Blue Velvet as Twin Peaks Cinema #23 - The Lynchverse (podcast)

This cross-post was scheduled and ready for 8am this morning, but accidentally remained in draft mode. Better late than never.

My three-month "Lynchverse" theme concludes (sort of) with the biggest topic of all: connections between Twin Peaks and the film that led directly to the pilot, Blue Velvet. This nearly ninety-minute episode, easily the longest I've released for Twin Peaks Cinema, serves as a companion to two episodes on my Lost in the Movies feed: the standalone Blue Velvet review from a couple years ago and this month's entry on Blue Velvet Revisited, a striking documentary about the film's production. (Incidentally, the above illustration is from a Wrapped in Plastic magazine cover designed by Craig Miller.) In this case there's so much ground to cover that I break the podcast into different sections, followed here by timecode for easy access...

COMPARISONS (7:06)

CONTRASTS (18:00)

FLUID PSYCHODRAMATIC CONNECTIONS (24:24)

CHARACTERS (40:58)

SETTING (52:54)

MOTIFS & MINOR CHARACTERS W/ CONNECTIONS TO DELETED SCENES (1:01:05)

+ BONUS: COMPARISON TO "JEAN FRAMING COOPER" STORYLINE (1:07:45)

+ BONUS: CRITERION SUPPLEMENTS INCLUDING MORE ON DELETED SCENES (1:16:33)

The links between these two iconic works begin behind the scenes with Blue Velvet's launch of so many collaborations with Lynch, often lifelong (RIP Angelo Badalamenti). And of course the world onscreen - a small town with dark secrets beneath the surface - is what lent itself so well to the surreal soap treatment suggested to Lynch and Mark Frost a few years later. But these close ties also make the differences between the works that much more fascinating - a sprawling TV series leaning toward a more rural aesthetic vs. a contained feature (albeit cut down from a much larger template) that evokes an urban milieu more often than one might expect. Aesthetically, narratively, and otherwise, Blue Velvet serves as a key passage between the intense focus of Lynch's earlier films like Eraserhead (last month's Twin Peaks Cinema subject) and his later films - which I'll be covering soon on this podcast, as part of a new theme overlapping with this one.

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LINKS FOR EPISODE 23

Blue Velvet Revisited (LOST IN THE MOVIES podcast #51)

When David Lynch descended on a midsize North Carolina city to shoot his distinctive, out-of-time tribute to - and/or subversion of - small town Americana, he meticulously determined what we'd see and how we'd see it. Blue Velvet strains the eighties zeitgeist through a filter of fifties nostalgia and Lynch's own particular aesthetic tastes but a West German documentarian was there on location to capture the process of the director's creativity - and also the raw material of the world around the 1985 production. Watching this documentary for the first time a couple years ago (this review was recorded immediately afterwards), I was completely taken with this contrast - a peek into the world as it was when I was a toddler - as well as by Peter Braatz's moody, meditative, avant-garde take on this footage, so striking yet distinct from Lynch himself. Originally dubbed No Frank in Lumberton when it was assembled as an even more experimental program for German TV, the Super 8 footage was re-born when Braatz was inspired by music from the group Cult With No Name and decided to mix black-and-white still photos, aestheticized titles, and voice tracks into a new assembly. The result was much more widely distributed than the original when it was released for the thirtieth anniversary of Blue Velvet. This podcast provides the perfect complement to my upcoming episode on connections between Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks on the Twin Peaks Cinema feed (scheduled for March 15; this cross-post link will be active the next morning). It also can be listened to as a sequel to my earlier Lost in the Movies podcast on Blue Velvet as a standalone film.

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Blue Velvet (LOST IN THE MOVIES podcast #19)

The patron follow-up Twin Peaks/Blue Velvet comparison is now available.

Today is the thirty-first anniversary of the Twin Peaks pilot, when David Lynch changed television forever in the form of a surreal mystery set in a small town. Four years before that, however, he'd told a similar story in cinematic form with Blue Velvet. I will be comparing those two works on a Patreon podcast which should be available in the next day or two - but first, for this public podcast I wanted to share a discussion I recorded three years ago; consider these "part one" and "part two," especially as this episode ends with a few thoughts on how Velvet relates to the The Return via the presence of Kyle MacLachlan and Laura Dern. I also cover the film's stylistic and tonal relationship to other Lynch films, some of the deleted scenes, the influence of Lynch's upbringing in different types of areas, the suburban vs. urban feel of the setting, the effect of perspective on an amoral (not just immoral) milieu, the legacy of the sixties onscreen and offscreen, and more outlandish theories - mine and others' - about what's "really" going on. Links to my previous work on the film are included below, and I'll be reading (or sampling) from them on the patron podcast too, as part of my archive section - in addition to a special section of my "Twin Peaks Reflections" in which I specifically relate the "Jean Renault's drug scheme" storyline from season two to Blue Velvet. If you're interested in becoming a patron but haven't taken the jump yet, this month is the perfect time, not only for the extension of this podcast but because I will be releasing a Straight Story patron episode in April as well.

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The follow-up to this podcast - patron coverage of Blue Velvet as "Twin Peaks Cinema" - is now available HERE.

LINKS FOR EPISODE 19

MY PREVIOUS WORK ON THIS FILM

Review of Blue Velvet

Take This Baby and Deliver it to Death (non-narrated video essay focused on how Lynch's early films - including Blue Velvet - depict violence and assign the roles of abuser, victim, and rescuer)

reviewing Lynch's entire filmography, pt. 1: each individual film

reviewing Lynch's filmography, pt. 2: all the films together

Journey Through Twin Peaks chapter 27: Opening the Door (video essay exploring how Twin Peaks represents a shift in Lynch's work and how it affected his later films, includes one clip from Blue Velvet) - see still images here

Blue Velvet & The Duchess of Langeais (reviewing a double feature from the David Lynch/Jacques Rivette retrospective at Lincoln Center)

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MY RECENT WORK

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Mad Men - "Christmas Comes But Once a Year" (season 4, episode 2)

Mad Men - "The Good News" (season 4, episode 3)

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Lost in Twin Peaks #20 - S2E12 (The Black Widow/"Episode 19")

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Lost in Twin Peaks #25 - S2E17 (Wounds and Scars/"Episode 24")

Lost in Twin Peaks #26 - S2E18 (On the Wings of Love/"Episode 25")

Twin Peaks: "Dark Dreams on the Radio" (video)

While creating the first Journey Through Twin Peaks video series in 2014, I decided to preview one clip a week ahead of time. I was excited by the juxtaposition I'd found between the killer's reveal in Twin Peaks and W.B. Yeats' poem "The Second Coming", and I knew that the video containing it wouldn't be ready for release as early as expected - so I posted it early. Now I'm taking a similar step even further ahead of time, for a few reasons.

"Dark Dreams on the Radio" is a non-narrated montage of clips from Twin Peaks' third season (and Blue Velvet) cut to This Mortal Coil's cover of "Song to the Siren" (as incorporated into the sound mix of David Lynch's Lost Highway). There are a number of compelling rhymes between soundtrack and image, as well as between images from different works (or different parts of the same work). I first conceived of this idea - believe it or not - before the incredibly well-suited Part 17/18 aired and afterwards I was even more determined to launch the new Journey this way.

Ultimately, however, I decided that this would be a better beginning for Part 6, which will premiere in late May or June, rather than Part 5 (which is going up in a few days). But I still wanted to find a way for this montage to not only kick off Journey but conclude a month of shorter video essays that began in mid-March with (not accidentally) a montage, Far Away Music, scored to another version of "Song to the Siren," this one by its author Tim Buckley. That the images in that montage came from the work of Federico Fellini, a major inspiration for Lynch, only added another level of symmetry - as did last week's Side by Side video essay on Nights of Cabiria and La Dolce Vita, covering two of the films from that montage.

So here is a full-circle conclusion to my March cycle and a teaser for the new series. That's it for the run-up to Journey Through Twin Peaks. As I tweeted last week while preparing a season three marathon, and in the spirit of that season's finale...see you on the other side.

Blue Velvet & The Duchess of Langeais (Lynch/Rivette Retrospective #1)

This is the first entry in a series covering the Lynch/Rivette retrospective at Lincoln Center, running from December 10 - 22. I attended a double feature of Blue Velvet (1986) and The Duchess of Langeais (2007) on the evening of Friday, December 11.

In spite of many memorable images, the work of David Lynch and Jacques Rivette is often defined by what we can't see: whispered conspiracies and chimerical secret societies, supernatural pathways that might exist only in the characters' heads, or buried links and splits establishing two characters as one or one character as two. Almost always, these hidden clues connect different worlds or people, speaking to these characters' hunger as they blindly grope their way toward deeper connection, spiritual or collective (a process envisioned literally in a rehearsal scene from Rivette's 1971 magnum opus Out 1). In Lynch's Blue Velvet and Rivette's The Duchess of Langeais (based on Honore de Balzac's History of the Thirteen) this impulse appears in its most basic form: the longing of one human being for another. Despite this simplicity, both films illustrate how ugly and cruel that longing can become, how easily a desire for the whole becomes enmeshed in abusive power plays. Few other double features will depict this desire as being so hopelessly futile, so destructive and dangerous.

It's a Strange World: A David Lynch retrospective, 1967 - 2013 (part two: the forest)

This is my fifth and final entry in David Lynch Month, an essay examining long-term changes in Lynch's work. You don't necessarily need to read "part one" first, particularly if you're already familiar with Lynch. There are spoilers for all of his films.

This week's "Question in a World of Blue" is: What does the term "Lynchian" mean to you? You can respond in the comments below or on your own blog (please tag this entry in your response).

David Lynch has been making films for almost half a century. Because it took him another ten years to release his first feature, and nearly another decade to achieve his full-on "Lynchian" breakthrough into the mainstream, we tend to forget he's been around for so long. But Lynch's work stretches from the avant-garde cinematic renaissance of the late sixties (with its reliance on celluloid and aesthetic discipline) to the digital free-for-all of the twenty-first century teens (unmoored and immersed in its own video hyperactivity). He has both shaped his times and been shaped by them, but he's also stood apart - a one-man band beating his own crazy clown drum, sometimes celebrated as a true and timeless American original, sometimes scorned as a self-indulgent sideshow to the larger world, societal and cinematic.

From my recent Lynch marathon, two distinct and somewhat paradoxical observations emerged: a sense of unpredictability alongside an awareness of trajectory. On the one hand, Lynch's body of work is more wildly diverse than is usually credited: yes, there is a special "Lynchian" mood, style, and sensibility, but within that world there is incredible flexibility, ranging from the gentle, G-rated sincerity of The Straight Story (1999) to the raw, hallucinatory terror of Inland Empire (2006). Not only does Lynch's oeuvre feature wild fluctuations in tone, look, and subject matter, these wild fluctuations often occur from one project to the next. This marathon reminded me that the wacky, light-hearted TV pilot On the Air (1992) premiered a mere month after the intensely dark and emotional Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992), while Lynch's tragic, stylish Mulholland Drive (2001) was shot around the time he recorded the gleefully juvenile Thank You Judge (2002).

Yet if Lynch can't be simplistically pigeonholed, he can - with caution and qualification - be placed. Over nearly fifty years his work, and the voice expressed in that work, has undergone gradual and long-lasting transformations: despite the variations film to film, strong patterns and an overall evolution emerge when looking at the big picture. This means not only recognizing links and echoes between far-flung films (say, the mirrored endings of Eraserhead (1977) and Fire Walk With Me) but also observing a tidal flow to the themes and styles presented onscreen. There is a chronological march in which claustrophobic panic gives way to rootless wandering, classical restraint dissolves into multilayered impressionism, and recognition of corruption from within slowly overtakes the quest against external evil. Just as in Lynch's films random experimentation and apparent non sequiturs coalesce into powerful, perhaps unintentionally resonant psychodramas, so several narrative arcs emerge when examining the totality of Lynch's expression.

The Eye of the Duck: A David Lynch retrospective, 1967 - 2013 (part one: the trees)

This is my fourth entry in David Lynch Month. It is a chronological overview of his career, including full reviews of every single feature and capsules on every available short.

This week's "Question in a World of Blue" is: Do you see particularly important turning points in David Lynch's career? You can respond in the comments below or on your own blog (please tag this entry in your response).

Over three days, I watched almost every single film Lynch has created since 1967, and as "film" I include not just features or shorts, but commercials, music videos, TV pilots, even the occasional promo tag. Next week I will examine the overall evolution of his career, in theme, storytelling, and visual style. Today I'm going to focus more on the nitty-gritty, the "trees" that make up the Lynchian "forest" (if you want to avoid spoilers, just read about the films you've seen - the only entry that contains a spoiler for a separate film is Inland Empire, which discusses the end of Eraserhead in its last paragraph). I will examine each of his works in turn, starting with Six Figures Getting Sick, a painting-in-motion installation he created as an art student in the late sixties, and concluding with Came Back Haunted, a Nine Inch Nails video so rapid-fire it contains a health disclaimer. Thus his filmmaking work begins and (for now) ends in the service of other arts - painting and music - but along the way he emerged as one of the greatest filmmakers of the twentieth century, his work appearing in cinemas, on television, and eventually streaming over the internet. He's bridged all motion-picture mediums and approaches, told stories and immersed himself in irrational imagery, accomplished himself as a humanist director of sensitive performance and a formalist photographer of abstract images.

Despite his surprising range, there is a distinctly "Lynchian" flavor to all of his films, which we'll discover as we move through them one by one. Each feature film is covered in five paragraphs (except for Blue Velvet, Fire Walk With Me, and Inland Empire, which get six, and Mulholland Drive, which gets ten), his seven TV episodes are covered in three, particularly distinctive short projects in two, and the rest of his work in single short paragraphs (often a couple commercials are discussed together). Here's what I couldn't see: a fictitious Anacin commercial (1967), the "Champions" episode of the Lynch-Frost American Chronicles (1990), a low budget video for his song "A Real Indication" (1993), HBO's Hotel Room sketch Blackout (1993), advertisements for Alka-Seltzer and American Cancer Society (both 1993), video documentary Lamp (2007), the Wild at Heart deleted-scenes "sidequel" (2008), playful greetings to the 2008 Hollyshorts awards and the 2010 Twin Peaks festival, a concert film for Duran Duran (2011), and probably dozens or even hundreds of short clips from DavidLynch.com, which aren't listed in online filmographies unless they also appeared on DVD (all I can verify missing are two episodes of his goofy Over Yonder web series, but there must be plenty more where that came from). Even with those exclusions, I covered sixty-seven titles below. For a filmmaker with only ten features under his belt, Lynch has been shockingly prolific.

Feel free to browse for the projects that interest you (it may be best to bookmark the post and return for several visits) or follow the entire overview chronologically - this retrospective can be read either way. Indeed, one could say the same of many of his films...

Take This Baby and Deliver It to Death: a video tribute to David Lynch

This is my third entry in David Lynch Month. It is a video essay covering his early work.

This week's "Question in a World of Blue" is: Does Laura Palmer have special significance in David Lynch's body of work? You can respond in the comments below or on your own blog (please tag this entry in your response).

With a title inspired by a passage from The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer (by Jennifer Lynch), Take This Baby and Deliver It to Death focuses on David Lynch's first six features - through Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) - as well as the TV show Twin Peaks (1991-92) and a few audio samples from later works. Allowing the interweaving of assembled footage to speak for itself, this non-narrated video essay emphasizes the complex, evolving portrayal of violence and abusive characters in Lynch's early work. Needless to say it contains both spoilers and graphic content, so proceed with caution. At 23 minutes, this is my longest video, but that's down from a 45-minute rough cut (not to mention a 4 1/2-hour assembly!) so the results are pretty tight. You can watch Take This Baby and Deliver It to Death as one continuous video on Vimeo below, or as three separate chapters on YouTube:

The Weird Eighties 1984 - 1986 • "32 Days of Movies" Day 25

Twenty-fifth chapter in "32 Days of Movies", an audiovisual tour through 366 films

(2015 update: included Vimeo embed after the jump)


View "Chapter 25: The Weird Eighties"

The Weird Eighties

On the morning of my fourth birthday, I innocently tuned in to a Saturday morning cartoon based on "The Pied Piper of Hamlin." Apparently I was not familiar with the story, because when the piper led all the children off to, well, candyland, or death, or oblivion or whatever awaited them away from the safety net of parental observation, I became greatly distressed. As I recall I even wanted to put off my birthday party, though by the time the guests (and their presents) had arrived I had moved on. The version of "Pied Piper" I saw was, I recall, a fairly straightforward animation and thus not the version you will see in today's chapter.

If I'd seen that in my tender youthful condition I probably would not only have postponed that day's party, but all future ones as I curled up in a ball in my room, a nervous wreck for all time (seriously, it's pretty creepy - and cool; see for yourself). But the film featured below reminds us of a crucial fact, and one that ties in to some of my other childhood frights (namely the bizarre and ghoulish "Hansel & Gretel" episode of Shelley Duvall's "Faerie Tale Theatre"), if not this particular one. It's a fact that people sometimes forget but those of us who were young enough to live through the era with the fresh, easily perplexed eyes of childhood certainly remember: the eighties were weird.

(continued below, along with NSFW warnings)

Blue Velvet

Blue Velvet is a strange, strange movie. Well, of course...this is David Lynch, right? But no, it isn't strange like his other movies. Those are unique and uncanny and surreal, but they connect on a dream level, appealing to subconscious tics you didn't even know you had. Not Blue Velvet, at least not for me. I first saw it five years ago, shortly after Mulholland Drive and I couldn't figure out why it was considered the superior film. Its dark-side-of-suburbia theme seemed trite and old-hat, and its surrealism paled in comparison to Mulholland Drive's ethereal atmosphere, which you could sink into and lose yourself. What redeemed its classic status was Dennis Hopper's madcap performance, lurching out of the screen and shocking in ways timeless and indestructible. Other than that, why was Blue Velvet David Lynch's masterpiece?

Now, on my second viewing, new thoughts emerge. One: this is Lynch's Breathless; it's the film for people who don't like the rest of the director's oeuvre. Blue Velvet is what you'll find on critics' top 100 lists; it's the token Lynch, or the token surrealism, or even the token avant-garde (just as Breathless frequently appears on the same lists, in lieu of stronger Godard works like Masculin Feminin, Alphaville, or Week End). Yet I think that Blue Velvet, like Breathless, may be a great film after all - you just have to leave the accumulated baggage at the door. Breathless is constantly praised for its "groundbreaking" qualities (if I have to read about those stupid jump cuts one more time, I'll throw my computer out the window) when in fact those very elements were improved and developed in later Godard films. But if you throw out all the "influential" garbage talk (a film is primarily "influential" when there's nothing else interesting to say about it), what remains is a uniquely charming, idiosyncratic, and enjoyable film. Go with the flow instead of trying to take it apart, or seeing it as part of some great pantheon, standing for something. Only then will it yield its charms. So with Blue Velvet, though "charms" hardly seems the appropriate word.