I absolutely love Lynch and would go as far as to say that it is to him that I owe my love of cinema.
I got into Lynch as TWIN PEAKS aired on UK TV for the firm time – I was 15. I was so enamoured with the show and its eccentricities as I’d never seen ANYTHING like it before. My parent had very middle of the road tastes and I grew up watching mostly comedy and action movies. My parents soon lost interest in TWIN PEAKS but I was hooked and I set about trying to see other stuff that Lynch had done. I was aware of WILD AT HEART but would have to wait to see that as it was then yet to be released on video but I bought a copy of BLUE VELVET and loved that. It was at this time that I started watching Alex Cox’s Moviedrome and the rest is history, as I discovered more Kubrick (I’d seen THE SHINING and FULL METAL JACKET and the likes of CRONENBERG et al.
But since those days I’ve anticipated every new lynch film eagerly. I was lucky to see LOST HIGWAY (under the influence!) at an NFT (now known as BFI Southbank) and INLAND EMPIRE in the first week of release in an arthouse cinema in New York but the most surreal experience I had watching one of his films was when I saw TWIN PEAKS FIRE WALK WITH ME at a fleapit on Tottenham Court Road – my mate and I binked off school one dreary November afternoon and found ourselves sat in a cinema where we were the youngest audience members by about 40 years – everyone else was male, 50-something and wearing raincoats. It was proper grotty!
You either love Lynch or hate him, there really is no in between. He’s one of the few American filmmakers who have continued to make arty films that do not pander to Hollywood convention and still manages to get decent releases. His more accessible films—STRAIGHT STORY, WILD AT HEART and BLUE VELVET--are all great but it’s the abstract likes of ERASERHEAD, LOST HIGHWAY and INLAND EMPIRE that are most interesting because they epitomize what it is that Lynch is all about: no one else seems to continually capture the essence of what it’s like to experience a nightmare – the narratives need not matter, it’s all about the ride. For me, anyway. We can all speculate what they’re about and hidden meanings within them but I’ve always thought the experience as they unfold is far greater than what you get at the end.
MULHOLLAND DRIVE and TWIN PEAKS FIRE WALK WITH ME fit between the two types – they’re accessible but there’s also a strong leaning towards the abstract that is only hinted at in Lynch’s “mainstream” films too.
Baseball Fury: I've never seen AN OCCURENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE but I understand that it was quite an influence on JACOB'S LADDER, from what I've read.
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