Artful Disorder
David Lynch’s artfully disordered office—a small white loft with lots of windows with no blinds or shades—was awfully bright. It seemed less a star turn than common sense when he pulled out a pair of Third World-dictator sunglasses and asked, “Mind if I wear these things?” With the top button of his white cotton shirt buttoned tight, there was a goofy chic about the 34-year-old director of Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, and Dune.
Lynch’s career thus far reads like a film student’s fancy: an avant-garde feature made for $20,000; then a modestly budgeted ($5 million), no-star commercial movie, in black and white, that earned good reviews, a decent box office take, and Oscar nominations for best picture and director; and now a $50-million epic that is dividing the critics and luring fantasy fans.
I caught Lynch at a bad time. At the end of post-production, a director has to hang on to his cool with steel fingernails—especially when sneak previews and the gossip columns have been churlish about the unfinished product. After his three-and-a-half-year war to make Dune, Lynch still must fight some studio skirmishes, or submit to some Universal compromises. Sitting down for our conversation, Lynch looked as cool as Paul Atreides—but as he folded his hands on his desk and smiled, his knuckles went white.—J.G.
You’ve got a start date of March or thereabouts for your next picture, Blue Velvet. After a project as big as Dune, is that enough time to regroup?
Everybody says they’re sick after they finish something like this, but then they go right back into the fire and they do it again. A one-month vacation is about the maximum you need, and then you’re burning to go in there again, no matter how much hell you went through.
What do you like best about making a film?
Film encompasses so many different elements, and it takes up sequences of time, so you can make a world and go into that world. You can go on a trip to a place you created, have a story take place there, have abstractions occur, and have an overall feeling erupt out of that world that never existed before. It’s so beautiful to think about, but it’s so hard to do at the same time.
Making a movie is an exhaustive process. How hard is it to keep a fresh eye?
That’s the hardest thing there is. The closer I get to finishing a movie, the more I start projecting my fears onto it. Not only have I seen it all over and over, I start seeing where I’ve made mistakes. I see my fears double-exposed with the images on the screen. And it just keeps getting worse until I can’t stand being in the screening room. I can’t see it—I just see fear, and horror.
Do business pressures affect you much?
The pressure has to affect a person. In order to create something, you have to feel somewhat secure. But if you’re too secure you’re just as apt to make some mistakes. And there should be someone with more power than the director—if they’re the right kind of person. Mel Brooks and Jonathan Sanger gave me tremendous freedom on The Elephant Man. I only had to please them. If I’d had to please 20 people, I would’ve been lost. You need that shelter, but at the same time you need room to think up ideas. But if you think up too many crazy things, someone you trust has to be there to tell you you’ve gone too far. On Dune there’s Raffaella and Dino De Laurentiis—two different stories, but still, I only have to please them. When they’re pleased, nobody else really interferes.
Did you have much trouble defending abstract ideas and intuitive decisions?
It’s very dangerous because I just recently learned how to talk. I mean, not just recently—but certain things are just so beautiful to me, and I don’t know why. Certain things make so much sense to me, and it’s hard to explain. I felt Eraserhead, I didn’t think it.
How’d you learn how to talk?
Practice. Being forced. And I finally realized that people didn’t always know what I meant. Or they’d misinterpret what I meant, so I had to learn to say what it was that I wanted. On Eraserhead, it was a quiet process: going from inside me to the screen. I’d get something on film, get it paced a certain way, add the right sounds, and then I’d be able to say if it worked or not. Now, just to get to that point, there’s a million times more talking. And in Hollywood, if you can’t write your ideas down, or if you can’t pitch them, or if they’re so abstract that they can’t be pitched properly, then they don’t have a chance of surviving.
You can’t really blame the studios. There are so many things of boredom. Or the ideas are so abstract that a film is not commercial. Film tells a story. But abstract things are important to a film. But very few people get the chance to really go all out with cinema.
The sound in your pictures is as interesting as the images. Are you a musician?
I’m far from being a regular kind of musician, but music is super-important to me. I came to film through painting, and I guess you could say I came to music through sound effects. As a painter, I’d make up sounds in my head to create a mood for a painting. I wanted to live in that painting, so I imagined what it sounded like. I’m very interested in mood music—that’s why I like Brian Eno so much. Sound effects used as music. I want to bend and shape a sound, and I want to produce an album of this kind of music. I can’t tell you how much I yearn to do this.
The story of Dune sounds very operatic.
I’m not an opera fan, but Dune has a feeling of theatrics and opera. No one sings, but it has that feeling.
What do you think about TV as a format for movies?
The power of most movies is in the bigness of the image and the sound and the romance. On TV the sound suffers and the impact suffers. With just a flick of the eye or turn of the head, you see the TV stand, you see the rug, you see some little piece of paper with writing on it, or a strange toaster or something. You’re out of the picture in a second. In a theater, when the screen is big and the sound is right, a movie is very powerful, even if it stinks.
So the viewer should get lost in a picture?
People want to be lost in a film, but they’re also afraid to be lost. There’s something much safer about watching something at home. There are some worlds I don’t want to go into—but if I go to the movies, I’d like to be in there, you know?
Have you seen Eraserhead on tape?
I worked really hard to get a decent video. We had a pristine print of it and the video guys really worked hard to get the mood and the rich, snappy blacks. They did it, and it looks pretty good.
Your next picture, Blue Velvet, seems to be a suburban twist on Eraserhead, with a stronger story. How is Blue Velvet going to be changed by your experiences on Dune?
It is what I’ve learned. I just finished that script.
Didn’t you have it in mind before you started Dune?
Yes I did, but all the changes are in this draft. It was way different before, not nearly as good. I’ve learned a lot, and I want to try to do films that are commercial and artistic. I want to have a strong story, but I want to have a story that has room for mood, where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. As long as I can do that, I’ll be real, real, real happy.
What’s the best world you can envision?
To me, creating—just the word creating—is the niftiest concept there is. Creations are an extension of yourself, and you go out on a limb whenever you create anything. It’s a risk, yet it’s so rewarding.
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