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MOVEABLE FEAST
By Thane Peterson
David Lynch's Weird, Wired World
With a new movie and his ambitious Web site,
this Hollywood maverick continues to advance the frontiers of
artistic expression
It's bad luck for any moviemaker to be coming out with important new
work just as terrorism and war are riveting the nation. It's hard for
fiction to compete with reality. I just hope director David Lynch's
latest efforts don't get lost in the shuffle because what he's doing is
pretty cool.
Lynch has two big new projects coming out within weeks of one another.
His latest movie, Mulholland Drive, has just been released, and
it's one of his best ever -- a film-noir that, among other
things,
is a biting critique of Hollywood. Lynch's new Web site, http://www.davidlynch.com/,
also is scheduled to go live soon, most likely in early November. In
development for more than two years, it could be the most ambitious
Web-venture yet by a major filmmaker. If you liked Lynch films such as Blue
Velvet, The Elephant Man, The Straight Story, and the
TV series Twin Peaks, I recommend registering at the site now so
you'll get an alert as soon as it's up and running.
Lynch, 55, is an oddity among Hollywood directors. Slight, with pinched
features, and a voice that has a flat twang, he seems more like a
perpetually annoyed librarian. He works at an indoor-outdoor art studio
near Los Angeles and he's very private. The only personal details on his
resume: He was an Eagle Scout and born in Missoula, Mont. His family
moved shortly after his birth and he actually grew up in Virginia, North
Carolina, Idaho, and Washington. His father was a tree scientist who
worked for the government and was transferred frequently.
SWEAR WORDS. Lynch's movies are quirky
and individualistic. His sensibility is artistic rather than commercial,
and he insists on having the final cut. He also writes music (some of it
for his movies) and is a painter and photographer whose work has been
shown in galleries.
Both of these new projects come out of Lynch's insistence on having
total artistic control over his work. The first half of Mulholland
Drive comes largely from a TV pilot Lynch shot for ABC. "ABC
saw the pilot, hated it, and killed it," Lynch says. "They
never told me exactly why." After a year of wrangling, the French
media giant Canal Plus won the rights to the project so Lynch could make
it into a feature film. One reason the second half of the film has a
different feel from the first -- it's weirder and far more surrealistic
than the beginning -- may be that it was shot 18 months later.
Furious with ABC's rejection, Lynch vowed never to do network TV again.
"I've heard him swear it using profanity," says Eric Bassett,
head of Bassett & Assoc., an advertising and Internet firm in Laguna
Beach, Cal., that is developing Lynch's Web site. "From now on,
he's only going to do the Internet and feature films. You could say the
Internet is his alternative to network TV." Bassett says Lynch has
invested about $1 million of his own money in the site while turning
away potential investors because he doesn't want anything to compromise
his creative control. However, Apple Computer and a French company
called 4D have donated millions in software and technical support,
Bassett says.
ON THE TRAIL OF STORIES. Lynch has
already created three, Internet-only TV series that will be shown weekly
in five-minute segments on a subscription basis. "I love the idea
of being able to tell continuing stories on the Net," Lynch says.
"I love that once they get started you don't know where they're
going to go." Bassett says each 7- to 12-episode series is likely
to cost about $5, though the price hasn't been locked in yet. The plan
is for the site to post new series four times a year, Bassett says.
The first season's three offerings are a sitcom called Rabbits, a
mystery called Axxon-N, and an animated comedy series called Dumbland.
Bassett says Lynch did all the animation on Dumbland himself.
Various experimental videos also will be posted. After each series is
finished, it also will be sold on DVDs, via the site's online store. In
addition, the store will sell posters, a high-quality DVD version of Eraserhead
(Lynch's first feature film), and copies of unreleased short films.
For heavy-duty Lynch fans, the site also will have a members-only
section that probably will be available only for a monthly fee. This
will include a chat room, where Lynch expects to make occasional
appearances, reproductions of Lynch's paintings and photos, and music by
"Blue Bob," a group Lynch plays in. In addition, Lynch's
30-something daughter Jennifer will host a daily radio show featuring,
music, talk, and listener call-ins and e-mail-ins.
MINI-DEMONS. Does Lynch expect the
site to generate a profit? "That would be nice," says Bassett,
who got to know Lynch through a high school friend and is developing the
site for free. "But the goal is to have an outlet for creative
freedom."
If creative freedom is what you're looking for, check out Mulholland
Drive. The movie starts out like a conventional mystery: A beautiful
dark-haired woman in a black evening dress (Laura Elena Harring) is
being driven down Mulholland Drive by two men. The car stops, one of the
men pulls a gun, and just as he's about to shoot the woman, another car
rams them.
Everyone but Harring dies. Stunned and unable to remember who she is,
Harring walks into town, sees an older woman leaving on a trip, and
slips into her apartment. She's taking a shower when Betty, the niece of
the apartment's owner, shows up. Betty, wonderfully acted by newcomer
Naomi Watts, has just arrived from small-town Ontario, blond,
fresh-faced, and eager to become a Hollywood star. She and the dark
woman (who dubs herself Rita, after Rita Hayworth) become fast friends
and resolve to uncover Rita's past.
DISTINCTIVE WEIRDNESS. Predictable
premise, right? Not in Lynch's hands. By the time the movie is over,
Rita and Betty may have exchanged destinies. The two discover a corpse
that may have been Betty in another incarnation. Rita may have become a
star and Betty a strung-out failure who ordered a hit on Rita. Or maybe
not -- it's far from clear. At one point, evil is personified by an oily
creature living behind a dumpster at a fast food restaurant and at
another point by a wholesome elderly couple who turn into vicious
mouse-sized demons that attack the down-and-out Betty character. This is
vintage Lynch. Some critics had speculated in recent years that the
director is mellowing. His last movie, 1999's The Straight Story,
was a fairly conventional feel-good opus based on a true story about an
ailing, 73-year-old Iowa man who decides to travel 200 miles on a rider
lawnmower to visit his estranged brother in Western Wisconsin. It's a
fine film, but many directors could have made it. In Mulholland Drive,
Lynch moves back toward the distinctive weirdness of his earlier work,
only without the sickening violence that marred Blue Velvet. If
he can set the same tone on his new Web site, it too could be a triumph.
Peterson is a
contributing editor at BusinessWeek Online. Follow his weekly Moveable
Feast column, only on BW Online
Edited by Beth Belton
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