The David Lynch Experience • group discussion w/ the Obnoxious and Anonymous podcast (& guests Joe Anthony, Ted Arn, Max Evry, Joey Pedras & Mandy Singleton)

(photo by Bonnie Schiffman)

Today would have been David Lynch's 79th birthday - the perfect time to share this tribute I recorded with fellow fans on Thursday night. After the sad news on January 16, I felt the need to talk to others - to articulate in common what we couldn't individually. Thankfully, Cameron Cloutier of Obnoxious and Anonymous, the channel that first hosted me over a decade ago, was able to oblige. He gathered several regulars and previous guests in addition to myself: collector Joe Anthony, festival aficionado Ted Arn, online commentators Joey Pedras and Mandy Singleton, and author Max Every (whose oral history of Dune I'd coincidentally discovered on a bookshelf a week ago). The last guest joined halfway through and brought with him lots of interesting anecdotes and questions about Lynch's most controversial film and its place in his larger body of work. Though we started off in a somber mood by the end of two hours we were all smiling, laughing, and leaning forward in our seats - buoyed by the memories and gratitude for these exciting years sharing the planet with David Lynch's dreams.

Rest in Peace David Lynch, 1946 - 2025

"Dust is dancing in the space...

A dog and bird are far away...

The sun comes up and down each day...

The river flows out to the sea..."

To write this tribute feels both alarmingly strange and sadly routine. We all knew David Lynch would pass away sooner or later and that there was a decent chance it would be sooner given news of his worsening health and restriction to his house (which he was forced to leave last week as L.A. was consumed by massive wildfires, likely contributing to his passing). Still, this came as a surprise if not a shock. My primary response was a weary sense of deflation. Occasions like this are expected to produce grand, soaring tributes but I did not have the urge to dive right in to the flurry of energy and activity that always accompanies the death of an iconic figure. No doubt in the days, weeks, and months to come, many who had not engaged with Lynch's work for a while or who may be coming to it for the first time will be encouraged to enter his kingdom. For those of us who've remained immersed in this world for a decade or more, it feels less like the beginning of a journey than an end. As Lynch was not a fan of closure, to reach this point feels almost like a form of blasphemy - as I noted on Twitter earlier today (I also briefly commented on Lynch's passing in a public post on Patreon).

It is hard to articulate a life in a moment. In a tribute on Bluesky, Mark Frost wrote of his Twin Peaks collaborator, "Words will come later. Only feelings at the moment." I've often thought about what this day would be like when it came, but somehow even with the warning signs this comes too soon to feel like a finale. And yet it is final. So much that was slowly swimming into focus is now fully clarified. Twin Peaks: The Return, or whatever you want to call it, was indeed Lynch's swan song - the grand, ambitious, experimental summation of a long career. Those of us who held out hope that he had more to say weren't wrong, but fate conspired to keep those dreams from coming to fruition. The Covid-disrupted Netflix project Wisteria/Unrecorded Night will remain, sadly, unrecorded forever. Carrie Page's scream outside the Palmer house will remain the final cry of Twin Peaks; whatever was "calling" to him about that ending, as Lynch described in a 2018 question and answer session (saying "the signal has a lot of disturbances"), now cannot ever be received - at least not by us. My draft of the narration for an upcoming video - about the quiet winding-down years after the Showtime series - now reads to me as if it was inevitably leading to this point. The sense that an era was ending was already palpable before Lynch himself was gone.

I'm not used to thinking about David Lynch this way, entirely in the past tense. I suppose none of us are. The bulk of my work on him was created in a long span of almost eleven years from the growing, almost unconscious hype surrounding his return to Twin Peaks to the mountain peak of The Return itself to the long period of anticipation and speculation about what, if anything, he'd do next. Thinking about this work as something that is over still doesn't sit quite right with me. Even back in 2008, when I was first getting into Twin Peaks Lynch had not yet officially "retired" from feature filmmaking - if he ever really would (and yes, another thing his passing solidifies is the absolute symmetry of his feature-length decalogue of theatrical releases). Though that early engagement unfolded long after the show had passed out of pop culture, it was starting to build popularity with a new generation - the Gold Box DVD set had just been released and the streaming deal on Netflix was not far off. Always in my long journey there was the thrill of exciting incompletion, either conceptual (exploring what he'd already left us) or, much of the time, literal. When I viewed and reviewed his entire body of work in the spring of 2014, even before more Twin Peaks had been announced, this filmography still felt like something that was alive and ongoing: a boundless horizon.

I'll have to get used to this more enclosed Lynchverse, and figure out how to remind myself that time was never what bound it anyway so it remains open-ended. That more cosmic understanding, however facilitated by Lynch's work and (more sparingly) his words, does not come naturally me to right now. I was prepared but not ready.

Here is what I wrote on Twitter within an hour or so of learning that David Lynch had passed away:

I think others will have new things to say directly pertaining to David Lynch. I feel, aside from some things I'm still working on, that I mostly already said my part while he was alive. I do have a few reflections on what his life, work, and death mean to me personally though.

I am a bit surprised, but not shocked, at his passing. We seemed to be on this trajectory with recent news but I thought, and hoped (if what he wanted was to continue living and working) that his health was more chronic than failing.

Now that it's come, there's a feeling of...deflation I didn't quite expect. The Return, it's now clear if it wasn't already, was as grand a swan song as an artist could hope for. Yet there was always a feeling of "maybe more...?" for the past 8 years.

In one sense, his career went out with a bang. For those of who followed very closely though, and maybe also who felt - for a variety of reasons - a longing to continue in the Peaks world especially after Part 18's scream, this era which has now ended was more like a long fade.

For Lynch himself, who most of us don't know despite his personality very much being part of the intermedia world he created, it seems from the outside like this process went about as ok as such things - never easy - can go.

He remained creatively engaged even as his contact with the outside world diminished. He lived the art life to the end.

What I feel less sure of is where this leaves the rest of us. So much of my engagement with Lynch's work has been defined by anticipation of what was to come. Not speculation so much (good luck to anyone who played that game) but belief that mysteries would continue to unfold.

Coincidentally, I was moving forward with a number of long-term projects right about now including a video which was to end with a montage of those who'd passed since The Return. I guess I know how that one will end now. Indeed, I guess that is the strongest sense I'm left with right now.

We all know how it will, and did, end. That feels wrong somehow when it comes to David Lynch.

I am also recording and publishing these reflections as a bonus on the Lost in Twin Peaks podcast:

Goodbye, David. You will be missed.

Allan Fish (1973 - 2016), the lights dim over Wonders in the Dark

Before you read my own tribute, please read Sam Juliano's obituary at Wonders in the Dark - and the comments below are as much a testament to Allan's importance as anything else

No person has had a greater impact on me or my online work than Allan Fish. There are others who have had a more concentrated impact on certain areas, and some - like Allan's erstwhile partner at Wonders in the Dark, Sam Juliano - who have had a strong galvanizing/organizational effect, introducing me to others, starting discussions, getting me involved with endeavors elsewhere. But Allan's influence was based purely on his own work, and it directly shaped my own content. To this day, he's the only writer about film who has his own tag on my site: Allan's countdowns were so important to me that I wrote about them with a kind of breathless excitement on quite a few occasions.

Jacques Rivette, 1928 - 2016

Although I haven't written any obituaries in a while, as soon as I looked at my blogroll and saw, via Catherine Grant, that Jacques Rivette had passed away, I knew I had to say something...not about his death, but about his life and work. If nothing else, a belated "Thank you" was in order. The director's rich body of work has provided me with as much material for contemplation, enjoyment, and engagement as that of any other artist in the past twelve months, save perhaps Hideaki Anno or David Lynch (with whom he was deeply tied for me in 2015). I created several videos honoring his work (including my first-ever collaboration), watched eight of his films on the big screen at Lincoln Center, and covered these and more in a dozen reviews or essays (at least one of which has yet to be published). Just a few days ago I even stumbled across an unexpected American blu-ray edition of his masterpiece Out 1 (including his Spectre cut, unseen by me) which I'm sure I will begin exploring tonight.

Farewell to the Log Lady (including podcast for Obnoxious & Anonymous)

Every month, I will be offering at least one post on Twin Peaks...up until Showtime re-airs the original series. Then I will post extensive coverage of each episode (mixing new reactions with my many older pieces) immediately after they air. Stay tuned.

Unfortunately, yesterday Catherine Coulson (the Log Lady of Twin Peaks and one of David Lynch's oldest friends) passed away. The news was shocking for Peaks fans who have also treasured this iconic character, whose brief appearances seemed to provide the soul of the show, as well as the extremely friendly and gracious host who always made herself available for interviews and discussions. Coulson was also a groundbreaking camera assistant in the 1970s (after getting her start in that department on Eraserhead), and according to one of her interviews she was one of if not the first female camera assistant to break into the all-male union. She will be greatly missed, and her legacy will be immense.

Last night, I spoke to Cameron Cloutier of the Obnoxious & Anonymous podcast - we had been planning a discussion (our fourth) for a while although it was unfortunate that this sad event provided the premise. Nonetheless, we embraced the opportunity to talk about Coulson (who appeared on Obnoxious & Anonymous herself last year), including her character's importance to the show and the true meaning of the Log Lady introductions. After that, we ventured into conversation about news from the set of the new Twin Peaks being shot in Washington - there may be some "spoilers," depending on your definition but we offer a clear warning beforehand if you just want to listen to the first part.

Usually I adhere to a strict Monday-Wednesday-Friday morning schedule, with entries of different series appearing at their usual times. But this event required an exception to the rule.

From my tribute on Tumblr:

“Only when we are everywhere, will there be just one.”

RIP Catherine Coulson

It sucks just typing those words, but she will be very fondly remembered by so many. According to Jennifer Lynch on Facebook, Coulson, one of David Lynch’s oldest friends and the unforgettable Log Lady, has passed away today. Really bummed by this news. No idea if she had shot any scenes yet (some rumors say she had) but either way it honestly doesn’t make me feel much better. She not only was wonderful in the show, she had a wonderful personality that came through in great interviews over the year. :(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeesofKOmuc

Goodbye and Happy Birthday

One of my favorite directors - and certainly one of the greatest in cinema history - passed away today. Eric Rohmer had the astonishing skill of composing films which were basically wall-to-wall conversations and making them beautifully, transcendentally cinematic. True, he was helped by the able eye of Nestor Alemendros, but also by an innate understanding of film language and style. I'll confess I've only seen the Six Moral Tales, but on that basis alone he knew how to make talk not just sexy, but cinematic. A few years ago, when Bergman and Antonioni died I wrote that the auteurs' Olympus was suddenly much emptier. Now, with the undisputed master of screen dialogue gone, Olympus is a whole lot quieter too.

On a brighter note, Luise Rainer just celebrated her 100th birthday. Happy birthday, Luise - hopefully the Oscars, which have supposedly axed their honorary awards from the broadcast in a gesture of open contempt for their own history, have enough sense remaining to pay tribute to their oldest winner at this year's ceremony.

This post was originally published on The Sun's Not Yellow.

Michael Jackson 1958 - 2009

With Jackson's face (or several faces) all over the news, one would expect that we'd be hearing a little more of the music and (especially) seeing a little more of the dancing. Sadly, this is not really the case. We get clips but rarely get to enjoy a whole piece - I understand MTV suspended regular programming for several hours after his death in order to play his old videos, but now they're back to reality shows. So I have embedded a You Tube clip, probably his most famous moment, below (it follows the rest of my thoughts).

Farewell, Updike

Isn't it strange how we feel that some people, some artists and some works of art, belong to us? And how arbitrary it is who falls in to that category? Olivier doesn't belong to me but Brando does - never more so than in On the Waterfront. Godard belongs to me; Truffaut does not. Dreyer, but not Bresson. Fitzgerald is mine, Hemingway is a stranger I admire and am courteous towards, but he does not really hold a place in my heart. The Beatles are so much mine than I can get tired of them the way one grows tired of a sibling; and so forth.

Farewell, Newman

Looking over his shoulder, riding into the frontier twilight (literally and figuratively), Butch and Sundance see the posse kicking up a dust cloud in the near distance: still hot in pursuit, unflappable. In disbelief the outlaws look at each other and ask, Who are these guys? Today we ask ourselves the same question about Butch Cassidy himself, Paul Newman, who passed away two days ago at the age of 83. And we ask it for the same reason: just like those pursuers, Newman was unflappable, cool without being hysterical or morose, completely self-possessed but seemingly not arrogant.

Farewell, termite

Manny Farber died yesterday and everyone's trotting out the forced analogies. Here's mine: his prose was like hard, tacky gum. I think that sounds kind of cool, but in case you're wondering, it's a compliment. Sadly I can't really expand on what others are saying. Not only did I not know Farber personally but I had only just begun to become acquainted with his work. A year or two ago I finally stumbled upon his famed celebration of "termite art," and that essay has been crawling through my brain and eating at my consciousness ever since, kind of like a...well, you get the picture.