Nice article. I'm a huge Lynch fan. Back in the late 80s I went all out and bought the most expensive Laserdisc Player I could find. It was the only one that could play both sides of a disc, which some laserdiscs were 2-sided. I had only a few at the time: David Lynch's Blue Velvet, the Japanese Collector's edition of Tony Scott's The Hunger with David Bowie and Catherine Deneuve, and Ridley Scott's Criterion Collection of Blade Runner. Man, I must've watched Blue Velvet over a hundred times. I also had all or most of his short films on VHS tapes I bought from VSOM - Video Search of Miami, a cool company that sold tons of rare, out-of-print, impossible-to-find, B-movies and Z-films from just about every country on the globe. They had horror, Kung Fu, pilots for discontinued tv shows, porn with famous celebrities like Sylvester Stallone and many others, adventure films & tv shows, J-Horror films before they were popular in the States, Italian horror films -like I got all the Dario Argento short films and uncut versions not shown in the US, etc., Those David lynch shorts were bizarro! But cool to own and watch. I also saw them when they were shown at the UC Theatre before it was closed down in 2001. I'm even a fan of Dune as disjointed as it is.
Michael, I remember laserdiscs, never owned any, but saw them in action. What a terrific trio you owned!
Blue Velvet... what can be said, it remains a classic, and a genuine tough watch today. I just taught an online workshop about writing unsettling scenes, so of course the first video clip I showed was the opening minutes of Blue Velvet. Maybe one of the best opening scenes of all times.
How cool that you can reference to and show scenes of films like Blue Velvet while teaching a class. Nice! The opening scene of Blue Velvet is classic. And what a great hook to pull you in. It also has so many incredible quotable lines... almost as many as Star Wars(..!). I do a spot on impression of Isabella Rossellini (& Ingrid Bergman, probably my favorite actress right alongside my other favorite, Olivia de Havilland) and will end this comment with one of my most often used movie quotes, "I don't know what it is about you, Jeffrey, but I like you." *Which one could say about David Lynch's films themselves.
I show my students (high school, all-boys) the Rabbits webseries in class sometimes. At first they are baffled, and some of them make fun of it, but the brighter ones sooner or later fall into a kind of captivated wonder where they roll around in their own minds trying to tease out the meaning. I've gotten some interesting interpretations from them.
Yes, it's great to introduce surreal work to younger people. Once they break from the pack mentality about mocking it or dismissing it they can connect to the material in enlightening ways. It can be a true revelation to them about different ways to communicate.
I love this! I learned about David Lynch when I was getting trained in transcendental meditation back when I was 16. I definitely need to watch more of his films and learn more about his work, but these lessons are so universal and timeless. Love that he's had such an impact on your life!
Nice article. I'm a huge Lynch fan. Back in the late 80s I went all out and bought the most expensive Laserdisc Player I could find. It was the only one that could play both sides of a disc, which some laserdiscs were 2-sided. I had only a few at the time: David Lynch's Blue Velvet, the Japanese Collector's edition of Tony Scott's The Hunger with David Bowie and Catherine Deneuve, and Ridley Scott's Criterion Collection of Blade Runner. Man, I must've watched Blue Velvet over a hundred times. I also had all or most of his short films on VHS tapes I bought from VSOM - Video Search of Miami, a cool company that sold tons of rare, out-of-print, impossible-to-find, B-movies and Z-films from just about every country on the globe. They had horror, Kung Fu, pilots for discontinued tv shows, porn with famous celebrities like Sylvester Stallone and many others, adventure films & tv shows, J-Horror films before they were popular in the States, Italian horror films -like I got all the Dario Argento short films and uncut versions not shown in the US, etc., Those David lynch shorts were bizarro! But cool to own and watch. I also saw them when they were shown at the UC Theatre before it was closed down in 2001. I'm even a fan of Dune as disjointed as it is.
Michael, I remember laserdiscs, never owned any, but saw them in action. What a terrific trio you owned!
Blue Velvet... what can be said, it remains a classic, and a genuine tough watch today. I just taught an online workshop about writing unsettling scenes, so of course the first video clip I showed was the opening minutes of Blue Velvet. Maybe one of the best opening scenes of all times.
How cool that you can reference to and show scenes of films like Blue Velvet while teaching a class. Nice! The opening scene of Blue Velvet is classic. And what a great hook to pull you in. It also has so many incredible quotable lines... almost as many as Star Wars(..!). I do a spot on impression of Isabella Rossellini (& Ingrid Bergman, probably my favorite actress right alongside my other favorite, Olivia de Havilland) and will end this comment with one of my most often used movie quotes, "I don't know what it is about you, Jeffrey, but I like you." *Which one could say about David Lynch's films themselves.
I show my students (high school, all-boys) the Rabbits webseries in class sometimes. At first they are baffled, and some of them make fun of it, but the brighter ones sooner or later fall into a kind of captivated wonder where they roll around in their own minds trying to tease out the meaning. I've gotten some interesting interpretations from them.
Yes, it's great to introduce surreal work to younger people. Once they break from the pack mentality about mocking it or dismissing it they can connect to the material in enlightening ways. It can be a true revelation to them about different ways to communicate.
I love this! I learned about David Lynch when I was getting trained in transcendental meditation back when I was 16. I definitely need to watch more of his films and learn more about his work, but these lessons are so universal and timeless. Love that he's had such an impact on your life!
Yes, I think about his work regularly and reference him at least one when I'm teaching a class on writing.