Splash, April 1989, pages not numbered

DAVID LYNCH

Margaret Sundell & Dorothy Spears

David Lynch photographed by Isabella Rossellini

When David Lynch´s first full-length film, Eraserhead, was released in 1977, it did not enjoy instant success. But it was only a matter of time before cult-movie watchers began to turn up in droves at midnight screenings. For many, Eraserhead´s dark humor and distorted effects had a certain sinister appeal. Since then, Lynch has gone on to direct Elephant Man, Dune and Blue Velvet, which earned him an Academy Award nomination in 1987 for best director. While continuing his work in film - he is involved with four different projects - Lynch has also expanded into other media. In February, he had an exhibition of paintings and drawings in New York. His first record, "Julee Cruise: Floating into the Night," is due to be released in May. And he is currently working on a pilot for what he hopes will become a weekly television series.

MARGARET SUNDELL/DOROTHY SPEARS: Your first education was as an artist, you went to art school in Philadelphia...

DAVID LYNCH: Well, first I went to Corcoran School of Art in Washington D.C. But I did that in high school. I used to go on Saturdays. Then I went to the Boston Museum School for one year, but I didn´t really like that too much. And then I went to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts for about two years.

S/S: How did you get into film?

DL: I got into film at the Pennsylvania Academy. I started hearing a little sound, and seeing paintings start moving. I thought about animation, just to make a moving mood. Real short things, four second films. And animation is like mathematics, you know. It´s so much fun to figure out how long something will take to move from here to there, and all the different things it can do. You start thinking about little pieces of time and movement. It´s great. I started getting hooked. And then ideas about stories and mood took over, and I started making films.

S/S: Have you been painting and drawing the whole time?

DL: Yeah, but about three or four years ago, I really started in earnest. I had been doing lots of drawings all along ...

S/S: I´ve seen two of your drawings and the imagery reminded me of Eraserhead.

DL: When they´re all lined up, there´s something hookinf them together now. And that didn´t happen before. This is the first time I´ve shown paintings. I had a show in L.A. of these big chalk drawings. Some of those will be in this show.

S/S: What about your first paintings? Has your work changed a lot since then?

DL: Yeah, but there´s much similarity, too. It´s like I had to go all the way around the block, and now I can see what was going on. Then, I wasn´t really getting it. But now something has just kind of happened. I don´t know exactly what it is, but I feel real good about the paintings now..

S/S: What do they look like?

DL: It´s kind of bad painting. They´re moods. They´re a little bit violent, and a little bit comedy. They´re violent comedies.

S/S: That sounds like your films.

DL: Yeah. There´s a similarity between the paintings and the films now, which there never was before. There were little parts of something, but even the drawings, which had a funny Eraserhead feeling. some sort of black humor wasn´t in them at all. Now it´s creeping in.

S/S: Do you think the work you´ve been doing in films has influenced your painting?

DL: You know, you get ideas, certain ideas you love, and others you don´t. Now I can see how film ideas feed themselves into painting, and I never could figure it out before.

S/S: You´re so well-known as a filmmaker. Does that make you worry at all about how you will be received as a visual artist?

DL: People are able, and they should be allowed, to do whatever they feel like doing. But Sunday painters are not so cool, maybe. But what I like about both Leo Castelli and James Corcoran is that they didn´t know to much about my film work. They were just looking at these drawings, and it made me feel good. I´m prepared to take some heat. But I don´t really care, because I´m so happy about the stuff.

S/S: You´re working on a record while you´re here in New York. Could you tell us a little about that?

DL: Well, they´re sort of fifties tone poems. They´re sensual and cool and romantic, kind of an arrangement of musical textures. And they put you in a place, a nice place.

S/S: It seems all your work - paintings and film and music - is very spatial.

DL: In anything, I think making a mood is very important. You´re somewhere where you couldn´t go if you weren´t looking at that particular thing. And even if it´s a violent comedy, you find something about it is so compelling or appealing, in some strange way, that you want to go there again.

S/S: Like Jeffrey, the hero of Blue Velvet. That´s how it is for him.

DL: Exactly. That´s how it is with Jeffrey.

S/S: Had you ever written lyrics before?

DL: Well, what happened was, I would always write down things. Like I have this painting called, Ow God Mom, The Dog He Bited Me. And I would write down some strange things for Angelo Badalamenti, who did the music for Blue Velvet. Before I met Angelo, I was trying to get a song for the movie which turned out to be very expensive. The company that owned it was involved in some sort of legal problem. Not only was it expensive, but it turns out that we probably couldn´t have gotten it anyway.

S/S: What song?

DL: I can´t tell you. But I had been writing down these poem all along. And Angelo, who helped Isabella sing Blue Velvet, did such a good job on that, that Fred Caruso, the producer, said: "Why don´t you just take these lyrics that you´ve written and tell him the mood and everything and he´ll write this song." So I sent him the lyrics and he came up with this fantastic thing, "Mysteries of Love", which was in Blue Velvet. I was so much in love with this song that I asked Angelo to do the rest of the music for the film. And he told me if I ever had any of these little things I was writing, that I should send them to him. Now I´ve sent them and we´ve done 35 songs together so far. Music is kind of incredible. It´s so much fun. I don´t know that much about music, but I have a feeling for it. I´ve always been working with sound effects, making moods with sound effects, and it´s sort of like that. And what I don´t have, Angelo or Julee has. We all work so well together.

S/S: Julee is the singer?

DL: Yeah. Julee Cruise. Angelo found her to sing the song for Blue Velvet. Julee has a very very pure voice. She is a fantastic singer.

S/S: When will the album be released?

DL: I think it´s coming out in April or May. It takes a long time just to get the artwork for the cover. Things go through a process. That takes quite a long time. And then they release it, and they have to do promotion. But in the music business, it´s crazy. I don´t know how many albums are released every week. It´s sort of frightening, there´s so much music.

S/S: What about your role in Zelly and Me?

DL: What about it?

S/S: Would you like to do more acting?

DL: Well, I would like to do some more, but not that many people saw Zelly and Me, so not that many people have been asking me to go back into the movies.

S/S: How did you get into doing that one?

DL: I was rehearsing with Isabella and they were having trouble getting someone for the part, so Isabella said, "Tina, you´ve got to test David. He´s doing some really interesting things." She tried not to upset Isabella, but Tina told her she wasn´t going to put her boyfriend in the movie just because we were rehearsing togethe. Well, one thing led to another and eventually I tested for Tina. That was a traumatic experience. I´d always tried to be respectful and to care for actors. I always felt they were going through something difficult. But until I went through it, I didn´t realize how difficult it was. Just sitting on the bench waiting to go into that room was like going to the dentist magnified by a thousand times. It was pretty bad. Then I went in and I couldn´t start. I didn´t tell them I couldn´t start, but I think if they had started then, I would´ve spit up. Luckily they got me a capuccino. So during that time, just talking sort of made it a little better. Then, suddenly we were starting the scene and suddenly it was going, and it worked. That was it. It was a great experience. You get into a strange high when you act. It´s really great.

S/S: Have you ever thought about directing yourself?

DL: I´ve never thought about it. You know you can get into a lot of trouble like that. There´s stories about people taking sixty or seventy takes of themselves, close ups and things like this.

S/S: So even though you have all these other projects going, do you see yourself primarily as a director?

DL: Yeah, but you have to be able to do all the different things. One thing gives you ideas for another.

S/S: I´m interested in what you think the relationship os between all these different projects. Do you see yourself working out some sort of personal vision?

DL: Yeah, but usually other people tell you what that is. If you start thinking about what it is that you do, things stay too much on the surface, and that´s not what really matters. Ideas are the most important things. I always say it´s like fishing. You catch these ideas.

S/S: That´s exactly what Virginia Woolf said.

DL: Oh yeah?

S/S: She had an image of the writer as fishing, sitting in a state of meditation, and all of a sudden a fish would be on the line that you could pull up.

DL: Absolutely. And the bait is maybe one little idea or feeling. It will sit and want to attract other similar feelings or things, and they´ll come swimming in and BING - you´ve got it. It you could go really really deep, that´s where the bigger fish are. Really great, unusual, rare ideas are lurking, and who really knows what´s there to be caught. But it´s fantastic and if you can get down in there, an idea can be so thrilling that you can´t go to sleep for like a week. Every single thing that you do is started with an idea. If you channel them into paintings, or you channel them into music, or you channel them into films, it doesn´t really matter. It´s all sort of coming from the same place.

S/S: Do you think there´s an autobiographical element to your films? Do you identify with any of the characters?

DL: Well there´s got to be, but not so much consciously. Ideas may come from the outside, but they go through all the machinery and the machinery is formed and set up in a certain way based on how you´ve been living and what you´ve been doing, so they´re going to come out changed.

S/S: But there does seem to be consistent dilemma faced by the protagonist in all your films. Would you discourage people from reading that personally?

DL: No. To me, film is like fantasy, it´s a world you can make up. Why would you want to make it up unless you wanted that? And why would you want that if it didn´t have to do with the way that you were different from other people? You don´t know what it´s all about, and you shouldn´t really worry. It´s not going to make films any better. It´s better just to go with your intuition, with these ideas that are coming, and try to be true to the ideas. You can pick and choose some, but the more you worry about the surface, strange magical things are going to get lost. There´s so much lurking beneath that you don´t really know about, except through you intuition.

S/S: That´s what brings out the humor too.

DL: Who knows what it´s going to bring out. It just makes it so the whole has a chance to be greater than the sum of the parts. And that´s what makes it magical.

S/S: That magical element makes your work so different from much American film, which tends to be realistic and oriented about narrative.

DL: I believe that you have to have a story. The telling of the story then becomes the most important thing. You can just have a person sitting there telling the story and it´ll be a film, but you could tell the story, and I´m not saying I do this, but you could tell one little story so great that it would be about everything. And that´s the whole trick. Cinema has the power to do that. It´s a magical medium, but it´s not often used that powerfully, maybe only a couple of times. It´s very tricky. Every ingredient that goes into it has to be working one hundred percent or you don´t have a chance. And if the elements aren´t just right... Unfortunately, it seems to me that not many people making films really think about all those different elements that much. Maybe they do.

S/S: I´ve always associated your films with Surrealism.

DL: I don´t know. In surrealistic film, since you can´t understand the story in a normal way, you´re paying more attention to cinema, or sound, or music. So they´re using cinema in a kind of nifty way, but if you could use the same things in telling a regular story, then I think you´re getting closer to what it should be, to what it could be...

S/S: That definitely seems to be what you´re trying to do with it.

DL: It´s what I´m trying to do, but so many things have got to be right. The story has to be right to support the other things that cinema can do. Some stories just don´t work. I don´t know what´s going to happen with this TV movie, but I´m going to direct a pilot for something that may become a series. It´s called "Northwest Passage." My friend Mark Frost and I wrote it for ABC television. It´s going to be a two hour pilot, and they may pick it up and make a series out of it, maybe an hour a week. It´s a murder mystery soap opera, so you get to know twenty different characters and follow their lives in this fictitious town in the Northwest. It could be so beautiful, the mood - this mysterious place with so many things happening[s], like in Blue Velvet, so many secrets. I love the idea of soap operas, because people get into so much trouble, and you can see them falling. You can go there in your living room every week. It´s fantastic.

S/S: Would you direct it every week?

DL: No, I wouldn´t direct all of it. Maybe one or two, but mostly I´d just be doing the pilot. I´d be a producer on the show, but I´d want to go make some films.

S/S: Are there any films that have had a special impact on you?

DL: I´ve got a bunch of favorites, and all of them create a place and a mood that I love going back to. I like Sunset Boulevard.

S/S: I´ve never seen that.

DL: You´ve got to see it. Most of the films I like are older: Rear Window, 8 1/2, La Strada, Persona, Lolita and I like Jacques Tati, the French filmmaker ... he did a film called My Uncle...

S/S: It´s about this guy whose life is falling apart. He´s working for a big company and he keeps getting demoted...

DL: Yeah, that´s the one.

S/S: God, that was a depressing movie.

DL: Depressing? Maybe it wasn´t the same one.

S/S: It´s French.

DL: Yeah, but it was a comedy.

S/S: That´s what´s depressing.

DL: That´s what´s so funny.

S/S: I´ve heard you like to have total control over your films. Is that true?

DL: Yeah. When you´re painting nobody tells you what color to use. But there´s not millions of dollars at stake. Even so, up front, a producer and you can agree on that, you have a script and everything, you should be able to tell the story. That´s all I want to do, just be left alone to tell that story in my own way. If I can´t do that, it´s not even worth it for me to do it at all. I´m not in it for the money. I love money, but I can´t do it for that reason.

S/S: Is that sort of what happened with Dune?

DL: I learned a lot the hard way on that film.

S/S: You wanted to make it longer...

DL: A lot, lot, lot longer, but it was impossible to do it. Things started going wrong early on. It´s not like there´s a perfect film sitting somewhere waiting to come out. In the beginning, there was the potential for a great film, maybe, but it just never happened.

S/S: It´s too bad. It sounded like you put a lot of time into it.

DL: An awful lot of time. But that happens with many films. It´s not always for lack of hard work that something comes out badly.

S/S: That experience must´ve made you especially cautious about losing control of a film.

DL: It´s worth it even if you have to work outside the system to get artistic freedom and final cut on a film.

S/S: You have to be able to feel the fish tugging...

DL: Exactly.

S/S: You´ve been very lucky, because you´ve been able to work within the system and still do that.

DL: Mostly people don´t want to fiddle. But just the thought that they could is enough to throw you off. And then you´re just not concentrating on the work and going where you think you should be going, just kind of feeling your way...

S/S: That must be difficult in film, because there are so many people involved.

DL: They´re involved, but in my experience, the people involved are great when they´re all working towards one thing.

S/S: It´s the people who aren´t involved.

DL: Exactly. Everyone is supposed to tune in to one thing. When that happens, it´s really beautiful and really magical and the thing is whirling and becoming better than you ever thought. But in order to set that up, you really have to have a pleasant atmosphere and a feeling that you´re allowed to make mistakes. It´s an experimental sort of atmosphere, and it´s a very delicate sort of thing. So many great ideas are ruined because when they come out, if someone says something negative, they´re so delicate they get killed right then.

S/S: You´ve done two adaptations and written two of your own films. Which way do you prefer working?

DL: It´s still all ideas. Maybe somebody else caught the fish and you´re just kind of cooking it. I´m working on one movie now called You Play the Black and the Red Comes Up. That´s based on a book. But I´m using the book as a point of departure. It´s going to be not so much an adaptation as an inspiration. I also have three other projects: Ronnie Rocket, Up at the Lake, and One Saliva Bubble. One Saliva Bubble is a real whacko comedy. It´s not a violent comedy, it´s just a whacko comedy. Up at the Lake is a completely violent film and Ronnie Rocket is an absurd comedy. You Play the Black and the Red Comes Up is also a violent comedy.

S/S: Do you see your other films as being comedies?

DL: Yeah, in a way. There´s varying degrees of comedy. I guess The Elephant Man is the least...

S/S: You´ve talked a lot about ideas and their power. What kinds of things inspire you to want to make a movie?

DL: You´ve got to fall in love with the whole thing in order to do it, because it´s so hard to do it. It gets harder every time, because you know how much work it´s going to be. It´s fun work, but it´s also very fearful to do something because you go out on a limb every time. I think that´s why old guys finally stop directing pictures. It´s like they´ve done it enough. And even though they might be loving some ideas, it´s not worth going out and going through all that to get them on film. They might just sit on a chair and, you know, live in their minds. But still, from mind to film, you can discover so many things. There´s a lot of action and reaction: you shoot something one day and you look at it, and just some little bit of light, or something somebody did, gives you an idea for something else, and a process is started. And it´s fantastic. You don´t know for sure exactly what´s going to happen. You have a structure. You have to have a good story, but you don´t know where it´s going to take you one hundred percent. Otherwise, it wouldn´t be so much fun to do. The producers hate hearing that, but it can still go somewhere better. You have to be open to surprises along the way.

S/S: It sounds like you work very intuitively...

DL: Yes. They´re a lot of different things in there, but what parts are bobbing up in the paintings, I´m not so sure.

S/S: Are they abstract?

DL: No. The paintings are sort of figurative. But like I said they´re bad paintings. But they´re bad in a sort of cool way. I love bad paintings. They have to be bad because they´re so many beautiful paintings. There´s something about paint, if it gets too beautiful, you kind of miss the fantastic thing about just paint. That´s what I´ve been finding out about. There are a lot of great painters who know about bad painting, and who know what I´m talking about. When it´s really working, you´re looking at the subject and the paint at the same time.

S/S: Are you afraid that if they´re too beautiful, it´ll be too easy to look at them, too complacent?

DL: Well, that way too, but... I wanted to bite my paintings. I was worried about it though, I saw these little skeletons on the paint cans, so I never did bite them. But I wanted to bite them so badly. I don´t know where all this is going to go, but they´ve got to be beautiful and they´ve got to be bad at the same time. Sort of like women.

S/S: With all these different projects going on at once, is it hard for you to keep them separate in your mind?

DL: No. It´s sort of like socks and underwear. They´re clothes, but they´re so different.

S/S: It seems like it would be difficult to find the energy for each project.

DL: When you´re in them, it´s all so fantastic. But it´s really hard to put a sock on for underwear.