David
Lynch: Exclusive Interviews
and other TidBits
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"On The
Couch with David Lynch: An Interview"
David Discusses Briefly
About Some of His Favorite Things
David Lynch seems like the only man in Hollywood
never to have had psychoanalysis. 'I went one time, and I asked
him if it might affect my creativity. And he said, "David, I
have to be honest with you, it could." And I said,
"Well, I'm happy to meet you, but I have to go. "'
Having witnessed therapy-junky John Cleese's comedy diminish as
his happiness increases, one can sympathize. However, certain
Lynchian motifs recur so obsessively that we're dying to know
what they mean. So come on Dave, lie back on the couch and tell
me the very first things that come into your head when I say
these words:
FIRE
There's Lynch's trademark
close-ups of cigarettes; the blaze that haunts 'Wild At
Heart'. Fifteen seconds elapse. 'Well, it's... It's
kinda.... It means different things in different
situations. When I just think about fire, it's so pure, I
don't think about anything else.' And then, shockingly;
When you said it, I was picturing being in it.' Your
first student short was apparently of heads throwing up
and catching fire. 'It was the reverse, actually. But the
elements - water, earth, air and fire it's no accident
that we really like hose things, and things get reduced
down... Fire is so magical. There's a texture to it that
occurs nowhere else. And controlling something like
that... It wants to get bigger if it can, and I then
you're very worried that one will go out! With me, I
always think about magic, the unexplainable.'
JAZZ
Lynch works very closely
with his composers, though it must be said, Bill Pullman
in 'Lost Highway' is the least plausible jazz saxophonist
ever seen. Hardly any pause. 'Freedom. It's like no
constraints, an opening, and then barriers going away and
lifting and breaking and experimentation and...it's like
attempting for something.
THE BRAIN
Each Lynch film
out-grosses itself on the brain front; 'Eraserhead's
title speaks for itself; the Elephant Man is killed in
his sleep through the sheer weight of his head; 'Blue
Velvet' has the shot cop briefly still standing, brains
exposed, like a faulty electrical appliance; in 'Wild At
Heart' Sherilyn Fenn wanders about holding her brain in
place while asking if anyone's seen her hair brush; 'Lost
Highway' tops the lot by burying a glass coffee table in
a man's cranium. 'Well, um...'Nineteen seconds go by.
'The brain is just like a plate but the nervous system
and the mind is, ah....' Twenty-seven seconds silence as
he furrows his brow comically like a boy at examination
time, 'It's the thing that traps us and ultimately frees
you.'
THE BED
In 'The Grandmother',
Lynch's best short, a lonely boy grows a grandmother from
a plant on his bed, on which she later dies; ' Wild At
Heart' contains heroic fucking scenes. Complete silence
for48 seconds. Then Lynch giggles like a schoolboy to
whom one has whispered the word 'sex'. 'It's sort of
like... It's used for many things, but it really is a
closeness to death.' Pause. 'And birth, too.'
RED
CURTAINS
The afterlife/limbo of
'Twin Peaks'; in 'Lost Highway the camera moves over red
curtains like a spaceship exploring a strange planet.
Immediate response. 'Curtains are both hiding and
revealing. Sometimes it's so beautiful that they're
hiding, it gets your imagination going. But in the
theatre, when the curtains open, you have this fantastic
euphoria, that you're going to see something new,
something will be revealed.
THE
OUTSIDE
Where Jeffrey finds the
severed ear in 'Blue Velvet', the woods where all the
weirdness happen in 'Twin Peaks'; the Lost Highway
itself. Lynch was terrified of the outdoors as a child.
Immediate response. 'Right, I did have a period of that.
I really like captured space. Even great vistas are okay
because I see some edge. But the word outside, it's uh,
too random. I lose a bit of control with that word.'
And yet your dad worked for the Department of
Agriculture. 'My father was a woodsman, yes. And wood has played
a huge role in my life. So I like building things out of wood, I
like chainsawing, I like the smell of the wood, I like the look
of a tree, particularly my father's favourite tree was the
Ponderosa Pine. The wood is... everything all the fairy tales
made you feel.'
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