David Lynch: Interviews [Hardcover]

On the other hand, when it comes to David Lynch's movies, you might agree with one of his own characters in Blue Velvet, Sandy: "I don't know if you're a detective or a pervert." She's talking to Jeffrey, the hero of the story, and he's both.

David Lynch Interviews, edited by Richard A. Barney, is fascinating but might be of more interest to serious fans than casual moviegoers. It's for those who want the complete record of Lynch's published statements about his life and work (the two subjects he likes talking about least, which makes for a difficult job for the interviewer).

The worlds of Lynch's films--the industrial hell of London in The Elephant Man, the suburban utopia that sits next to cheap rooms in Blue Velvet, the dreamland Hollywood in Mulholland Drive--are like the way Lynch described Philadelphia: "decaying but fantastically beautiful, filled with violence, hate, and filth."

The interviews run chronologically from Eraserhead and the beginning of Lynch's career to Mulholland Drive, which I think is his masterpiece and a movie you have to watch after seeing Sunset Boulevard again.

I admire the way Lynch refuses to explain the meaning of his films, but enigmatic responses which seem subtle the first time can get tiresome when repeated. In an interview at the Cannes film festival one of the critics got angry at Lynch's refusal to talk about the meaning of his films. (". . . I feel that we are not allowed to ask you these questions because we won't get answers. And I am wondering if it is because you won't talk about it or you don't want to think about it.")

Stephen Pizzello's interview with Lynch and his crew who made Lost Highway is full of details about camera, lighting, and film editing--how they got the strange "Lynchian" look of the movie. When you remember that movies are pictures most of all, it's surprising more people don't write about these aspects.

Like Jeffrey in Blue Velvet, I think Lynch may contain yang and yin. He has a naïve view of the benign side of America. ("Dark things have always existed but they used to be in proper balance with good and life was slower.")

But he realizes that on an individual level we lie to ourselves. ("An accurate memory of the past would be depressing, probably.")

What Lynch said to John Powers in a 2001 interview about itinerant people trespassing on his property ("You know, John, this country's in pretty bad shape when human scum can walk across your lawn, and they put you in jail if you shoot 'em") seems inconsistent with the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and Peace. I hope Lynch was being ironic, but irony implies an awareness that I've never found in this kind of unthinking hyper-libertarianism.

In any event, David Lynch is brilliant at showing us our dreams and our nightmares, and this book explains a little about how.

› Go to Amazon.com to see the review  4.0 out of 5 stars