If I had to pick my favorite movie from the 1980s, it’d be a good long while before I thought of a better candidate than David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, which came out in 1986. Blue Velvet was Lynch’s redemptive triumph after the time-consuming and expensive flop Dune, which was based on Frank Herbert’s tortuous sci-fi novel.

For reasons unknown, Lynch invited a German photographer named Peter Braatz to Wilmington, North Carolina (yes, that’s right, not Oregon or Washington) to come and document the shooting of Blue Velvet. Braatz titled his nearly hour-long movie “No Frank in Lumberton”; any fans of the movie will instantly understand “Frank” to mean the malevolent character played by Dennis Hopper and “Lumberton” to mean the idyllic logging community in which the action takes place.
 

 
You won’t “learn” anything in the ordinary sense from the movie, it’s an impressionistic tone-poem on Lynch and Blue Velvet that uses grainy footage of Lynch, Isabella Rossellini, Jack Nance, Kyle MacLachlan, et al.; unmotivated cutaways to exercising football players; and plenty of asynchronous sound and music. Sometimes, just for fun, Braatz uses actual dialogue from the movie as the vocal track, such as Dorothy Vallens’ pained cry to “Frank!” to leave poor Jeffrey alone.

This kind of movie strikes me as being very 1980s, it’s “experimental” and self-indulgent and kind of… drunk of video cutting techniques in a way that a movie like this would never be today. But I definitely enjoyed watching it—it’s an “audiovisual experience” first and foremost that just happens to take as its subject one of the most vivid films of American cinema. To Braatz’s credit, the movie does have something of the creepy audio gestalt that Lynch achieved so many times in his work.
 

 
Welcome to Twin Peaks has just announced that Laurel Near, the dream-haunting Lady in the Radiator from David Lynch’s debut feature Eraserhead, will perform her character’s signature song “In Heaven” in Philadelphia, as part of PhilaMOCA‘s annual Eraserhood Forever Lynch tribute. The event is being held on Saturday, October 3rd.

The Lady In The Radiator from Eraserhead, Laurel Near, is set to perform Peter Ivers’ haunting “In Heaven” song LIVE at PhilaMOCA‘s 4th annual David Lynch celebration, Eraserhood Forever. The event space is a former tombstone and mausoleum showroom located right in the middle of the neighborhood that inspired David Lynch for his first feature as he lived there across the old city morgue on 13th and Wood. To make it even more otherworldly, the actress/singer will be backed by the Divine Hand Ensemble, an enchanting chamber orchestra led by Mano Divina on theremin.

 

 
Eraserhood Forever is becoming quite the large event—a call for artists was recently issued for a related art exhibit, and the full lineup includes Lynch-themed bands, audiovisual works, DJ sets, and even Lynchian burlesque which could either be the hottest or most terrifying thing ever.

Here’s the song. If you’re totally unfamiliar with Eraserhead, this is going to seem utterly baffling and nightmarish. Don’t worry, I’ve seen it a zillion times and it’s still baffling and nightmarish to me, too. This is actually quite calming compared to her OTHER scene.
 

 
And for no other reason than that it’s awesome, here’s the Pixies’ cover of the song.
 

 
Prior to my first viewing of Eraserhead, I was warned I’d be horrified and repulsed beyond all belief. Instead, I was stricken with maternal concern for the sickly “baby,” and afflicted with sympathetic anxiety for its suffering parents; as far as I was concerned, David Lynch had created an avant-garde family melodrama, albeit in the aesthetics of a particularly affecting dark and morbid surrealism. Knowing now that Lynch had a toddler during the making of the film lends some credibility to my interpretation. Lynch’s portrayal of “children” is obviously pretty damned disturbing, but I’d argue his more horrifying use of kiddies comes from his 1968 short, “The Alphabet.”

This partially animated experimental film was inspired by the young niece of Lynch’s wife Peggy—the child had been reciting the alphabet in her sleep during a nightmare. Lynch painted Peggy white and filmed her in a room painted black for optimum eerie contrast. In a stark and ghostly bed, she is tormented by a phantasmal alphabet in a series of erratic, disorienting shots before blood spatters sheets; the results are absolutely hellish. The distorted crying you hear in “The Alphabet” is Lynch’s baby daughter, so the film truly is a family affair.
 

 
As I write this, Showtime and David Lynch have been going back and forth on the possibility of new episodes of Twin Peaks, the strikingly original TV show that aired on ABC in 1990 and 1991, setting a new bar (that has never really been surpassed) for brazenly experimental programming in an utterly mainstream context. A month ago Lynch made it known that “not enough money was offered to do the script the way I felt it needed to be done.” However, Twin Peaks fans rejoiced when Lynch tweeted the following message last week:
 

Dear Twitter Friends, the rumors are not what they seem ..... It is !!! Happening again. #TwinPeaks returns on @SHO_Network

— David Lynch (@DAVID_LYNCH) May 16, 2015

 
A new web project called And The World Was Paper is dedicated to the task of recreating bits of famous video using nothing but artfully cut-up pieces of colorful paper (somewhat like South Park). There are only two videos up at this point, but weekly installments have been promised, with new episodes on the way “every other Monday.” One video re-creates the trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and the other is the Twin Peaks title sequence.

I must say, this is very nicely done. It took some creative positioning of my browser windows, but I was able to watch the cut-paper version and the real version side by side, and it’s uncanny how perfectly the homage matches the original.

It never occurred to me before how much of the title sequence is just footage of things happening in factories.
 

 
via The World’s Best Ever
 

 
The films and television of David Lynch delight us with their strangeness, but they often pale in comparison to the man’s “extracurricular” projects. There’s the time he campaigned for Laura Dern’s Oscar by just hanging out in high traffic areas of Los Angeles with a giant sign and a live cow. There’s also the haunting public service announcement he did on New York City’s rat problem—pickup your garbage, people! His line of women’s sportswear was a great left turn, but dude has topped himself with this acceptance speech for his 2015 Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Award in recognition of his contributions to transcendental meditation.

Instead of just, you know, accepting the award, Lynch allowed “Trixie,” a Barbie doll shot in close-up, to serve as his proxy. In Lynch’s own voice, Trixie says her form of meditation consists of getting naked and “laying in the sun at the beach,” then Trixie and Lynch have a short dialogue. This comes not too long after Lynch used a Barbie in an ad for his signature line of coffee, but was asked by toy company Mattel Inc to take it down. I assume this use of Barbie poses no legal risk, as this is not a commercial, and merely a lovely moment of surreal play.
 

 
Via Welcome to Twin Peaks

 
For me, it’s difficult at this point to be surprised by anything David Lynch does outside of his cinematic endeavors. What’s that you say? He’s teaching the world his quinoa recipe? Of course he is. It’s probably delicious. And now he’s designing women sports wear? I’ll bet it’s great! I’d wear a David Lynch creation to Pilates in a heartbeat. But did you know that in 2006, he personally campaigned on behalf of Laura Dern so she’d get an Oscar nomination for Inland Empire on the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and La Brea, with a live cow? (He was in other locations, too, such as the parking lot of the former Tower Records on Sunset.)

Luckily, some very excited Lynch fans managed a little impromptu interview with him at the time. He was very warm and diplomatic, obviously genuinely acting on behalf of Dern, but the presence of the cow was not made totally clear. His explanation for his bovine companion was, “Without cheese there wouldn’t be an Inland Empire,” (the same text on the banner he had with him) and then, “Cheese is made from milk. Get it?” (I do not.)

Dern didn’t get the nomination, but what a nice, supportive, and deeply Lynchian gesture!
 

 
Via Welcome to Twin Peaks

 
In 2002 David Lynch unveiled on his website eight short animated movies, each one an episode of a series called Dumbland. Featuring a blistering cowpunk score and a stark animated style that is vaguely reminiscent of Dr. Katz on mescaline, Dumbland may represent Lynch at his most unvarnished, revolving around a mouth-breathing troglodyte named Randy. It was released on DVD in 2006 and also appears on Lynch’s jaw-dropping multi-disc release The Lime Green Set from 2008.

Lynch said of it: “Dumbland is a crude, stupid, violent and absurd series. If it is funny, it is funny because we see the absurdity of it all.” It’s true, everything about this tossed-off show is violent and absurd; perhaps it is the detritus that lodges in one’s brain if one has been busy dreaming up crazed, animalistic characters like Frank Booth in Blue Velvet, Leland Palmer in Twin Peaks, and Bobby Peru in Wild at Heart.
 

 
Though I’m sure your thoughts are probably on higher things than mine, I couldn’t help but consider the benefits of hair dye while watching this interview between Patti Smith and David Lynch. Is there a point when life can be enhanced by a teeny drop of Nice ‘n’ Easy? I was a tad surprised this question wasn’t raised during the interview, however, Ms. Smith and Mr. Lynch did share their thoughts about singer Bobby Vinton and the film Blue Velvet, the series Twin Peaks (which Smith claims “reconnected [her] to the world and art”) and the feminist band Pussy Riot, of which Ms. Smith says:

These girls did something absolutely original. As even a mother or a grandmother, they are in my prayers.

The interview is taken from the “Encounters” strand of BBC’s “flagship” news and current affairs program Newsnight,  in which two notable people interview each other about issues relating to their work. If you’re a fan of either Ms. Smith or Mr. Lynch, you will surely enjoy this.
 

 
H/T NME

 
I Don’t Know Jack is a documentary about the troubled life and violent death of Jack Nance, the actor who starred as Henry Spencer in Eraserhead, played the lovable Pete Martell on Twin Peaks, and popped up in small parts in many of David Lynch’s other movies. Though you know what they say about small parts—he’s only onscreen in Wild at Heart for about a minute, but, for me, Nance steals the show in his turn as deranged Big Tuna resident OO Spool.
 

”My dog barks some.”

Nance’s life takes shape through interviews with Lynch, Nance’s brothers, Catherine Coulson (Twin Peaks’ Log Lady, who was married to Nance in the ‘70s), Dennis Hopper, and a number of Nance’s close friends and colleagues. Lynch recalls his first meeting with the actor for Eraserhead:

Jack came in and he had a bad attitude. He didn’t really want to be there, and it was a stupid student film, and it just didn’t go real smooth. And so, it was sorta polite, but not really great, and we ended the interview and I walked him out to the parking lot. And on the way through the parking lot, we passed this Volkswagen—‘59 Volkswagen with a roof rack, four-by-eight-foot roof rack. And Jack stopped and looked at this thing, and he said, “Man, that is a great rack!” And I said, “Thank you.” And he says, “Is that your rack?” and I say “Yeah.” And he says, “You build that?” And I say, “Yeah, my brother and I built that.” So we started talking about wood, and garbage, and getting stuff, and pretty soon I saw another whole side of Jack. And it changed right there, 180 degrees. And Jack went on to be the star of Eraserhead.

Produced (or “presented”) by Lynch, I Don’t Know Jack is full of fascinating glimpses of Nance’s early life. A gifted young stage actor from Texas, Nance moved to San Francisco to play the lead in a production of Tom Paine, whose director, David Lindeman, later recommended Nance to Lynch for Eraserhead. Nance just missed getting the parts that went to Robert Blake in In Cold Blood and Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate. He played twin brothers Benny and Tony Rebozo in the Doo Dah Gang, a performance group that staged 1920s-style gang fights at nontraditional venues. When one of his characters died, Nance spent three days lying in a coffin at the staged wake.
 

Jack Nance plays dead in the Doo Dah Gang
 
Nance seems to have spent much of the 1980s in a dark, down-and-out place, drinking hard, acting crazy, and studiously avoiding tenants as the manager of a Hollywood apartment building. Lynch describes an early morning he had to drive Nance, suffering from an alcoholic’s painfully distended stomach, to the emergency room, where the doctor gave him a bleak prognosis. Dennis Hopper talks about helping get Nance into recovery around the time Blue Velvet was filmed.

Nance’s wife, Kelly Van Dyke, committed suicide in November 1991 while the actor was filming Meatballs 4. According to the documentary, she had been on the phone with Nance immediately beforehand. Van Dyke threatened to kill herself if he hung up the phone, at which point a storm on Nance’s end cut the connection.

A few months later, I happened to notice the star of my favorite movie in a supermarket in Studio City, and I asked him: “Are you Jack Nance?”

“What’s left of him.”

I was twelve, and I had no idea what had happened, so I told him how much I loved Eraserhead and Twin Peaks. He was very kind.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘Eraserhead Stories’: David Lynch looks back on his weirdest film

I Burn Pinecone And Throw In Your House (2009)
 
New York Times art critic Ken Johnson does not like David Lynch’s new art exhibition, David Lynch: The Unified Field, and not because he doesn’t like David Lynch. No, Johnson seems to be under the impression that Lynch’s work isn’t Lynchian enough, saying:

Is Mr. Lynch as compelling a fine artist as he has been a filmmaker. The short answer is no. Images of sex, violence, trauma and black comedy abound, but many of the qualities that make his movies so singular—so “Lynchian”—are missing. The convoluted narratives, shifts from noirish realism to hallucinatory surrealism, erotic sensuality and creepy voyeurism, atmospheres of suspense and dread, mood swings from wonder to hysteria to bottomless grief, battles between innocence and evil: these dimensions aren’t fully realized in Mr. Lynch’s paintings.

First of all, I actually find Lynch’s art to fit very nicely within his larger canon, and I wonder why Johnson can’t see what appears so obvious to me (Eraserhead immediately came to mind). Mind you, Lynch actually started out as a visual artist, and since half of the work displayed was created before his film career (the other half being more current pieces), it’s ridiculous to say this isn’t a coherent body of work. More to the point, it’s surreal to hear a critic say an artist isn’t creating art within their own self-made idiom—I’m pretty sure whatever Lynch makes is going to be “Lynchian,” by definition.

A little more research into Ken Johnson’s previous criticism shows that he’s caught some flak for sexist musings on women artists, and once in a review of a black art show, argued black people aren’t suited to assemblage style sculpture because it doesn’t reflect their black suffering or some shit (I wonder what he’d do if he saw a black ballerina or black classical musician). I say enjoy Lynch’s paintings if they’re your thing—or don’t, if they’re not your cup of (hot!) coffee—but can we all agree that The Times’ art critic ain’t much of an authority on “authenticity?”
 

Boy Lights Fire (2010)
 

Pete Goes to His Girlfriend’s House (2009)
 

Bob Loves Sally Until She is Blue in the Face (2000)
 

Mister Redman (2000)
 

Hello (2012
 

Untitled, 1971
 

Sick Man with Elephantine Arm (1968)
 

Woman with Screaming Head (1968)
 

Flying Bird with Cigarette Butts (1968)
 

 
Attention lovers of David Lynch and Mark Frost’s unforgettable TV sensation of 1990, Twin Peaks. I recently came across a completely puzzling line of long-johns-esque hipster menswear, the creations of some folks calling themselves Black Weirdos. The color palette of the garb interestingly avoids the pine green of the show’s opening credits, but is otherwise plausible. The model, identified as Kenny RM Rodriguez, sports a bushy beard, earlobe studs, and an insouciant demeanor, but the clothes give away the game more explicitly. Many of his tops say “Killer Bob” on them, and lots of the pieces have that zig-zag chevron thing that is reminiscent of the floor in the dream chamber where the midget talks backwards in Agent Cooper’s dreams. In one shot he’s reading a book about cherry pie, for goodness’ sake.

To be honest, it looks like it might be a gag. A trip to the mostly Japanese-language website (which exists as a “blogspot.jp” website) merely compounds the mystery. There are plentiful pics of the clothes, but few of the images lead to product pages where a purchase can be made; an exception is a single page featuring the knit cap (4,104 yen; about $37), the socks (6,264 yen; about $57), the plate (8,424 yen; about $77), and the cowichan sweater (85,320 yen; about $784). Those prices are either in error or are ironically meant. Clicking on the “Add to Basket” button spawns a mailto: link. So who the fuck knows. As much as I like those plates and would like a few for my own personal use, I don’t want to pay $77 for one. Having said that, I still think the clothes are kind of cool in a completely clueless way.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Here’s the famous dream sequence from episode 2 of Twin Peaks:
 

 
via Tombolare

 
I’ll be honest, I’m not that shocked by David Lynch’s new venture into lady’s workout clothes. The man has his own signature coffee—he will not be boxed in by your preconceived notions of what an eternally boyish American surrealist filmmaker is supposed to do! I guess what surprised me was the relative tameness of the designs. It’s not like I was expecting inspiration from Eraserhead—he’s always preferred his leading ladies in feminine get-up—but the look is unexpectedly… wearable. I would totally do pilates in that.

The line is actually a collaboration with model Alyssa Miller (the very Lynchian-looking doe-eyed brunette you see above), and a company called Live the Process—from what I can gather, it’s some kind of lifestyle brand, but the corporate New Age speak is a little vague. The venture was inspired by Lynch’s notable commitment to transcendental meditation, a practice Alyssa Miller recently undertook as well, and some proceeds go to Lynch’s meditation-focused non-profit. From the website:

David Lynch wants to bring Transcendental Meditation (TM) to anyone interested in practicing.

The award-winning director/writer/producer—best known for films like Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive and seminal TV series, Twin Peaks—has worked to raise public awareness of TM via his namesake charity, The David Lynch Foundation (established in 2005). Now, DLF, model Alyssa Miller and Live The Process are collaborating towards this shared goal, with a capsule collection, as well as an exclusive t-shirt designed in association with New York artist Jason Woodside communicating “Change Begins Within, Live The Process.” The collection will be available at Barneys New York with a portion of the proceeds going towards funding for DLF’s mission to make learning TM accessible to everyone globally.

Barney’s? Swanky! If florals aren’t your thing, the line also comes in a classic cheetah-print—a good workout look may cost you $150, but it’s perfect for cardio in the Red Room.
 

 
Via No Tofu

Donna Hayward
 
I really love these restrained yet expressive portraits of some of the memorable characters from David Lynch’s landmark 1990-1991 ABC television series Twin Peaks. The artist is named Paul Willoughby; not being able to procure actual postcards from the town of Twin Peaks, Willoughby cleverly used as his “canvases” vintage postcards depicting the gorgeous, foresty vistas of the Pacific Northwest instead.

The postcard images call to mind a memorable bit of typically gee-whiz dialogue from the show:
 

FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper: Sheriff, what kind of fantastic trees have you got growing around here? Big, majestic.

Sheriff Harry S. Truman: Douglas firs.

FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper: [Marveling] Douglas firs…

 
Four of these images—the ones for Josie, Audrey, Donna, and the high school portrait of Laura Palmer—were part of an exhibition at Menier Gallery in Southwark, London, dedicated to Twin Peaks at the end of 2012. I highly recommend clicking around in the exhibition’s website; there’s a lot of fun stuff there for Twin Peaks obsessives.
 

Josie Packard
 

Audrey Horne
 

FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper
 

Shelly Johnson
 

Regional Bureau Chief Gordon Cole
 

Laura Palmer
 

Laura Palmer
 
via Biblioklept

 
When it was released thirty years ago, David Lynch’s film version of Frank Herbert’s science-fiction novel Dune was almost unanimously reviled by critics. It was considered incomprehensible, boring, disjointed, cold, and the special effects were cheap and nasty. When I saw it the following year, I couldn’t understand the enmity. I liked David Lynch as a filmmaker, and thought Dune was an intelligent, well-made and thoroughly engaging film. Lynch’s vision (via author Herbert) was not the clean, pristine, plastic, over-lit world of Star Wars, it was a gritty, darker and a far more believable construct than what Lucas had created with Skywalker and co.

I also think Lynch was was being overly harsh on himself when he said:

“I started selling out on Dune. Looking back, it’s no one’s fault but my own. I probably shouldn’t have done that picture, but I saw tons and tons of possibilities for things I loved, and this was the structure to do them in. There was so much room to create a world. But I got strong indications from [producers] Raffaella and Dino De Laurentiis of what kind of film they expected, and I knew I didn’t have final cut.”

All employment involves some selling out, and the creative industries involve this more than most. However, Dune‘s Frank Herbert was more diplomatic:

“I enjoyed the film even as a cut and I told it as I saw it: What reached the screen is a visual feast that begins as Dune begins and you hear my dialogue all through it.”

Unlike some behind the scenes photos where actors pose on set and directors smile for camera, these pictures from the making of Dune give a good idea of the intense work cast and crew go through in the making of a movie.
 

 

 

 

 

 
More images and videos after the jump…
 

 
As some of you probably already know, David Lynch was approached by George Lucas to direct the third film in the Star Wars trilogy, Return of the Jedi.

Here’s a short excerpt from an interview David Lynch did with MTV in the 80s addressing the Return of the Jedi rumors:

MTV: Is it true you almost directed “Return of the Jedi”? How close did you come?

Lynch: Not close at all. I had a meeting with George [Lucas]. I like George. It was his thing. I said, “You should direct this. It’s your thing! It’s not my thing.”

MTV: Did he flat-out offer it to you at the time?

Lynch: Yeah!

MTV: But you immediately declined.

Lynch: I called him the next day.

YouTuber “C-SPIT” re-imagined Return of the Jedi as if Lynch had actually directed it.

 
Below, an animation of David Lynch recalling his first meeting with George Lucas.

 
Via Nerdcore