
the final ‘dick laurent is dead’
the car accident on mulholland dr.
the nightmare become reality behind the diner
mr. roque
betty’s audition
discovering the dead body at diane’s apartment (which incidentally is right around the corner from my house and i should get on the waiting list for that place good fucking christ)
no hay banda, and the entire performance at club silencio and the shaking and crying of betty and rita
the end—i don’t mean like a title card, but the end
inland empire is its own beast; it has so many amazing things going on that it, like fire walk with me, is difficult to pick apart. it tells the story of itself endlessly. how can i describe this film any other way? it tells the story of itself endlessly.
‘what do whores do?’ ‘they fuck.’
the girl crying in the room
rabbits
the old woman who comes marching over to nikki grace’s place to tell her and the audience the story of the movie she/we are in, both literally and figuratively
brutal fucking murder and this, which i had to get the dvd to quote properly: ‘i can’t seem to remember if it’s today, two days from now, or yesterday. i suppose if it was 9:45, i’d think it was after midnight. for instance if today was tomorrow, you wouldn’t even remember that you owed on an unpaid bill. actions do have consequences. and yet, there is the magic.’ there aren’t words to describe how i feel about this tiny bit of dialogue.
kingsley tells the story about the cursed film, which is the story of…
the runner inside the soundstage
nikki grace’s increasing confusion
her run down a dimly lit pathway into full frame
the dingy apartment filled with the slutty girls doing the locomotion
‘fucker’s been sowing some pretty heavy shit’
‘you on high now, love’
the very long story from the japanese girl at the end when nikki/sue is dying on the street about taking the bus to pomona to a blond friend who has troubles with her female parts and is also sort of the story of what’s happening right next to said japanese girl
nikki in the theater
nikki shooting the very frightening person with the very frightening face which is also nikki’s face
everyone dancing at the end (including the girl from pomona) to nina simone and just laughing and giggling
that’s all i can think of right now. did you enjoy this? doesn’t matter either way, really.
