A diorama based on Agent Dale Cooper’s dream about the ‘Red-Room’ from David Lynch’s 1990 television series ‘Twin Peaks.’
 
An artist based in Babenhausen, Germany named “Kristina” is currently selling her super-small DIY Twin Peaks diorama sets that come in three different versions based on scenes from the original television series that made its debut over 25 years ago.
 

A tiny David Lynch is included with this version of ‘Red-Room’ diorama.
 
Available in her Etsy store Boxartig you can pick up what Kristina refers to as “Dodos” of Agent Dale Cooper’s dream about the Red-Room, a scene from Lydecker Veterinary Clinic that features Agent Cooper and a Llama getting acquainted; and a grim miniature recreation of the body of Laura Palmer resting on the beach wrapped in plastic. While they are pricey ($58-$94 bucks a pop) they are really well done and it’s my hope that the talented German artist will continue to create others as I’m quite sure the one’s currently available at Boxartig will quickly disappear (the Lydecker’s Vet diorama already has).

Images of Kristina’s tiny homages to Twin Peaks follow.
 

A diorama based on the Lydecker Veterinary Clinic in ‘Twin Peaks.’
 

 
More after the jump…

 
A few days ago the BBC released its list of the top 100 movies since the year 2000, representing the consensus view of a whopping 177 (!) working film critics. Such lists are made for carping, and I’m not going to do that here, but a point of primary interest here is, What finished first? And the answer to that is David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, which came out in 2003. Not bad for a movie that the director openly admits was two entirely separate project yoked together for no good reason…....

Be that as it may, let’s stick with David Lynch here. I’ve never lived in Los Angeles but I’ve heard multiple times over the years that you used to be able to get David Lynch’s weather report on the radio there every day or most days or something. I did a little poking around and it seems that Indie 103.1 was the station that presented this. Can anyone confirm? Was it really every day? How often was it? Please do chime in with your reminiscences.

On his website in the mid- to late 2000s, Lynch used to present an occasional video weather report for Los Angeles, which is quite hilarious if you stop to think about it. Few would dispute that weather reports are useful things to have—even Angelenos with their samey weather—and yet the utility value of a weather report delivered on the Internet for a specific location and updated irregularly—that’s pretty near useless and obviously part of Lynch’s whole Eagle Scout deadpan dada shtick.

All of the videos were shot in some workspace used by Lynch. A video would start with Lynch intoning the date and then looking out the window and describing whatever was there to observe in a meteorological sense, after which he would sometimes deliver the temperature in Fahrenheit and Celsius as well. They’re all well under a minute long.

The mini-project gave Lynch an opportunity to engage in a blockheaded poetry of sorts. Here, for instance, was the weather report for March 12, 2009: “Mostly blue skies, some white clouds floating by, muted golden sunshine, very still, 52 degrees Fahrenheit, 11 Celsius.”

There were occasional variations. In one early instantiation of the form, Laura Dern is sitting next to him holding a piece of paper that reads “FEB 1”—for that was the date—but you can tell that Lynch hadn’t quite gotten the kinks worked out yet.

No dummy he, Lynch himself made fun of the fact that he was doing this, as evidenced in this tweet from 2010:
 

If you're watching the daily weather report right now, could you please close the window so we can upload a new one?

— David Lynch (@DAVID_LYNCH) February 25, 2010

 
Several of Lynch’s video weather reports, after the jump…....

Behold the ‘Damn Fine Coffee’ edition of the newly reissued vinyl soundtrack for the original ‘Twin Peaks’ television series.
 
A little over a week ago—on August 10th—a vinyl reissue of the soundtrack for the original Twin Peaks television series (first broadcast in 1990) scored by long-time David Lynch collaborator Angelo Badalamenti was released into the wild via Mondotees and promptly sold out. If you missed the boat on that like I did there’s still a way (and a better one at that) to score the gorgeous release which comes pressed into coffee-colored vinyl whose color profile is described as “Damn Fine Coffee.”
 

 
Starting on September 9th many cool independant brick and mortar record and video shops across the country will temporarily transform into a version of Agent Dale Cooper’s favorite hangout, Tweed’s Cafe in North Bend, Washington and will offer up their own in-store “Coffee and Pie” event during which you can purchase the record while listening to the soundtrack. Two-long years in the making, the packaging for the soundtrack is almost as cool as the show which comes in a gatefold sleeve,with liner notes written by Badalamenti and a record jacket that pays tribute to the floors of the “Black Lodge” thanks to the clever use of a die cut pattern on the cover. If it sounds at all to you like I am completely geeking out on this, then you’d be correct. Especially since my favorite video store, the world-famous Scarecrow Video in Seattle, is holding one of the 20-some-odd “Coffee and Pie” events. Yummy.

For those of you bemoaning the fact that you don’t live in the U.S. according to the website Welcome to Twin Peaks there are a few locations in the UK, too that will also be hosting their own Twin Peaks party. More details on the record as well as a full list of shops (which does appear to be updated from time to time) that will be hosting the event, here. If your location isn’t listed or if you prefer to miss out on what sounds like a really excellent time you can pre-order the album (for a mark-up in most cases) at lots of places online.
 
Additional product shots after the jump…

Agent Dale Cooper (played by Kyle MacLachlan) having fun smashing glass with his head on the set of ‘Twin Peaks.’
 

I have no idea where this will lead us, but I have a definite feeling it will be a place both wonderful and strange.
Agent Dale Cooper

 
Many of the photos in this post captured while the cameras weren’t rolling on the set of Twin Peaks were taken by actor Richard Beymer (who played ‘Benjamin Horne’ in the series) after the photographer hired to take promotional shots for the film quit (you can still buy a few of Beymer’s beautiful photos here). Others are what appear to be candid photos including an amusing polaroid of director David Lynch yelling into the ear of actress Grace Zabriskie (who played Laura Palmer’s mother Sarah in the original series) with a megaphone.
 

Deputy ‘Tommy Hawk Hill’ (played by actor Michael Horse) hanging out with a deer head.
 
As pretty much everyone on the face of the earth has been following along with the drama that has surrounded the return of Twin Peaks to TV (predicted to occur sometime in 2017) after Lynch said sayonara to the folks at Showtime via a series of Tweets to his “Twitter Friends” noting that he had himself began to notify the cast that he was no longer attached to the shows revival. Thankfully for lovers of the Log Lady about a month later the one-of-a-kind master of cult films decided to come back as did pretty much every one of the members of the original cast. And if that’s not enough for you to get excited about the fact that television is about to get really fucking weird again the show will start shooting scenes in location around Washington State specifically North Bend—the home of Twede’s Cafe that still serves up “Twin Peaks” signature cherry pie and of course “a damn fine cup o’ coffee.”

Loads of cool behind-the-scenes shots from 1990 series follow.
 

Actress Grace Zabriskie (Sarah Palmer) and David Lynch on the set filming one of the last episodes of ‘Twin Peaks’ on March 13th, 1991.
 

‘Caroline Powell Earle’ (played by Brenda Mathers), David Lynch and ‘Annie Blackburn’ (played by Heather Graham).
 
More after the jump…

 
One of our stock moves here at Dangerous Minds on a slow traffic day is to post something related to David Lynch. Like almost anything about the guy or even tangentially Lynch or Twin Peaks-related (like a cherry pie recipe) is guaranteed to be shared on social media. A lot. People seem to love David Lynch… or do they really?

To be honest, I’m not so sure how genuine all this supposed rabid Lynch fandom actually is. I think people think they’re supposed to like his work and if they don’t get it, then they aren’t cool. How else to explain the Emperor’s new clothes-ishness of Lynch fans, most of whom, if pressed, have rather a difficult time explaining why they like his films so much. Even smart people will twist themselves into pretzels offering pointless interpretations and tenuous excuses for his work. Ask one of them to be specific sometimes, the resulting word salad, it’s a good laugh.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the earlier part of Lynch’s filmography: I first saw Eraserhead projected on a wall in my parents’ basement on a 16mm film projector with a print that was acquired via an interstate film library lending system. I’d read about it and I HAD TO SEE IT and that’s the kind of hoops I had to jump through back then to be able to clap my eyes on the film. I saw The Elephant Man in a cinema by myself when I was 14. I must’ve watched Blue Velvet five times in a movie theater. I saw each and every episode of Twin Peaks as it aired. Wild at Heart, I’ve seen this multiple times, too.
 

 
But after that… I mean come the fuck on! From Lost Highway onwards, his films (for the most part) simply stop making sense. Moody? Sure. Sexy? Often. Nice to look at. Okay. They’re also incoherent self-parodies and ultimately say nothing. Frankly I think people extolling the virtues of Lynch’s incomprehensible later films are fooling themselves into believing that there is some occult profundity contained therein. The message? Go ahead and search for one. I’ll just wait here until you’ve given up.

Writer/director Joe McClean seems to feel the same way I do about David Lynch. McClean made a step-by-step guide on How To Make A David Lynch Film and cleverly disguised it as a David Lynch film within a David Lynch film.

It’s plain and simple. I watch David Lynch movies and I just don’t understand them. I decided I was going to try and figure them out so I stapled my eyes open and had a Lynch-a-thon. It didn’t help. I thought if I forced myself to watch, at some point it would just click and it would all make since. That never happened. I believe that good and bad are subjective terms so I allow others to spew forth praise and amazement at the genius of Lynch’s work, and I fully believe they have a right to their opinion.

This movie is my opinion.

See if you agree too, after the jump…

 
David Lynch completed shooting the new Twin Peaks episodes he and Mark Frost are producing for a Showtime release early next year. The singular TV show had its brilliant but inconclusive-feeling initial run in 1990 and 1991 on ABC, and it was enough of a sensation to land Lynch on the cover of TIME, identified as “The Wild-at-Art Genius” behind the show. It’s beyond question that Lynch and Co. helped stretch the boundaries of what a TV narrative could be, at a time when network television was practically the only game in town.

Around the same time that the shooting on the new episodes wrapped, the excellent blog Welcome to Twin Peaks noticed that the whopping 217-person cast list released by the show contained a goodly number of people with a decent musical pedigree—or better. For instance, Trent Reznor, Eddie Vedder, Sky Ferreira, and Sharon Van Etten are all listed as cast members, while actors such as Jennifer Jason Leigh, Monica Bellucci, Richard Chamberlain, and Balthazar Getty have released music in their time.

From these facts was birthed a tremendously fertile idea—why not cobble together a mixtape that is limited to the people on the cast list that evokes the peculiarly malevolent and down-home acoustical vibe that Angelo Badalamenti created for the original show? And that’s exactly what Welcome to Twin Peaks did.
 

 
We all know what Twin Peaks music sounds like. Starting with the spare guitar notes with the saccharine synth tones from the show’s opening theme, the show’s music evoked a just the right Bizarro World of melodrama that just might produce a random lady clutching a log or a cryptic dream dwarf.

Obviously, Nine Inch Nails and Pearl Jam is fair game for the project, and the mix brilliantly stretches as far back as 1962 for Richard Chamberlain’s tremendous cover of the Everly Brothers’ “All I Have to Do Is Dream.” How they missed the masterpiece that is Jim Belushi & The Sacred Hearts’ 1998 album 36-22-36 is a mystery for the ages.
 
Listen after the jump…

 
David Lynch is like our nation’s super-fun, super-weird uncle, and it’s high time that he decided to get involved with a music festival. To his credit, he’s not riding the coattails of an established festival but has started one up from scratch.

It’s called the Festival of Disruption, and it’s going to happen in downtown Los Angeles on October 8 and 9. Lynch has put together the kind of impressive lineup of guests that you can only muster if you’ve long since become Hollywood royalty (albeit in a surrealist sort of way).

The headliners are Robert Plant and the Sensational Space Shifters. Joining them will be St. Vincent, Questlove, and Rhye, as well as a performance of music from Twin Peaks involving Sky Ferreira, Xiu Xiu, and Lynch’s axiomatic composer Angelo Badalamenti.

There will also be “talks” with figures such as the stars of Lynch’s masterpiece Blue Velvet (Kyle MacLachlan & Laura Dern), Blondie’s Debbie Harry and Chris Stein, and Mel Brooks, who was Lynch’s producer on The Elephant Man. There will also be screenings of Lynch’s films, daily Transcendental Meditation sessions, and more.

The venue is the Ace Theatre Hotel and Theatre, located at 929 South Broadway. Tickets go on sale Friday, June 24th at 10:00 a.m. PST. 100% of the proceeds will benefit the David Lynch Foundation, whose mission is reducing toxic stress and trauma among at-risk populations, including victims of domestic violence, veterans suffering from PTSD, and underserved urban youth, through the evidence-based Transcendental Meditation technique.

More after the jump…

Salvador Dali’s ‘Giraffes on Horseback Salad’ (1937)
 
Most film directors have a list of movie projects they never manage to make. Some are started like Orson Welles’ Don Quixote but never finished—though posthumously released in a re-edited form. Others like Hitchcock’s R.R.R.R. never quite make it from idea to script to studio green light.

L.A. based artist and designer Fernando Reza has created a stupendous selection of film posters for movie projects by directors like Hitchcock, Welles, Stanley Kubrick, David Lynch and even Salvador Dali that were discussed, planned, and even partially filmed but never completed.

Take for example Salvador Dali who planned to make a movie with the Marx Brothers called Giraffes on Horseback Salad in 1937. Dali was friends with Harpo Marx and the pair decided to work together on a film project. Dali had already made two short films with Luis Bunuel (Un Chien Andalou and L’Age d’or) and would later go on to collaborate with Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock designing dream sequences for Dumbo and Spellbound.

Dali and Marx concocted a story about an aristocrat played by Harpo falling in love with a woman whose face is never revealed. The great Surrealist intended to use the film to show:

...the continuous struggle between the imaginative life as depicted in the old myths and the practical and rational life of contemporary society.

The film was to include scenes with a “horde of burning giraffes wearing gas masks, and Harpo catching dwarves with a net.” A script was apparently written but the other Marx Brothers nixed the idea thinking the idea a stinker and the script not very funny.
 

Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Kaleidoscope’ aka ‘Frenzy’ (1964-67).
 
Alfred Hitchcock wanted to make a prequel to Shadow of Doubt with another “Merry Widow Murderer” luring women to their grisly deaths. As with Psycho, Hitchcock had devised three set pieces to focus on the three gruesome murders carried out by the deviant sex-fiend. The first murder was to take place by a waterfall; the second on board a disused warship; the third in an oil refinery against brightly colored oil drums. 

Unlike Psycho or Shadow of Doubt there was no moral counterpoint to the “relentless sex and violence” shown onscreen. A script was written and test scenes shot. Among the actors considered for the lead role were Michael Caine, Robert Redford and David Hemmings. The film was basically a slasher movie a decade ahead of its time. Universal Studios vetoed the idea—thinking Hitchcock’s movie too amoral and too dark.
 
Continues after the jump…

 
Ever thought you’d see a Jack Nance, a Lady in the Radiator or that creepy-but-still-cuddly baby from David Lynch’s Eraserhead in doll form?

Me neither. But here I am blogging about them. They’re handmade by an Australia-based outfit called Slice of Mod Pie.

There’s hardly any information about the dolls in the listing so I’m not going to pretend to know anything about them to use up extra characters here. Because I don’t. I do like them very much, though. They look happy, too. I like that.

The price for each one is $55.84.

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘I Don’t Know Jack’: Fascinating documentary about ‘Eraserhead’ star Jack Nance
‘In Heaven’: The Lady in the Radiator from ‘Eraserhead’ live in concert
Someone made an ‘Eraserhead’ baby cake

 
Parents, is it taking forever for junior to utter his first fuckwords? Then help your little sadist grow up fast with the Blue Velvet play set! From a swatch of blue fabric and an inhalant mask to a decomposing ear and a bottle of PBR, it’s got everything* your toddler needs to act out his cruelest fantasies.

Lynchland, the source of the shot above, reports that this prototype was spotted at last month’s Monsterpalooza convention. (Instagram user Rebekah McKendry uploaded the only other snap of the package I could find.)

If you’d like to get your hands on one, perhaps you should nag the inventor, Skullclown, about mass-producing these. But like Frank says, be polite!

Here’s to your fuck, ages three and up!
 

 
*1968 Dodge Charger and “well-dressed man” disguise sold separately.

 
I wish there were more images of this Eraserhead baby cake by Debbie Does Cakes, but sadly I only have this one shot. It’s pretty great, though. I’m assuming some diehard David Lynch fan asked for this custom design.

I wonder what it tasted like? And what exactly was the (presumably foul) occasion this cake was made for? Don’t you want to know? No?

Below, a short scene of the Eraserhead baby to refresh your memory (although, how could anyone one forget this?!)

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘I Don’t Know Jack’: Fascinating documentary about ‘Eraserhead’ star Jack Nance

 
In the early 1990s Anton Corbijn made a peculiar short movie called “Some YoYo Stuff” featuring Don Van Vliet, a.k.a. Captain Beefheart. The movie is in black-and-white and lasts a little under 13 minutes. Most of the movie is the Captain’s face in front of a large screen on which words and images appear. The Captain addresses the topics projected onto the screen in his elliptical way. David Lynch even gets into the act.

Corbijn has been taking pictures of prominent musicians since the mid-1970s, when he worked for NME. He is noted for luminous b/w pictures of rock icons—his work appears on the cover of U2’s The Joshua Tree; as it happens, it appears that “Some YoYo Stuff” was likewise shot in Joshua Tree National Park.
 

 
Here’s Corbijn in the pages of World Art in 1998 describing the movie:
 

It was a simple affair to make the film: His mother sue opens the movie with the photograph that I took when Don and I first met, saying: “This is Don, my son,” and, apart from David Lynch asking him a few questions via projected film, it is all Don’s thoughts on various matters. Some funny, some serious, but all sharp, poetic and beautiful. You really want to hear every single word he says—whether it’s about paint, Miles Davis, an ear (“nice sculpture”) or the desert. 

 
My colleague Marc Campbell eloquently described the difficulty of capturing the essence of Beefheart on film several years ago:
 

His writing and occasional communiques were like those of a modernist monk of the left hand school. He spoke in an ancient craggy voice that sounded like hollow bones being rubbed together. Corbijn’s film communicates the desert father aspect of Beefheart’s existence. There’s an otherworldliness about the whole thing that seems as though it is being beamed in from another planet.

 
More after the jump…

 
The good people at Welcome To Twin Peaks have shared a wonderful web widget with which you can kill some quality time today—”David Lynch Doodle.” It’s a caricature of Lynch (who turns 70 today) with his epic haircut lopped off, and you get to draw it in, with eleven simulated brushes to choose from. (While you justly make fun of my shitty efforts, bear in mind that I went to art school. And graduated. In lots of debt.)
 

 

 
More after the jump…

“The hole is so deep and so bad; the Doughnut is a beautiful thing.” ~ David Lynch

There’s not much to say here. Just 1 minute of life advice from David Lynch about keeping your eye on the doughnut. Don’t forget it folks, this might be the most important thing you’ll ever hear.

 
h/t Joe Reifer

 
This is one of the best holiday bread/cake recipes I’ve ever seen! A spiced-filled Dune sandworm!

Now, I haven’t made this sucker yet—so I don’t know what it tastes like—but I fully intend to test my culinary skills this weekend and try this worm out.

I don’t know how many people would watch David Lynch’s take on Dune and see something yummy when the grotesque sandworms are onscreen, but Chris-Rachael Oseland over at The Kitchen Overlord came up with this brilliant-looking recipe. “The final result is even more delicious than it looks. Now, you too can make a proud, impressive, spice-scented Great Maker of Arrakis,” she writes. I believe her.

FYI, there are pretty detailed steps to follow at The Kitchen Overlord for your edible Dune sandworm. Here are the ingredients to get your tasting buds salivating:

 
Spice-Filled Sandworm Bread

SANDWORM DOUGH:

1 1/2 cups warm water
2 tbsp yeast
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 tbsp cinnamon
3 eggs
¼ cup slightly cooled melted butter
2 tsp salt
6 ½ – 7 cups bread flour

SPICE FILLING:

2 tbsp garam masala (or pumpkin pie spice, or Chinese five spice powder, by preference)
2 tsp cinnamon
3/4 cup brown sugar (or 1/2 cup brown sugar and 1/4 cup white sugar if you want it less sticky)
1/4 cup melted butter
sliced blanched almonds
1/2 cup raisins (optional)

GLAZE:

3/4 cup powdered sugar
¼ cup water
1 tsp cinnamon or garam masala
1 tsp vanilla extract

Now that I’ve hopefully piqued your interests with the ingredients, please follow the step-by-step cooking instructions that you’ll find here.

h/t Colihouse on Facebook