Matthew Kalil on David Lynch – Episode 2
Welcome to Talking Movies, I’m Spling. We continue with episode two of our conversation with ‘Three Wells of Screenwriting’ author and David Lynch Film School’s Matthew Kalil, a tribute to the late filmmaker David Lynch.
As brilliant as Denis Villeneuve is, there is still a commercial aspect that has to be attended to, very much like Lynch’s sacrifices with Dune.
Yeah, I think you’re bringing up a really, really deep topic here and it’s kind of interesting, but I do think that through YouTube and through people making their own work in their privacy of their own space, we’ve sort of democratised filmmaking to a certain extent, whereas you don’t have to have all the massive amounts of investment that you need to make a feature film. You can make something quite experimental, and I think the auteurs live in that realm. But the problem is that’s also curated, so YouTube’s algorithm sends you certain things, Netflix will send you certain things to watch.
So the question is, where do we watch experimental art films? I find a lot of my students actually are quite conservative in the way they express themselves and their access to David Lynch, particularly his early work like Eraserhead, or you’d see them in art theatres. We don’t really get that anymore. You’re bringing up a very deep question here about what is the future of the auteur and where can we find that place of expression? In the quest for the auteur, a lot of my students will reference someone like Christopher Nolan as an inspirational director, and to an extent, Nolan is perhaps an auteur.
I think that the Batman franchise and even Oppenheimer and all these things are big budget Hollywood movies. They don’t have the same authenticity and doesn’t feel like I’m communicating directly with a filmmaker and about his own intimate experiences in the world, which is very often the thing with an auteur. I mean, in short, I don’t really know where people will find work like David’s on a large industrial scale in terms of the marketplace of filmmaking.
It is going to be more and more tricky to find that, which is a little bit sad, but I think we really need people to be artistic in their own world, even if they just make art for themselves at home and show it to their community. That’s what David started doing, and he, through an interesting series of events, got a larger audience. He did meet the right people at the right time, and he ended up making The Elephant Man, which really rocketed him to stardom from Eraserhead.
Suddenly, this guy who would have just probably remained an auteur for the rest of his life, he just met the right people. It was actually Mel Brooks who met him and lifted him up to stardom, and then the next thing you knew, he was directing a feature film with Anthony Hopkins and some really famous John Hurt and famous actors, and then he won Academy Awards for that, and he was nominated. I’m not sure if he won.
He didn’t win as director, but the point is that someone from obscurity was suddenly lifted up into this realm of the public sphere, and I think it’s important just to keep being those people in obscurity if you want to, and you might be lifted up one day. Who knows?
I think the difference as well is that obviously he has done those works that are commissioned in a way, where it’s an adaptation like Dune, but I think that that kind of filmmaker, because it’s so difficult to get behind a filmmaker just for their vision, just for their creativity these days, it has to be backed by a fan base, some kind of issues thing that’s now being addressed, that it’s quite difficult for them to just create art. And I think that’s the kind of filmmaker that we aren’t going to see as much of anymore, or at least not on such a high level, because I think we’ve got a lot of those people that are on the grassroots level, but in terms of big commercial household name directors, it’s going to be sorely missing going forward, I think.
I think so, yeah. My hope is that with the streaming platforms to an extent, or this was in the early days, I think the streaming platforms are having their own very quick evolution, but the nice thing was Netflix, for example, approached David and said, make a short, do whatever you want, and he made What Would Jack Do?.
I feel like the streamers have the freedom to approach these auteurs and say, make this, make that, and there’s enough of a fan base that will watch it, but it is a question, and I think it’s a vitally important question, is what will happen to us as a society, because I do feel that we grow as, in the realm of art, art should push us to understand ourselves better as humans in the world, and if we don’t do that, if we just get the algorithm telling us who we are all the time, and we keep repeating the same Marvel movie after the next, will we evolve as a species? I mean, I hope so.
It seems like we’re just checking the boxes.
I think, yeah, David’s gone, and we can celebrate the fact that he existed and showed us a path in a way to actually be auteurs in our own lives, and to take responsibility for our own creativity, and take it seriously, and not even that seriously, he was a very funny guy, you know, take it unseriously, maybe, is the better word, and just do it, and create.
Enjoy, and be passionate, yeah.
And he would say, you know, funnily enough, someone asked him in one of our Zoom calls, like, what do you want people to take from your movies, if I had to study your films, and what is the message you want to say, and he said, which I find really funny, if you’ve seen any of his films, but he said, have fun, and be happy. But I enjoy the lightness of that.
That’s just a good outlook to have for life, really. Thanks, Matt.
Thanks, Spling.