David Lynch makes obscure, darkling movies, and fittingly his reputation as an interviewee is an uneasy mix between inarticulate black hole and gregarious man-child. But this year, self-distributing and stumping for his most difficult and indigestible movie, Lynch is an open book, frank and energetic. If anything, Inland Empire makes his trademark elusivenessâtalk of âideas comingâ and âfeeling right,â like a painterâseem, for once, wholly appropriate.
The Stranger: How did Inland Empire originate? With the equipment?
David Lynch: Well, I started experimenting, producing little things for my websiteâIâd shoot these little bits and pieces I called âexperiments,â with this digital camera I got. I thought it was a toy, but then I fell in love with it, I just fell in love. So then I got an idea for a scene, all by itself, and so I shot it with that camera. Then, another scene, and another, all disconnected from each other. Slowly, a story emerged. I went to Canal+ in France and said, I donât know what Iâm doing here, but are you in? And they said theyâre in. It was that beautiful. It really was like writing down ideas for a screenplay, a little here, a little there. Usually, youâd eventually have a screenplay, not a film. This way, I had material already for the film.
Iâve read that Laura Dernâs long prostitute monologue was that first scene.
People say thatâs the first scene, but itâs not true. I donât want to say which part came first, because it would putrefy the rest.
What determined the movieâs size and shape?
It was the same process as itâs always been for me: The ideas come, one by one, action, reaction; eventually they make a whole that feels correct.
This movieâs particularly difficult for some viewers; you have to sympathizeâwhen you use the word âstoryââŚ
I hear you, I do sympathize. But for me there is a story, to me it makes sense. But when a film is abstract in its storytelling, some people have difficulty letting go and just having the experience, and dealing with it intellectually afterwards.
The movie makes you hunt for corollaries; I thought of Persona and Juliet of the Spirits, the splintering feminine psyche⌠Not on your radar?
No, Iâve seen both of those films, I love them, but no. They said the same thing about Mulholland Dr.
Can you go back to orthodox filmmaking ever again?
If I fell in love with an idea, Iâd make itâlike The Straight Story, I didnât write it, I read it, I saw in my mind how itâd be, and so I did it. But shooting film as compared to shooting video is soooo inefficient. The downtimeâI die the death. Magic can get lost. With video, thereâs no waiting, you get deep into a scene, things can happen, and with auto-focus you can make little changes as you shoot you could never make with film. It doesnât have filmâs quality, but it has its own quality, and I love its quality. Film has gotten as good as itâs going to get. Video is the future, and itâs just going to get better and better.
Why Lodz?
Itâs pronounced âwooch.â Strange, isnât it, all those sounds. Itâs because I was invited to the Camera Image festival in 2000, and I became friends with those people, what a great bunch. But also the city in winterâthe mood, the architecture, it drove me crazy.
The ideas of good and evil as portrayed in your movies lead me to ask if you believe in God.
For sure. But⌠I do, but itâs probably not a man on a throne.
My 9-year-old read me this from a magazine yesterday, and I thought of youâthe fact that the weight of all the termites in the world is heavier than all the humans. But you never see them, theyâre under the surface.
Thatâs Blue Velvet, right there. Wow, a good fact to know!
Iâm well aware you hate to analyze your films, but it seems to me that thereâs a pervasive attempt at expressing a visceral anxiety, from Eraserhead onâis it self-expression, or a crafted vision of the world, or something else? I remember years ago reading Mel Brooksâs interpretation of Eraserhead, when The Elephant Man came outâhe said it âbetrayed a strong anxiety about parenthood.â
Well, thatâs Melâs take. For me, itâs just the ideasâit sounds like it, but Iâm not copping outâthey come. Itâs nice if theyâre in a whole but usually theyâre in pieces. Then a whole emerges eventually, and only later can you look back on it and see a theme, or whatever. But everyoneâs different. Thereâs that old saying, âthe world is as you areââsome people see everything through dirty gray glasses, some people see through rose-colored glasses. Some see only politics, others only see elements of love and emotions. The audience is such a huge part of a movie, how it plays out. Sure, thereâs anxiety, thatâs part of human nature. But thereâre other things, and how you see it all is up to you.