Normally, when you go to see a film, you just go to see a film. It's entertainment, maybe information. You go, you see it, you're bored, you're interested, you laugh, you're angry, whatever. You walk out and you forget it fairly rapidly.
The first time I saw Mulholland, it was in a packed cinema — every single seat was taken, this is not common any more — in a town in the south of France. I shall never forget the reaction after the final “Silencio”. There were angry mutterings, there was bemused laughter, there were sounds of dismay, even fear all over the darkened auditorium. The audience split up into a thousand different fragments. It wasn't universally acclaimed; it wasn't universally execrated. I'd never been in anything like it.
As I sat there in the dark, I didn't know what I thought. But I did know, without a doubt, that I'd just been through an actual event in my life. An event that, although it was a celluloid dream, was on the same level as actual important events that have happened in reality.
There could be no consensual reaction to it.That was the whole point. That was Lynch's whole aim. Everybody just had to go off into their own world, and make sense of it as best they could.
Perhaps 80% to 90% of film is fast food for the eyes. It always has been. That's the industry. It was the nickelodeon industry, at least in America, from its earliest days. Spend a nickel, spend a couple of lost hours in the big dark room.
It's a Big Mac, you eat it, you get out.
Lynch pays his spectators the supreme compliment, and it's very, very rare — you are not a passive consumer, sprawled back in your seat, stuffing your face with my film. I'll come to meet you half-way. You do the other half. You can do it. You are a thinking being. You have imagination. And in the long run, you'll find it more rewarding…
I suppose I spent dozens and dozens of hours in the weeks that followed talking about Mulholland to friends, to anyone who would let me bend their ear. Over and over, people would say to me,“But what's the meaning of it? Explain it to me.” And I would always say, “No. Absolutely not. I can give you my, personal, meaning. But I'm not going to give you the canned analysis out of a tin. I could, but I won't. That would be betraying Lynch's art. You must make your own meaning. That's what Lynch asks of you.”
But since I've said all this a bit solemnly, I want to emphasise something else, and I've said it over and over to friends — Lynch is a hell of a filmmaker, a hell of a story teller. He loves to tell you a story. That is, it's not some esoteric game, open only to the initiated. Lynch's films are great to look at. And they're often very funny (think of the silly scene with the two low-life hit men — the History of the World in Telephone Numbers — and how one of them first shoots his partner, and then has to keep on shooting people, because he's fucked it up. People were rolling round laughing in the auditorium). He wants to invite you in. He says, “Come in, it's a party. Maybe a weird one (like the Lost Highway one!), but still it's a party. You're welcome to my world…” People in Hollywood kept saying to him, “Why don't you make a straightforward film, instead of all this weirdo stuff?” So he went ahead and made A Straight Story, which is a quiet little masterpiece. Just to show that he could make that kind of film too, if he wanted. Wow, Eraserhead on one side; A Straight Story on the other. !!. From one to the other. Think about that for a second…
And yes, Straight Story is his affectionate homage to the small-town, Great Plains America that he came from, and that he never forgot. But… but Blue Velvet is that same small-town mom's-apple-pie world, but this time it's the dark, dark underbelly of it (those insects, that ear!).
And then, think of the performances he got out of his actors. All of them. He really looked after his actors. They all loved him. Laura Dern as a sort of small-town Little Miss Muffet in Blue Velvet; then Laura Dern in Wild At Heart, the bad girl that you'd love to meet but not sure you could handle; then Laura Dern in Inland Empire. I mean, fuck me, what the hell!!
Monty Montgomery. He's not even an actor. Never acted in his life. Couldn't memorise the lines, according to Lynch, and if you look carefully, you can see that he's having to read them off a prompter from time to time. Lynch was holding up cardboard signs behind the camera. But what a performance. The Cowboy. I've thought a lot about that scene, and talked about it a lot to friends. I could write an entire chapter in a book, just about that one cameo (and I've thought about doing it). Montgomery is simply riveting. You listen to him, and you listen to him carefully, because you know that, in his world, this guy is a boss. Justin Theroux, you can see him fascinated by him — not just in role as Adam Kesher — but as Justin Theroux, the professional actor.
And then, Elephant Man. This is a film with acting royalty, at least British acting royalty — Wendy Hiller, John Gielgud, John Hurt, Anthony Hopkins. Lynch was a very young man, still, to be dealing with that kind of heavy artillery. One day (according to Lynch, it may be Lynchian apocrypha, but, hell, I want to believe it…) Hiller grabbed him on set by the back of the neck, and said to him “We know who you are!” meaning, “We know you're winging this. We know you're bluffing your way through this… we know you're playing poker with an empty hand. You're in over your head!”
But then, there we have it, the finished thing. We have Elephant Man. So somehow he must have been quite some poker player. For weeks after that I went round the house imitating Freddy Jones declaiming “Elephant… Man!” as he presents his monstrous masterpiece to Hopkins, and Hopkins just stares and stares as tears trickle slowly down his cheeks. I still do Freddy Jones from time to time. My son thinks I'm a nutcase, but he's amused, too. He grew up, as a baby and then as a little boy, hearing me coming out with lines from that film.
Yep.
Ok. As you see, I could go on. And on. And on.
Let me just close with this (because I've got other things that must be done today) — as long as films are watched, there'll be a place, a very special one, for Lynch. I occasionally say to friends, half-jokingly — but only half — “You're a virgin of the eyes until you've seen Eraserhead. After that, you've lost your virginity.” I myself shall be rewatching his films (now only on DVD, sadly, it's not the same) until the end of my life, learning how to see.
