The Straight Story as Twin Peaks Cinema #25 - Long Road Home (podcast)

The first connection that leaps to mind between the bizarre Twin Peaks and the down-to-earth The Straight Story is their mutual roots in small town Americana. The early nineties series is set in the Pacific Northwest while the late nineties feature unfolds across a couple Midwestern states but they share a sense of communal warmth and sadness, of old men moving slowly about their daily business and neighbors wondering what's going on in the house next door. Both works use this comforting familiarity as a springboard, in Peaks' case for an increasingly supernatural murder mystery, in Straight's case as a more literal point of departure for a character's odyssey. In some ways, The Straight Story bares even more resemblance to the third season which came afterwards, given its road trip nature and even some of its images and dramatic moments (the storytelling surrounding Agent Dale Cooper and Alvin Straight harbors some striking similarities). The Straight Story was David Lynch's closest collaboration with editor/producer Mary Sweeney, since she actually originated the project herself: purchasing the rights, co-writing the screenplay with John Roach, and shopping the script to Lynch who was initially uninterested. This is one reason the film is included after last month's Lost Highway and before Sweeney's own directorial debut under "Long Road Home" banner for this season/miniseries of Twin Peaks Cinema. Another reason is, of course, the centrality of a literal road to this story - it feels like the in-between journey from the previous episode to our next, and last.

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LINKS FOR EPISODE 25

April 2021 Patreon podcasts: LOST IN TWIN PEAKS #27 - Season 2 Episode 19 and LOST IN THE MOVIES #78 - The Straight Story in Twin Peaks Cinema, Opening the Archive & Twin Peaks Reflections (w/ Ben's Civil War breakdown + Jean, Dick, the Briggs throne, orphanage & more)

Following the last update's all-Blue Velvet line-up, this month I tackle another David Lynch project as part of Twin Peaks Cinema, Opening the Archive reading/sampling, and Twin Peaks Reflections storyline tie-in. In this case, the rustic journey of The Straight Story makes a nice companion piece for the Americana of Twin Peaks (including the drama of the Civil War as filtered through Ben Horne's breakdown). This G-rated Disney film, about a determined old man riding a lawnmower through the Midwest, provides at once a marked contrast with Peaks' supernatural surrealism and also a thematic complement. Meanwhile Lost in Twin Peaks is drawing closer and closer to the finale, this time with an episode co-written by Mark Frost which dives headfirst into the growing mythology. Even that podcast is related to The Straight Story, since I dwell on a contemporaneous Time Magazine cover story about the post-eighties "simple life." Behind the scenes I've been catching up with work on all fronts and there will be some announcements about that soon, but for now I'm just happy these arrived on time. Thanks to all of you for your patience. After running behind for a couple months, I'm finally caught up with patron rewards again (although some of the bonus content planned for this month - feedback and capsule podcasts - will have to wait until May). Maybe Alvin's method really does work best: stay slow and steady, and you'll end up back on track.

Lost in the Movies patron episode #78: The Straight Story in Twin Peaks Cinema, Opening the Archive & Twin Peaks Reflections (w/ Ben's Civil War breakdown + Jean, Dick, Briggs throne, orphanage & more)

Lost in Twin Peaks #27 - S2E19 (Variations on Relations/"Episode 26")

NOW AVAILABLE: Lost in Twin Peaks #21 - S2E13 (Checkmate/"Episode 20") open to all patrons

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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.