Sunday Morning! The Art Life of David Lynch

Rufus F.

Rufus is a likeable curmudgeon. He has a PhD in History, sang for a decade in a punk band, and recently moved to NYC after nearly two decades in Canada. He wrote the book "The Paris Bureau" from Dio Press (2021).

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11 Responses

  1. InMD says:

    Good essay. I’ve always seen Twin Peaks as sort of a mid point between the earlier, in your face weird Lynch movies and the more polished ones he’s done since, starting with Lost Highway (also my favorite). I don’t see a point in re-evaluating it in a deep way anymore than I’d do it for a sophomore album of a band that grew to greatness or for early episode strangeness of a good tv series. And that may be where I disagree with you somewhat. I think there were growing pains in that film. You can appreciate them the same way you can appreciate the not-quite-there-yet production value of some of those aforementioned albums but youd never mistake it for the masterpiece.

    On an unrelated note but possibly up your alley I saw Pig Destroyer last night in Baltimore. You’ll be happy to know DC hardcore lives on and there was a quite good opening act for those into that sort of thing. I think I appreciate it more now that I’m relegated to old guy standing in the back status.Report

    • Rufus F. in reply to InMD says:

      That’s cool! I probably still know people who are playing hardcore in DC. Interesting connection here too- there’s a point in the David Lynch documentary in which he talks about Boise and how happy it was and then the family moved to Alexandria, Virginia and he says something like “I remember Virginia as darkness and night”. That was where he fell in with a bad crowd and drank excessively and “the darkness” entered his life. Having been to Alexandria (where Pig Destroyer is from), I get it!Report

      • InMD in reply to Rufus F. says:

        Ha! It’s funny you say that because when my wife and I met she was living in Alexandria and I actually kind of liked it down there. I definitely find it preferable to Arlington or Fairfax but I’m from the other side of the river so what do I know?Report

  2. Mike Schilling says:

    Quentin Tarantino (who has plenty of room to talk on this count) said he felt that “David Lynch had disappeared so far up his own ass that I have no desire to see another David Lynch movie until I hear something different.”

    Yeah, this is like LeBron complaining that Steph Curry gets away with traveling.Report

  3. aaron david says:

    Blue Velvet was one of the initial art house movies I cut my teeth on, along with My Life as a Dog and others from that period, as a high schooler. And much more so that Twin Peaks it opened my eyes to the idea of a person who, metaphorically, can stand just to the side of everyone else, and thus see things in a whole new light. That small-town bucolics, which I lived in, often had a seamy underbelly. Which showed more and more as I grew up and witnessed many things that people moved to the town to escape. I think the last film of his that I really enjoyed was Straight Story, I seemed such a subtle version of that heightened sense of absurdity.

    Not being a TV watcher, I never saw Fire Walk with me, as I never got into the TV show.Report

    • Rufus F. in reply to aaron david says:

      This is obviously like my opinion, man, but I came to the conclusion, while going through a list of all the movies released in the US in the 1980s, that the three I would absolutely include in the cannon of great cinema were Blue Velvet, E.T. and Raging Bull.Report

      • Aaron David in reply to Rufus F. says:

        I agree with Blue Velvet and Raging Bull, but I have no love for E.T. (and think it is a very subpar movie for Speilberg.) I know that puts me very much on the outside of my/our generation, but that movie gave me a particular loathing of wish-fulfillment fantasies.Report

        • Rufus F. in reply to Aaron David says:

          I have a thing for movies that could easily be silent films and that’s what appeals to me still about E.T.- it’s very visual. It reminds me of a Méliès film or a dream.Report