Lost Highway with David Lowery

Blank Jack with Griffin and David

Black Jack with Griffin and David Don't know what to say or to expect

All you need to know is that the name of the show with Black Jack

We've podcasted before haven't we keep going hard to do Blake

One of the most incredible vocal performances in a movie.

I was a little close.

Yeah, no, you're getting it, but like, but it's, but you can't get it because every time you see him in the movie,

you're like, I think I know what this guy's going to sound like.

And it's not exactly what you think he's going to sound like.

Have you tried the laugh?

It's so hard.

I mean, no.

Like, it's so hard to get that ramp up.

It's like, there's just like a baritone.

Like, his voice is kind of wonderful.

Like, you actually, it's not like some weird monster voice exactly no and yet it's also so disturbing this one must have had a fairly limited budget right uh 400 million dollars no i'm just saying like blake must have really done them a major favor by saving them all the hair and makeup time just showing up to set apparently this movie had a 15 million dollar budget i guess that makes sense because it's like entirely french funding though right well dig in i'm not joking yeah there's interest

i think this movie had no american finance i can't imagine it was it was an easy sell in the U.S.

It was the short-lived Shibi, Sibi Sibi 2000.

CB 2000.

And

which reminded me of, I remember when you did the Carpenter series, and he had that deal for live pictures where it's like, we'll give you final cut.

Right.

And I think he had a budget cap, but it was like, great, I'm going to do a slate of pictures for them.

And so this was the same thing.

Elaine Giraud, that's the guy's name, who

built the channel, I believe.

All by by myself.

Yes.

And he was like, now I'm going to move into film.

And he like post Wild Heart winning the Palme d'Or was like, hey, David Lynch, make whatever you want.

I'll finance it.

And

then I think he had died by the time Lost Highway came out and the deal fell apart.

And it was distributed by October here.

One of the greats.

Yeah.

One of the greats.

I mean, truly one of the coolest.

Yes.

October Films, one of the coolest distributors ever.

Like, if you look at their list of like movies they distributed.

Good name.

Go see all of them, basically.

But that's him coming off of a five-year gap.

And all of his films before that gap, post-Eraserhead, were released by major studios.

Right.

Like he was weirdly a major studio guy.

Well, because there weren't other things.

Yeah.

They didn't exist.

And

Dune, notwithstanding, there was, well, it's, it's weird to look back at his filmography and realize like, there weren't that many movies in the 80s.

I had him in my memory that.

Oh, it's three movies.

Yeah.

The The Firewalk with Me, which sort of represents a breaking point, was like much later in the 90s, but no, that was 92.

Yes.

And, you know, 10 years after Dune.

And so in that run,

he had his great heartbreak of Dune.

Yes.

And then his massive success with Blue Velvet.

Twin Peaks, a couple.

You're forgetting he wins the Palm D'Or or

Rod the Heart.

And then Twin Peaks.

And it's like, is David Lynch like, you know, he's on the cover of Time.

Name Stream?

Right.

Yeah.

Like, you know, I think, and this speaks to like the exact age we are, David.

But like, I have grown up feeling like, it is so strange that Twin Peaks had its moment of being as big as it was, that this weirdo guy made a thing that crossed over that much into the mainstream.

But then you step back and you're like, he was ostensibly a mainstream figure.

up until Firewalk with me.

And that is the collapse.

And then people are like, we're over this guy.

and then when he rebuilds himself he becomes more of a cult object is that fair to say i don't know if that's totally he was always a whatever we got eraserhead was i mean eraserhead was a cult film right he was always a cult guy yes but the esteem that was he was greeted with you know when he made elephant man all of a sudden he is on a you know that movie is nominated for every oscar it's a little like your

so classy right a little like yorgos sure where it's like here's the weird guy that the mainstream public has accepted as the one weird guy who gets to operate at a high level with big stars, with real money.

It's fascinating.

I mean,

it is.

You're a little bit older than us, David.

Second, David.

Wow.

Just calling him out.

Well, no, because I'm curious.

I didn't have the, like, I couldn't live through the perspective of this.

Do you remember feeling in the time between 1992 and 1997

there being an energy of like, is Lynch never going to make another movie again?

No, the energy was he's cooked.

Right.

I'm not that much older than you guys.

I know.

Hang on here.

I'm younger when this came out.

I'm a little too young for it, but I remember that its reputation was when the straight story came out.

So I was old enough then to really be plugged in that it was like lost highway, though.

That was when Lynch was fucking off the rails.

Right.

Like, Straight Story was like, he's over his bullshit.

Well, straight story was

a weird thing for him to to do the weirdest thing he ever did right and it's like that it was a not a comeback tour but it was kind of like okay but the vibe on lost highway was just like uh he's over really embarrassing it's really interesting so i'm like a couple of years older than you guys so like i was right in the sweet spot for lost highway which also was my introduction to david lynch that makes sense that was the first movie of his i'd seen I knew who he was because as a toddler or a small child, I checked out the dune storybook from the library which was like the star wars storybook it was like the picture of space adventure fun for kids yeah right was it like a little golden book now i want to look at the inspiration slightly larger one it was all photos

right it's like the star wars one i have the star wars one yeah you know like it's uh you know

and and so i

as I also did, would then look up any movie I was interested in, Roger Ebert's movie, Hum Companion.

Roger Ebert has a famously fraught history with David Lynch, which I'm sure by this point you will have talked about at length.

But his review of Dune was, you know, one star, cardboard, cutout spaceships.

He really

did not like it.

No disrespect to Dune, but the Dune storybook might be the ideal delivery system for David Lynch's Dune.

Maybe.

I've also got, I have the Dune coloring book, also very nice.

Oh, yes.

All black and white, which was his original plan for that film was to make it black and white.

Great plan, David.

Wait, which David are we talking?

Let's make this very clear.

There's a lot of stuff.

We're doing the three Davids right now in this episode.

Didn't this happen to us before?

Every time.

Were we discussing a third David last time?

Must have been.

Well, we had Ben David on the show.

Well, no, I'm not talking about that.

That was kind of confusing.

People furious that we didn't call out the weird

very late in the episode.

We finally got to it.

I can't remember why we would have been talking.

Anyway, yes, there are three Davids in the room right now.

But the Dune coloring work.

Yes.

We don't need to talk too much about Dune because you'll have already done a whole episode on it.

I love his Dune.

I think it's

a really fascinating movie.

And if you watch the deleted scenes that are on YouTube, you're like, if this was all in the movie, it would be a much better shit.

Sure.

The problem with Dune is the yada yada thing that it starts to do.

It looks incredible.

Anyway,

but enough about Dune.

I became aware of David Lynch because of that.

And then in.

the early 90s, I think I talked about this on the,

maybe it was the

demi demi episode I did where there was an

issue of Newsweek that had Hannibal Elector on the cover and inside it had a picture of Laura Palmer wrapped in plastic, which terrified me.

And it was like America's obsession with murder, why

you're like murder movies.

Yeah, okay.

And that picture, I thought it was a severed head.

I also thought it was from Silence of the Lambs, but that was sort of like I became aware of Twin Peaks, basically that.

And then my favorite tangent that I will go on here is

there was this, my dad brought home a new PC like in 1991 that had a CD-ROM drive and one of the CD-ROMs that it came with was Microsoft Cinemania.

Oh, yeah.

Yes.

This was incredible.

So it was like IMDB with Wikipedia for movies combined with a database of Roger Ebert and Pauline Kale reviews.

I think there was some Malton in there.

Yeah, some Malton.

You had some James Monaco in there.

Okay.

It was dense.

Yeah.

Sure.

And it also had clips.

And so all these movies that I would have been not allowed to see or just unaware of, you could just watch clips that were embedded in the CD-ROM.

In that like weird, grainy

early 90s.

And one of them was the opening to Blue Velvet, which was with the, with the going into the earth, the guy having the stroke.

The sound design in that sequence just like really was provocative to me, especially as like an 11-year-old.

So now David Lynch is someone I'm aware of.

Let's cut to 1997.

I now have like a, we're going to have have to break this at some point, but I only talk about movies on this podcast that came out while I was working at a movie theater.

Yeah.

Well, it's, I feel like that's why you are always asking for these movies.

Probably so.

Very formidable time for you.

Very formatively.

But this is sort of a guy who's been like lingering over you, and you're finally not getting to live through seeing one of his movies.

So I'm two months into working at the AMC Grand in Dallas, Texas.

Because like, right, Sleepy Hollow, you did, this is blank check, and Griff will introduce and all that.

You're a David Lowry.

I'm not not doing that, I'm just saying you're David Lowry.

Well, now what I need to say is Blank Check the Griffin.

David, it's a podcast about filmography.

I'm Griffin, it's a podcast about filmography.

Directors were a massive success early on in the career of sincerity series.

Blank checks make whatever crazy passion projects they want.

Sometimes that's clear, and sometimes they bounce baby.

It's been a series on the films of David Lynch.

It's called Twin Pods Firecast with me.

Today, our guest returning to the show is David Lowry.

We're talking Lost Highway.

But right, you did Sleepy Hollow, that's 99.

Truth About Charlie is what, 2002?

Yes.

13th Warrior is what?

99?

98 or 99?

99, yeah.

Yeah.

And this is 97.

So what you worked at this theater from like, what, 97 to 2002?

Oh, I'm still working there.

That's my job.

Yeah, of course.

I never claimed.

I never.

You're just gliding up and down on the chair, the office chair between all the screens.

So 99, so you've just started working.

I turned 16, instantly go and get a job at this movie theater.

I want to work my way up to the projection booth.

That will happen in May, but this is February.

And

there's a standee, the standee for Lost Highway, which I wish I had kept because I took home a lot of standees, was an actual road construction sign with the flashing light on it.

And we had that.

Yeah, I remember that.

That was a week outlay for October films.

Yeah.

They really went through.

They were doing a lot of standees, I imagine.

Do you know how many batteries we're going to have to buy?

They had an Apostle standee with Robert Duvall waving his arm.

Thank you.

It would go like this.

Yeah.

Could pull a string.

Oh, apostle.

So I'm working at this movie theater.

I'm coming into my own gothdom.

I'm realizing I've got like some goth tendencies.

Big Tim Burton fan.

Sure.

Big fan of the crow.

And of course, my favorite band in the world, Smashing Pumpkins, second favorite, David Bowie, third favorite, Nine Inch Nails.

I go sit down in this theater, theater 14.

I think it was an employee screening, but I can't remember for sure.

Sure.

Okay.

And the movie starts.

And boy, does it start.

Like it just slams into you with the text, the music, hearing a Trent Reznor remix of a David Bowie song.

And I'm like, oh, this is my favorite movie ever.

And probably this is my favorite director of all time.

And it's never going to get better than this moment right now.

Oh yeah, man.

So I just immediately fell in love.

I immediately fell in love.

And the whole movie worked for me on every level.

It would have worked.

He would have done anything at that point.

From that opening,

it's hard to lose me.

Right.

It's hard to lose a movie.

I see him like looking at the screen be like, David Lowry, you, you suck.

Just him saying that for two hours.

and you're like, this is pretty good.

100%.

Yeah.

And I mean, Ben, did you have you?

Have you seen this before?

I feel like.

No, I'd never seen it before.

I fucking loved it.

It's a very Ben movie.

It's a very Ben movie.

Yeah, I really got locked in on this.

I just love how it's just a bunch of desert scumbags.

You ain't wrong, baby.

Wait, what is what does Robert Loja say at the end of the?

What's his final line?

It's something, it's not scumbagged.

It's something like that.

And you're right.

The soundtrack is really great.

Hearing of Romstein drop,

like the self-titled Romstein song.

Wow.

That band really haunted me because, of course, my last name is Hosley, and there was that popular song of theirs, Du Hostmitsch.

And that was really kids would just quote that at my face.

Wait, did you suddenly just accidentally give yourself a nickname for this?

Series?

Probably.

Oh, I sure did.

We can really out ugly them son of a bitches.

I remember that.

That's some bitches.

Yeah.

Some bitches.

As sort of one run-on board.

Yeah.

It all just comes out.

It is, it is like odd.

It is incongruous to have one David Lynch movie that is so filled with songs of its exact moment.

Like it feels weird to have a Lynch movie that's like featuring Marilyn Manson and smashing pumpkins and nine-inch nails.

And it doesn't, it's not that it felt like it was shoehorned in there.

Just he had an opportunity to collaborate with artists who happened to fit with his vibe.

And That's probably

they all probably were excited to collaborate with him.

Right.

Mainstream music was maybe starting to be invaded by people who were influenced by his work.

You know, like were tonally.

Yeah.

That's a good call for sure.

He never directed a Nine Inch Nails video, but he could have.

Yeah, he could have.

He probably.

Yeah.

How many music videos has he directed?

We do that.

We did.

Well, he did a music video for Toxic, right?

He did Wicked Game.

Uh-huh.

Who Let the the dogs out wait a second friendly he did do a nine inch nails video way later though uh came back haunted in 2014 that's from the yeah the much more recent stuff and that song is oh is it a video or is it the scene from twin peaks the return where nine inch nails is playing in the club which is a

fragmented into a video i don't know all i know is that it has an epilepsy warning Oh,

there's also, he did a Moby video that he like animated that's like weird drawings of people and skyscrapers.

Anyway, no, are you going to do a Patreon on Dumbland and all of his

short films Patreon?

We haven't really figured out what to do.

There's so much stuff.

DavidLynch.com was.

Yeah.

Although they're short.

Larry has his tradition.

We are recording with you like six months before the episode comes out.

Yes.

That's true.

We had scheduled this episode before

your last episode had come out, even though we had been sitting on that one for five months.

Yeah, well, welcome back, baby.

Lost Highway.

I mean, we have to do it.

Do you think we need to record like a

choose your own adventure based on where the world might be?

Like, oh, what?

That this is releasing right after Election Day?

I don't think post-election days.

Let's make that really clear.

This episode was recorded many months ago.

Many months ago.

We have no idea.

We found a very chill movie.

What things feel bad vibe in November 2024?

I was too young to see Lost Highway in a theater.

I was aware of the film.

I thought, I think I was even interested by it because I was like, is it about like roads and driving?

Not really.

But that was sort of what the

advertising excitement with

similar to train spots.

Yeah, exactly.

Like, is there going to be like roots in it?

It's a transit movie.

And then I saw Mulholland Drive when I was 15 years old and it did.

That is, I have that moment with Mohan.

Mohan Drive.

And I'm about six years younger than you.

It's the same thing.

It's the same.

It's literally the same thing, except that I was less gothy, but Mohal and Drive is less goth.

It's very much less and more like whatever, dreamy or whatever.

And I watched this movie in college on my 10-inch television that was next to my bed, wearing headphones, and it scared the bejesus out of me and altered my brain.

That's how I experienced last time.

That was my college 10-inch TV

young woman I was possibly dating.

Wow.

You need to watch this.

Cool.

I want to be her for Halloween.

Do you remember if you saw it on VHS or DVD?

It was definitely a DVD.

It was the crappy DVD that probably just like loaded the movie without even anything, you know, happening.

Because this movie's been hard to watch for a long time.

Yeah.

Yes.

And hard to watch in a good, in good quality.

I mean, it is now this criterion release that's very nice.

But yeah, but even like

a couple years ago, Kino Luhrber put it out on Blu-ray, which was the first time it was in circulation for a while.

And Lynch came out and was like, don't buy it.

The disc is bullshit.

I've been debating.

Like, I've got some, I've got some Lynch quotes that I think are you.

And it's like, do you do the voice?

We're going to have such a good fucking time.

That was the first time.

I'm hearing the voice.

I was talking.

You know what?

It's fun.

I was talking to a friend about this, but you know, there are different calculations we make in picking a director.

And obviously, this director was picked for us, our March Madness winner, right?

But we're like, who makes

for a good series?

Is it about the personality of the director?

Is it about the arc of the career?

Is it the individual movies in the episodes?

Is it how much they sort of overlap with movements and film or their own thing or variety or whatever it is?

I do think one through line that has always served us well

is when it will always be funny to do an impression of the director.

Definitely helps us.

The Verhovins of the world.

When they have a funny voice and a clear game you can constantly

Funny.

Same types of things they would say, or saying the types of things they would never say.

Now, here's a question.

Should every Friday we post one of us doing the impression?

Well, I think Griff does it better than me.

Why Friday?

Why are you saying Friday?

His Friday.

He does his videos where he's like, the weather.

I can't do him.

Yeah.

I'll try.

I'll try and drill down to him.

Maybe.

You got to get that Midwestern part is his impression.

The twangy thing.

Fake.

I witnessed Michael Shannon in line at Bear Burger.

It was Moo Burger.

Yeah.

Oh, what if he's David Lynch's Friday burger report?

Hi, fellas.

I can't do him.

It's too high.

Snapping, crisp, burnt bacon.

I had a better earlier.

That's the thing.

You just got to do it naturally.

You know, like it'll just come out of you when it needs.

All right.

So you saw.

I'm getting back to this.

You saw Lost Highway.

Did you then go back and watch other David Lynch movies shortly after

watching,

I probably got my first paycheck, which I used to buy a TV and VCR because I grew up without one.

Sure.

And that was my.

There was no TV in your house.

We had a TV that was on a rolling tray that we'd bring out when we were sick.

And it would take about 15 minutes to warm up.

Wild.

And then we rent a VCR.

I believe we're unlocking this lore in your fourth appearance.

It was, my parents were anti-television.

So when I first,

I grew up in Wisconsin for the first eight years of my life and we had a black and white TV.

So I saw like Wizard of Oz without color.

Never knew there was a transition.

Yeah, first 30 minutes played the same for you, baby.

Exactly.

And then she's like,

and this is a big deal, Darcy.

Weird streets.

When we moved to Texas, we

jettisoned that black and white television.

Sure.

And entirely.

Entirely.

No.

Out the plane, which was crazy.

Yes.

Yeah.

Just chunked it right out.

Would you say 30 minutes to warm up?

Was there like a crank?

Like you'd turn it on, it would be static.

Wow.

And we inherited this from my mom's sister, my aunt.

And she was just, she warned us, like, just like, yeah, just turn it on and walk away and come back.

And it was like letting the hot water heater.

100%.

Wild.

And then we would occasionally rent a VCR

on special occasions from Blockbuster.

And we would go to Blockbuster and pick out.

two to three videos.

And that was how I watched

a lot of films.

And

I think

after I bought my TV and VCR, like that sort of opened the flux.

You broke the damage.

They're like, okay, it won't corrupt the children to have a piece of technology like this in the house.

And now they've got big screen TV and Blu-ray player.

And their son's a famous director.

I mean,

their lives probably went in ways they didn't see coming.

It worked out well.

It worked out well.

And as a result, there were so many movies that

I've talked about this, where

I'd read about them.

I knew everything about them, but just had not seen them.

No, I mean, but I was kind of like that too, right?

It was reading Empire Magazine and them telling you, like, this is what the Night of the Hunter is about.

And I'm like, I can't watch this movie.

Although, but I'll just read about it.

Like large history of film books.

Yeah, exactly.

And either be like, someday I'll be allowed to watch this or someday I'll just get to.

Yeah.

And Roger Ebert's reviews were

very vivid, particularly his Wild at Heart review, which was like described like Willem Defoe's head coming off and the hand getting carried away by the dog.

And so as soon as I had the means to do so, I rented all of his movies that I could get my hands on.

And then

eBay, I must have been coming into its own towards the end of my high school.

Yeah, for sure.

Because I remember ordering Industrial Symphony number seven.

Oh, yeah.

And Eraser Head.

Was that on its own VHS?

It was.

Okay.

And And then Eraser Head, you had to get a bootleg from Japan.

That was like the only way to see that at that point.

And this was, this was a pre-lime green box era.

Pre-lime green box.

And pre the eraser head box that he released on DavidLunch.com, which was

the big empty box.

Yes.

With the envelope glued to the inside.

Yes.

And

which I still have, which it was pretty cool.

And.

So I'm just deeply into David Lunch at this point.

When Straight Story comes out in 99,

I'm like,

boy, what, what a great way to mess with expectations, make a G-rated Disney movie, and yet it's still a quintessential David Lynch movie.

It's all him.

It's all that.

You're not wrong.

I mean, we'll talk about it next week, but that was

perhaps unsurprisingly, just because of my age.

That was the first Lynch movie I saw.

My parents took me to see it in theaters, and they kept on being like, it's so fucking weird that he made that.

And I was like, that's the most normal movie I've ever seen.

Why are you guys acting this way?

I didn't

understand.

It's weird.

Yeah.

And then Mahalan Drive came out.

And

Mahollan Drive I saw at an advanced screening in Dallas at the Angelica Film Center that exists there to this day.

And it was, I just realized this the other day.

It was like, that was the first time I saw my wife in person.

She was also at that screening and we hadn't met yet.

But later on, had you corresponded to that?

You're truly like opening every vein of your life right now.

Yeah.

Okay.

David Lynch was, for better or worse, one of my guys.

Like there, he runs runs through my life in a very significant way, which is one of the reasons I'm excited to talk about this movie.

So, your wife was also at this early screening mall.

Yeah, which had already been a can or whatever, but like, this is right now.

This is what, like, September of

right before

right after September.

It came out in October.

It came out in October.

So, yeah.

Yeah.

And

the reaction that I had was, oh, pretty good.

Not as good as Lost Highway, but pretty good.

Right.

And

this is coming from someone who felt that Lynch's best film probably was Lost Highway.

That was still, for me, the apotheosis of like what a Lynch movie was.

But I feel like I had a slightly, I mean, there is a part of me that will always kind of think that the New World is Malik's best movie because it is the one I saw in theaters for the first time.

Not a bad take.

Not a bad bad take.

Sort of ingesting some of the mythical qualities of this guy without ever having watched any of his stuff and the impact of seeing that for the first time and being like, this is a totally different language.

I like can objectively step back and go like, maybe this is better.

Maybe this is better.

But there is something about like the love-it-first sight moment when you find one of your guys.

Yes.

Yeah.

And you didn't put it on your sight and sound, though.

I didn't.

Disaster.

I now think that Moholland Drive is a superior film to Lost Highway.

But I'm really, I wanted to unpack why.

Why is it better?

Why was this film beloved?

Why was Moholland Drive his?

Right.

It's like, lynch is back we missed him here he is and not only that similarity between the two there is for sure yeah yeah and and back and better than ever 100

and

and so

we can we can parse this out we don't have to jump into why it's better right now and you'll have an entire episode of on mulholland drive to talk about that in depth but the thing that i kind of came away what i did in preparation for this was I watched Lost Highway, then I watched Straight Story, then I watched Mahalan Drive, then I circled back to Firewalk with me just to kind of get the context in which he was making this movie.

This film is kind of a loop.

So you wanted to go in a loop.

It was a good call by you.

Also, just great movies.

That was fun.

It was a good week.

It was a solid week of movie going.

But as we were saying, contextually similar to, let's say, like To the Wonder or Song to Song, the response to this movie was like done, over.

Self-parody.

It's negative.

Yeah.

Let's write this fucking guy off.

Straight story.

Everyone thought it was weird, but they were like, at least he made something that's like coherent.

This is like, oh, yeah.

And it's so interesting to like, also like look at it from the perspective of like my parents went to see Elephant Man in theaters.

And they're like, straight story in the long run isn't that far away.

It's like 18 years.

And they're probably like, finally, Lynch is fulfilling the promise that he displayed.

With, I don't know if my parents actually, they did see the straight story.

But it is fascinating that Lost Highway and

Moholland Drive are similar on so many levels.

And one of them got such a negative response.

One of them got such a positive response.

And in the middle, there's this like uncharacteristic palette cleanser for him.

And the really,

as you said, in so many ways, as lynchy as any movie, but pre-lynchy.

The fascinating thing also is watching all these movies back to back.

I think that it's not too, you know,

this isn't too controversial of a take, but I think Lost Highway is his most beautiful film.

On a technical level, this fucking criterion disc of it too, like extraordinary kind of blew me away how good it looked because I must have seen it in like fairly shitty quality.

Indeed, it is never like like, I think that's one of the reasons also as to why it may have fallen out of esteem was because it just was unavailable in a way that looked good.

But like Eraserhead and Elephant Man, impeccable, you know, they look absolutely stunning, black and white extravaganzas.

But then after that, these movies kind of have like a mishmash of like they, they're beautiful, but they're not as austere as this one.

There's something so formally

perfect.

This is a perfect object of a movie.

A tremendous amount of control.

Extreme control.

He had a decent budget.

15 million is no, you don't want that's a that's a time.

Yeah.

That's a big budget.

He had 56 days to shoot it.

He had a lot of time to get those levels of darkness just right.

And

so I think he made,

I think it is a perfect movie for what it is.

And Mohollen Drive is the opposite because it was meant to be something else.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He's splicing two things together.

It's obvious how he's splicing them together.

It's not like in Moholland Drive, you're like, oh, he, you know, yeah, this is a big mishmash.

Like, Mohohan Drive basically is just like, here's some more stuff that's weird.

We will get to it.

We'll get to an extra.

My take on Mohollen Drive is that it's kind of weird.

This is the kind of deep analysis Blank Check's going to be doing about Blank Check.

I mean, about David Lynch.

It's so interesting

Lynchian is a, we'll talk about this a little bit further on in this episode, but Lynchian is

sort of a catch-all phrase now, and yet it's so hard to actually do.

There's the

Neil Campbell comedy bang bang character that is the art critic who just keeps going, the painting is rather

good.

Sure.

If I had to describe it, I'd say it's good.

I know this character, yes.

And the problem with like talking about like Lynchian things is so often you're like, it's quite weird.

There's just kind of a weird vibe.

See, there's normal.

Yeah.

But then this seems to be weird.

Obviously, like

David Foster Wallace tried to write about David Lynch.

It's one of the worst things he ever did.

We've got to go into this.

Like, you know, like, like, like major people have tried to tackle David Lynch and not really been able to write about it very well.

He's a tough person to write about.

I have had a complex relationship with that David Foster Wallace piece.

Sure.

I'm willing to call it bad.

I'll say it.

Come for me.

Quite bad.

It was certainly also the first piece of writing by David Foster Wallace that I ever read because I was definitely reading Premier Magazine in that era and would have read this.

And I remember thinking like, this is really long

and kind of

boring.

Right.

Yes.

In a lot of words.

Yeah.

And kind of like going around and around rather than getting at something because he doesn't know what to get at.

And also, I remember thinking, and I'm kinder to it now as a fan of David Foster Wallace, but like, I feel like he was misdiagnosing what lynchian means.

And he keeps talking, he keeps giving references like a lot of Tarantino, like talking about how Tarantino is very lynchian.

And which is now an insane thing to say.

You have to forgive, of course, it's 1997.

It's a different time.

Pulp fiction has just come out.

Jackie Brown has not come out yet.

Right.

And

as I've gotten older and re-watched these movies, and especially watching a lot of them in a short run, you kind of like get a better sense of what

David Lynch is really after.

And also it helps that he's done so much talking about where his ideas come from.

Transcendental meditation, catching the big fish.

You start to understand what he's after, but there is a depth to what he's doing that is

hard to replicate.

Well,

there is such a fascinating contradiction in Lynch of like how much he is giving you the audience in terms of the information, the pieces, the insight into his own process and his like view of the world and what he holds back and refuses to explain.

And in a way that sometimes feels strategic and other times feels like this is just organically the rules he has set for himself.

But it does turn him into one of these guys where like people either, I feel like often can process his work as like, this is the only guy

who has the answers.

This is the only true artist working in this medium.

This is the one guy who's in conversation with some deeper thing.

Or you can be like David Foster Wallace and be like, I think this guy's a fraud.

I think there's nothing going on there.

You know, I think it's weird for weird's sake or provocation or whatever.

I feel like,

I mean, I don't want to speak for you, David.

I've always been a guy where I'm kind of in the middle on him, which isn't to say that I'm like

middling in my appreciation for him or or that I think he is middling, but I've never like invested that much strongly into him on either side.

I just have seen his movies and appreciated him, but it does become a like weirdly emotional thing for people.

He's, yes, this is why this is going to be a really annoying series for us.

Yes, absolutely.

This is what I'm trying to get at.

People are on him.

Yeah.

And also, much like dreams or whatever, another thing we'll fucking talk about a lot.

But like

people get really invested in their interpretation this is what this means how do you not see it the same way that i do i think i love david lynch a lot more than you do which is fine um and he is more meaningful to me and mohal and drive in the theater which we will talk about next week is the most important theater film experience i ever had like without a doubt i was just saying that to my friend which just sounds really like what happened with you in lost highway It was

crucially formative.

And even though I did not meet my wife at Lost Highway,

I should give Mahong Brive some credit for my happy marriage, I suppose.

Yeah, there you go.

Humble Rick.

Happy marriage.

Wow.

He's just laying it all out here.

Television that took half an hour to warm up.

Cool job at the movie theater.

Yeah.

I think that's it, though.

I don't have any other personal tidbits to inject into this story.

David, yes.

This episode is brought to you, the listener by Mubi, a curated streaming service dedicated to elevating great cinema from around the globe.

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The glove-to-hand pick.

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of course.

David Mussolini, Colin, son of the century.

It is.

Look,

it's an exciting project, but it's really funny to be like, guys, Mussolini.

Here's what's funny about it.

Just to peel back the curtain for a second.

We get like messages that are like, hey, you guys good with this ad?

Yeah, here's the copy for the ad.

And as shorthand, it was texted to us as, you guys good with the Mussolini ad?

And I was like, Mussolini sponsoring the podcast?

What do you mean?

To be clear, we decry Ilduce Mussolini, Benito Mussolini, the terrible dictator of Italy.

But we celebrate Joe Wright and his newest project.

The filmmaker Joe Wright

has created

an eight-episode series about Mussolini's rise to power.

And I will say, not to sound like a, you know, a little nerd over here, but it is actually very interesting to consider Mussolini's rise to power in these times uh you know he was sort of the original fascist and the way that he sees power in italy is

unfortunately something we should probably have on our minds right now i'm not trying to be a loser right now you sound like me right now this is the kind of thing i say uh it's just it's it's very it's a very interesting part of history and i feel like because you know other world war ii things became

whatever the history channel's favorite thing you don't hear quite as much about mussolini's rise no you're right unfortunately sadly tragically frighteningly He's not a hugely this is a hyper-relevant time.

And this is a theatrical hyper-visual tour deforest starring Luca Marionelli.

Martin Eden himself.

Remember that?

Beloved member of the old guard.

That's right.

Movie I Love, episode that people considered normal.

All right, well, sequel

checking notes here.

Great.

They start calling it a towering performance of puffed up vanity.

It features an era-bending score by Tom Rowlands of the Chemical Brothers.

That's cool.

Imagine techno beats scoring fascist rallies.

It just sounds kind of Joe Wrighty.

It does.

Joe Wright.

You know, he won't just do a typical costume drama.

He likes to, you know, think about things in a different way.

Got futurism,

surreal stagecraft, cutting-edge visuals.

Mm-hmm.

Guardian calls it, quote, a...

brilliantly performed portrait of a pathetic monster.

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This is heavy ad copy, guys.

Usually it's kind of like, eh, shirts, you know,

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Yeah, no, it's Joe Wright, one of the one of the scarier people I ever interviewed.

I've told you that story, right?

He knows he's kind of a cool guy.

We've added him around.

He's certainly gotten interesting.

He's very interesting.

And he's made some great movies, and he's made some big swings that didn't totally connect.

Totally.

That's really interesting.

He actually is a blank-check filmmaker, unlike a lot of some people.

I get suggested, you're like, sure.

It doesn't fit the model.

This one does.

This one does.

Look, to stream great films at home, you can try movie free for 30 days at movie.com/slash blank check.

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You can watch Mussolini or you can watch non-Mussolini things.

Yeah, they got lots of movies.

They got a lot of things.

Bye.

David.

Okay, okay.

I'll be very quiet.

Oh, I'm used to it.

Producer Ben is sleeping.

Oh,

Hazzy, Hazy boy is

getting some

with multiple dashes.

What's he sleeping on?

He's sleeping on one of the new beds we got from Wayfair for the studio for our podcast naps.

But this is a big opportunity for us.

We get to do the first ad read for Wayfair on this podcast.

no no griffin you're clearly not listening to past recordings ben did a wayfair ad for us recently you listen to past recordings yeah sometimes that's psycho behavior it is look he did that when we were sleeping look apparently we need to talk about how when you hear the word game day

you might not think wayfair but you should because wayfair is the best kept secret for incredible and affordable game day finds makes perfect sense to me

Absolutely.

And just try to, David, just if you could please maintain a slightly quiet.

We don't have to go full whisper.

I just want to remind you that Haas is sleeping.

I mostly just think of Wayfair as a website where you can get basically anything.

Yeah, of course.

But Wayfair is also the ideal place to get game day essentials, bigger selection, created collections, options for every budget slash price point.

You want to make like a sort of man cake.

Okay, fine.

Okay.

All right.

Sorry.

You know, Wayfair

stuff gets delivered really fast, hassle free.

The delivery is free.

For game day specifically, Griffin, you can think about things like recliners and TV stands, sure, or outdoor stuff like coolers and grills and patio heaters.

Like that's, you know,

all the winter months.

David, you have like basically a football team worth of family at home.

You got a whole team to cheer up.

This is true.

You need cribs.

Your place must be lousy with cribs.

I do have fainting beds.

I have cribs.

Sconces?

Chaise lounges?

I'm low on sconces.

Maybe it's time to pick up a thing.

This is the kind of thing that would make your home team cheer.

Look, I'm just going to say that Wayfair is your trusted destination for all things game day, from coolers and grills to recliners and slow cookers.

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David, there's only one shame to this ad-rig.

Don't wake Hausy.

There's only one shame to this ad-rig.

that I didn't find out about this in time before I already purchased coolers, grills, folding chairs, patio heaters, recliners, barware, slow cookers, sports-themed decor merch for my favorite teams, and more.

If only I

Cleveland Browns, of course,

no matter what.

Okay, that's the end of the ad rig.

Lost Highway.

Lost Highway.

So I saw it.

Yeah, I saw it in college.

You sounds like you saw it in college.

Ben saw it last night.

Yep.

More like Lost Night.

I felt a little weird after that.

Ben, you did.

It's a bit of a sick, a bit of a head shrinker.

They're to say you're on a number of over-the-counter drugs.

Oh, yeah.

How many?

Three.

Two, three, yeah, 2.5.

Perspective.

I'm sort of floating.

We've had to do like three consecutive record days.

And the last two, you were basically non-verbal.

Yeah.

So you set up the mics and then you just kind of put your head down on the desk.

They were remote episodes.

They were Zoom episodes.

Total Peep Behind the Curtain.

Also, it was the trio of open range, Beverly Hills, cop and Lost Highway.

It was an incredible, normal three movies.

Yeah.

But I'm feeling better today.

I did watch this movie very late last night.

Oh, good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This is, it's kind of a late night movie.

It feels weird to put it on.

I'm also in the middle of writing a 6,000-word piece on M.

m night shy malon that i hope got published i mean this is no pub this is the dating of this episode of like weird i've been like bribing to pennsylvania to hang out with him we're existing in like four time continuums we're touching shamelon breast costner and lynch as like david's gonna go four corners of america

maybe one to two more movies in between these like who knows society is still existing yeah society exists i can't wait to know what i'm gonna be up to yeah right it definitely exists.

Like, is it going amazing?

Who knows?

Yeah, I'm going to call it right now.

I'll be married by the time this episode comes out.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Please send gifts to Griffin Newman, one, two, three, blink check way.

David Lynch, I'm cracking open the dossier, had reached his lowest point as a director since the release of Dune.

Yeah.

Dune is obviously also big bottoming out for him.

Starts the 90s.

Like I said, Twin Peaks wins the palm d'Or.

Everything's going great.

By the mid-90s, it's like Twin Peaks has been canceled, kind of in disgrace.

He makes a movie version of it, like that everyone is just like, question mark, question mark, question mark?

Like, you know, I think more than question mark.

Twin's like naturally, yes, right.

Yeah, because people are coming at it from like you can tie things up.

Twin Peaks got fucked up, and you're going to solve it now, right?

You're going to swing back and like clean up this mess.

No, sir.

Yeah.

Have you seen that recently?

Or

would be?

No, he's never seen it at this point.

He's never seen any Twin Peaks.

Things.

Yes.

I've only seen The Pilot.

Firewalk With Me is the thing I am the most afraid to re-watch.

I do love that movie a lot.

I find it very sad.

It's genuinely upsetting.

Yeah.

It's terrifying, upsetting.

More than anything else he's ever made.

And even in the context of people wanting more just donuts and coffee from Dale Cooper, which it does not give you.

Even if it had that, which he shot, you can watch

all the deleted scenes.

He shot all that.

It's still just like, it is a

aggressively unpleasant movie.

But let's say.

In a good way.

In a good way.

In a way that you have to be prepared for.

Dune, Firewalk With Me, Lost Highway, Inland Empire are the four movies that upon release, people were like, what the fuck?

To some degree, is that?

Yeah, I mean, I think Inland Empire, by that point, the Lynch

cult was so massive that there was a stronger reception for it.

Would you say that?

Obviously, it's a.

It was very well received.

Like, it was warmly received and everyone knew what he was doing but no one was like

expecting big commercial success

he's self-distributing right

he's out there with a cow doing fyc ads you know by that point lynch had become the internet's boyfriend right yes right and it's like he's making this for his people he's not trying to reach anyone else at this point uh it's just interesting to me that like basically the reputation has become positive for every one of his films dune is probably the one that's still the trickiest but I would argue

it has its big fans.

And I think the Veleneuve movie actually kind of like makes people kinder to that film.

Because now Dune has been done a little more.

Pressure off.

Right.

Right.

And there's that wonderful, you'll talk about it, I'm sure in the episode, there's like a 600-page making of Dune book that came out last year that is exhaustive and makes you appreciate it even more.

I think that movie is gaining love every day.

It's a good movie.

I mean, it's cut loss, but it's a good movie.

But at this time.

He's bounced.

He has bounced.

His ass has bounced.

He premieres, of course, we also should mention on the air on ABC, you know, which is post-Twin Peaks.

That is a disaster.

Only airs three episodes.

A deeply weird show that people watch all of for the George Lucas talk show.

How was it?

That's the one big Lynch thing I've never seen.

I mean, it's Lynch and Frog.

It is in most ways.

It's like 85%

quote-unquote normal sitcom.

And I'd say in the

wild, why am I listing every other title?

In the straight story way,

where you're like, well, it's normalness is the weirdest aspect.

And then there's little moments, I suppose, that are okay.

What do you think of on the air?

I have not seen it.

It's also a blind spot.

Hard to, wow.

Now it's on YouTube.

Yes.

But at the time when I was really into Lynch tracking these things down, it was hard to find.

He did Hotel Room.

Have you, have you seen that?

I have never seen Hotel Room.

That one is really worth looking at.

The final episode that he did, which is like an hour-long basically teleplay with Crispin Glover and Alicia Witt,

is really,

as I recall, really beautiful.

That was on HBO in sort of 1993.

It was meant to be a series.

Right, he created it with the cowboy.

Yeah.

Monty Montgomery Montgomery.

From fucking

Loveless.

Loveless.

He co-directed The Loveless.

Oh,

a billion years ago.

Yes.

Okay.

Yes, that's another thing.

Which was his first collaboration with Peter Deming, who is now his go-to cinematographer.

His guy, right?

Yeah.

Who's probably the most tragedy DP alive?

Yes.

He did also shoot the Awesome Power Series.

And Scream?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Not the first one, maybe, but I think most of them.

It's that he replaced the DP on Scream, who was fired midway there, and then he did.

Yeah, they did the rest of them.

After Firewalk With Me tanks hard at Can Lynch and Mary Sweeney, his editor, producer, sometimes sweetheart,

go to Madison, Wisconsin,

which is near where you grew up, possibly.

They go to Lake Mendota.

They start looking for property there.

David sort of reconnecting with Midwestern vibes, right?

Going to the hardware store, she says,

watching the OJ trial.

That's the crucial part of this.

For this movie,

yes.

And he starts thinking about Lost Highway.

He was working at Tandem Press, making monoprints with a squeezing machine and a paper that was a quarter of an inch thick.

Hotel room premieres around then, which Barry Gifford, I guess, worked on.

Yeah.

He scripted some of it.

He wrote, I think he wrote all of them.

Yes.

Yes.

The two episodes that Lynch directed, Barry Gifford wrote.

Muted reception to that one.

So HBO is like, ooh, don't worry about it.

He directs X-Japan's Longing Music Video, and he's always making art.

Things like that.

It's not like Lynch is never not doing stuff, right?

Like even to this day.

he's really into furniture making and

obviously he paints and has dabbled in photography but this is why i asked i was curious and and rudely implied that you were old enough to have a consciousness of this at the moment like did it feel in these five years that he might not make another movie because it did feel that way a little bit in between mulholland and inland where it's like is he just done It felt that way in between Inland and Twin Peaks the Return.

And certainly feels that way.

And we've been living in that way now where you're like, there's constantly.

We'll never do anything again or tomorrow.

He's like, actually, I've been making something.

And he never disappears because he's multidisciplinary, like Ben Hosley.

There are always projects.

And he's always freaking posting.

He's posting.

He posts more than Ben.

Not to call out Ben.

No.

But Ben could post more.

Yeah.

I could.

I've been taking a break.

It's good.

But you could see coming off a couple bounces, this guy just being like, fine, I'll do my own shit.

And there's this quiet aspect to Lynch being this kind of stealth mogul where he is a quietly savvy businessman who has controlled the rights to a lot of his things, but also knows that his audience is so locked in that he can like put out an album or an art show or a book or whatever, and it will always sell fairly well all his kind of like independent projects that you always believe that he could just pull out of movies and not return.

My suspicion is that that probably wasn't the perception then, because I don't, I think obviously he had done commercial, a lot of commercials, music videos.

I don't think

probably just wasn't an awareness at that because of the lack of the internet.

There wasn't an awareness of all of his hobbies that really, to him, are as meaningful to him as filmmaking.

From where I was sitting at that point, I didn't have any awareness of this.

I had not, you know, I didn't have a sense of the gap, nor did I know that he was out of favor.

Now, Lynch says this time is beautiful to him.

When you're down, you want even kicked in the street and kicked a few more times until you're bleeding and your teeth are out.

Then you only have up to go.

It's beautiful down there.

It's so beautiful.

Someone else do the voice.

A lot faster than he would have said.

The other thing.

It's beautiful.

The other big difference, though, is like after Dune, he is embarrassed.

He doesn't like the final product.

The movie was taken away from him.

With Firewalk With Me and Wild at Heart and stuff, he's like, I like those movies.

I'm happy with what I did.

Dune is the only one he seems to have any level of.

Right.

He's like, I don't want to talk about it.

Yeah, he won't acknowledge it.

But those ones, like, it hurt because people were rejecting things that mattered to him, but it didn't make him rethink his approach to filmmaking.

In fact, it made him double down.

He was like, okay, I just need to do my own thing even more.

You also have to imagine, he always reads to me like the type of guy who doesn't understand why some of his projects connect more with people than others.

It must be somewhat inexplicable to him.

I thought that, but then I read that same quote about how...

Down he was after Firewalk with me didn't connect where he was like I think it I mean maybe it is surprising to him but I also think it hurts like I think it definitely not saying it doesn't hurt but that like to him it's like why do they like blue velvet and not firewalk with me these are both coming from the same place yeah he has a couple movies he's thinking about making uh an adaptation of kafka's metamorphosis which is like a long-running never realized lynch idea i feel like his take on that would be kind of weird i'm laborgasted that that script is not manifested on the internet.

Yeah, let me see it.

Because like One Saliva Bubble and Ronnie Rocket are always float.

Yeah, you can read those.

Yeah.

Uh, there's a movie called Love in Vain about Robert Johnson, the blue singer, which is another thing that he long would meet with producers and it never materialized.

I don't know if you know anything about that one.

He also is interested in a live adaptation of the manga Domu, a child's dream.

Dreams.

He doesn't like that kind of stuff.

No.

The most discussed

of this era Unrealized Project is The Dream of the Bovine, a surreal comedy scripted by Robert Engels, who had worked with him on Twin Peaks.

Engels says it's about three guys who used to be cows.

They're living in Van Nuys, trying to assimilate, trying to live with us.

They look like people, but they're cows.

They do cow-like behavior.

They like to watch cars drive by the house and stuff.

Sounds pretty good.

He wanted to cast Harry Dean Stanton and maybe Marlon Brando.

Okay.

This would have been incredible.

Brando apparently read the script and thought it was pretentious bullshit.

Weird.

Brando was kind of aggressive about this.

And so whatever, it just didn't happen.

I'm a little sad he never made a movie about people who are cows.

It sounds like Farside.

Sounds kind of cool.

He saved the cows for his Oscar campaign.

Of course.

But okay, Barry Gifford.

So Barry Gifford obviously is someone he has in existing relationships.

Wrote The Wild Heart.

Wild a Heart was based on that.

Yes.

Have you read much of his fiction or

poetry or anything?

None of that.

Yeah, neither have I.

And I know he did, didn't he write and or direct the sequel to Wild at Heart that came out a couple years ago?

Like, I don't know what his relationship is.

He definitely wrote, he wrote further Wild at Heart books, right?

There's like a trilogy.

Well, there's the whole Perdita Durango saga.

It seemed like there was a movie called Sailor and Ripley that came out as well.

That sounds familiar.

I don't know.

I don't know.

But my, my...

Familiarity for better or worse with Barry Gifford is

through Lynch's work.

Right.

And they seem to be good collaborators.

I like what they've made together.

I totally agree.

He also wrote a novel called Night People, which has a sentence

where that Lynch says evoked something for him, which is about two characters going down the lost highway.

And that little phrase wedges into his brain.

And he says, it made me dream and it suggested possibilities.

And I told that to Barry and he said, well, let's write something.

And Lynch was like, okay, I'm thinking like a saxophonus.

And then he goes down this weird hallway, turns into Balthazargetti.

And Barry gifford's like yeah say no more i'll fucking turn it out tomorrow piece of cake and uh they start writing together uh lynch says we got together over coffee i told barry some things he told me some things and we hated each other's ideas and we hated our own ideas after that um but the one thing that lynch mentioned that barry gifford liked was the idea of the videotapes of a couple right which i think that came to him earlier like that was something that that had been like that was maybe something he was going to do for twin peaks yeah put in there one of of those little ideas that just was waiting for its time to blossom.

And Barry was like, geez, I really like that.

And that's the first third of the script.

A couple living at home and a videotape is delivered.

It's the front of their house.

And then they get another one.

And it's.

And then

they're bad.

20 years later, you see Cachet and you're like, What is this hack ripping off David Lynch?

That guy should

just retire in shame.

The other part of this was that

if stories are to be believed, that David Lynch lived next door to David Lander, aka Squiggy from La Vernon, Shirley.

That's cool.

And one day someone rang his intercom outside his house and said, Dick Laura is dead.

Yes.

And then he went outside to find the guy and the guy was gone.

Right.

And he was like, was that meant for me or meant for the other guy whose name shows a lot of letters and is right next door?

Probably.

I don't know.

Who knows?

Yeah.

And then almost certainly that is the, because David Lynch then bought that house.

And now he has three houses next to each other in the hills.

And my very first trip to Los Angeles,

I you can find out what the addresses are.

And I was like, have you ever met the man?

I've never met him.

You should, you should meet him.

You should go buzz his doorbell.

Can you imagine how many people do that?

Or how many people go leave videotapes on that door?

Like, it must be terrible.

He must have a full-time staff member whose job it is just to get the videotapes off of his front door before he wakes up in the morning.

Fucking lost highway fans.

It's not even his most popular movie.

Other being inspiration at the time, yes.

O.J.

Simpson.

David was glued to the TV.

He was soaking it all up.

He was, you know, so that's this is an LA noir saga about a man who kills his wife.

It's in this movie.

Um, and obviously, this movie is about how OJ is innocent.

Yeah, no, clearly.

That's dearly apart.

Dearly departed.

That's what I want you to take away from me.

Gone to San.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah, right.

R.I.P., O.J.

Simpson.

There is the

dark side of it.

Not R.I.P.

Fuck that guy.

Sorry, carry on.

Rest in

chaos, RIC.

Yeah.

There's like the Kenneth Anger dark side of Hollywood obsession that Lynch is always tapping into,

which I think is very tied to him constantly using these like legacy actors.

I will not call them Nepo Babies, but using people who are like second generation, third generation entertainment.

Max and Wagner and Boston Sargetti to a certain extent.

And using people like Robert Blake who are former child stars, where there's like some kind of innate

tragedy in like the lineage of broken spirits.

That's really, yeah, that's I didn't think about that connection.

This everyone has like a red history.

Yes, yes.

And he knew that Bill Pullman would eventually have a Nepo baby.

Yes.

He knew that Lewis was cooking.

Yeah.

He will play the sentry.

Is that what he's doing?

I think so.

But I think it's not even like he's using these people as like tokens, like it's meta casting.

I think he is responding to some innate kind of like acquired sad brokenness in people.

I think so.

But I also don't necessarily think that he looks at it as brokenness either.

Like I think, I think he acknowledges it.

Not brokenness.

I'd say there's like, there's a quiet tragedy to the actors he usually picks.

Right.

Even when these people do not seem broken.

Definitely.

That speaks to some element of.

I wonder what it's like to audition for him.

Apparently, it's just a conversation.

Like, he doesn't actually.

It's not like he's giving you signs.

He just meets with someone and if he likes them.

But that's the thing.

It's like it's an energy thing and a look thing.

And there's something from like, well, perhaps dig into it a little bit, but like you read about fucking Patricia Archett's childhood, you know, and this like group of kids who all basically became actors, whose father was this like guy desperately trying to find his foothold in show business.

Um, they lived in a commune, right?

And like the dad kept switching religions.

It's always good when your dad keeps switching religions, being like, nah, Catholicism, Islam, one of these is gonna be

gonna click,

really settle everything down for me.

Uh, yeah, the eventually Gifford and Lynch just uh apparently David was staying at a hotel and would uh call him and say, Barry, I'll be there in exactly eight and a half minutes.

And eight and a half minutes, he'd walk in with a big cup of coffee and they would write the script on a legal pad together.

And Gifford is like, I know the film confuses people.

I know it doesn't, people don't understand it, but it is the

screenplay we wanted to write.

I would like that is what we wrote down.

I would argue that's not that confusing.

I would agree.

It's not, well,

that's a couple questions.

It's, and I say this, having had the benefit of having seen it several times over, you know, 25 years.

Ben, how did you find this?

Was it obviously weird?

Not going to question that, but did you find it confounding?

I'll say this: I feel like it scared me, and it felt very much like an eerie fable.

And I didn't really try to get too bogged down in thinking about the actual logic or the linear

like way of how did this guy switch places.

It to me felt more just like this is a

scary story.

And there's these unknowns that are just out there.

Is that like?

I think you just became David Lynch's favorite audience member of all time.

Right.

Unsurprisingly.

We all knew this and where it was.

Excuse me.

I noticed that in Midnight 37, you're revealing the ending here, right?

Like the Easter egg that I found or whatever.

Like, that's what I like David Lynch a lot, but I also feel like when I watch his movies, I don't try to solve them.

I'm just sort of trying to like pull back and engage with the whole object that he's built.

Definitely.

I also think it is fascinating reading the reviews of this movie from the time where like beyond people saying like he's lost it, he's up his own ass, it's pretentious, it's whatever.

Incoherent is this word that people throw out over and over again of like this movie does not make sense.

You cannot track it for a second.

I think it's not like divided cleanly into an act one, act two, act three thing, certainly in terms of like real estate of runtime.

But this movie's basically got three parts.

And I would say each of those three parts makes sense completely in and of itself.

And the weirdness mostly comes from the relationship between those parts and how much they do or don't connect.

And the overall general ambiance, which is that people talk very slowly.

Right.

But especially the middle chunk, which is the vast majority of the running time of the movie

with Balthasar Getty and Patricia Arquette, if you cut that into just basically its own like 50-minute short film, that is

an oddly stylized, pretty classical noir tale.

It is not incoherent.

Not really.

I mean, if any, it's not coherent at all.

I would even say it's a good thing.

It's all

right.

there.

It's all right there.

I mean, there's like, it's lacking in exposition, but it doesn't really need exposition.

Like it doesn't have scenes where guys are like, all right, like, here's the deal.

Like, I want this to happen.

But you don't need them.

Yeah, you're right.

You understand everyone's relationship to each other.

And maybe we are gifted with a little bit of media literacy that the old guard didn't have at that time.

I think it was also just an era of movies that are confusing or crazy.

Like in that late 90s.

Yeah.

I don't know.

I mean, I definitely, when I watch Mullah Holland Drive, I'm like, okay, I want to know more about David Lynch.

I was aware of Twin Peaks.

I'm aware of like a racer head elephant man.

And I'm like, what's Lost Highway about?

And they're like, Bill Pullman is in the movie.

And then he just turns into another guy.

And I was like, that sounds great.

Like, that sounds like the coolest thing in the world.

No one's ever done that.

Yeah.

No, I love that conceptually.

I will say it is my biggest strike against this movie that I just need to get out of the way.

Balthazargeti is no Bill Pullman.

There is some juice for me that gets lost when the movie, the baton, gets handed over to a guy who is infinitely less compelling.

I have no other complaints with that section of the movie.

I don't have complaints with the narrative.

I think it remains engaging, but I do, perhaps I also just like Bill Pullman a lot.

And it's interesting seeing him in this milieu.

And I'm not super into Balthasargetti.

I would not say he is bad in this, but you watch this and just imagine like,

if Kyle McLaughlin had been the right age, if Justin Thoreau had been the right age.

Like there are other types of guys in this vein he has used throughout the day.

He has good look for it, though.

I think he looks he has the right look yeah i agree a hundred percent i have two things to say about balthazar getty one is or three one is that i don't he's your favorite rapper of all time my favorite rapper of all time i

he's he's a weird guy yes he falls into the bucket of what i was saying of people with like weird kind of he's part of the getty tragic family past definitely

with the name like balthazar

yeah his dad

strong name his dad was the one who was kidnapped correct correct correct yeah his dad is the center of all the money in the world.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

You know, the one whose ear was cut off, not to be lurried about it.

And the family, like, just most of the people in that lineage have had very tragic outcomes.

And he has turned out better than almost the majority of the ghettos.

I said better.

Yeah.

Is it the evil within?

Right.

Which was his uncle.

His uncle made this movie that he was.

like an obsessive passion project and he filmed it over like 10 years it was self-financing merry men is in it yes it is it's weird.

It's so bizarre.

Yeah, I feel like at the point that Balthasari, obviously, he's in Lord of the Flies, produced by Griffin Newman's father.

Also a child actor.

Yeah.

Not my father, Balthasargetti.

Which he's Ralph in that.

And I feel like the take on that, you know, that's the lead part, obviously, in Lord of the Flies, was like, ooh, like, ooh, this sort of some intensity here.

This is interesting.

And by the time he's in this,

he's a bit of a like talent, right?

Like he's in white squall and stuff and Mr.

Holland's out.

Like he'd been been in stuff and it's kind of like oh is this like balthazargetti's coming out as a you know hot young actor and then he was not ever really that he became more of a tv guy becomes brothers and sisters well he is fucking bizarre on that show as someone who watched brothers and sisters right which is the show which is every episode someone's like i'm a republican and the other one's like i'm a democrat and then they're like well this is what we think about this issue and then on it goes anyway your sister's in a fire truck that just fell off a cliff you know it's like a soap opera with politics right he makes no sense in that show as one of the brothers and sisters which he is one of the brothers and sisters all the other ones what worked about that show is they actually felt like a family you were kind of vibing with the and then balthazargeti will walk in and you're like is this like a stranger he's so weird on that they wrote him out of the show which is hard to do in a show about a family but they were like we you gotta go one episode they're like we just don't talk to him anymore like truly yes like he's gotta go um anyway well i feel like that's the last i heard of him the one of the funniest parts of the david foster wallace piece is where he's just kind of subtly throwing shade at balls of sargetti the entire article but like he's like i don't want to talk badly about someone he doesn't go into it yeah and then finally at the end he's like it this guy sucks here's why i wouldn't even go as far as to say that he sucks well no not not the performance i know i guess yeah he's an asshole yeah he's an asshole um what were you gonna say about him sorry we oh derailed well one of those was those things things.

That's one of the funny parts, the David Foster Wallace piece, which is very, very interesting read.

And then the other thing is that one of the brilliant, the things that makes Lynch a cut above the rest in this type of film is that nine out of ten other filmmakers would have had Walt Zargetti, Pete Dayton, show up somewhere in the, in the, in the, in the Fred Madison sequence.

Yeah, in the early part of the movie.

So you see his face.

And Fred's like that.

He's like, oh, he's fixing my car, like something like that.

And then like the fact that he has been spun out of conjured out of, invented out of Fred Madison's, you know, subconscious and id

is really what makes this movie work.

Because that's how subconscious is work.

I've had dreams where I'm like, I wake up and I'm like, where did that person come from with a name and a life that fully exists?

And my brain conjured that in my sleep.

I also think it's a thing that like, at least for me, happens all the time in my dreams where i am in a dream engaging with one person and in a moment that i do not clock they turn into a different person totally they either turn to a fictional person or they turn to a different person for my life should we have a segment where we talk about our dreams on every lynch episode get romlee's dream quarter

and that was there's like a lie in the movie where he's he's like i think

She's like, it looked like you, but it wasn't you, which is another classic dream scenario where you, you're, you recognize the face, but it is definitely, and I'm always like explaining to my wife the next morning, like,

yeah, it was you in my dream last night, but I, but this wasn't actually you.

It wasn't what, what I'm about to describe.

It didn't actually happen with you.

It was just looked like you.

And when that happens to me in my dream, I do feel like I feel myself justifying it.

Going like, oh, no, I guess it was him the whole time.

Yes.

I don't like dreams.

I had a weird dream last night.

Don't remember it.

David?

I don't remember.

I never remember my dreams very well.

You remember the vibe?

You remember the residue?

Like, sort of just like he like leaves that weird statement.

I like woke up early too, so I was like in the

I've been off THC now for a month.

Critics are talking about it.

Yeah.

And I've been dreaming like a motherfucker.

Your brain's like, like the TV.

It's like warming up.

It's like, yeah.

I am having full cinematic.

Yeah.

Like, it's a franchise every night for me.

You're building a cinematic dreamy?

I am.

What's the over-under on like good dreams versus bad dreams?

So far, it's been kind of mostly scary.

but i think it's because i've been pumping stuff into my head that is sort of lending itself to that like this movie yeah i think helped with like uh waking up in the middle of the night and being discombobulated probably also all of the meds yeah also why'd you walk down that weird hallway in your apartment all of a sudden and i really do insist on having no lights on very slowly constantly or one red light right well because red light is just a nice atmosphere yeah i have 14 lamps though i always i there's a lamp and lynch has cool lamps in his movies he has cool furniture he built all of that really you should actually consider that the next branch in your entrepreneurial architect ben is furniture building yeah i would love to feel like possible carpentry yeah i mean i built home i would love to be able to like yeah sketch some some stuff and then have someone execute it but i have ideas on furniture absolutely i've built a shelf once and it was the most satisfying experience in my life that sounds it's so satisfying.

And I never did it again.

Wow.

You were like, why not going in on top?

Get plus, baby.

But beat this.

I tried to sign up for some woodworking classes over the years a couple of times and for scheduling.

It didn't work out, but it is incredibly therapeutic.

Yeah.

I mean, Harrison Ford, that guy, it feels like he's got it all figured out.

And I've always assumed the carpentry is a big part of it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I feel like I keep derailing you, but it is just the thing of like, I do love that he doesn't tease that character at the the beginning.

It's what makes the movie work.

That it's a hard minute 40 or whatever.

You're seeing this guy's face for the first time.

Yep.

But it also puts a lot of pressure on that performance.

It does.

Because you're just ready for like this handoff is happening.

And I want to feel excited about this and not feel the absence of like, wait, so is Pullman not coming back.

And there, I love when movies do this.

I mean, it's hard to think of another movie that does exactly that.

I was about to say, right.

It's not a typical movie.

Moonlight has the handoff of the three different actors playing the same character, and they're very different performances.

And every time you're like, oh, am I not getting that guy back again?

You start to acclimate to the new guy.

And I think all three of them are great.

Like, Barbarian does a somewhat similar 2001 is famously as we're going to be.

That's a great idea.

We're not going to see that guy anymore.

Yeah.

Part of it is that I just do think like Pullman is so weirdly compelling at all times.

Pullman rocks in this.

97.

He's cooking with gas.

This is his peak period.

And this is a movie using him unlike any other movie has ever used him.

Now, can I just, obviously, you're referring partly to Independence Day, which is a gigantic hit that he was in the year before.

But are you also thinking he's cooking with gas?

Because Casper came out in 1995.

Okay, thank you.

Just wanted to give

a record.

Dr.

Harvey, the drunk ghost, the scene where he is a drunk ghost and he has to apologize to his daughter for wanting to stay dead.

It's funny because Pullman, obviously, Independence Day is his peak as a box office star, and everything after that is a decline for him.

Yep.

Like, he enters the wilderness right because he never

really was an A-lister.

No offense to Bill Pullman, who I like.

And then it's like, well, you're in this big fucking movie.

Shouldn't we have some vehicles for you and all that?

But like, this is his best.

My arc in my mind is like Space Balls.

This is like as a kid, Space Balls, Casper, Independence Day, Lost Highway.

Zero Effect.

Zero Effect is advanced.

He's 28.

He is.

That's right.

That's them being like, all right, let's make you a movie.

And nobody watches it.

we talk a lot about like uh leading men guys

a character actor stuck in leading men bodies right and very often those guys want to like musk themselves up they want to look weirder they resent their handsomeness or whatever bill pullman's a weird example of like a traditionally handsome guy who plays character versions of leading men, if that makes sense.

No, 100%.

Like he's not playing against his looks or his kind of like clean cut vibe, but he's playing them at sort of odd functions within movies where like even in Independence Day, the bit is sort of like, you're too hot to be president.

Right.

No one takes you seriously.

You're a little too pretty is kind of the vibe of that movie.

Yeah.

I like Phil Pullman.

I think he's great.

I think he's great.

I think he's great in this.

He is the Baxter.

He is the guy that the archetype basically gets based off of.

Of course, right?

Sleepless.

For so long, where it's like the movie is either based around, well, you don't actually marry this guy, or you fight with him the entire running time until the end you realize you actually do love him or whatever while you're sleeping, right?

While you're sitting, yeah, which is great now, but he's always this odd version of romantic protagonist.

You watch this and you're like, it's so funny that like Lynch used Bill Pullman at this point in his career.

It's definitely funny.

Where his public persona, what we were all used to out of him is so different.

And then you see him in this like fucking wailing on a saxophone and you're like, this feels like the more obvious version of who bill pullman is like he ended up in this weird zone but you're like yeah bill pullman as like sad tragic stoic jazz player with fucking dyed black hair makes perfect sense he really does he looks incredible with that feels like this is like the most natural fit for him of any part he ever played and he seemed by all accounts very happy making the movie you watch the behind the scenes like interviews with him and he seems like he's having a great time and i think bill pullman's anger has always been like an underrated strong suit.

Yeah.

Let's nuke the bastards.

Right.

Which often movies will let him deploy it like one or two times at key scenes.

And this is a movie where that's simmering the whole time.

We will not go quietly into the night.

I do just feel the absence when I'm like, oh, no, this is a good thing.

But then you get Robert Loja to show up and fill that void.

Loja times 10.

Loja coming in with just two buckets of gasoline.

He's like, don't worry about it.

Yeah, you think Getty's not giving you energy.

That's fine.

Loja, who infamously wanted the the Frank Booth role.

Sure.

Very badly.

Sure.

I think went after it very hard.

Lynch was like.

But I'm sure him going after it was chill.

He actually give me a fucking role.

He didn't even get to audition for it.

Right.

He was, he was waiting in the room, waiting in line.

Then

the lineup to go audition.

Who, by the way, is also an independence.

It is kind of hilarious that this, okay, yes.

I think that's how.

That's how this happened.

Okay, I'm going to

get to this.

But they, like, I think Robert Loja was in line to audition for Frank Booth, like in like the sitting in the chairs outside the room.

And David Lynch was meeting maybe with Dennis Hopper or someone else and got so carried away that he ran out of time to audition Robert Loja and Robert Loja just lost it on him and just exploded.

He was like, this is not how you treat actors.

This is so disrespectful.

How dare you, you know, treat me this way.

And

Lynch files this away.

And when this role comes up, he's like, I know who is going to

nail this.

And Loja is like attacking this role with the energy of a guy who has waited like eight years ten years at this point blue velvet is 87 86 yeah so he's waited over 10 years to play in lynch's field you feel that he's so

good

uh he is very good um

i want to get back to the dossier the dossier i think we should touch on the psychogenic fugue state of it all

which i love is like that describes the movie, but it was the movie's unit publicist was like, David, have you ever heard of a psychogenic fugue?

And then she described it to him, which is like

a mental shift, a break where someone just loses their entire sense of identity and sometimes goes wandering off thinking they're someone else.

And he's like, oh, great.

That's exactly what this movie is.

And henceforth, he described it as

psychogenic views.

Thank you for giving me the one phrase.

Yeah, exactly.

Like that is 100% what it is.

Right.

Like Gifford in his attempt, he said, like, when we're writing it and Lynch agrees, like, we are not talking about like meaning, quote unquote, right?

We're not like, and what this means when he does this is this, right?

They're not doing that.

But Gifford's like, yeah, it's about a man in a dire situation who has a kind of a panic attack.

Like, you know, essentially a disassociative sort of thing happens to him.

I mean, as you logged on Letterboxd team, it's a movie about headaches.

Movie about headaches.

It's a movie about headaches.

Yes.

And so, right, then Lynch

gets on this, the psychogenic fugue term and is basically like, put that on the poster.

You know, like, he's like, I love that term.

And he likes, of course, that a fugue is also a musical thing.

And he's like, jazz is, this is Lynch.

Jazz is the closest thing to insanity that there is in music.

So I love that we're like merging these things together.

Because jazz is, and I say this with respect for the art form, someone going up there and going like,

but you're free.

He did that very respectfully.

He He did that very respectfully.

Everyone at home needs to know that.

It was done with great care.

It was very respectful.

I think he actually conveyed what

the intended meaning is.

I do love jazz, to be clear.

I'm going to beef with jazz.

Let me say this.

Let me say that.

You love free jazz, especially.

That's something.

That's the free the better.

Off-Mike David is constantly talking about Ornette Colden.

Let me say this, and I want to say this as respectfully as possible.

Yeah.

Everything you just said, Sims, is correct.

That is jazz.

But jazz is also about this:

the things you don't hear.

The notes you don't play.

I don't know if you've heard this.

This is a theory that I've come to recently.

I believe

I have always said

jazz has never been my cup of tea, but I greatly appreciate the forms.

It's about the notes you don't play.

David, what?

This episode of Blank Check with with Griffin David podcast about philographies is brought to you by Booking.com.

Booking.

Yeah.

I mean, that's what I was about to say.

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God, I'm trying to think of anyone in my life, perhaps even in this room.

Ben, who's...

Like, what's an example of someone I know who maybe has a very particular set of directions?

Bringing me in and there's only one other person in the room.

There's one other person in the room right now.

This is so rude.

I sleep easy.

I'm definitely not someone who insists on 800 thread count sheets.

No.

That's an example of a fussy person.

But people have different demands.

And you know what?

If you're traveling, that's your time to start making demands.

You know, you've got...

a partner who's sleep light, rise early, or maybe, you know, like you just want someone who wants a pool or wants a view or I don't know, any kind of demand.

I'm Lynn and I need a room with some good soundproofing because I'm going to be doing some remote pod record.

Sure.

Maybe you're in Europe and you want to make sure that's very demanding to be in Europe.

You got air conditioning.

Well, think of one person in particular, although it's really both of you.

Yes.

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I need air conditioning if I'm in the North Pole.

Look.

If I can find my perfect stay on Booking.com, anyone can.

Booking.com is definitely the easiest way to find exactly what you're looking for like for me a non-negotiable is i need a gorgeous bathroom for selfies you do you love selfies as long as i got a good bathroom mirror for selfies i'm happy with everything else uh look they're again they they they're specifying like oh maybe you want a sauna or a hot top and i'm like sounds good to me yeah please Can I check that for you?

You want one of those in the recording, Studio?

That'd be great.

You want to start, you want to be.

I'll be in the sauna when we record.

I was going to say, you want to be the Dalton Trumbull, a podcast.

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It would look good if I had a sauna and a cold plunge.

And while recording, I'm on mic, but you just were going back

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Ben.

What's up, Griff?

This is an ad break.

Yeah.

And I'm just, this isn't a humble brag.

It's just a fact of the matter.

Despite you being on mic, oftentimes when sponsors buy ads based on this podcast, the big thing they want is personal host endorsement.

Right.

They love it to get a little bonus ben.

on the ad read, but technically, that's not what they're looking for.

But something very different is happening right now.

That is true.

We had a sponsor come in and say, we are looking for the coveted Ben Hosley endorsement.

This is laser-targeted.

The product.

We have copy that asks, is the product a porch movie?

It certainly is.

And what is today's episode sponsored by?

The Toxic Avenger.

The new Toxic Avenger movie is coming to theaters August 29th.

Macon Blair's remake of...

Reimagining.

Reimagining, whatever.

reboot of the toxic Avenger.

Now, David and I have not gotten to see it yet, but they sent you a screener link.

Yeah, I'm going to see it.

We're

excited to see it.

But, Ben, you texted us last night.

This fucking rules.

It fucks.

It honks.

Yeah.

It's so great.

Let me read you the cast list here in billing order, as they asked, which I really appreciate.

Peter Dinklage, Jacob Tremblay,

Taylor Page, with Elijah Wood, and Kevin Bacon.

Tremblay is Toxie's son.

His stepson.

His stepson.

Okay.

Wade Goose.

Yes.

Great name.

Give us the takes.

We haven't heard them yet.

Okay.

You got fucking Dinklage is fantastic.

He's talking.

He plays it with so much heart.

Yeah.

It's such a lovely performance.

Bacon is in the pocket too, man.

He's the bad guy.

He's the bad guy.

There's a lot of him shirtless.

Okay.

Looking like

David sizzling.

Yep.

And then Elijah Wood plays like a dang-ass freak.

He certainly does.

He's having a lot of fun.

Tell us some things you liked about the movie.

okay well i'm a jersey guy i just gotta say the original movie was shot in the town where i went to high school

yes yes that's right the original film yep i grew up watching toxy and trauma movies on porches yes with my sleazy and sticky friends it informed so much of my sensibility your friends like junkyard dog and headbanger yeah exactly making toxic crusader jokes and so when i heard that they were doing this new installment i was really emotionally invested

it was in limbo for a while before our friends at Ciniverse rescued it and are now releasing it uncut.

But I feel like there have been years of you being very excited at the prospect, but also a little weary.

They're playing with fire here.

Yeah, it's just something that means a lot to me.

And they knocked it out of the fucking park.

It somehow really captured.

that sensibility, that sense of humor, even just that like lo-fi, scrappy kind of nature that's inherent in all of the trauma movies and the original Toxie movies.

And they have like updated in this way that it was just, I was so pleased with it.

It's gooey.

It's gooey.

It's sufficiently gooey.

Tons of blood, tons of goo,

great action.

It's really fucking funny.

It just, it hits all of the sensibilities that you would want in an updated version.

Cinniverse last year released Terrifier 3 unrated.

Yeah.

Big risk for them there.

I feel like it's a very, very intense movie.

And one of the huge hits.

More interesting, yeah, theatrical box office phenomenons the last five years.

Want to make that happen again here.

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Yup.

And Ben, it just says here in the copy, wants to call out that Elijah Wood plays a weird little guy who says, Summon the Nuts.

Can you tell us anything about that moment without spoiling it?

Summon the Nuts is in reference to a

psychotic new metal band.

Hell yeah.

Who are also mercenaries.

Cool.

And drive a van

with a skeleton giving two fingies up on the grill.

And that's all I'll say.

Okay.

And they are the most dang-ass freaks of dang-ass freaks.

I'm excited to see it.

And your endorsement, I think, carries more weight than anyone else is in the world on this list.

Seriously, get your tickets now.

Go to toxicadvengure.com slash blank check.

Do it.

Do it.

I've known people who are very into jazz, and they'll take me to jazz shows.

And those guys are always really cool and fun.

They're your best friends.

Chicken on a stick.

They're always taking me to chicken on a stick, my favorite jazz club.

I love that.

And that

basically was where jazz was born.

Correct.

Of course.

Yeah.

Invented.

Yes.

Down in the bayou of Chicken on a Stick on Sunset Boulevard or wherever it is.

But yeah.

And it is just

where, like, I do love, and again, I'm saying this with obvious understanding for jazz music.

that I know so much about that it'll suddenly be like, all right, now this guy's going to do breadwinner, you know, for like five minutes.

Which, by all accounts, what he's he's doing is really hard he's like so hard the hardest complex and they have to purchase

to like get to be able to do like look like he was doing that and you're kind of like ah and someone's like do you want another 48 dollar

you know like

sometimes it's not even a wind instrument sometimes it's the guy just like

or the drum the drum guy does drums the drums are fucked up

i i'm i feel like this is what i'm trying to feel like i'm saying this with mockery and i'm not waiting we should do it.

We should do a jazz spin-off show.

It's the worst.

Jazz spin-off show of all time.

And then when he's like, but

that part of weird.

We're very committed to not being a video podcast, but I do wish our listeners could

not do

the pantomiming Sims did.

If you thought the sound was rich and respectful.

You thought Bill Pullman in Lost Highway was cutting loose.

It was like fucking Shields and your Nell were in the studio.

Suddenly you could see the object work was so precise.

This is a great quote from Lynch about...

I can't see the instrument.

This is a lost highway.

To me, mystery is like a magnet.

Whenever there's something that's unknown, it has a pull to it.

If you were in a room and there was an open doorway and stairs going down and the light just fell away, you'd be tempted to go down there.

Good point, David Lynch.

Kind of describing what you're so good at.

I would, I actually wouldn't.

Me too.

Yeah, I would be not going to do it.

I'm closing the door, maybe locking it if I can.

But on a movie, I would be delighted to watch a character disappear into that darkness and stay in it for a long period of time while nothing else happens on screen.

That's fantastic.

That's cinema.

Lynch, of course, is other big thing is when mysteries are solved, I usually feel tremendously let down.

It's like at the end of Chinatown.

The guy says, forget at Jacob's Chinatown.

You understand it, but you don't understand it.

Keeps the mystery alive.

That's the most beautiful thing.

Of course, he's saying this to people who have money

who he needs to fund his projects.

And they're like, what?

You know, I hate resolutions.

How did he get someone to fund the film Lost Highway?

Well, CB 3000, 2000.

2000.

Sorry.

He had a three-picture deal with them.

You know, they also worked with Campion back in the day.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Portrait of a lady?

Which movies did they do with her?

It must have been Portrait of Lady.

I think it was Portrait of a Lady.

Yeah.

Because that would have been that era.

And even they

balked slightly.

at this one,

being like, it's about what?

So they give them the treatment

March 95

and they were like, we need to shoot in, you know, as soon as possible, but they didn't get to shoot until November.

So they only did the piano water.

Yeah, interesting.

Sorry.

Lynch was annoyed that they were shooting in the desert in the winter because it was cold.

He always wanted Bill Pullman.

He said, I've always seen him in these films playing the second fiddle, but there's something in his eyes that made me think he could play something strange and tough and difficult.

He really popped in Casper.

Pullman loved David Lynch.

Said it was like meeting a member of the family.

It was like tuning forks, humming together.

They do both have like this Midwest thing, too.

I think they both have a Montana connection.

Like they, you know, whatever.

They

vibed immediately.

On his sack solo, he said, quote, I just kind of put the sacks up like here and then made a bunch of noises.

No, he didn't say that.

I studied David Sims.

You know, Angela

Badalamienti.

Bada Lamenti.

Badalamenti writes the music.

And

David's like, here's the session track.

Like, we, you know, we recorded this music.

And

Bill was like, I can't play that.

Like, that's crazy.

And, but David's like, it'll be fine.

And while he's doing it, David Lynch is offset just screaming, crazier, crazier.

Patricia Arquette.

I feel like she's hot stuff right now, right?

She's new.

Yes.

Right?

Like flirting with disaster advertisements.

True romance, obviously.

She was like the dream girl for movies about broken men.

A certain type of misunderstood broken loner weirdo.

Is that fair to say?

And she's such a lynchy.

I mean, she makes so much sense with his whole vibe, right?

Also, her natural speaking voice, like she's just everything she says is always in a very slow whisper, in a way that doesn't feel affected.

It's just who she is.

And yeah, very soft.

Yes.

Very, Very, yeah.

She styled basically like Betty Page when she's in dark hair mode.

The first Veronica Lake, maybe for the kind of, yeah.

The very platinum blonde.

And David Lynch apparently didn't know who Betty Page was, which is kind of amazing to think about.

That feels impossible.

I know.

I'm not calling bullshit on him.

Patricia Arquette said, who's that?

And then he was like, wow, she's the beast niece.

No, now that story is 100% true.

Yeah, that's exactly how that would go.

Arquette said, like, so I'm reading the script and I'm like, these are two people.

And Lynch was like, no, these are the same person.

And so she's like, I guess I'm playing two different interpretations of the same woman.

She thinks the movie is about a man trying to recreate a relationship with the woman he loves so much.

So and this time it'll end up better.

That's the kind of really rose-colored glasses perspective on the movie.

I would agree with that, but I guess if you're playing the part, I can understand.

If you're trying to, like, what is my relationship with this man?

You know, not to fucking derail again here, but I feel like we get into this oftentimes where an actor will be promoting their movie and they will offer some soundbite.

And this is, look, in fucking 1997, Patricia Arquette says that one time to Premiere magazine, only weirdos like us ever remember it.

It's gone in the culture, right?

Now, someone says a quote like that, and it gets repeated on the internet a billion times.

And people go like, actors are so fucking dumb.

How could that be your interpretation?

And it's like, your job is specifically to make sense of just your one part of it.

Tunnel vision.

That's part of the job.

Yeah, right.

Anytime an actor comes out and they're like, I found him to be a sympathetic character.

People are like, you're playing the Joker.

How could you fucking feel that way?

And it's like, your job is whatever it takes.

All right.

I just had lunch with Emma and Fran, friends of the show.

Isn't it crazy how the whole plot of the movie Joker is that like, what if there was a guy that was crazy?

Like, that's the whole plot of Joker.

Because there's no Batman.

I mean, I know he's like off to the side.

But like the whole pot of Joker is like, this guy's crazy.

But he's good at comedy.

Yeah.

Great.

You know what the plot of Joker Falia Deu is?

What if there was a good movie?

What if he met a crazy lady?

Do you like Joker?

I appreciate it.

Yeah, I liked it.

I think that's a good call.

Appreciate is probably a good

way to put it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I had a quality time at the movie theater watching that movie.

That's another thing.

We're releasing this episode.

We won't know the impact that Falia Duh had on culture.

Oh my God.

It could be.

thought it was going to be a cultural moment.

Everyone is.

Everyone thought it was going to be cool.

Well, okay.

Kagazin is

not cool.

But I want to defend myself by saying it is undeniably a cultural moment.

I didn't want to actually say what it might be.

Later, we'll have a pickup.

It will insert something that's the correct answer.

The correct answer.

Yeah.

Decently sized hit.

Robert Loja does get this role because Pullman on the set of Independence Day is like, yeah, I'm working on this Lynch movie next.

And Loja's like, that piece of shit.

No, he truly is like, he's not going to want to.

I yelled at him.

Like, he's like,

he'll never want to work.

Yell, you say?

And Pullman's like, well, there's this one character who screams his fucking head off every time he's in the scene.

Yeah.

And

so,

let's see.

And we also have these, like, Richard Pryor.

Richard Pryor's last.

I mean, it's Robert Blake's last performance.

It's Jack Nance's last performance.

Blake, Nance, and Pryor.

This is the last movie for all three of them.

That's, I mean, that's crazy.

So, wait, when did Jack Nance die before this film?

Yeah, right, right.

I knew that it was basic.

Yeah, and then Pryor dies a few years later, right?

But obviously he's already in like very tough shape.

It's kind of a beautiful.

thing to see him in this movie, but you know, obviously.

That was another thing, watching this movie in 97, I hadn't seen Blazing Saddles.

Sure.

Right.

Or anything that he had been involved with.

So I didn't have that context.

And watching it now, like now, having had that context, I'm like, it's really moving.

Yeah.

Well, it's also, there's something about like seeing Richard Pryor's speech patterns slowed down in fighting his illness.

Same guy.

Right.

You know, and he's recognizable.

This is the last moment when he's still able to do some version of his thing.

And it's like, when you get to what another you, I think is the last Gene Wilder movie.

And that's the one where people are like, you can tell he's sick.

He's like slowed down.

And then after this movie, he would just do like sort of like Kenny Center honors.

He'd get on stage.

He'd say thank you, but he clearly like wasn't able to say much.

There's something to a guy who had such recognizable, controlled, powerful speech patterns.

be slowed down that has the same effect as like Lynch playing someone's dialogue backwards.

It has that eerie quality.

Yeah.

No, you're right.

It is eerie to see him talking slowly.

And yeah, he's very sweet.

He's very sweet.

Getty Lynch saw a picture of him.

Was like, that's the guy.

For sure.

Robert Blake.

He's got the right look.

Robert Blake Lynch saw on Carson and was like, there's a guy who doesn't give a shit about anything in this industry.

and puts him in the back of his house.

Also doesn't give a shit about the law.

Blake,

the Colbert joke, I always think of it's from from it's like from an ancient daily show.

Like, I went back to get my gun, was his alibi.

Yes.

But it was a different gun.

To be clear, you can Google Robert Blake, but he was probably involved in the murder of his wife, who was herself an interesting figure.

Yes.

The whole thing is very cursed, dark side of Hollywood.

Yeah, exactly what we're talking about.

Yes.

Blake.

He was like the little

baxter.

Yes.

Right.

And then he was Beretta.

In Cold Blood was the thing I think I knew him from.

Of course.

That was sort of his breakout.

I mean, the obviously the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is very, very obviously inspired by Robert Blake to the point that parts are dedicated to him.

Yes.

And, you know.

Wait, is it really?

Yeah.

Is there a dedication in it?

I believe so.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because the idea is possibly Robert Blake hired a stump man to kill his wife, right?

That was always the story of the body man.

Yes.

And Cliff Booth, it feels like he's sort of like Terrant is kind of swirling both of those legends together, right?

Along with, obviously, like Burt Reynolds and Hal Needham and all these other things.

All that other shit.

And even see them at parties and you're like, is that the guy that, did that guy like kill his wife?

Like, you know, right?

And because it was on a boat in that movie.

So there's Natalie Wood as well.

Obviously.

Yes.

Yes.

And the spear gun that's Aquaman, obviously, that's an Aquaman reference.

Yeah, of course.

Arthur Curry.

King of the Ocean.

But not the Ocean Master.

Blake says that Lynch told him, hey, I want you to play this.

I have no idea why.

I read the script like nine fucking times.

I didn't understand one fucking word of it.

I said, are you sure you want me to play this?

I'll be cooperative because I have no fucking opinion on anything of what the hell to do.

And

Lynch is like, yeah, man.

He said he didn't understand.

He said he called him Captain Ahab and didn't understand shit about the script, but he liked doing it and he's really good in it.

Not only is he really good at it, it is one of the most incredible screen performances of all time.

It was his idea to shave his eyebrows, I believe.

Yes.

Lynch left up to him and was like, come up with whatever look you want.

And he showed up like this.

He shows up with this like kabuki kind of thing.

Like Klaus Nomi inspired to some degree, it feels like.

Yeah.

To quote Robert Blake, who liked to talk.

Robert Blake could pop off.

Like, it's not like Robert Blake was mysterious.

He could pop off in several ways.

I'm sorry.

He said, I sort of knew what the devil looked like.

I knew what fate looked like.

I had this image of myself that would come to me sometimes.

I'd go out to the desert and get involved in some strange, isolated kind of thing.

And I would come to myself as this white ghostly creature i said oh yeah that's my conscience talking with me so i started going with that i cut my fucking hair off i put a crack in the middle of it and all this shit and the makeup people said you're going crazy nobody mook in the movie looks like this everyone else looks regular

And I said, just leave me alone and give me some shit.

I put the black outfit on.

I walked up to David and he said, wonderful, turned around and walked away.

I sort of knew what the devil looked like is one of the crazier things a person could say.

Because if you go, look, I have seen the face of the devil.

There's a, there's a confidence to that versus like, I sort of know what that is.

Yeah, the vague shimmer of understanding.

Um, yes, uh, this is his last film in 2002.

He was arrested and not convicted for the murder of his wife, but then he is convicted in a civil trial.

Blakely, he was found liable for her death in a civil trial.

Yeah.

Bonnie Lee Blakely, who was married 10 times, he was her

10th husband.

Yes, who was herself this sort of person who's fascinated with Hollywood people and would like sort of try to meet them and get to know them.

It's a whole saga you can.

I'll say it.

It's something out of a David Lynch movie.

It is.

I was reading through the Wikipedia entry today, and it does feel like Lynch shit.

And Lynch, yeah, really wanted to work with Pryor before, you know, basically he was not able to work with him anymore.

So he was like, I just really like

love that guy.

He is the warmest presence in the entire movie, right?

Like he's the one guy who's like, it's wonderful to see you.

He's just so happy to see Baltisargetti show up.

Yes.

um and as you say during the production of this movie he buys his neighbor's house and now he has the three houses which is crazy so he's like creating one of the houses is sort of like where he does sound stuff like it's a sound recorder's like the house you live in the house you build furniture in and the house you record music that's how i live my life it's like vin diesel's three trailers right one for him one for his boys and one the third is a gym

You can't just drive to the gym.

No, on every set, he has three trailers.

One's for him, one's for his entourage, who he wants there with him, but also wants space.

And then the third one is just for fucking pumping iron.

To go back to the David Foster Wallace piece, there's a question he asked in there.

He's like, Premier Magazine really needs to do an expose on what actors do in their trailers.

Yeah.

He was just ahead of the curve.

Like trailer life now is not what it was in 1997.

No.

Trailers are not as cool anymore, I feel like, right?

Oh, it depends on who you are.

I guess it depends on who you are.

Absolutely.

I just feel like much as the 90s was the height of movie stardom, it's the height of crazy trailers.

No, I think

crazy trailers, like I remember the stories of Will Smith's trailer.

Obviously, we respect Will Smith's Men in Black trailers, great story trailer.

Yes, yeah, very good.

To a certain degree, post-Men in Black 3 stars have been really good about keeping their trailers out of the press.

Sure, I think they're like, well, they wanted to park it on fucking Spring Street like he did.

You didn't know about the fucking Vin Diesel thing until I just said it.

And I talk to you about Vin Diesel every day.

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Should we talk about the film?

Yeah, I mean, jumping off of the

OJ of it all, I was like really interested watching this now, like having seen OJ Made in America.

And

I'd always known that.

Like that was like always, I always knew that that was what.

It's a seed of movie.

It's a seed.

It's not what the movie's about.

Like looking at it as like David Lynch tackles the OJ saga is very, it's wrong.

There's energy placed.

Yes.

But right.

But the thing that really, there was two aspects of it that kind of like stuck out to me.

One was.

was related to the psychogenic fugue idea, which Bill Pullman's line when the cops are arresting him was like, tell me I didn't kill her, which is really crucial to understanding where the movie is about to go.

And then I also just was thinking about Robert Blake and the mystery man, and something really just leapt out at me that couldn't have been one of those things that David Lynch was really thinking about, at least consciously at the time.

But like,

we can all say what the mystery man is.

Is he the devil?

Is he the subconscious?

Like, what is it?

But he's also, he's mass media.

Yeah.

He is the 24-7 news psychic.

He's holding the camera.

Holding the camera.

He is like, he's in our house right now because we invited him.

And he's the one chasing us with the camera.

He's like putting the knife in our hands because, you know, he's perpetuating, he's perpetuating what we can't help but want to see.

And at the end, he gives Robert Loja a TV to watch his own death on.

And it's 100% like that's like, that is the media frenzy around a case like OJ's.

Yes.

And

I don't think that, I think that

I'm, I'd put money on the fact that David Lynch was not sitting down with Barry Gifford saying like, what this guy represents is, and I'm like, can't do the voice, but

that that is what he was going for, but it is so thoroughly realized that it now registers on that level in a really profound and clear way.

Well, and this morbid, um,

obviously, like, film being very voyeuristic, a thing that Lynch is very tapped into, right?

And he's also obviously always very engaged with this sense of like the really dark shit happening just under the surface of this sort of projection of American normalcy and happiness, which like OJ is the celebrity version of course of what everyone's talking about.

This

sweet family man.

Right, right, right, right.

Right.

But we as the public are like constantly demanding, as much as we love to like cast our judgment, it's the same thing that like historically caused people to fucking line up in the streets for executions or whatever.

OJ was this like example, this perfect case of just like the news cycle and the media and technology had all caught up to turn this thing into like a fucking 20 ring circus that would stretch out for a year and a half where we would feed on every single morsel of it and every person adjacent to it.

And you can like cast aspersions at the mechanisms that like feed this to us.

But also it's like we wanted it.

We wanted it.

We still fucking want the OJ story.

I mean we want people to make

like Kim Kardashian owes some of her fame to the OJ trial.

Who?

Yeah.

Yeah.

The tendrils are so deep, but it is this weird thing where like

I talked about before, I feel like I've said this before in the podcast, but I love the Naked Gun movies so much.

And sometimes people will say to me like, Does it not like bump for you at all that OJ's in them?

Not like, do you take a moral stance against them, but don't you get uncomfortable when you get to the OJ parts?

And my answer is always: OJ being in those movies feels like the way they have someone dressed up as Queen Elizabeth or George H.W.

Bush, where, like, somehow OJ being in them adds to the weird parody quality of like, well, he's one of the clear stamps of the 90s of the culture.

There's something about the fact that Robert Blake, a couple of years after this movie, gets caught up in his own lynchian murder.

100%.

Yes, in a lurid Hollywood murder thing that the performance is incredible it always was going to be and then now there's this added layer onto it where you're like the guy who is playing the specter of our like obsession with celebrity and crime and death and all of this sort of stuff also like fell prey to the exact same thing is so fascinating to me it's wrong to say that makes the movie richer, but it adds a level to it that it's there's certainly a power.

It's a power.

A a power is a great way to put it it has a heaviness to it that is again the filmmakers would never have assumed that might be a possibility but it came to pass and you imagine he's casting him primarily for like uh you know like dean stockwell he uses so incredibly well in blue velvet who's another like child actor who sort of struggled as a child and then found this second life for himself as an adult character actor in a very different vein than how he was presented as like a child actor

you ever seen beretta no i've I've never watched an I mean, not Beretta.

Why would you have?

Obviously, it was sort of way before our time.

But I feel like Beretta's reputation was that it was kind of a little cooler and more hard-edged than the other hit cop shows of the NYPD Blue of its day.

Yes, he was a tough talker.

Right.

I'm sure now it would feel insanely dated, but just that it had a little more edge to it or whatever.

Um,

yeah, so Lost Tyweight's about Fred Madison, Los Angeles saxophonist, having a great time.

He's married to his wife, Renee.

He's not, He's not amazing in the sack, but whatever.

He gets it done.

Does he?

I think he actually is struggling to get it done.

Our friend Jordan Fish always says that you can tell a lot about a filmmaker from how they film their sex scenes.

It says something kind of like innate about their view of humanity and relationships to people.

And he covers, there are many sex scenes in this film.

He covers it a lot.

A number of different ways.

Right.

But the choice, he'll go back to the shot a lot, like right over the man's right shoulder when he is on top of the woman and you're just sort of seeing her face disappear and reappear.

You're like mostly locked into her eyes, but constantly getting obstructed.

It's really interesting.

And then the reverse of that, which is the low angle where he's just looming.

Yes.

Looming in this really uncomfortable way and often.

frozen in that position.

And there's this like serenity to the women and there's this like effort and stress to the men.

Yeah.

He hears on his intercom that Dick Laurent is dead.

Mysterious.

Gets a weird VHS of the outside of their house.

Mysterious.

Basically, gets a paranormal activity dropped off on his doorstep.

Hears you and your wife sleeping.

She describes the dream, right?

Or no, he describes that he has the dream of

Robert Blake's face on her face.

The most, the best Lynch

image there is.

And it's, it's an early example of like these like naive visual effects that he would come to employ with more frequency in Twin Peaks and Inland Empire where he could just do it himself and, you know, Final Cut Pro or whatever.

But in this something about, you know, shooting on 35, having just the right level, it's a very simple effect.

And it is so scary that usually when I watch this movie and I kind of look away when I know it's coming.

I am so scared by it.

I don't like it when there's a face on a face.

And he's going to keep doing it to us.

He does it in Twin Peaks too.

Watch out.

Just wait.

He'll put face on face in that one, too.

And Inland Empire is like terrifying.

I have multiple like unconnected friends who have told me like that the image of Laura Dern's face being distorted in Inland Empire and stuff like is the scariest thing.

Like they don't like even talking about it.

Yeah.

I don't know.

And you see it disconnected from the movie and you're like, oh, it's just like a Photoshop filter, you know, but.

distortion, but it's so in context.

It is.

He's just always been incredibly good at finding ways to create images that just are wrong.

And it's not just that they feel wrong in like meaning of what they represent, but it's like, as you're saying, he's using the technology.

Like he's making it a little bit off.

Yes.

Oh, I can't wait to hear.

I've been wanting to rewatch Twin Peaks Through.

Amen.

And I will be doing so, but I can't wait to just hear you.

Lose my fucking mind.

Yeah.

It is, it is a journey.

Yeah.

So

the, you know, not long after is the party scene, right?

Like, is there anything else we need to address i mean he goes to the he plays sax jazz club he's getting a sense that something is up with renee like she doesn't want to go to the club because she'd rather stay home and read like who would want to stay home and read and he's doing like deep shadow real like kind of 40s b-noir look to this whole movie he and peter deming were like really studious in their you know explorations of darkness and and the term that like they'd have different gradations and and Peter Deming has talked about how they'd have dark and then they'd have next door to dark and always have to choose between the two.

And that those were the two things in prep.

All he really talked about was that dark hallway.

I was just like, that is like the image for him.

That was the image of the movie.

But you also have these kind of like bigger than life, like shadows that feel like they're 100 stories tall in the corner of a room.

And everyone's wearing black, too.

So often it's just the faces are kind of like floating through darkness.

You get introduced to Michael Massey at the party, another actor in

surrounded by tragedy, of course.

Yes, The Crow is only a few years before this movie.

This is the guy who pulled the trigger on Brandon Lee, which was not his fault.

We've talked about it in the seven.

Yes.

The seven, which is even more.

Which is another example of a director kind of using the innate sadness in this guy.

Yeah.

Doesn't this party feel like it really captures 90s cool?

Well, like LA.

Yeah,

specifically like bowling shirt cool.

Yeah.

Like that whole thing.

His mustache.

His fucking pencil mustache.

closely trimmed mustache like i was trying to describe swingers to a friend of mine who is i guess too young to know about swingers not the swingers well swingers is the same time as lost by the way where i'm like yeah this moment where men wore like bowling shirts and did swing dancing and shit and like it was genuinely cool for like five seconds like it's almost immediately overcooked And this is the same kind of vibe.

But his movies are always in conversation.

Sure, jazzy kind of.

There's obviously like the deep like bob's

did it again there's the bob's big boy like yeah yeah right of lynch right right let me go get a gas station shirt yeah polo shirts and yeah which he often the the 18 woody woodpeckers from the the gas station um he often like turns it into this weird kind of like out of sync with time

sort of no place sort of thing this movie and part of it is i think the soundtrack is like oh no these are specifically people in the 90s caught in a 50s revival cycle.

There's like, I think, I can't remember which critic it was who, maybe Vincent Cambie or something, criticized like the fact that it was so modern.

He's like, if this was just a straight-up noir, it would have made more sense.

Why not set it in the 50s?

But I just love that.

I do too.

That's what makes it so great.

It's actually, of all of his movies, probably the most contemporary to when it came out.

Yeah.

And it feels like it was made and set in 1997.

Yeah.

I mean, I understand the note in that it's kind of like a movie about a jazz saxophonist block black dollying someone does feel vintage.

Like, because he literally cuts her in half,

from what we can tell.

And, like, you know what else feels vintage?

The Brian Setzer Orchestra.

And they were fucking at their peak at this exact point in time.

It's very true.

Like, this is where culture was.

Yes.

Cherry Poppin' Daddies.

That's the content.

I can't remember that name.

Oh, my God.

Squirrel Nut Zippers.

Squirrel.

What a fucking baby.

This was an era.

As someone who was watching this movie

and Lynch's subsequent work in a very gothy phase of my life, I did note Michael Massey because I knew him from The Crow, which was a cherished movie of mine.

Then Mohan Drive, I was very excited to see Vincent Castellanos from the Crow City of Angels

playing Spider Baby.

The fact that I just was able to call that up talked me.

And then, of course, David Patrick Kelly is one of the most you know memorable characters in twin peaks and twin peaks the return and eats the brie and baguette sandwich and he was t-bird in the original crow oh wow i have nothing else to say about this other than that i just knew all the actors crow had yeah

um have you ever considered zoot suits yeah obviously i think you could pull it on it would make me look taller it's like the bart simpson game the lines up yeah

um

okay so uh he goes to this party hosted by Michael Massey, and there's this weird kabuki devil man who walks up and is like, I'm in your house right now.

Yeah.

Hands him a cell phone, says, call your home.

He's on the other line.

Pretty quickly puts together this is the guy who was making the tapes.

It's so effective and it's such a simple little trick, but it's really scary.

It's deeply scary.

It's the scariest shit that ever fucking happened.

It's about as unnerving as anything.

Like you go to parties in, this has only ever happened to me in LA.

but we go to parties in la sometimes they have a magician on site who will do crazy shit like close-up magic or even far away magic they'll just do magic and it is there to amuse the party guest and you're like how the fuck did that happen and it makes the party better and this is like the version that went too far yeah this is close-up like satanic yeah power yeah i remember just like it was yesterday watching this in my bed two in the morning, headphones on, just not knowing that that's what that was going to be.

didn't think i don't think he even knew about the mystery man at all i don't think i knew the only thing i think i knew is that bill pullman was going to turn into balthasar what's so crazy is i'm sure there's a trailer for this movie but i never saw it is it on youtube great question like i don't i never this was pre-internet so like i would not have seen a trailer online and i'd certainly

one guy is gonna have a crazy weekend

uh looks like we've got a car on road oh oh robert blake's right there right at the start it's leading off with robert blake uh freaking out bill pullman well how lucky were we to have never seen the trailer when we obviously because yeah i did not um

know that that was going to happen um and then he uh

well then they get another tape of them in their bed right after this there's three there's three tapes there's the one that's just the house then there's the bed and then the third one is the is the murder the murder yes The silence of the tapes is really creepy.

There's no sound really at all, except for just like static noises.

This really taps into the unnerving aesthetic qualities of VHS that the ring then sort of extrapolates from.

Like,

maybe the ring is like the same year, the original one.

Ring is maybe 96.

Yeah, it's around 99.

Okay.

I feel like we've talked about this so much.

That's another of the scariest things I ever fucking saw coming out of that goddamn TV spoiler alert.

But the detail that gets lost in tape that creates this fear of like, what am I not seeing?

What is like being artifacted to a point of abstraction?

It's a thing now where, like, I've said this so many times, but when movies have characters watching video footage of something and the video footage is the same clarity as the movie you're watching, it never fucking has the same effect.

It's the fucking birthday party scene in signs, which is still, I feel like, the most scared I've been by anything in a theater.

Scary.

God.

Another great example.

Yeah.

Just the jitter when they hit pause.

It's unmistakable.

You cannot quite figure out what you're seeing.

Yeah.

People always forget that it's fucking Hiroyuki Sonata getting murked in Ringu.

Yeah.

King of all kings.

Shogun himself.

He just does not stop.

Anyway,

stop making me do the plot of Lost Highway.

Come on, guys.

Don't fucking plot for Lost Highway.

So then...

Pete or Fred Madison gets arrested and he goes to jail.

He gets put on death row.

Yeah, I guess in between this, he walks down down a weird hallway.

That's right before the murder.

Like that's right.

He walks down the hallway.

You know something's up with that hallway.

He's, he spends an unusual amount of time looking himself in the mirror.

And then you say unusual.

If I were Bill Pullman, I'd look at myself in the mirror half of every day.

That's true.

Like out of context, I spend more time looking at myself in the mirror than he does in the scene of that movie.

But and I never think of myself as a particularly weird or troublesome individual.

No, he's got an incredible pull in him.

He goes to jail.

He goes, goes, gets put on death row.

Who's the guard?

There's Henry Rollins.

Henry Rollins.

Yes.

Henry Rollins is the guard.

And Jack Jack Killer is the other one.

Yeah.

Who's one of those incredible that guys

who Lynch uses a fair amount, right?

Well, he's also, he's, he's the landlord in Big Lebowski.

But didn't he come up in something we were watching recently?

Jack Killer, uh, he's in Men in Black 2.

Yes.

Could it be that?

Water World, Spy Who Shagged Me.

We've been covering him a lot recently.

Yeah, he's been around.

But yeah, so Fred's

in jail and having crazy headaches and weird visions of a cabin in the desert, right?

Anything else?

Well,

before he starts.

I listen to Sargetti.

He's also in I Love You to Death.

That's what it was.

Of course.

He plays a detective.

We've covered him like six times in the last 12 months.

Have you ever seen I Love You to Death?

No, but having listened to the episode, I now really, really want to check it out.

It's fun.

Start to the spinning pizza, Lynchian image.

Is it?

Pizza rotating in the is it?

a little bit you'll see it's a little weird i can't wait we gotta we gotta talk more about what lynching means um

i went and found the script for this movie because i was just like shooting scripts i was curious what

you know how might how it might have changed and this is the year the part of the movie that is like has the most there's nothing crucial like there's no like scene with pete dayton that got cut out from the first half But there is more stuff with Michael Massey in this part and some other young women that he's

partying with.

And there's more in the prison.

There's another prisoner who gets executed.

And all this footage has kind of been compressed into this brief sequence before he becomes Balta Zargetti.

But the really interesting part, or maybe it's not that interesting, but you hear both in the David Foster Wallace piece and other articles

about how

the transformation into Balta Zargetti is a truly horrifying sequence.

full of prosthetic makeup and fake heads.

And none of that is in the movie.

There's a sped up shot of him just like that's right, that's like turning a set.

That's it, where you sort of get a sense that there's prosthetics in those sped-up shots, but you don't really see anything specific.

And this, this one doesn't have a missing piece, does it?

It doesn't.

And reading the entire screenplay, there's no other deleted scenes.

There's just like a little bit in here.

It feels like pretty much everything's there.

But I was like, Googled Lost Highways prosthetics, but it's just about people who lose prosthetic limbs on the road.

On the road.

Yeah.

Anyway, carry on.

The

description of the change in the screenplay is interesting.

So I thought I might read that.

Maybe I'll read it in a David Lynchian tone.

So Fred turns, straining upwards as we've seen him do before.

His face and head are hideously deformed.

He pulls his hand down across his face, squeezing it as it goes.

As his hand passes over his face, Fred's features are removed, leaving a blank, white mass with eye sockets.

We move into the eye sockets and beyond.

Fred's blank face begins to contort and take on the appearance feature by feature of Pete Dayton.

Bred Madison is becoming Pete Dayton.

So he's making it sound like a werewolf transformation.

Completely.

Right, yeah.

It's like fucking American Werewolf Olunda.

And if you watch the end of the movie, when the transformation starts happening again and freeze frame and step through it frame by frame, you can see full-on Rob Botine style.

It's like crazy technology.

His face is inflating and throbbing and pieces are like growing out of his head.

The bump on his head, on Balthasargetti's head for the first chunk of his section of the movie looks so incredibly artificial.

It's one of the few flaws of the Blu-ray.

It's too good.

You see the theme lines on the prosthetic in a way that stands out in a movie that does not have any of that.

But you could see if that was coming straight after 10 minutes of Rob Botine, like fucking changeo face kind of shit, it wouldn't stick out as much.

He turns into Balfazargetti, and it's sort of like, now you're a new person.

So I guess you're free to go, but we're going to keep an eye on you.

There's the logic of that sequence, which is great.

It's a really funny sequence.

You're not that guy anymore.

You're a different guy.

You're a car mechanic named Pete Dayton.

The moment that's incredible is the guards going, like, this is weird.

There's a different guy in the cell.

We can't skip over that.

That it's not just like the movie edits over to a different guy.

No, the guards are like, this guy we were supposed to execute isn't here.

There's another guy.

Right.

A move that obviously Morbius references in its end credits when the vulture time slips into...

I feel like Spider-Man's behind this.

I hope the food's better in the air.

But that's like the eeriest part of it is that this is like a phenomenon occurring in the world, not just the language of the movie.

And people are reacting to it as if.

As people probably would.

There's like, how the fuck did this happen?

Right.

What's the paperwork that's going to be be involved with the discharge of the social security cards, sir?

What?

When they release him into the stable and supportive arms of Gary Busey.

90s, Gary Busey.

90s Gary.

Very stable.

Yeah.

You'll got that great leather jacket, that great pompadour.

Ready to order two mute boss up.

Yeah, oh, he's going to get, oh no, I know I want a mute boss up.

But he doesn't really remember anything.

No.

They refer to something that happened the previous night

and it keeps coming

but is the implication that like

this guy was with his parents

and he kind of got zapped into it because they're like yeah your parents are here

like what is this metaphysically

like where was pete dayton yesterday i think and we are treading dangerously close to which i analysis which i don't care about to be clear so like if the movie is about how does zoopia feed its people sorry go on like like you buy giant popsicles you melt them down, you make tinier popsicles.

Very good point, Redwood.

I would argue that Brad Madison is conjuring up all of this.

Yes.

Including P.

Dayton and the parents and the fact that something happened that explains this, that they won't tell him, that none of this, that there wasn't actually a character who swapped places.

And the movie, the movie comes close to...

reality a few times, but never quite breaks through that surface.

So you think he's feeling a little melancholy about the fact that he maybe killed his wife and maybe he's chopped her in half?

He's feeling very melancholy.

A little melancholy.

And he's creating basically like a hypothetical for her to grow in which a younger version of him gets a new chance with a similar woman.

Yes.

Yeah.

Who ultimately is the same woman and who sends him on the same spiral of the same mad descent that she did the first time.

But a plottier version of it.

A plotty version of it that's very akin to something he may have watched on television.

Yes, it's like the movie Detour or whatever, like one of those like really hard-boiled 4D snores where it's like, yeah, you're a car mechanic, you're a simple guy, you don't mean no harm to nobody, but keeps making the wrong thing.

You get mixed up with this dame and

she's mixed up with this guy who it's like, is he a gangster?

Is he a porn producer?

He's definitely chill and never yells.

Also, not to spoiled detour, but it has what I will just refer to as the phone cord death that feels very influential on Lynch where you're watching this thing where you're like, like, is this really happening?

And the way the characters are reacting to it in the moment is odd, where you can't tell if they're like, why aren't they doing anything to prevent this?

Are they happy?

Did they design this this way?

And alarming in the context of that movie when it was released, too.

Like, just to you, I think of detour just because, right, it's so famously lurid for the movie.

Right.

Um, Michael Massey is back, obviously.

Uh, is going to have an incredibly, incredibly good death.

Really, one of my favorite, like, such a 90s LA death, too.

Death by class table.

Yeah, last tablet.

I had to, I had to

copy down the description of that in the screenplay.

Please.

Which is, there is a sound like a hammer going through a bucket of eggs.

You fuck.

You sick fuck.

It's like a hammer.

Oh, boy.

So, yeah.

So, yeah.

Yeah.

Fred Madison has, I would say, lost 60 to 70% of his charisma.

You know, he's lost a few years too.

He is.

He's looking younger.

He's looking younger and he is now Pete Dayton.

But the ladies like him.

Yes, he's sinking a looker.

You're about to say Pete Davidson.

He is now Pete Davidson and he's in this swirling tabloid mess.

If this movie were made now, that wouldn't be out of line.

That would be probably what you would do.

Yeah.

It's still Bill Pullman.

It's a little punch remake.

Yeah, it's still Bill Paulman.

It's like, what if you turned into Pete Davidson?

That'd be good.

I gotta say, I would never fuck with Mr.

Eddie, Robert Loja's character.

Mr.

Eddie doesn't seem like a guy you want to even like give an inch to I wouldn't fix his car.

No, I would quit my job.

Yeah, exactly.

If he took a liking to me, I would move.

I'd move to a different subway car if he gets on before we get into made of eye contact.

He's one of those guys where you're like, too much energy.

Well, if he was on a subway car, he'd be mad because he would think the other subway cars were tailgating his subway.

Why are you following me?

You're too close.

robert loja plays mr eddie slash dick laurent

a yeah gangster porn magnate with a bit of a short fuse a bit uh i don't know how else to describe i'd say he's a bit of a no-fuse norman right i love with an exploding bomb i love with the henchmen during the tailgate scene where they both just like kind of quietly buckle their seatbelts because they know what's about to happen It's so fucking good.

That's another Tuesday in Griffith Park.

Yeah.

Who is like a lot of like Lynch has this character always, this like raging, like terrifying like male.

He has this guy, he has the henchmen, and then he always has the two detectives.

He always has the two detectives like, well, I don't know, ma'am, who like are like both giant and kind of like oddly dressed.

And it seems to me he might have done it.

Yeah, right, right.

He might have done it.

Because like Mohaw and Drive has Robert Forster and the other guy, right?

The guy from

the Sam Raymond movie, who I love.

Yeah.

And you're like, right, if this is a TV show, that's a plot, right?

Is those two guys are like bumbling around?

They get their showcase episodes.

Right.

And you're sort of sad that there's no more Robert Forrester and Will Holland Drive.

And thank God he's in Twin Peaks The Return, absolutely shattering the backboard anytime he is on screen for even one second.

Incredible performance.

But right.

Brent Briscoe.

Yeah, that's it.

That's simple plans.

Love that guy.

We lost him.

Yeah.

Well, go get him.

But yeah, what else?

Give me more plot things we can discuss about this movie.

He falls in with Alice, the gangster's mall.

Yes.

He's dating Patricia Gregson Wagner.

Yes.

Hanging out with Giovanni Ribisi.

Yeah.

Yeah, who

bad kind of guy to hang out with.

He's popping up a lot for us recently.

He's been popping up a lot for us.

And it is funny because I feel like in certain episodes, we are so wildly critical of Giovanni Rubisi.

And other times we're like, Giovanni Rubisi.

And he is like, you know, you said

Franco, James Franco is a feast or famine actor, right?

Where it's like, sometimes he's engaged and he's giving you everything.

And sometimes you're like, what the fuck are you doing?

Rabisi, it's truly a problem where I'm like, anytime Rabisi is bad in a movie, I blame the people who hired him.

He knew what he was going to give you.

Right.

Right.

Right.

You just, you have to know.

It's like, it's, it's another, he's a volatile chemicals guy.

And this, it's like the exact right amount when he enters.

He's briefly in the film.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Natasha Gregson Wagner, great.

Uh, Love her.

So pretty.

Obviously, herself, like you said, swirled with crazy Hollywood history.

Her parents and her stepfather, Robert Wagner, and all that.

But nothing's really going on with him except that he falls in love with Mr.

Eddie's mistress, Alice, right?

Right.

Who is

blonde Patricia Arquette?

Instantly seduces him.

and then embroils him in a plot straight out of a film noir from the 50s.

Right.

But you're going going to rob my friend.

We're going to bust out of town.

But then this is like when she's also like, but also Mr.

Eddie is Dick Laurent and he makes crazy porn.

And like, that's something I'm revealing to you now, I guess.

I hate trying to describe it.

Which then

it's like the stuff that Fred Madison has been suspecting is starting to bubble up into the reality of this version of him.

He tried to, he was like, all right, I'm creating this alternate version of myself who has got a stable family life and a good good group of friends.

We go out and have fun and I got a really nice girlfriend and we got a good thing going on and I make her happy.

And then

here comes Alice to

kind of bring the reality slowly and then rapidly seeping back.

And then you're like, Hollywood, right?

And like the undercurrent of everything under belly.

Sharkette has such a fascinating persona at this time.

She's someone who like

escalated to being an above the title star really quickly even if it was in small movies 100 nightmare on elm street 3 is her first film she's good in it too and they want her back for four and her career's taken off too much that she walks away and then she occupies this space where it's like all these characters where it's like is she an innocent in a horrible world Yeah, she's sort of in the Trans Lewis zone, but she's more like voluptuous and like kind of a throwback look.

But this weird feeling of her being like this sort of like cursed knafe, yeah, you know, yeah, and then you have movies, she's also just like in R-rated movies, right?

She's like such an R-rated movie actress, they're all like dark dramas and stuff, like fucking goodbye lover and like the high-low country, like these movies that it's like a stigmata where it's like, I can't see those movies in theaters, I'm too young.

I know who she is, but I can't see her movies.

But then you have things like Ed Wood and Flirting with Disaster that both use her in a similar way, where it's like, this is the one sane, kind, normal person in this absurd world.

She's awesome in Flirting with Disaster.

And then

she's like such a beacon of lovely performance.

Her 90s run is incredible.

And then like after this, she does Bring Out the Dead.

Yeah.

Which she's good in, but that's a really, really depressing part.

Like, and her playing against her husband that she's actually been estranged from for seven years.

And then that ends her like 90s where she's got such a specific thing.

And then it's like an odd period where you realize at retrospect, oh, she was doing boyhood this whole time.

Yeah, that's true.

Where the jobs in the 2000s are odd and all over the place.

And then she's obviously on medium for many years and wins Emmy and whatever.

And then she gives this performance in Boyhood and you're like, oh, this is kind of incredible.

Have we been taking Patricia Arquette for granted?

She was doing this the whole time.

And then now she's just become like the queen of prestige TV.

She does a lot of prestige TV.

She directed a movie, I think, recently.

Did I think it was at Tiff last?

It was at Tiff.

I saw her outside her restaurant and I was like, well, I don't know what I I would say to Patricia Arquette, so I did not approach her.

But she has barely made movies since boyhood, which is now 10 years ago.

She did do Escape to Danamora, though.

She escaped to Danamora.

Don't tell anybody.

She did the fucking Gypsy Blanchard one.

Yep.

She's on Severance.

She did another Apple Plus show that got canceled.

that I only found out existed when they announced it was canceled.

I'm like, I just have my Apple TV on or whatever, and it starts playing the trailer for Dark Matter, which is like one Jennifer Connolly, one million Joel Edgertons.

Yeah.

And I'm just like, this must have cost a fucking $100 million.

Like no one will ever know what this is.

High Desert, which premiered in May 2023 and was canceled in July 2023 and starred Patricia Arquette, Brad Garrett, Bernadette Peters, Rupert Friend, Matt Dillon.

It was directed by Jay Roach.

She was doing this the same time she was doing Severance.

Patricia Arquette.

You're right.

She's very good in this film.

Yes.

Yes.

You know,

she's playing an archetype.

She's playing two archetypes, sort of two sides of one archetype of the dark, unknowable, right, mole.

I think that's what made her boyhood performance feel so revelatory is like, so often in the 90s, she was incredibly good at being asked to play an aura.

She was like an incredible energy actor.

Boy, that she's a human being.

And she just has the moment where she's like, this fucking sucks.

You're just old now.

What do I do?

Yeah, it's an incredible scene.

Why she won an Oscar?

What do you think of her in this movie, David Lowry?

I think she's fantastic.

It's also a complex thing to watch now because

what she's being asked to do in this movie is really challenging and it's really uncomfortable.

And I have to admit, like watching this movie as a 16-year-old is very different from watching it in my 40s and being like, I don't know if I could direct a scene like, like, it's so fraught with so many things.

I mean, I was watching this movie with a woman I had a crush on in college who I was like, are we dating or not?

And she's pointing at the screen being like, I'm going to be her for Halloween, which is a very different way to process this.

That's easy.

Yeah.

And it's

even wig, it's easy.

Yeah.

It's a great costume.

Yeah.

And Patricia Arquette's talked about how scary this movie was.

Yes.

And David Lynch, to his credit, is always, he'll put actors in these really difficult situations, but acknowledge that it is difficult.

Like he's like, I'm asking you to do something really dark and uncomfortable.

And she will always say that she felt protected.

He protected her specifically.

Yes, but this is the the kind of thing she did not feel comfortable doing.

It didn't really do in other movies, even though other movies were always kind of taking her right up to the time.

She's not going to be able towards that.

Yeah.

And I think actors will do that for David Lynch.

Laura Dern certainly has.

Isabel Rossellini famously, and that's why Roger Ebert hated that movie was because of that scene with her.

And it is.

It's like a really hard, that movie, it's like this one.

Those scenes are really hard to watch.

That one more than this one, perhaps, because it does.

This one has the,

you know, the soundtrack, which sort of like

makes it seem a little edgier and more stylized.

It's all in slow motion, but the blue velvet scene is very similar and very hard to watch now.

Right.

And Lynch, I mean, we'll, we'll have talked about it, but Ebert's contention at the time was just like, this makes me so uncomfortable.

I can't process how someone wasn't actually experiencing a real trauma.

What is captured on screen feels too powerful to not have some human cost in it.

But it does feel like, I mean, they obviously ended up getting married after that.

You know, and Pratish Arquette speaks very highly of this and is someone who has been very outspoken about bad experiences she's had in her career.

She's someone who like uses her platform to talk about and try to like set a better model for new generations of actors and all of that.

And also someone who's had like an incredibly bizarre history of romantic relationships.

Sure.

Yeah, she's had some, yeah.

But she's wonderful in this movie and really like iconic.

I would say this is an iconic performance.

Yeah, the look is iconic.

Yes, the whole affect, the energy, aura, whatever Griff, you were saying, like, yes, iconic.

Um, and not in the way that everything is iconic now.

Like, I had an iconic breakfast burrito or whatever, like, you know, more classically iconic.

But also, sleigh.

Yeah, but also, it's a triple sleigh.

Let's go off.

Times infinity.

So she's like, we're going to rob Michael Massey.

They kill him by mistake.

Balthazar, you know, Pete clocks him with a candlestick.

Getty is cheating on.

Well, I think it's just a statue.

Okay, but it's like a little thing.

Yeah.

Getty is cheating on Gregson Wagner.

Yes.

Who has picked up on a culture out on him?

And he's sort of like falling into the absolute trance of this woman who sets up the like, this is the way for us to run away, make money, start a new life.

This is a guy that Robert Loggia yells at me to go sleep with sometimes.

He's got got this set up.

You see Getty getting fired up in jealousy of just even finding out this guy exists and that she has slept with him.

And she's having sex on camera or whatever.

Whatever, like all, all, just considering the dark like potential of what's going on.

And in a movie that is already weaponized, like

watching weird videotapes of yourself or people you know and love, to have him enter the house and it's just being projected on the wall.

And earlier, reflecting back to Bill Folman's classic line, which is like, or her line about him, which is that he like, or maybe he does say it, he likes to remember things his own way, not the way they actually happened.

And he's just being forced to look at the way things actually happen.

Yes.

And is Manson in that video or does he come in later?

He's later.

It is a weird thing.

It's later on.

Yeah.

There's like another sequence at the hotel.

Where they cut him.

Yeah.

And so Michael Massey dies.

He gets he gets tabled.

Um.

And

doesn't Pete sees that picture of like the two arquettes together, right?

And it's of which one is you.

Right, yeah.

And she points to it.

Are you both of these people?

Yeah.

Right.

And then we're kind of in empty cabin times, right?

Well, they have sex on the beach.

Illuminated.

Outside of the cabin.

Yes.

They go to the cabin where the

like, I love that the movie gets specific.

It's like, I know a fence.

He can get us fake.

Like they get very specific.

And then they drive to this abandoned shack.

Yeah, this shack in the middle of like the salt flats, practically.

But it's like they can't even wait to get to the to the cabin.

They have sex outside illuminated by the headlights of the car yes and then they get into the cabin and bill pullman's there and she will she's like you'll never

she abandons him right she goes in by herself yes and uh bill pullman's there and um you know so is the mystery man the mystery man is there holding a camera yeah and having a great time creating a thousand meme formats and then mr eddy shows up and they slit his throat that's really the he has he has to go find mr eddy and that's the part of the movie where you're like if anything in the movie is

quote-unquote realistic, it is this sequence of a guy who feels cuckolded and goes and finds his wife, his lover, and murders him.

And then goes home.

And the point at which he pressed the buzzer and says Dick Laurent is dead is really like, he goes home and then murders his wife.

And that is

probably the reality of the movie in a nutshell.

And instead, we're back, we back on the road with him transforming,

probably.

And this score is going crazy and the fucking you know road is rushing at us and this is like the music that prompt rezner is like to wrote for the movie which i think is the first time he quote-unquote scored anything must have been and what an incredible trajectory yeah to go from this to to soul winning oscar for soul yeah nature turtles for soul ninja turtles challengers challengers scores so good so good but i listen to his soul score a lot i do too it's good writing music it's good like nice ambient background music.

Yeah.

But it is funny to imagine Trent Reznor like sitting there in his tight t-shirt while Pete Doctor is like, so the souls have these little bobs.

You've interviewed him.

I did interview him.

I don't get starstruck.

I was very terrified to interview him.

And I saw him at a challenger screening a couple weeks ago, and I was just like, I don't know what to do.

Like, I just stood there and stared at him because he was such an icon to me in my youth.

And to just be like all of a sudden face to face with him for the first time.

It's so funny to have a guy like that.

He also still looks like Trent Reznor.

I was going to say, say, he has always looked iconic, but his look has transformed a couple of times.

Yeah.

But he's still got the hair and the sort of whatever, like the physicality.

But I interviewed him with Atticus Ross, and Atticus Ross is this guy who's like, oh, David, how you doing, mate?

You know, and you're like, okay, so this is the, this is the easy guy.

He likes the blobs.

He probably really dug the blobs.

Whereas Trent was like quiet and thoughtful, and his answers were pretty short and like, you know, kind of like straight to to the corner.

When I saw him, he was in the lobby of the cinema looking for a way out so people like me would not go up and talk to him.

Yeah, right, right.

He'd probably walk through a wall somehow.

Uh, anyway, yeah, I lost highway.

So the movie is just about how OJ's innocent and uh, yeah, three and a half stars.

What do you guys think?

Yeah, no, you took the words right out of my mouth.

Two thumbs down has never been, never sounded so good before.

And Lynch said two good reasons to see the movie, right?

That was his rejoinder to Siskel and Hubert.

Yep.

I feel like this is the moment where people really fucking hate because Godzilla is the next year,

where Emmerich is like, fuck you, Ebert.

I'm here.

Mayor Ebert, yeah, Mayor, you know, like, and all that, where people were really living or dying by two thumbs up or down.

It started a little earlier with my favorite movie, Willow, with the Ibor Susk Dragon.

Sure.

And General Kale, General Kale, yes, definitely, definitely.

Which is also funny that, like, not funny, but like, Siskel dies a year after this.

Yeah.

He dies in 1990.

He dies at the end of 98.

Yeah.

And I feel like when Siskel is gone, everyone's attitude to Ebert changes.

100%.

Yeah, of course.

There was something about them existing as a duo.

And even though Ebert continued to have like someone by his side, Ebert no longer had an antagonistic relationship with his co-host.

So he became a national treasure.

And he became, right?

The show is no longer this debate.

It was more of like a warm show about movies or whatever.

And like, right.

And then Ebert, when I'm a teenager, I'm like, that guy, there's a, he has a review for everything, and I can read them, and they usually will crystallize something about the movie that's helpful to me.

But also, it's not like the most beautiful criticism in the world sometimes, but like he'll write about, I always say this, La Ventura.

I read his review of La Ventura and was like, this guy's helping me understand something I watched when I'm 14 years old that I'm not really ready to totally process.

But also in the 2000s, he starts doing the great movies column.

And a lot of that is him revisiting things and being like, I was wrong about this.

Or even people.

Yeah, some would call him a coward.

Some.

Even the people he stayed on his fence with, he like comes around to basically saying, I have to acknowledge there is value in what David Lynch is doing.

Right.

Because he had such

a thing about it.

These movies are all garbage.

And he

never gave a good review because he didn't review Eraserhead.

So then Elephant Man, he didn't like.

He was one of the few people who did not like Elephant Man.

That's the one

when he didn't like it.

Come on, buddy.

And then, so it just wasn't his cup of tea.

And then he's old, but he's always like a teacher.

He's the one he like despised and was like, this made me unhappy.

That's the one Riley World will talk about at the moment.

And he's acknowledged.

He always acknowledges that David Lynch is incredibly talented.

And he's like, why are you wasting your talents on trash like this?

It feels societally harmful and irresponsible for you to be doing that.

So he acknowledges the craft, but just hates the movies until you get to Mohollen Drive, which is where I feel like we should talk just a little bit about

why

he did also love the straight story, I will point out.

Oh, that's right.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

But Mulholland Drive, go ahead.

I think, so like watching these and trying to interpret my own

response to Mulholland Drive circa October 2001, where I thought it was a pale imitation of.

Obviously, they're sister movies.

If you love Lost Highway, you might not be able to buy right away with it.

Right.

And the people who are disappointed with Lost Highway, I think, approach Mulholland Drive of like, okay, well, this is what he's finding.

Yes.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So there's like, he's always dealt with doubles.

Now you've had like, you know, the Maddie and Laura Palmer.

You've got Leland and Bob.

You've always had these people.

So he's like, he's been working towards crystallizing this idea of duality, of our interior duality becoming

externalized.

And I think Mohan Drive is probably

not as succinct as

Lost Highway.

No, of course.

It's not as succinct as Lost Highway, but because of that lack of succinctness, because it's not as neat and tidy, it is actually more indicative of what David Lynch is after this entire, what he's been after his entire career, which is

that these things, we can't preordain them.

There's no, we can't, we can't prescribe intention to things because they come from a place beyond.

The things that he is trying to access through transcendental meditation, through dreams, you can't plan those.

And Lost Highway does feel to a,

for better or worse, it does feel very plotted out.

And it feels, it feels intentional more so than Inland or than Mahalan and drive because mahal and drive was meant to be a tv pilot and then he's like actually it's a movie and everything that i meant to be one thing such as uh robert forster and burnt briscoe are now going to mean something completely different that i could never have thought of before so he was forced into this

sort of like

bending these ideas into a new shape that allowed them to realize what the type of movie he's been trying to make his entire career.

And he has to transform his characters.

Mohal and Drive, he does the DOS Highway thing again.

They don't turn turn into different actors, but they transform

or wake up or what have you.

Obviously, Mohan Drive is very simple, and I'll explain in our episode.

I'll just

Mohond Drive explained.

Yeah.

It is probably the most explained Lynch movie in a way, but that's only because people are so obsessed with it.

People are so obsessed with it.

And again, like Lost Highway, I think you could boil it down.

It literally begins with the head hitting the pillow.

Like he's giving you clues.

It's not that outrageous.

Right.

But it is.

And I think

on a very formally intrinsic level, the fact that the movie movie is made out of random pieces of film that are being spliced together to create new forms gives it a sense of the potential of cinema that his other movies don't have.

Like, this is a movie about movies.

This is a movie about movies as dreams, but also movies, movie about Hollywood.

It is a very,

in spite of the entire Justin Thoreau subplot, I think it is a very unjaundiced perspective.

of Hollywood, whereas Lost Highway is like, LA sucks.

This place is a seedy successful.

Yeah, this is like don't come here.

Whereas Mohollen Drive, in spite of how dark it gets, manages to maintain this old Hollywood glamour, this old sense of allure, this sense of like place where dreams can come true, even if those dreams become nightmares.

And I also

think that one of the reasons it's beloved is because for the first time in his entire career, he loves.

the women that lead the film.

Yes, right, right.

It's true, right?

They're in a different place in the story.

And even beyond that, he has women truly leading the film.

Yeah.

They're leading the film.

They are not duplicitous.

They are not compromised.

They could maybe become a little compromised at one point, but like they are

people who he has great degrees of empathy for.

And that is clear from frame one.

And no matter how dark Betty or Diane Selwyn's journey gets, you never lose that empathy, nor do you fault her.

Maybe you can fault her for, you know, ordering a hit on her lover, but you never really feel like she's an evil person.

Yeah, I'm joking.

She didn't have a coming.

But, you know, I don't like that lady, though.

The little old lady.

At the end, she's scary.

That's very, very scary lady.

We should play the box office game.

Sponsored by Regal Cinemas.

I guess.

For Lost Highway, is there anything else?

This movie was a colossal flop.

What do you mean?

This

feel crushed.

This was a steamroller.

Made half a black hat?

The February box office Made $3.8 million.

It's about half a black hat.

I think Black Hat was seven.

Yeah.

Yeah.

In this day and age, that would be a glowing success.

Yeah, in this day and age, 824 is like, thank you.

Can you believe Neon will lost highway four mil

before selling it to Paramount Plus or whatever?

I remember being a concessionist at the movie theater and recommending this movie to people because I was so excited about it.

So I'm taking some credit for that 3.8 million.

Yeah, I mean, you must have gotten a few angry people in the door there.

Did Lost Highway have a cinema score?

When I play the game of like, how do I make myself feel more depressed?

Yes.

Which, you know, usually I wake up.

I love it when you play back.

Great disposition, a great view on the world.

And I've said this in other episodes, but I feel slightly more optimistic about the state of the film world

now than I have in a very, very long time.

But it is funny to look at certain like prestige or just sort of more serious-minded Ford grown-up movies that, like, five years ago, I perceived as underperforming.

And then you're like, Vice made $50 million domestic,

and it was kind of seen as a bomb.

I guess, was it?

I guess it was expensive.

Yeah, that's funny.

And it got like a hyper-wide release at Christmas.

Yeah, that's a big Christmas movie.

Yeah.

All right, Lost Highway made $3 million.

We've actually done this box office before, but I have no memory of us doing it because it's the Rosewood box office.

Oh, wow.

Rosewood is opening number eight

this week.

Lost Highway is opening unlimited 12 screens down to number 31.

But I bet you don't remember the damn Rosewood box office.

Those episodes are lost to my mind.

Same.

I just want to call out Vice 47.8 domestic, 28.2.

Yeah, see, it didn't do that.

76 worldwide against a $60 million budget.

Yeah, I know these days that would be a sensation.

Yes.

Number one at the box office, Griffin, is a re-released film.

Wait, give me the date again.

February 21st, 1997.

It is Empire Strikes Back?

Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back.

Episode 5, that one.

Yeah, the fifth one.

It's new, quote unquote, this week.

This is its first week in re-release.

Now, what's number two at the box office, Gerfin?

Star Wars.

That's right.

Episode 4, they call it.

I assume you saw those films on their re-release.

That was the first time I ever saw them not on Panin Scan VHS.

Same.

It was the first time I saw them, period.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

I had seen them on VHS, but certainly in right in their bullet.

It's funny that we've been doing the show long enough that that got no really from you, because that's definitely something we covered at some point.

But also buried within the bit, maybe it was fucking mask and layers of who fucking those.

Here we are with the special edition of Phantom Menace

having just opened and clearing up.

Made

three times what Lost Highway made?

I know.

I know.

Also, this thing of like Amazing Spider-Man 2 is in the top 10 just because they're doing like Spider Mondays around the, whatever.

Do you know what's also interesting you look at there have now been three wide releases of phantom menace original release it opened to like uh

70 60 something

the 3d re-release in 2012 it opened to like 24 and this time it opened to eight every like 10 to 15 years they re-release it and it does a third of what it did the last time okay all right and they'll keep trying um it's done okay for itself though i was doing fine did you go see it i've been very busy i need to go see it i'd like to go see it i don't don't know.

I saw it last time when they did the 3D.

I saw the 3D.

It was bad.

It was pretty shadow.

And I love 3D.

It was one of the worst conversions.

And I think maybe it was Dennis Murin himself.

Someone took over, like, I will oversee the conversions of episodes two and three to fix this problem.

And by all accounts, the Attack of the Clone conversion and the Revenge of the Sith conversion are incredible.

And will never be seen.

One of them was screened.

Attack of the Clones was screened at Star Wars celebration one year, and then they sold to Disney.

Disney was like, we're not fucking putting these back in theaters.

And Revenge of the Sith was never seen.

Yeah, maybe we'll see him one day.

Number three is a political thriller from a great auteur.

Not one of his better movies, in my opinion.

Is it Mad City?

No, that was a good guess, though.

Totally great guess.

Not Acaustic Avarice.

No.

When I call him a great auteur, I guess it's like this is sort of a.

Is it Devil?

Is it Devil's Own?

No.

But also a good guess.

Also a good guess.

I was in grown-up movies back then.

Grown-up movies.

No, this is a director-actor.

He's the star of this film, and he also directed it.

Huh.

Is it a Clint?

Clint Eastwood film.

Is it Blood Work?

No.

Is it Absolute Power?

Absolute Power.

I got fucked on this exact thing at the box office game recently where I was like, which wing?

Blood Work is a Clint programmer was this?

Who it's a little later.

He's like old in Blood Work.

Great movie.

Blood Work is so good.

Absolute Power is okay.

It's the one with Gene Hackman as the president.

Have you seen Absolute Power?

I have not.

I saw,

this would be a momentous couple weeks in my life because I was working.

I was employed for the very first time at a movie theater.

Yeah.

And I feel like I, you know, I definitely saw Rosewood.

I would have obviously seen the Star Wars films regardless of having worked at a movie theater.

But I'm curious what else is populating.

I feel like I remember January pretty well.

I remember December, but I don't remember where we are right now.

All right.

Well, David, also just to correct you quickly, Welcome to Mooseport is the one where Gene Hackman's the president.

That's what what the name of the movie is.

Going out on top?

Number four is a disaster film.

Dante's Peak.

Not Volcano.

Yes, Dante's Peak.

Well done, Lowry.

The better of the two, Dante's Peak, in my opinion.

Dante's Peak.

Volcano Blow Up.

Ben.

Oh, like Grandma Dying in Acid Lakes.

It was fucked up.

Disturbing.

Fucked up.

Yeah, I did not like that scene.

Number five is

a comedy sequel nobody asked for.

Ben was probably there.

Probably.

Ben.

I don't know.

Ben's considering.

It's a comedy sequel no one asked for.

How long has it been out?

It's been out for two weeks.

It's going to top out at $36 million.

Was it close to the release of the first or was this?

Did they wait for the first time?

This is the fourth in the series.

Oh, it is

Major League Colon Back to the Minors.

No.

That is a totally good guess.

But maybe someone asked for that one.

I don't know.

Ben, that's why I thought the clue was you saying Ben asked for it.

They do go back to the minors.

those movies get me i like cry to both major league one and two but not every

not back to the minors yeah that one's also that's three not four yeah yeah yeah three uh two is so good it is what is this what is this it's a fourth

no one asked for it it's not doing well no it's the last one very much it's the last theatrical I think they've done some TV.

Huh?

They've done some TV version.

What the fuck is this?

What the fuck is this?

They remade it eventually.

That doesn't really count, but they remade the original.

Is it a Beethoven?

No.

No, fuck.

Is it like star-driven?

Yeah.

And the same person.

Same star, but

cooked.

Yes.

Family comedy.

Oh, oh, oh, oh.

Ben,

were you there opening weekend to see Vegas Vacation?

Vegas Vacation.

The movie that National Ampoon took their name off of.

No, because my dad wouldn't take me wow

he thinks that chevy chase is an asshole no well he is an asshole your dad wasn't wrong no i was ahead of the curve i have not seen vegas vacation uh i haven't either no no one ever did but that is the one it is just called vegas vacation national ampoon was like we'll set this one up

you've also got you'd rather wait for van wilder to swing around Just to fill in the rest of the top 10 for you, David, you've got Fools Rush In.

That's the one where Matthew Perry marries Selma Hayek.

Yes.

A fatal mistake.

Because he knocked her up.

Is that why?

Yes, yes.

He knocked her up.

I think that it ends up being

that's at least some plot point in the film.

Yeah.

He knocked her up.

Yeah.

She has a daughter at the end.

The grand cat is family part of it.

It's a Twilight Zone-asque premise of what if you had to marry Selma Hayek.

Number seven at the box office is the Disney remake of That Darn Cat with Christina Ricci and Dougie Doug.

A movie which uh my mother recently invoked the original that darn cat to me as one of her favorite movies of all time and i was like what she was like you know that

she was like shut up you never talked about this once but i do remember one time walking by the marquee when the dougie dug christina ricci that darn cat was playing and she turned to me and just went i keep remaking all the classics and that is the only time i ever remember her acknowledging that darn cat number

uh eight is um Rosewood, new this week.

Number nine is hanging out three months into its run, Jerry Maguire, one of the great works of American storytelling.

Number 10 is some movie about an English patient that has only made

the English patient.

It's only made 51 million on its way to 78.

It's been out for four months.

It's just going to trouble.

Those are some legs.

Yeah.

Huge legs.

Number 11 is fucking shine.

Do you hate shine?

Because it took Tom Cruise's Oscar off.

Oh, sure.

Like, it's so offensive that he doesn't have the Oscar for Jerry Maguire already.

But then you're like, who won?

Shine.

You're like, what's that one again?

I've never seen Shine, but isn't it?

But you know, Jeffrey Rush comes into the movie like so late.

That's what I was going to say.

That's the weirdest part.

I remember my parents' contentious

wish that Noah Taylor at least should have won if you were getting it to someone.

Well, he was nominated, right?

But no, Armin Mueller Stahl was.

Oh, that guy.

Noah Taylor kept getting the precursors.

And then there was the swerve on Oscar Morning.

I recently, I re-watched Multiplicity and I was trying to do the math on

No Teller got a SAG supporting nomination.

There we go.

Bizarre.

Sorry, what were you doing?

Multiplicity.

Multiplicity.

And I was

multiplicity.

And I was like, well, if I were to make my own spreadsheet, Michael Keaton would be a lock for one of my five slots.

There must be space for him in this year.

And then I look at this year that was incredibly good.

Yeah.

And I'm like, I guess you bump.

I haven't watched Shine, not to be rude, but I guess you bump Rush.

You got Shine right the fuck out of it.

Are you kidding me?

Yeah.

Well,

not for Keaton.

I don't know.

He gives four of the best performances of the year.

Okay.

But then here's the follow-up.

There's another

great comedy actor, movie star that played multiple in the same year.

And I'm like, I think I got to put both of those guys in.

Yeah, Nutty Professor is a good shout.

So then am I bumping fines?

You're bumping Michael Keaton.

He doesn't need an Oscar.

Nomination for multiplicity.

He is transcendent multiplicity.

I have Tom Cruise, William H.

Macy for Fargo, who's obviously a lead.

Fuck, yeah.

Eddie Murphy for Nutty Professor, Woody Harrelson for People versus Larry Flynn, and Philip Baker Hall for Hard Eight.

I may be kind of ahead of the curve on Hard Eight.

That's great.

Great movie.

But he's amazing in it.

I mean, Philip Baker Hall is, you know, he's incredible.

He's a god level in that movie.

Anyway, Lost Highway is good.

I degree.

Lost Highway is, I would again say, it is

a pretty perfect movie, but somehow, in spite of its perfection, in spite of how much I still love it, has somehow slid down a little bit into a minor work in the

oeuvre of David Lynch.

But it's just, he didn't, he's never made a bad movie, in my opinion.

It is.

It's fair to say.

Dude's probably the closest to like, okay, that's not his movie.

That's not his fault.

But he has sort of shifted from being a guy who has like hits and misses.

to being a guy who has major work and minor work in the public eye.

Is that fair to say?

Yes.

And I guess yes i i guess you can call this a more minor work by him i guess but it's also it's so the the stuff that comes out of it is so it it has to start with this it does if he had never made another movie about people becoming other people in la this would have in la this would have been a much more like we'd be looking at this in a much different light i think that's true but he kept digging down he kept burrowing into this evolving it and it gets better and better he's like instead of a highway what if about a road just just a drive honestly yeah just like one little drive little driveway and then he was like no no no no empire empire

done

what did he think imperial march over inland empire

he was still regretting his decision to pass on uh return the jedi i can't wait to hear you guys discuss the technical specifics of the making of inland empire uh that'll be fun i think and it was fun having you on our show david lowry thank you for for having me back um and

what do you want to plug

for uh an episode that's coming out in november i'm just gonna play it safe and just take the cards as they fall and we'll see where we are when we're listening to this in seven eight nine months and i'm feeling optimistic about the future i think one of david lynch's weather reports came out during the pandemic where he said beautiful things are in store or something of a foot and it really something like that it really uh it got me at the right time and I'm gonna just find that weather report look at it again and and believe that that's where we're headed uh Larry uh that's a beautiful setup beautiful beautiful uh I forgot to bring it because this week has been a little chaotic but I did purchase the final

dare I say it not to be rude deeply discounted Peter Pan and Wendy Lego set which I have never seen in person a local target to to bring to you but I owe it to you next time.

I will happily take it.

That's fantastic.

I'm glad that they actually exist and

just photographs.

They do.

And as a Lego fan, I texted you when I saw it on the store shelves and you had some notes.

Yes.

I also texted Sims.

I was walking through LA.

This is the best.

I think we had already been texting about something maybe earlier that day.

Or in that week.

It was like we had recently texted.

And then I was standing at a stoplight waiting to cross the street to meet friends for dinner.

And there was a flyer taped to the street light

that just said, Let me get this exact photo.

Disney's Peter, Pan, and Wendy needs a sequel.

Please scan below to sign support and share this petition.

Wow.

And a guy took the poster,

Lowry's film, put a QR code, put a little two at the end of it, and a QR code for a change.org petition.

And the petition, which I went to, is not just like a little, you know, fly-by-night petition, a deeply argued reason, reasoning why it needs a sequel.

And it really made me look at my own movie in a different light.

And I, it's one of the reasons I love David Lynch's Dune in spite of his own, you know, the reason he does this because like, I love knowing what he intended and what, and seeing all that work and all that thought that went into it.

And in spite of the fact that it was compromised, there's still a beautiful film in there.

And somehow this petition.

made me realize due to a difficult birthing process.

There was history.

There is a beautiful film somewhere in there and stuff that I'm still very proud of.

And it really, it really meant a lot to me to see that.

How about we plug this?

How about change.org?

No, I'm just

saying.

Let's post this when the episode comes out.

Let's get an influx.

People sign up to join this petition.

Yeah.

Now, to be clear, you're not agitating right now the Disney green light of Peter Pan and Wendy Sequel.

No, but just that

the desire being out there is enough.

We want to support the support.

Exactly.

There you go.

How weird was that, though, for me to just chirp by that?

That's pretty weird.

It blew my mind.

Yeah.

And certainly the folks at Disney are now very aware of it because I sent it to them.

We need to take this campaign to the streets.

Not just I'm making a change.org petition, but I'm going to Kinko's.

I'm printing this out.

I'm taping it.

Speaking of Jerry McGuire, hanging your balls out there.

Oh, he prints his manifesto at Kinkos.

We've had like two really good endings so far to this episode.

Yeah.

So we should be done, right?

Yeah.

But I just remember I brought something.

This may fall flat.

We're like babies.

But it's something good.

It barely counts as a gift.

But four years ago, I was at Skywalker Ranch mixing the Green Knight, and it was the day that Tom Hanks got COVID.

And it all fell apart.

But I was planning on coming to New York that spring for the Green Knight press tour.

Yes.

And I was going to hopefully see you guys.

And while I was...

just wandering around Skywalker Ranch on a lunch break, I happened into the gift shop.

Let's just call out quickly, not to disrupt you here, but we were planning on doing an episode

tied to the release of Green Night, which ended up getting postponed a year that we had teased at the time and tried to game out.

Right.

We were going to do the Green Night RPG role-playing equal to the RPGs.

Yes.

And

so I was looking through the gift shop and I saw just this postcard of a stained glass window.

And I was like, I don't know.

For some reason, I feel like Griffin Davidson is like that.

Absolutely.

So there there you go this is going right on the corkboard wow that's been sitting tucked away in a book for the past four years wow

beautiful stained glass it is it is beautiful it's very nice it looks so nice wow that's it

it says so much about george's psychology that they sell this completely i have always thought it was fascinating that he Kept it.

Kept it.

Yep.

And it's more fascinating that he's like, well, it's a beautiful stained glass.

Why wouldn't I sell a postcard up?

And with that, I bid you all adieu.

Thank you so much.

Lowry, you're the best.

Thank you for being here.

Thanks for having me.

Yep.

I look forward to having you on again for your entrance into the Five Timers Club.

Oh, yes.

Another episode recorded six months before that.

You'll come here in the winter and we'll record something that's coming out in 2026 or whatever.

It'll be great.

Thank you all for listening.

Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe.

Thank you to Marie Barty for helping to produce the show.

Thank you to Alex Barron, A.J.

McKeon for editing.

A.J.

McKeon is also our production coordinator.

Thank you to Pat Reynolds and Joe Bowen for our artwork.

Lane Montgomery and the Great American Novel for our theme song.

J.J.

Bursch for our research.

You can go to blankcheckpod.com for links to some real nerdy shit, including Blank Check Special Features, our Patreon, where we do commentaries on film series.

And we are doing right now, I think we're still in tabletop games.

We're actually way past that, and we don't even have anything.

We don't even fucking know.

We don't even fucking know.

We don't know anything about it.

This episode's so far in the future that we don't know what the fuck is happening, other than say on this feed next week, the straight story.

Actually, we're doing probably Major League.

I think if it lines up, okay, two.

Two.

Yeah, I would say that's kind of where that.

The deuce.

Yeah.

Tune in next week for the straight story.

And as always,

give me that fucking pod that goes.