Watching David Lynch stuff a pair of women's panties into his mouth got me to thinking.
Okay, maybe I should back up for a second.
Yesterday, someone forwarded to me via email a demented YouTube video from about five years ago wherein the aforementioned auteur consumes the aforementioned article of ladies lingerie. God knows I would not have sought it out voluntarily. But it was sent to me with the query, "Is David Lynch a good director?" . . . as if the measure of Lynch as a film artist could ever be drawn from another instance of his growing penchant for half-witted exhibitionism . . . and since I'm such a sucker for the role of Sage Cinephile, I figured I'd at least take a gander at the thing and see what it was that inspired the question before launching into performance mode.
Now, before anyone asks why I was posed such a seemingly elementary question, I should probably point out here that no one I know outside the confines of the internet has a fleeting interest in cinema beyond its diversionary function. It means nothing, less than nothing, to anyone I'm even casually acquainted with; and speaking about it with so much as a particle of enthusiasm . . . as I sometimes do when I'm unable to govern the impulse properly . . . gets you either amused chuckles or uncomprehending stares (take your pick). For all the social good it does, you might as well tell people you've been moonlighting as a part-time carnival geek.
At any rate, I suspect (actually, I know) that the individual who bid me to disclose myself on the subject of David Lynch yesterday was just looking for some cheap amusement on an otherwise slow Friday. Fine by me, captain. So before winding myself up I watched the video I was so graciously sent.
It's not a new production. In fact, I understand that what I saw is someone else's remix (always a bad thing) of a piece that debuted on the Premium section of Lynch's website. Watching it, all I could think was that David Lynch is a filmmaker of true and immense gift who puts an
awful lot of effort into acting strange; far more than the task would require if it ever came to him naturally.
From what I can piece together through the remix madness (no, I'm not linking to it here; go run a Google search and it'll come back a hundred-fold), it goes like this: He's sitting in front of a red velvet curtain left over from
Twin Peaks, looking for all the world as though he just woke up after eight hours slumber on a park bench, togged out in that trademark black suitjacket and white shirt buttoned up to the adam's apple (an exceptionally hip clothing selection . . . for 1985). There's a girl sitting next to him who I
think is supposed to be a fan (probably an actress or somebody who works in his office). He announces that the little lady is going to remove her panties, hand them off to him; whereupon, with nothing up his sleeves, he will stuff them into his mouth. Swell. She gets to her feet, removes her garment (off camera; which is not the only clue that she wasn't actually wearing them), he exclaims with what was once called boyish enthusiasm that they're
still warm!! (hubba hubba), stuffs them into his yap, chews them audibly ("num . . num . . num"), and . . .
You know, there's really something wrong with this guy. David Lynch, I mean. A few years back, when he put out a series of ringtones (
ringtones?!?!) on that website of his . . . the one where he sells hats and t-shirts and mugs like some paranoid major market disc-jockey who thinks it's all going to vanish into thin air tomorrow, so why not cash in now (what kind of waterhead, I ask you, spends ten bucks on a
Dumbland coffee mug?) . . . I remember being somewhat unconvinced that this is the sort of thing a filmmaker of his caliber ought to be spending his time on. After all, it's not as if our cinemas are about to be crushed under the weight of all this great filmmaking we've been getting lately. We could use a
little bit more, at least. I know that if I were advising Lynch I'd say, "Look, maybe you should forget about moving the merchandise for a while and . . . I dunno . . . make movies or something; since you seem to do that tolerably well. Granted it may not be as creatively fulfilling as taking twenties off your audience for hats with ERASERHEAD embroidered across the front, but I'm sure it has its rewards."
I won't even go into the TM pimping or dragging a cow hither and yon to promote
Inland Empire, or the rest of that arrant foolishness he engages in routinely now, except to say that it's all in keeping with something like that video I bore witness to yesterday. In another forum where I was discussing this crackbrained stunt, someone who will almost certainly wish to go unidentified here wrote the following:
Watching the bonus material on the Inland Empire DVD I was
struck how Lynch's gimmicky celebrity weirdness, his marketed schtick,
might look contrived but he gives off the aura of someone who,
underneath all that, really is odd and maybe not all that likeable.
It's like the Lynchian strangeness we've come to know and love all
these decades is cover for some Lynchian strangeness we might not like
as much.Maybe. Of course a comprehensive examination of that would require closer analysis of Lynch than cinephilic discourse could ever bear; and anyway, who in hell wants the thankless task of rooting around the interior of
that skull? Personally I think this is simply the way David Lynch has chosen to market himself; literally going into a kind of creative liquidation as he enters the autumn (if not the twilight) of his years. I just wish he did it with a little more dignity. Jesus. I mean, if Carl Dreyer were still with us, you think he'd be spending his days working on a line of
Ordet screensavers?
Yeah. I don't either.
I'm beginning to realize that it's a lot easier for me to write on this blog when something crops up unbidden and unexpected, that strikes within me a primal chord, thus driving me up the proverbial wall and back again. Only then, when larger events conspire to irritate the bejesus out of me, does the act of annealing my furies and casting them into words hereabouts seem at all tenable.
