David Lynch Interview 1986 Brian Linehan's City Lights

laura dern with Kyle McLaughlin in a scene from a film called blue velvet written and directed by David Lynch welcome Thank You Bryan I want to point something out sitting here with you within the context of the Toronto International Film Festival your film blue velvet being in the festival and I can say the street with a smile because you are the filmmaker who went around with 24 cans of film that happened to be something called Eraserhead you went to people and you begged and you got down on one knee and you tried to get into the New York Film Festival the conne Film Festival you finally went and borrowed a shopping cart saying I promise you this will be returned and indeed it was how nice to know David that after all you have been through as a filmmaker as a screenwriter that you can have a project like blue velvet and it's in a Film Festival and you didn't have to beg this is true it's fantastic some great world now why are you saying that was that's it's my because it is I guess do you mean that oh yes it's a pretty fascinating world yeah you sound like one of the characters and blue velvet isn't that an important line it's a strange world is the important line yeah do you feel do you feel good about the treatment accorded to you in 1986 as a filmmaker I I don't know what that treatment is yet because blue velvet has not been released so I'll see what the treatment is within the next couple of weeks are you telling me that you don't place much important in what are known as trade paper inner well mr. Lynch well no good things are happening but you know you can't you can't count on too much till it really happens what's important to I should point out that I sit in front of you and and I can point out that Eraserhead is still playing in a London movie house that the runs of Eraserhead in New York and San Francisco and Los Angeles not only set precedence there are people who still go back to see Eraserhead and talk about it and on the way to blue velvet being a I still think of that meeting that was set up between you and Mel Brooks and you were terrified you told a friend that you were afraid that if Mel Brooks saw Eraserhead you'd never get the job directing the Elephant Man on film then Mel Brooks came out afterwards and said before he met you he expected to meet someone that looked like a short fat German with spit running down his chin and he met this wonderful open-faced all-american kind of guy who made him think of Jimmy Stewart 35 years ago now since you've heard this before why do you think people have this preconceived notion of you David well it's pretty obvious but this is what films for me are all about there's a surface of life and this is the tip of the iceberg and then there's so much beneath the surface and that's the interesting bits you can never tell you can't judge a book by the cover to true I was thinking of you when I was sitting through blue velvet because I was able to recall how you've talked about your idyllic childhood tree-lined streets parents who never argued didn't smoke didn't drink although you wish they did all of those things you were the same boy at the time who could go to Brooklyn to visit a relative be terrified filled with fear find yourself in Philadelphia sharing a room with your buddy Jack Fisk living near a morgue we filled with fear and it's all there in blue velvet the idyllic tree-lined streets firemen waving hello and all of these things going on underneath am I putting autobiographical things in where they don't belong or are they there they're there I started out in the northwest in a one of the most happy childhoods you can imagine it was picket fences and blue skies and so things became contrast to me other things Philadelphia in particular why Philadelphia in particular Philadelphia when I lived there I can't say now for sure but it was one of the sickest most fearful corrupt frightening cities I've ever you know stepped foot in and especially in the neighborhoods I was living in and I guess I you know feel atmosphere of a place the mood of a place and it and it effects on me and I just felt I was living inside ocean of fear and I would see you know so many things that supported that and I guess this makes a little network in a person's psyche and when you do get ideas they come bobbing up through this network and are altered somewhat and outcomes eraser header or blue velvet did you really say at one point David that you there was a time when you thought you'd never get out of Philadelphia alive or you'd never get out I never felt there was a long time where I never felt I would get out of Philadelphia yeah I was printing engravings and living in a very frightening neighborhood in a big old house but things were looking pretty bleak and then I got a grant from the American Film Institute and it is one of those things that come along in people's lives that really is like a bolt of electricity changed everything all right that we'll take a commercial break be right back with David Lynch and more on blue velvet it's Abela Rossellini in a moment from david lynch's blue velvet my reaction to you toward that scene and very much of what Isabella Rossellini does and blue velvet but specifically there is that I had to go all the way back to Joshua Logan's direction of Marilyn Monroe in båstad William Inge's bus stop and Monroe's attempt as cherry to sing that old black magic where you saw in the use of the music within the characters definition the futility the hopelessness the lack of talent the belief that somehow it would be overcome you reach out toward the character knowing the characters doomed you can't help and there it all is and I compliment you because it's a Bella Rosaline ease creation of Dorothea Valens is right there this is true no is the character of Dorothy valance is she's a foreign a foreign person in a in a strange land and you know at the same time I don't know if there will ever be an album of her her songs it could be a hit it could be but she's a music video tape I don't know but um you know a lot of things come through when she when she does sing and like you said it's it's it's Dorothy and your heart does open up you recently stopped on your way to Toronto and Montreal of course here I'm sitting in front of a filmmaker who makes a movie like Elephant Man and received eight Academy Award nominations two of them specifically for himself as director and writer but when you stopped in Montreal blue velvet managed to pick up some more prizes one of them being for Dennis Hopper I must point out that as a movie goer that is one of the most insidiously repellent no redeeming social value creations ever put on the motion Victor screen and Dennis Hopper is obviously having a wonderful time doing it he meant did you have to control him or did you let him go actually Dennis said that I even you know pushed him further he thought he was getting too far out and he wasn't he wasn't even halfway out there he was 3/4 of the way out there I guess but you know Frank is a guy who is driven all the characters are driven in various directions but Frank loves his work and he and he Frank is is a is a lover he's filled with love and it's just a just a hair twisted but he's pretty intense now there's a writer director making understatements on camera you are also the filmmaker who gave us the film version of dune and you've been generous there many people in the motion picture industry who aren't as generous as you are toward Dino De Laurentiis but we're talking about blue velvet which is a deg presentation through Dino De Laurentiis company you made a reference at one point saying that well you have not seen Michael Jimmy knows Heaven's Gate you really felt that if someone I'm paraphrasing now that you felt it if someone like a Dino De Laurentiis had been on the set would have been a good thing mm-hmm and that you feel that we as directors who who said need that intervention you need that person to come in and pull in the reins to control you are you saying that is that a constant or was that in defense of dune or in defense of an empire builder like Dino De Laurentiis or your understanding now of what happened with the film like Heaven's Gate where there was no one administrative lien control I think that it's good to have some sort of boundaries and I don't know exactly you know what it does but it it helps you you're forced to think that boundary is getting too tight like an eraser head the boundaries of no money stopped us cold but too much money and too much freedom sometimes you're just you know floating out in space and it becomes something other than filmmaking and so I think that maybe when I said that maybe somebody like Dino could have you know just just made a tighter Corral around the whole process and and it could have sparked something and something better could have happened I don't know but I like a boundary some sort of restriction it's just it almost pushes it pushes me but also for artistic business I like freedom there and so I think the two things can coexist you need a real good producer who is totally organized but who also keeps you from getting a little bit too crazy where does the making of dune fall into what you just said the making of dune went wrong because we had a two hour and 15 minute limit on the length of the picture and it was too much to tell in that amount of time so it was like a fantastic Porsche car kind of compacted down into it still a Porsche but it's hard to drive it and it doesn't look so good anymore all right all that we'll take another break be right back with David Lynch and one Dennis Hopper in a moment from David Lynch's film blue velvet again Isabella Rossellini Kyle mcLaughlin I think it's really full circle there's something romantic almost about you and your longtime friendship with Jack Fiske fact that Jack Fiske has a sister who happens to be an important part of your life you married her and that Jack Fiske was involved in this year's festival because Spacek was involved in Knight mother and that your old buddy Jack Fiske could make a director film like Raggedy man and the irony of the title of his previous effort with Spacek being violence or blue your film being blue velvet do you two still see each other oh yeah because they're living out in a farm and you're I think in California mm-hmm yeah I see Jack and and strangely enough in the same year we both made a film with the word man in it and then practically in the same year with the word blue in it so interesting David who introduced you to David Cronenberg odd Canadian filmmaker Dino De Laurentiis in what city New York City did you have an immediate rapport yeah I guess so um I don't know David real well I'm looking forward to seeing his picture the fly but you know I guess he's a kindred spirit gee that's a funny thing to say out loud I was thinking that about both of you two because you are unique and what you put on film there is I suppose one of the things I like about seeing your movies whether one does talked about Eraserhead or Elephant Man or dune or now blue velvet they're never dull you get into arguments you can go out with a group of people after a screening of blue velvet and practically divide the room in half and you know perfectly well that one half of the room believes you're a genius the other half of the room has the same opinion Mel Brooks had a view before he met you and it must confuse you too you must feel it about people when they meet you for the first time thinking gee what kind of a guy meet does it does it affect you or does it affect your meeting of people no it doesn't I guess a lot of my life I i'm i'm just i'm down in somewhere else or up in somewhere else i don't know where it is I'm not sleepwalking through you know meeting people but I really like people it's just a different part of me that that meets them as your teenage daughter seen blue velvet she saw it almost finished she was there when we were mixing it what was her reaction to it David well she digs it that's it that's it did she sympathize with Isabella Rossellini creation of Dorothy I think she did yeah yeah I think she did I don't say this on any silly level but was there any hesitation on Isabella's part in terms of some of the more bizarre things her character was required to offer on film or did she give herself to you as an actress no questions well I think an actress good or great actress it says goodbye to themselves and they go into the character and Isabella I think she fell in love with the character of Dorothy and she was said I'm there 100% she was I wish you well with blue velvet it is not going to be without controversy and I think you have a potential box-office blockbuster on your hands Brian thank you very much I hope I hope so pleasure we don't want you to go back to Athens and live in that basement with lizards all over the wall do we know we don't it's a pleasure meeting a good deal Brian thank you very much

Channel: Brian Linehan's City Lights

Views: 73,932

Rating: 4.9619045 out of 5

Keywords: City Lights (TV Program), Blue Velvet (Film), David Lynch (Film Director), Brian Linehan (TV Personality), Crime Fiction (TV Genre), Twin Peaks (TV Program), Eraserhead (Film)

Id: MmsJvR2sVmA

Length: 16min 47sec (1007 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 16 2015