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i feel like the quality of any writing can be measured by how easily it slots into the second part of "this shit ain't nothin' to me, man"

This thread makes me grin wide :D I enjoyed reading through your commentary agafnd.

I love the Twin Peaks series. It has such a quirky charm with endearing characters!

While I adore Twin Peaks, I'll always be a hopeless romantic for the subversive story telling, surrealist cinematography and dreamlike boundaries that he pushed in some of his other works.

"Lost Highway" and "Inland Empire" made the most impact on me. While those may may seem impenetrable on first (or second, third and fourth) viewings, they speak to me in ways I can't express.

i'm always happy when i can witness people consuming twin peaks for the first time.

i understand why people don't like the return, but i think it might be the best television series of all time and i could watch it every year. (though i haven't, actually. i've only watched it through three times since it aired.)

of david lynch's filmography i've actually been drawn towards lost highway and twin peaks: fire walk with me the most, recently. on first viewing, i didn't really feel anything about either of them, but having seen all of lynch's films at least once now, and understanding the kinds of things he was preoccupied by throughout his career, they're both beautifully unsettling. fire walk with me, especially paired now with the return makes me a bit sick (positive).

Wild at Heart is a film about two crazy, horny people on a Wizard of Oz–themed road trip pushing their plot armor to its breaking point, while a John Wick–style crime world machinates around them. It's grotesque, disturbing, upsetting, frequently very funny. Nick Cage has an amazing physicality to him and delivers some completely unbelievable lines. Grace Zabriskie's unsettling visage appears in a jumpscare-type fashion. Did you know Diane Ladd was Laura Dern's actual real life mother? Initially I thought it was just exceptionally good casting. Anyway not a single person in this movie is normal

something I didn't quite expect going in to this Lynch-watching endeavor, by the way, is how there's always at least like 5 of the same pool of actors in everything he made. it's like watching a theater company

watched the Elephant Man. It's pretty different from Lynch's other films in a few significant ways:

One, it is biographical. From what I understand (i.e. having read a few Wikipedia articles) it is, barring a few filmic exaggerations and fabrications, a fairly accurate account based on two biographies. Those biographies themselves contain errors (his name was actually Joseph Merrick, not John) and misrepresentations, but there is still much truth to the film. The prosthetic makeup is pretty accurate to historical photos. Lynch I think did his best to avoid a lurid portrayal of Merrick—in fact we are given time to sympathize with him before getting a proper look at him.

Two, it is historical. Lynch's preoccupation was mainly with contemporary America, but this is of course set in Victorian England. It comes off very well as I'm fairly sure it was shot in England with a mostly British cast. (On either side of the pond Lynch was able to find a supporting cast of unsettling, leering working class people)

Three, it is a tragic film with an almost entirely somber tone. Eraserhead has its moments of absurdity and horror, but the only horror here is human cruelty...

It bears hallmarks of David Lynch though. Obviously the bookending dream sequences, but also notably the sound design with its low rumbles and gaslamp hisses. You really benefit from turning up the volume because when the music gets loud it is overwhelming as it's meant to be.

And last night I watched "Lost Highway". This is the sort of movie where I truly had no certain idea of what would happen next, in large part because Lynch's films are so varied tonally. It could have taken almost any turn and it wouldn't have felt too out of place. I've said it before but the reason we watch films is to see something we've never seen before.

David Lynch said that the interpretation of this one was up to the audience. The interpretation that came to me directly after watching was it's about actors (a common theme for filmmakers and playwrights, to be sure). Or more specifically acting taken as a horrific endeavor: appearing involuntarily as different people, under different names, being followed by a ghoul with a camera, coerced by those with more money than you...

Apparently it was adapted into an opera. I'd love to see it.

Something I have been thinking about regarding how people talk about these films. I don't think David Lynch ever made incomprehensible films per se. (With the exception of the occasional dream sequence—but that's kind of what makes those work as dream sequences, is that they're distinct from the rest of the film.) Actually the events are typically very clearly related—it's just that, in the case of Lost Highway for example, those events violate anyone's understanding of how reality works spatially and temporally. He's not trying to trick you or obfuscate anything—he's just showing you something weird!

I watched the criterion collection's...collection of david lynch short films (I have a free trial right now haha)...most notable in there is "The Grandmother" (1970) which is far stranger in presentation than anything he made afterward, and the series of shorts "DumbLand" (2002) which are flash-animated shitposts

I definitely saw "The Straight Story" as a child. I remember the line "quick, what's the number for 911", and also being surprised at Alvin striking matches on surfaces other than the side of a matchbox. I don't really remember anything after that, though, so I probably fell asleep on the couch while my parents watched the rest...no wonder, since it is a slow-paced film about a slow old man driving a slow old vehicle. Despite being a Disney-distributed G-rated film it's not really for kids.

Lynch called it his "most experimental film" and I wonder if the experiment was to see if he could get Roger Ebert to give him a good review. It is still recognizably his though, most notably in the long stretches of silence which are so against convention in Hollywood. If I were to compare it to his other works, it has the same industrial-pastoral verisimilitude as Twin Peaks, with a touch of the Elephant Man—both being slightly maudlin portrayals of a real man's life.