I’ll never forget my first David Lynch movie and the one time I saw the visionary director in person.
Like many other budding teenage cinephiles, I was in a phase where I was actively seeking out “edgy” and “messed up” movies. It was the mid nineties, and I was on a tear: Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, unrated cuts of Natural Born Killers, Scarface, and RoboCop. A friend recommended Blue Velvet as “dark shit”, so I rented it on VHS.
The film’s Rockwellian intro left me a little baffled. White picket fences, red roses, blue sky, fireman waving in slow motion — this was a dark film? But then a man watering the lawn had a stroke and fell to the ground. A nearby child looked confused by what was happening. A dog growled in slow motion as the camera pushed into the grass and the sound gave way to bugs gnawing and one of Lynch’s trademark drones. The transition from idyllic suburbia to dread piqued my interest. Lynch’s direction left me unsettled, even though nothing on screen was as explicit as the many other ultra violent movies I had watched prior.
Jeffrey’s (Kyle MacLachlan) first encounter with nightclub singer Dorothy (Isabella Rossellini) at her apartment had me transfixed for the rest of the film. With Dorothy returning home early, discovering a terrified Jeffrey hiding in her closet, I had a feeling events would turn bad, but I had no idea how bad. Dorothy’s subsequent demand that Jeffrey strip at knifepoint was bizarre and deeply unsettling. Like many other teenagers, I identified with mild elements of Jeffrey’s voyeuristic instincts (though of course watching a few bloody and risqué movies is a world apart from Jeffrey breaking into a woman’s apartment.) Dorothy threatening a helpless, naked Jeffrey with a blade felt particularly sinister.
Layer on top of that Frank Booth’s (Dennis Hopper) introduction minutes later, who for me remains one of the most terrifying villains in film history. I remember watching Frank assault Dorothy while inhaling gas from a canister, and feeling like the conventional rules of cinema had been irreversibly broken. Frank’s alternating fits of sobbing “mommy” and extreme rage, paired with the gas mask wasn’t “cool” or “extreme” or “dark shit” but genuinely dangerous and troubling.
Frank Booth’s nightmarish qualities stuck around in my head for a while. Over the next few months, I was so intrigued to learn more about Lynch’s singular filmmaking that I rented every movie I could get my hands on from him, and read books that analyzed his movies. My devotion to Lynch continued into adulthood: watching Mulholland Drive in a nearly empty theater in midtown, renting Inland Empire on Blu-ray, and catching up with Twin Peaks on streaming.
Finally in the mid 2000s I caught up with Lynch in person. He had just published his self help book Catching the Big Fish, and was giving a short talk to promote the work at a bookstore in NYC. While it’s a common observation in interviews, I was disarmed by how folksy and charming he was talking about meditation and creativity. The notion that this gentle man could somehow build landscapes as outlandish as depicted in films like Blue Velvet felt impossible to reconcile. It was in a small way inspirational, showing creativity didn’t necessarily derive from egotistical, control freak assholes.
While I don’t remember everything from the event, one interlude at the beginning stood out vividly. The synth-pop indie band Au Revoir Simone played a short musical opener before Lynch’s scheduled talk. Lynch watched from the side, and after their song wrapped, a store employee passed a mic over to Lynch. His first words were a booming, emphatic “That was wonderful!” The praise clearly delighted the crowd, who proceeded to applaud and laugh at Lynch’s enthusiasm. It was a tiny moment, but it was touching to see this legendary artist be so genuinely appreciative of a pretty obscure, young band knock out a song.
Fast forward to today, where I’m staring at the multiple 4K Blu-rays I own of Lynch’s feature work on a nearby shelf as I write this. It’s sad we won’t get any more work from such a creative force. But I’m thankful for what he made, and his singular direction has and will undoubtedly influence many generations of filmmakers and filmgoers to come.