I remember them on the surface as very idyllic. But there’s always a sense of other things. The fifties were a beautiful time, in many senses: the birth of rock’n’roll, the cars, a certain optimism and freedom. It seemed like time was moving slower. There was a hopeful quality to things.
David Lynch
Absurdity is what I like most in life, and there’s humor in struggling in ignorance. If you saw a man repeatedly running into a wall until he was a bloody pulp, after a while it would make you laugh because it becomes absurd. But I don’t just find humor in unhappiness - I find it extremely heroic the way people forge on despite the despair they often feel. Like the character in ‘Eraserhead’ -he’s totally confused, yet he struggles to figure things out and do what’s best. Isn’t that fantastic?
David Lynch
To me, a detective is the most magical type of character, because mysteries are to me the greatest thing. Puzzles and things like this are thrilling, clues, things like finding money. Everything is a mystery and we’re all detectives. Even scientists are detectives and they’re all looking for clues to solve the big mystery. There are so many detectives going around, and so many mysteries.
David Lynch
The more unknowable the mystery, the more beautiful it is.
David Lynch
Sunset Boulevard is in my top five movies, for sure. […] It’s like an avenue into that other world, and a really beautiful avenue. I talked to Billy Wilder, and that mansion wasn’t even on Sunset Boulevard! So I wished I hadn’t heard that, you know. Of course it was on Sunset Boulevard! There it is, right there! And it’s still there somewhere. […] I love Hollywood and the whole thing of the Golden Age and Sunset Boulevard captured that so well. I just love that world. I love it. I love it when William Holden and Nancy Olsen go for a walk in the studio back lot at night. That’s probably never quite happened in exactly that way, but it should have. It should be going on right this minute! Working late at night in those writers’ rooms. It should be going on right now! It’s just too beautiful - every part of it. […] LA is much more than Hollywood, but Hollywood does play a big part in it. There are a lot of films set in LA - because people work here - but a lot of them could have happened somewhere else. Sunset Boulevard had to happen here.
David Lynch on Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (1950).
Well, I always said 20. I don’t know if it’s quite 20. But it’s between 10 and 20.
David Lynch on daily coffee intake
Dumbland is a crude, stupid, violent, absurd series. If it is funny, it is funny because we see the absurdity of it all.
David Lynch
David Lynch discusses some of his favourite films and filmmakers.
Mark Kermode Interviews David Lynch
‘The American auteur was on stage at the NFT to discuss his oeuvre, his debt to transcendental meditation, the genesis of his latest film, Inland Empire, and why he went on the road with a cow.’
Sometimes if I listen to music, the ideas really flow. It’s like the music changes into something else, and I see scenes unfolding. Or I might just be sitting quietly in a chair and bing! - an idea will hit me. At other times, I might be walking down the street when I see something that’s meaningful and inspires another scene. On anything that you start, fragments of ideas run together and hook themselves up like a train. Those first fragments become a magnet for everything else you need. You may remember something from the past that’s perfect, or you may discover a brandnew thing. Eventually, you get little sequences going. Before you think of anything, the whole landscape is open. But once you start falling in love with certain ideas, the road you’re on becomes very narrow. If you concentrate, ideas will come to that narrow road and finish it.
David Lynch
Earlier Posts
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