Matthew Kalil on David Lynch – Episode 3

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

So Matt, we’re talking about David Lynch and what a seasoned filmmaker he was. He’s passed away, but we are talking about his films in memory of him because we also think that they’re going to last the test of time.

Exactly. And I think he’s made about 10 feature films, depending on how he counted. So he’s made a lot in his life and there’s a sort of a trajectory I’d love to take you through of his work. There’s kind of like a through line, I think, of what he was trying to do that you can follow from the beginning of his work to Twin Peaks, The Return, which is kind of like a feature film. It’s 18 hours of television. Some people call it a very long feature film, but yeah.

So let’s go.

Sure. So David was an artist first and foremost, I’ve said that before, and he went to the American Film Institute and he got funding to make a feature film called Eraserhead, which if anyone out there has seen it will know how strange it is. It’s very different. It’s definitely the essence of David’s work. It’s very artistic, very experimental. It has its own internal dream logic. It’s all shot in black and white.

When I watch it, I actually watch it in sittings. I’ll watch it in like four sittings. I don’t watch it all at once, although watching it once through is quite an experience.

Seeing it in the cinema is even more amazing because it’s just so rich and beautiful. I’d say it’s almost like the note that he struck as an artist. The first note, almost like the beginning of a symphony, and it’s saying like, here I am, this is me.

It took him many years to make. There’s a scene in the movie where the character’s on the one side of a door and he walks through the door and he walks in the other side of the door. And like sort of two years of production has elapsed between him being on the one side of the door and the other side of the door, because he just kept on being uncompromising in the making of Eraserhead.

So that was the start of his career, really. And Stanley Kubrick once famously showed Eraserhead to some people and said, “this is my favourite film”. And when Lynch heard that, he was blown away.

With Eraserhead, my thinking is that he was tackling his fear of fatherhood. I think that comes through quite strongly.

Yeah, I think also in Eraserhead, he lived in Philadelphia at the time and he was at that point when he was making Eraserhead, he was quite depressed.

It’s kind of like a love-hate song to Philadelphia, the industrial side of it at the time. And he established a core group of people that he kept on working with for his whole life.

And it’s unlike anything that had come before. So that’s why he landed with a splash.

Yeah, and he was noticed, which moves us on to his next film, The Elephant Man, because Eraserhead was noticed by people in the film industry. Mel Brooks, weirdly enough, was one who really sort of championed Lynch to make The Elephant Man.

And The Elephant Man was, you know, it’s set in London. It’s a story about a man with elephantitis who’s quite deformed looking and…

Joseph Merrick.

Joseph Merrick.

Another black and white.

That’s right. Another black and white. Also starring Anthony Hopkins as the doctor who takes him into a hospital setting and tries to sort of cure him in a way. It’s a very moving story. Very different to Eraserhead in that the emotion is very on the surface.

People cry when they watch it. And in some ways, a more traditional film, less experimental, although there’s still the absurdity element to it. There’s a freak show vibe to it, which I think was perfect for Lynch.

And that took him to the mainstream. And the next thing we knew, he was at the Academy Awards being nominated for, you know, various things for Elephant Man. So that brought him to the forefront out of obscurity of sort of strange film school feature film, more into the mainstream.

It’s quite a skyrocket.

Yeah. And then after that, Dune came along. He kind of puts his own stamp on it. But Dune, famously, David Lynch does not talk about Dune. The only time he ever talks about it is insisting on final cut.

It was David versus the studio system. And even though elements of David work is in there, it’s still, at the end of the day, it’s not David’s movie necessarily. I still love it, but David would see it as almost a failure.

And I think he lost his way a little bit and he really suffered through Dune. He wanted to give up. He really did not want to keep making things.

But then what he did is he made Blue Velvet. That was next. And Blue Velvet was almost like a return to Eraserhead in some ways, because Blue Velvet was David again, almost saying, here I am in the film world.

This is me uncompromising David Lynch, looking in small town America, looking at what lies beneath. In the opening sequence of Blue Velvet, we go from the grass into the underbelly and we see the worms in the earth and the sort of darkness that lies below, which is something that he’s fascinated by. And that was almost like him restating the Eraserhead feeling and tone, but in something that was also a little bit more accessible in some ways.

I mean, it’s a disturbing movie, also very funny sometimes. I think he really struck his tone, the sort of Lynch tone with Blue Velvet. And it was really well-received.

What lies below and Kyle MacLachlan again doing his thing and Dennis Hopper obviously doing some famous work there. Infamous.

Yes.

And I really enjoy that film. But as you said, it is quite difficult to watch in parts. But it did seem as though Dune forged Lynch’s career because he almost reacted to the final cut dilemma by going completely into his own space. So it actually may have given him his signature.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, I feel it. Dune, weirdly enough, even though David doesn’t talk about it, was so seminal in his trajectory as a creative person that it almost pushed him in the other direction, which is to be uncompromising, always insist on final cut and stick with his vision. And then we have Blue Velvet.

And then after Blue Velvet, we have Twin Peaks, which is a TV series which we’ll talk about at some point.

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.