Subject: David Lynch Interview Re: LMFAP and Mike
From: achapman@unixg.ubc.ca (Aaron Chapman)
Date: 1992-10-09, 11:59
Newsgroups: alt.tv.twin-peaks
I know some people were aware of the David Lynch interview in The issue of
Premiere magazine, in the June 1992 edition. One of the advantages of being
Canadian, and as many Canadians would also argue, one of the disadvantages is
being bilingual. So, I took the time to translate this interview, and I'll
reprint it here for the benefit of my fellow David Lynch enthusiasts. There
was the odd word here and there that I had trouble with but I think I got
everything corret in the end.
So in the spirit of The Great Went himself, Jaques Renault (that crazy French-
Canadian), I dedicate this interview to him. I hope you folks find it
informative.
A quick note, for those of you who have yet to see Fire Walk with Me, especially
our Australian friends (Weddings, Parties, Anything fans?) there might be the
odd SPOILER in this interview, so I suggest you print it out or keep it, and
read it later.
Here you are:
DAVID LYNCH interview from French Edition of Premiere Magazine, Translated by
AARON CHAPMAN, interview by Michael Torello. June 1992.
Lynch is an extraterrestrial. he dresses like a schoolboy, as though an
adolescent from the 60's, *somthing* [peints de toiles] is voluntarily bad,
he collects dead flies and photographs of organs. His style in "The Elephant
Man", "Blue Velvet" and "Sailor and Lula"--are balanced between absolute
obscurity as in Eraserhead and grotesque black comedy. In "Twin Peaks" (the
film) there are both of these elements: satanic conspiracy, and a police
inquiry. David Lynch who is 46 years old has a warped and terrifying vision
of America. His obsessions are sometimes confined to hermitism. Twin Peaks
recounts the last week before the death of Laura Palmer.
Q:Firstly, what drove you to make Twin Peaks?
DL: Well, its Laura Palmer herself, you see?
Q:No, I don't understand.
DL: I felt like finding her again and talking about her life. In the television
series they talked about events that surrounded her and the events that were
discovered after her death. After all, the series began with her death.
Q: What effect did it have on you to find all these characters again?
DL: I loved it.
Q:Aren't you tired of Twin Peaks? Its been two or three years since you've
lived {been} with them.
DL: Yes, three years. BUt I still love them.
Q: Concerning the asthetics of the film, is it very different from the series?
DL: No, they follow the same rules. I guess we filmed in the same place in
the north where the same wind blows. There is an ambience there... Anyhow,
the series was done on film rather than video. When we did the pilot episode,
we presented it to the producers and it worked right away. People were hooked
right away, there was something that attracted the viewers. I think that its
Laura Palmer, her murderer, who was she, and what happened. In fact, the
mystery remains unsolved in the TV series and even the film. There are hints
in the film that are not fully explored. I like this idea a lot. Nothing is a
dead-end, there are still some things which can appear.
Q: You are a painter. John Huston bought some of your work?
DL: I had alread made some films, he bought some of my paintings in an art
gallery in Puerto Vallerta, while I was working on DUNE in Mexico, and I was
painting at the sme time. I was contacted and asked to do two expositions, one
in Mexico and one in Peurto Vallerta. Huston lived there, and Freddy Francis who
was the the photographic director of DUNE had worked on "Moby Dick", knew
Huston. And that's how we me. He liked my work. He was very friendly. For me, he
was an idol, but the tone of our meeting was very casual.
Q:Do you admire his films?
DL: Yes, but they are not the only thing that inspire me. I loved "The Misfits".
Q: Painting is one of your sources of inspiration.
DL:Mmmm....
Q: One of your favorite painters is Bushnell Keeler.
DL: He was the father of one of my friends. He didn't influence but he changed
my life. I was living in Boise, Idaho until I was fourteen years old. There are
no artists there. There are only painters in buildings. I'm not criticizing that
, but its different. But understand that I still love that city. But for me
painters were old fashioned, and there weren't any in the modern world. Then I
met Toby Keeler whose Dad was a painter. Everything changed. I realized that
anybody could be an artist. Toby took me to see his Dad's studio in Georgetown.
We went the day after I first met him. Two years later I took over the studio
when Bushnell moved to Virginia.
Q: Was it he that made you discover that there are other things than "what on\
the surface" as you often say?
DL: No, that's everyday life. Everyone knows that. For me, life is layers of
reality. There are lots of things which turn up under the surface at different
levels. There are sub-atomic particles which we can't see, but they are there.
There are strange forces which act on us. We can choose to ignore them but they
are still there. They are sometimes inside us. We are the victims.
Q: How does this translate to your life?
DL: Its enough just to walk down the street. We are siezed by strange ideas,
strange desires...
Q: And the other forms of art like sculpture, music and literature?
DL:
A bit of Sculpture, yes. As far as Literature goes, I don't know very much.
I wasn't very proficient in that area, I couldn't express myself with words. I
didn't read, and I buried mysefl in this silence. One thing that I liked was
Franz Khafka.
Q: And the movies?
DL: In Boise, Idaho we saw some pretty banal [des choses banales] things. But
I liked that. Presley for sure. Movies like "The Fly", "The Creature from the
Black Lagoon", "The THing"... The theatre was called the Vista theatre. I
went quite often.
Q:Frankly, our image of you is of a very strange type of person. Are you?
DL: No, I'm very normal. Very normal. If your neighbour was a scientist,
you'd find it normal that he studied certain illnesses [la maladie]. In the
world of illnesses, there are wonderfull abstractions and strange intuitions.
In films, we work with all sorts of things, indescribeable sources of
inspiration... Its my job.
Q:But you keep, for example, used chewing gum in a beaker [un bocal]?
DL:Yes, its a very interesting pink substance. I asked my daughter to save them
for me. Its a very surprising substance to sculpt things with.
Q:You collect dead flies.
DL:I've done that for years.
Q:You're strange.
DL:No, I'm not strange. There are lots of people who collect birds. Flies are
just like birds, only smaller.
Q: Do you still like ERASERHEAD?
DL: Its a perfect film. I don't want to sound like I'm bragging. Its like
Edward Hoppers stories [un toile d'Edward Hopper]. I don't want to sound like
I'm boasting. Everything I did after ERASERHEAD is imperfect. Everything is
flawed.
Q: Today you live in Hollywood, do you feel tied to the history of that area?
DL: Yes. I would have loved to work in the Golden Age [J'aurais adore
travailler dans le studio-system], surrounded by producers, by people who tell
you, "Here's your script, read it over this weekend, Monday you start."
Q:Last question. Chris Isakk, who plays an FBI agent in Twin Peaks, disappears.
We never find out what happend to him. I would really like to know...
DL:You don't really think I'm going to tell you. We'll see later...
* * *
There you go folks. As you can see, where I was unsure or uncertain about some
words, I bracketed them next to the french. I hope you enjoyed it.
achapman@unixg.ubc.ca
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