The simplest avenue for beginning to understand filmmaker David Lynch might be found in a childhood friend’s observation: “David’s always had a cheerful disposition and sunny personality, but he’s always been attracted to dark things. That’s one of the mysteries of David.”
Dark things abound in Lynch’s signature films — the grotesque infant in Eraserhead (1977), the disfigured adult in The Elephant Man (1980), the violent and perverse Frank Booth in Blue Velvet (1986) — and in his first TV series, the offbeat murder mystery Twin Peaks (1990-91). When his cheerful and sunny side shows itself, and that’s not often, the result is The Straight Story (1999).
Like a David Lynch film, the biography-memoir Room to Dream is set in a world we recognize but one with a dreamy, compelling perspective at its core. Co-author and Lynch friend Kristine McKenna writes from interviews and other research in one chapter while the filmmaker’s own recollections of events follow in the next. It’s a unique structure that’s perfectly suited for a cheery fellow with dark fantasies.
Lynch has always been drawn to art of some sort — paint, film, video, music, sound design, photography, acting, even carpentry. Friends and colleagues say he is smart, nice, generous and outgoing — and insist that he isn’t weird. Well, how would you describe someone who dissects a mackerel, lays out the parts, labels them for reassembly, then photographs the display and calls it a Fish Kit? Oh, and a Chicken Kit and a Duck Kit follow.
Curiously, Lynch’s life lacks the elements of evil and tragedy and the bizarre found in his art. McKenna describes an all-American 1950s boyhood in the Northwest. Taking his turn, Lynch recalls an idyllic youth, too, but one with the occasional disturbing image — like the night a nude and beaten woman stumbled down his street. (If you’ve seen Blue Velvet you’ll recognize that childhood memory.)
At one point Lynch writes: “Almost everybody has a bunch of stuff swimming in them, and I don’t think most people are aware of the dark parts of themselves. People trick themselves and we all think we’re pretty much OK and that others are at fault.”
Photo: EPA
McKenna doesn’t omit unflattering details — Lynch’s extramarital flings, for example, and the crumbling of the first three of his four marriages. Actress Isabella Rossellini describes how Lynch used a phone call to end their years-long relationship, a subject on which Lynch contributes only silence.
Importantly for cinephiles Room to Dream explores such things as how Mulholland Drive (2001) rose from the ashes of a failed TV project to the cult film that the Web site BBC Culture declared to be the best movie of the 21st century. That backstory and so many others provide a window into the mysteries of creativity.
Lynch once told director Steven Spielberg, “You’re so lucky because the things you love millions of people love, and the things I love thousands of people love.” Yet Lynch thrives as an artist and as a human being because he fuels his passions with curiosity, discovery and a sense of fun.
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