The Lawnmower-Man

"The Straight Story" is David Lynch`s most unusual movie to date. Unusual for avoiding eerie sound effects, evil dwarfs, ruthless high-school girls and perverts being played by Dennis Hopper. 

Mr. Lynch, you`re interested in biology. When did you dissect an animal last?

Well, I haven`t done it  for ...days (laughs).

Your`re said to keep strange things at your home, a uterus in a bottling jar for example. Is this true?

I don`t really collect these things, but they do interest me. When Raffaella di Laurentiis` (the producer) uterus had to be removed, she gave it to me. Raffaella knew, it`d like it and I was thankful for it. I still keep it.

Your interest in the human body even made you go the morgue several times as a student in Philadelphia.

I went to the morgue for the sake of study, why not?   Every student of medicine has to dissect bodies to study the inners, noboby is appalled by that. In a morgue you get a special kind of understanding for the human being. A lasting impression, but my interest is not pathological but simply curiousity. I like to study people`s behaviour at coffee shops as well. All kinds of beings interest me.

Your new movie "The Straight Story" is a wonderful study in human behaviour, but without the dark and mysterious elements this time.

I just fell in love with the story. Everytime that happens I try to make  a movie out of it. I like Alvin Straight, I liked his reasons for his trip and I liked the way he did it.

The movie is about an old man travelling on his lawnmower for six  weeks to reconcile with his ill brother. How did you come across the story?

My companion through life, Mary Sweeney, who wrote the screenplay,  read about Alvin Straight`s travel in the New York Times in 1994 and was obsessed with it ever since. She bought the film rights four years later and began her investigation. She met with his family and people who knew him or whom he had met on his travel.

Did you meet  Alvin Straight in person?

No, when I joined the project, he was already dead. He died in 1996.

Alvin once says, the worst part of being old is ...

... remembering when you were young.

How do you cope with getting older?

Well, there`s nothing you can do against it. You have to accept it. But when you look into the mirror, it can be frightening. But you`re ageless in a way; if you talk to yourself, it`s still the person you were when you were young. That gives you hope - no matter, in which physical condition you`re in.

Even if Alvin can hardly walk or see, he`s still clinging to the motto: A man must know what a man must do!

Exactly. He`s a rebel much like James Dean or an old cowboy. The entire movie is quite like a western. Only that Alvin isn`t riding on a horse.

Is getting old Hollywood`s last taboo?

It`s very difficult to tell stories like that in fact.. Especially television only aims to attract a juvenile audience. Quite absurd, but that´s why many stories are never filmed. The same goes for cinema. Fortunately, there are exceptions every once in a while.

ABC dropped your pilot of your televison series "Mulholland Drive" so noone will ever see it. Why did they do it?

The executives never told me directly. All I know is that the audience of a testscreening didn`t like it and the ABC-executives hated it - while I love it.

You don`t want to work for the small screen anymore.

That`s only partly true. I just don`t want to work for the big television-networks anymore. I`m conviced they will disappear in the USA soon anyway - replaced by the internet. Future belongs to the internet.

Do you intend to present yourself on the internet?

Yes, of course. A website is like a television station. Or a small cinema. A place for being creative. It`ll even be possible to show entire movies. Right now, the quality is dissappointing, but not for long. Soon the internet will turn the status quo on its head. 

Are you certain about that?

I don`t know for sure, but record companies and television station are already very anxious about it. The internet will stir up the whole thing, there will be new stars from China, Thailand, Peru, everwhere.

When do you expect your official website to launch?

It would be nice to go online new years eve 1999 straight. I hope to make it.

Olaf Schneekloth