Matthew Kalil on David Lynch – Episode 4

Welcome to Talking Movies, I’m Spling. We begin episode four 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.

During the second season of Twin Peaks, he makes Wild at Heart. He actually steps away from Twin Peaks season two, which is why some people say it loses its way a bit. And he makes his next feature film, which is Wild at Heart, which is, again, a sort of uncompromising Lynch.

There’s elements, if you look at Wild at Heart and then you look at Tarantino and the movies he made, you can see how influenced he is. It’s Nicolas Cage driving around. It’s a road movie, but with elements of The Wizard of Oz.

Very surreal, also quite disturbing in some ways, but also extremely romantic in others. So it’s sort of violence, but the violence is very extreme and stylised, over-stylised. But an interesting look at America again. You know, Lynch does look unflinchingly at America as a society. People don’t always see it in his work, but even in The Return, there’s a look at violence and gun violence and school shootings, and it’s all there.

And again, that could have inspired Oliver Stone with Natural Born Killers.

Very much so.

So, you know, it just shows the kind of sporadic influence that Lynch had over his career. Then, what about Lost Highway?

Well, Lost Highway was many years after Wild at Heart, actually, and it continues in a similar vein in sort of a strange road movie. He calls it like a Mobius strip. In other words, the middle of movies where everything changes, and it’s about somebody trying to escape a crime that he did and almost escape into a sort of a parallel world.

But, you know, Lost Highway, I feel some of the elements that were in Blue Velvet are in Lost Highway, and some of the elements of Wild at Heart are in Lost Highway, but it’s been polished in a way.

It feels like the look of it feels very sleek, and it’s like a filmmaker reaching the peak of his craft in some ways. There’s even elements of Eraserhead in Lost Highway in terms of the dark corridors and going off into the distance, almost feels like some of it’s in black and white, which it isn’t.

So there’s this sort of continuing thread all the time. And if you start watching his movies, you see repeated themes all the way through. For example, like the famous Lynch one is the road coming towards the camera with the lines, right? That’s in everything. I mean, it’s in Blue Velvet, it’s in Wild at Heart…

It’s on the cover of my book.

It’s on the cover of your book.

‘The Essence of Dreams’.

‘The Essence of Dreams’, which is a must-read.

Speaking of road movies, actually, the next one after Lost Highway is The Straight Story, another road movie. But now the funniest thing about The Straight Story, it says Walt Disney presents a David Lynch film, which is just so incongruous because you think Disney and Lynch are almost opposite of each other.

But this is a very beautiful story. Now, I would say if anybody wants to start with a film of Lynch that’s very accessible and doesn’t have elements of violence to it or is not too challenging, then Straight Story is probably the way to go. It’s actually my favourite Lynch film.

So The Straight Story is about a guy, based on a true story, the script was written by a longtime collaborator of David Lynch’s, who wanted to tell the story and approached Lynch and said, here’s the story about a guy who drives his lawnmower across two states to visit his brother. He loved the script and he just fell in love with it.

He normally does his own stuff, but this is interesting because he’s adapting somebody else’s story. As a matter of fact, Lost Highway, Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, they’re all actually written by other people, but they were sort of Lynch’s original concept, whereas Straight Story is something that he adapted… and it’s beautiful. I think all the Lynch elements are there.

We’ve got the roads, we’ve got the forests, we’ve got houses on fire, we’ve got cowboys. All the things Lynch is obsessed with is in The Straight Story, but it’s almost elevated to a higher level that’s not as purely symbolic as some of his other work.

And then we have Mulholland Drive, which I know you enjoy.

Mulholland Drive is one of my favourite films. And I think that was going to be a series which got turned into a film with one of my favourite actresses as well, Naomi Watts. And they’re just some indelible moments in that film that will haunt you forever.

Winky’s Diner, The Moonlit Cowboy, the moment where Naomi Watts is auditioning for an acting role that’s just so powerful. The moment where the mafiosa is trying to see the next it-girl, Camilla Rhodes, and spits his coffee out because it’s just not good enough. The guy in the wheelchair…

The guy who spits his coffee out, interestingly enough, is Angelo Badellamenti, who’s a longtime collaborator of Lynch’s in terms of the classical music.

Wow, that is a factoid that’s just blown my mind. But yeah, this film has got so much going for it. And I so loved it.

We’ve left out Fire Walk With Me, which is the Twin Peaks feature film that he made to explain the beginnings of the Twin Peaks universe.

But after Mulholland Drive, which is very difficult to skip over Mulholland Drive like this, because it really is quite a seminal film and makes the top 10, doesn’t it…

…makes the top 10 or make most movie critics lists. Yeah.

Yeah. But anyway, after that, there was quite a pause.

And then Lynch got very obsessed with making films with almost low to no budget. So he made Inland Empire, which he made with, you know, very simple early video cameras. So no longer using film, but he became obsessed with accessible video filmmaking, I guess.

And Inland Empire is like a dream crazy story where Lynch is being fully himself, 100 percent exploring just what he wants to do, but with really great actors and actresses and really funny moments like the rabbits.

And in Inland Empire, he kind of brings them all together into this difficult to follow, difficult to understand… but sometimes for some people, extremely seminal work.

Sometimes you just want to go there for that dreamlike journey just to experience this sort of connotative flow.

Absolutely.

From one thing to the next.

Thanks for listening. This episode was recorded at Best Case Scenario Media in Muizenberg.

For more movie reviews, podcasts and interviews, visit SplingMovies.com. And remember, don’t wing it, SPL!NG it.