P.S. on D.L. (& other stuff)

For the scientific approximation of how these newspaper clippings appear when viewed from the opposite side of the looking glass, see the image from my entry “Timewaster wordwaster.”

P.S.

(What follows was originally the postscript from Wednesday’s wisdom, but I moved it here so that I could get paid twice instead of just once. This is a good rule-of-thumb for writers: always get paid.)

And yesterday I thought about doing a personal Lynch rating, but I aborted the idea because I was tired. Now, being twice as tired today, I’ll give it a shot. I’ll copy my introduction from that last post verbatim:

Now that Twin Peaks is over, I don’t have to talk about David Lynch anymore. So let me rate all his movies with a simple hand-gesture, like a gang sign. While presenting a selected filmography, I’ll tell you what is hot and what is not:

Whoa I was just getting ready to post my Judgment but then a book arrived for me: a title by John Berryman – it came unexpectedly fast because they only had to ship it from the St. Paul location to my local library; I got an email notification after pasting the above paragraph, and so I took a break from composing this post, walked over there and picked up the book; then I started to read it, and it lifted my mood sky-high. I love strong poetry. As I explained in some earlier entries here, the books in the stack that I am currently reading are great, but they’re depressing because of their subject matter: for instance, one is about U.S. history, and one is about the war in Afghanistan; and although I’d recommend each book heartily, it makes me despair to read of such horrifying events... especially in mere prose.

But anyway, here’s a photo from inside the title that arrived; I love how old library books look, with all their weird wear, markings and extra text and stickers and stuff:

I became interested in Berryman after reading the poem “Henry’s Suicide” by M.P. Powers (the character Henry, I later learned, is a sort of authorial mask in Berryman’s book, whose title I’ll reveal once I escape this parenthetical aside); I searched our local system and surprise! it had the collection 77 Dream Songs, which I thought would be a good place to start (normally, if I want the really good stuff, I must request it via interlibrary loan, because our home branch’s catalog is, to say the least, poetically impoverished; hence my surprise); but after reading about halfway thru the book (I left off at number 40 before returning here to huff and puff about this), I’m so taken that I think I’m gonna try to get my mitts on the rest of the songs: for, in an introductory note from the poet himself, J.B. explains that this volume of 77 is “one version of a poem in progress”; and I learned from the encyclopedia that there’s a further offering titled His Toy, His Dream, His Rest, and that Berryman “clearly intended the two books to be read as a single work.”

But since I’m still just on my first trip through the present volume, I’m too shy to share a piece that I love – plus I love so many already, it would be absurd to zero in on only one...

Actually no, here – I’ll take a photo of #36 so that you can get an idea of what the text looks like:

As one who remains in awe of the poet Robert Frost, I want to add, lest anyone run too wild with that last line above, this citation from an interview—in his own words, here's J.B.:

This business about geniuses in neglected garrets is for the birds. The idea that a man is somehow no good just because he becomes very popular, like Frost, is nonsense, also. There are exceptions [...] but on the whole, men of genius were judged by their contemporaries very much as posterity judges them.

Detour second

Now, alas, I must take leave of Berryman. If only for the sake of the title, I need to get to Lynch.

But first, let me quote from one of the other books I’m reading – I happened to have typed out the excerpt earlier today, so I figured I might as well trace its scent, as this entry is already off the rails. The book is called Hollywood: A novel of America in the 1920s by Gore Vidal. Does the clip that I want to share demand any setup? No, none. Or if it does, then I'll be guilty of writing an irresponsibly confusing weblog entry, because I refuse to set this up. I just want to paste this thing and move on. Obviously the passage’s context is prior to the ratification of the 19th Amendment:

Privately, Burden hated the whole enterprise. The wounded of the Civil War had been all round him in his youth, and the general poverty of the delta during that time was directly due to the loss of manpower and money in the war. Publicly, Burden supported the war; yet he could never rationalize to himself the brutal manner in which the United States had violated its own sacred Monroe Doctrine in order to fight a war in Europe, something the original republic had guaranteed to all the world that it would never do. However, as a practical politician, he had been able to rationalize the necessity of making the world safe not for democracy—a quixotic enterprise, since the United States had yet to experiment with so dangerous a form of government, as those militant women who wanted to vote never ceased to remind their sexual masters—but to enrich the nation.

Tho nearing its end, I am still making my way thru the seven books of Vidal's self-styled "Narratives of Empire." It's a big undertaking for a reader: Why am I doing it? Because I'm sick of my ignorance; as a child of the U.S. public education system, my mind is a fog about my own nation's history: I want to remedy that lack; yet my hunger is for more than the official propaganda; I want to know the parts of the story that the power-mongers do not want me to hear. Vidal's books are one of a cocktail of remedies to my predicament. The novels of this series have ample artistry to make the historical portions palatable, and enough hard truth that is shocking and timely to justify any lack of poetic exuberance. (In other words, with Vidal, I can always sufficiently answer my inner devil's-advocate, who, while I read, never ceases to whisper: Why spend your time here rather than with, say, Blake or Joyce?) Any time my interest wanes, it is soon rewarded by some blowout revelation: the type of thing that, once it's been pointed out, I can't believe ever escaped my notice. Again: hiding in plain sight. Each book in the series is centered on some such scandalous theme, overarching and so general that it went unnoticed hitherto. The banality of evil...

But what's this—why am I pontificating? Why did you let me ramble so long? I just wanted to post the quote and skip to my lou. Now here I am offering broad impressions of the whole shebang. Let's get a move on. Finish the job and skedaddle: beat it, scram. Go get some breakfast. Or is it only brunch-time? Lemme see...

Yes, 5:27 a.m. North American Central Time covers a zone in parts of Canada, Mexico, Central America, some Caribbean Islands, part of the Eastern Pacific Ocean, and Minnesota, where the bestselling author Bryan Ray "lives". Central Standard Time, by the way, is six hours behind Coordinated Universal Time; hence its inhabitants' immunity to all fashion.

Attempt #3

NOTE. The subtitle in the above screenshot from Twin Peaks Season Three refers to my new-old mini rap demo or "rhythmic podcast," which appeared in stores on Thursday. It's the first release of an ancient recording (I did it in 2004); and I call it a folk-rap podcast because all I did is talk for about ten minutes over some beats, and this alternate label helps to soften the blow for those who abhor the genre known today as rap. During its release party, I promised that I would let everyone know when the record company managed to upload the project to various places online; so here is an update: The Fireman Tape is now available at three new media outlets: on my YouTube account, also at my Tumblr page, and of course at demorap headquarters. Thank you for listening. Now, back to your regularly scheduled advertisements:

At long last, and without any further ado, I want to stash this wealth from my previous entry, which, as explained at the start, I relocated to this present post so as to take advantage of its geolocation; for this is the only known, unenclosed place on the surface of the earth where the sun don't shine.

LYNCHLIST

Bear with me while I collect overtime pay on this blog post by rating the movies of David Lynch with one of two hand-gestures: I will put my thumb up if I like the film, then we can let it live; and I’ll put my thumb down if the film must depart from me into the everlasting fire, prepared for the angels [Matthew 25:41].

First we have Eraserhead (1977), that’s his most truly REALIZED cinematic poem; it is deeply rewarding; I highly recommend it.

Then in 1980 he made The Elephant Man, which is a great film, I love it; but the only thing I find sad is that Lynch originally wanted to direct his own intensely personal script Ronnie Rocket but that never got made because financiers have no imagination and they’re all going to regret their life when time flips.

And then Lynch stumbled in and out of Dune (1984) but was so disappointed with his mishandling of the thing (it was a big-dollar production) that he asked that his name be removed from the credits and replaced with Alan Smithee (the official pseudonym used by film directors who wish to disown a project).

Next comes Blue Velvet (1986), which is superb. Roger Ebert panned it, and that’s his stupid mistake. Keep this in mind when you consider that Ebert also panned two other of my favorite films: The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), and Wrong (2012). And he never even bothered to review my all-time favorite film, Wrong Cops (2013). However, in fairness, he might have been dead by the time it appeared.

And then comes Lynch’s adaptation of Barry Gifford’s novel: Wild at Heart (1990). At first I recoiled from its grotesqueness and violence; I vowed never to see it again, because I thought it was just plain ill-considered cinema; but I’m glad that I broke my own rule and gave it another chance, for the truth about the film is that it’s an ultra-modern love story: since the bond between its main characters Sailor and Lula serves as the artwork’s foundation, it’s rather hot than not. That’s my official rating, subject never to change.

And in 1990-91 comes the TV show Twin Peaks. The pilot episode with its “European ending” is the best; and then that ending was edited into the second episode as a dream sequence when it aired. Both of those shows were directed by Lynch, by the way, as was episode 8, 9, 14, & 29 (the second season’s notorious finale). All the Lynch-directed Twin Peaks shows are good, and so are many of the episodes directed by others; but a number of the non-Lynch episodes are indeed awful, especially the ones amidst the second season; so the show becomes a great tool for learning about the effectiveness of directorial decisions: I would surely exhibit it to teach a course on mise-en-scène. (I use that term only because I’ve never quite understood it.)

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992), the movie that appeared in the theaters after the TV show’s cancellation, is an uneven artwork but well worth wrestling with: if I’m limited to giving it ONLY either a thumbs-up or thumbs-down signal, and I’m not allowed to give it two vacillating thumbs, then I give it two vacillating thumbs.

I’m getting tired of writing this. Critical appraisals: so stuffy. Do I have to say something about the Lynch-directed episodes of Hotel Room (1993)? They’re not bad, from what I remember. But why was there nothing spellbinding enough about them to stick with me, something to haunt me and lure me to return and re-watch? (FUN FACT: I was able to find the three episodes of this semi-obscure show on VHS at my local Video Update store.)

Lost Highway (1997) was the first Lynch film that I got to see in the theater. All of his other great works came out before I knew of him. I didn’t catch Twin Peaks when it aired on TV; I had to rent its tapes from Blockbuster. And then I had to pay 80 U.S. dollars for the set of its first two seasons. That was about one week of pay, for me. And I took a full week of work off, just to binge-watch them. So the total cost was more than two weeks of pay. It was like a holy duty. So I loved Lost Highway when I first saw it, and a few years later I was angry when Lynch’s other film Mulholland Drive came out, because it seemed so similar. But now that eons have passed and I’ve had time to calm down, I realize that the latter is the better film. But I still watch Lost Highway occasionally; it has charms of its own.

The Straight Story (1999) is a great film that was not written by Lynch but only directed by him: its screenplay was written by Mary Sweeney, who was briefly married to Lynch. Sweeney was born in Wisconsin, and so was I; but I was never married to Lynch.

Mulholland Drive (2001) is a really great film. I love it. I think about the dialogue with “The Cowboy” all the time: as I move thru my life, I meet people who I wish I could send off to have a talk with “The Cowboy.” This movie is definitely among Lynch's top two or three. The only reason I am saying so little about it is that I dislike talking.

DumbLand (2002) appeals to me for similar reasons as Quentin Dupieux’s Wrong Cops (2013). I love both films. Also that same year 2002 David Lynch released the short series Rabbits on his website – that was an interesting experiment. DumbLand is the best: a successful experiment; I even favor it over his subsequent feature films; it’s maybe the last excellent motion picture he’ll do. Its main character, who is not named in the show but whom Lynch on his website calls “Randy,” is exactly like a guy I used to know from the Baptist church. And Randy’s wife is a spot-on sendup of my mother.

Before purchasing a copy of it on digital disc, I saw Inland Empire (2006) in the movie theater, which was an accomplishment because it was hard to find anyplace that was showing it, at least here where I live in the backwoods rural countryside of the furthest reaches of farmland in midwestern USA, because of the unconventional way that Lynch distributed it. The sad thing is that I don’t really like this film. I like small parts, but mostly it feels subpar.

[Author's note-to-self before the end: Also I wrote tiny thots about a couple shorter films from earlier in Lynch's career, in a recent entry. File this under "further reading" or maybe cut-&-paste it here later.]

Lastly and leastly, out of the full eighteen hours of Twin Peaks: The Return (2017), I like most of episode 3, plus episode 8 after the Roadhouse musical performance; but that’s pretty much all. After re-watching the whole thing, I am willing to admit that there are good moments marbled throughout, and I do like the writers’ decision to leave the series as it ends, with that last scene; but the series as an entirety lacks a certain crucial quality (gusto? intensity? focus? inevitable pacing?) which is normally organic to the work of David Lynch. As Ruth’s husband says about Officer Rough’s song in the film Wrong Cops, “There may be just a little something missing.”