Ok, Let’s Try That Again, but This Time Good!

This column is a reprint from Unwinnable Monthly #184. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price.

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Now this.

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I don’t normally get sentimental about celebrities passing. These are people I don’t personally know – people I only know by reputation. I strongly hold firm to my stance of “no heroes.” But, if there is someone who I strongly admired and I think stood for something good in the world of the creative industries, it would have to be David Lynch. By all accounts, he was a decent man, thoughtful and caring. Maybe not the best husband, but nonetheless loved by most who knew him, and millions who didn’t.

I was fortunate enough to recently rewatch two of his projects in the months prior to his passing. More will certainly be on the way, and at some point, I will finish his oeuvre and watch The Elephant Man, The Straight Story, and Inland Empire. But, with a three-year-old running around causing chaos, who has the time? So, for now, in his honor, I want to reflect just a bit on my relationship with Lynch, and a bit on what revisiting his work feels like.

I first encountered Lynch in my senior year of high school. I took a class on film history, taught by our soccer coach. She decided that Blue Velvet was a critical film for understanding the history of the medium, and at 17, I had never seen anything quite so wild. I’ve seen Blue Velvet probably a dozen times since, and I honestly think our soccer coach was onto something. It continues to be my go-to Lynch film. Despite my mom’s protestations that it was the most vile movie she’s ever seen, for me it was the entry point. It was the reason I watched A Clockwork Orange and Irreversible; it was the reason I watched Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom, Singapore Sling and Nekromantik. Blue Velvet was my first introduction to transgressive filmmaking. Lynch was the gateway.

After my initiation, I had a list to accomplish. But I had many lists. I need to watch as many Werner Herzog movies as I could. I needed to finish Kubrick and the Coen Brothers. And of course, Cronenberg required most of my attention. To be clear, this was all back in the day when Netflix delivered DVDs. It was a slow process, at least compared to now. But slowly but surely, I started tackling Lynch’s catalog. Lost Highway was an instant acquisition, but I kind of wasn’t impressed. It didn’t quite stick. Likewise, Mulholland Drive was sexy, but I didn’t really get it. Wild At Heart just felt like another clone of Natural Born Killers (I’ll come back to this).

So, Lynch kind of sat for a second after that. Always something to get around to understanding, but never taking front and center. A guy I needed to understand better but was a second-tier priority. That is, until I found Twin Peaks. As soon as I started digging into the first two seasons, everything Lynchian clicked into place. Twin Peaks (and I still stand by this) is the key to understanding the rest of Lynch. And no, I’m not saying it’s an extended universe and I will track you down and do Lynchian things to you if you suggest any such thing. Rather, Twin Peaks wraps all of Lynch’s obsessions in packages as accessible as they can possibly be wrapped in: the unfathomable evil lurking underneath the American dream; the unknowable connection between dreams and waking life; the drama and simplicity of the everyday. The themes that drive his life’s work are on complete display in Twin Peaks. Lynch was unlocked.

I immediately rewatched everything I could and picked up other things. I watched some shorts. I watched Eraserhead and Dune. And then, The Return was announced, and I shat myself. Well not literally, but it did feel like a bomb went off. I immediately rewatched the first two seasons in preparation, and then sat down to experience . . .  well, to experience Twin Peaks: The Return.

And what an experience it was! Given, it was eight years ago, more or less, so my memories might not be crystal clear, but I do remember being completely flabbergasted. Some of it made sense: the monster coming out of the box to murder two 20-year-olds fucking; Matthew Lillard giving a Emmy worth performance; somehow even Jim Belushi worked!

But then there were the things that didn’t work. Number one, fucking Dougie. Ask my wife, ask my colleagues. In 2017, I was on a tirade about Dougie. He drove me insane. Why didn’t anyone treat him like a normal person? Why wouldn’t anyone lock him away? Of all the people in Twin Peaks, and I’m including Richard Horne and Leland Palmer in this conversation, Dougie needed to be the most put away for his own good.

And that now brings me to the central point of this screed: when I rewatched The Return this year, Dougie just didn’t bother me so much! Part of it is that I realized my strongest reaction to him was how often everyone says his name. Every other sentence from a scene he’s in contains “Dougie”. And then, when you add in Naomi Watts also saying “Sonny Jim” every other sentence . . . well, I admit that I’m still about to lose my mind. But, unlike my first watch through, on my second, I could get past it. I knew it was coming, and I knew it would end. I knew Dale would return, and Dougie would be a thing of the past. As would Mr. C (but honestly Mr. C is maybe the, I’m struggling not to say coolest, so I’ll just say, most interesting characters in all of Twin Peaks).

But this also echoed my rewatch of another Lynch, Wild at Heart. While I very much enjoyed The Return on my first watch of it, my rewatch gave me a deeper appreciation for it, one not fixated on Dougie. On the other hand, when I first watched Wild at Heart, I was not a fan at all. But to be clear, I think I was in the wrong context. As a young white man in my twenties intent on becoming a film buff, I of course started digging into transgressive films. As I mentioned above, Blue Velvet sparked my interest, but I obviously started down the hallowed territory of killer road trip movies, classics like Bonnie and Clyde and also less well-received movies like Kalifornia. This all obviously culminated with throwing on Natural Born Killers.

Which brings me to a side tangent: I fucking hate Oliver Stone. I’m not sure I’ve ever expressed my contempt for his filmmaking style in this magazine, but I can’t think of a single filmmaker whose oeuvre I’ve seen so much of that I dislike as much. Platoon, JFK and Wall Street, probably his best moves, are mid, and The Doors are straight garbage. But none of them are nearly as bad as Natural Born Killers. For someone who was straight primed for this movie, inundated with Tarantino and big into exploitative violence, I have never been more let down by something. Stone’s visual aesthetic kills that movie for me: the forced, off-kilter camera angles; the bad color filters; and frankly, Juliette Lewis doesn’t do much for me ever. The only plus I have for it is a fantastic use of Rodney Dangerfield, fresh off his choice to be in Ladybugs. Rarely has anyone been cast so well as an abusive, alcoholic father.

So, when I first watched Wild at Heart within two weeks of Natural Born Killers, I just wasn’t feeling it. It felt like, “Oh, here’s another ‘bad-vibe-road-trip-movie genre’ from the early ’90s. I guess I don’t like those.” But when I rewatched it last year for the first time in 20 years, I was blown away. This was not a Natural Born Killers clone. Wild At Heart is a Lynch movie through-and-through. From one of Wilem Defoe’s most insane performances and teeth choices, to pitch-perfect Nicholas Cage and Laura Dern performances, to the final scene with Glenda the Good Witch coming down in a bubble (Doug), rewatching Wild at Heart outside the context of Natural Born Killers just gave me the best feeling: a reminder of how much I hate Oliver Stone.

I kid, sort of. No, the best feeling was how much I love David Lynch’s work. Everything I’ve seen of his bears rewatching, again and again. These are pieces of art from a mind truly unique in contemporary cinema, unparalleled in its creativity, and as unburdened as possible from the demands of Hollywood to be accessible and understandable in a single glimpse. From my multiple watches of not only Wild at Heart and Twin Peaks, but Mulholland Drive, Blue Velvet, Lost Highway and Eraserhead, it’s clear that Lynch’s project was multidimensional. And that doesn’t even include the films of his I haven’t seen or his shorts, and especially not his non-televisual work, his painting and music (although I did enjoy Dark Night of the Soul by DangerMouse and Sparklehorse, on which he collaborated).

I’ve rambled about Lynch long enough, and I know there are other, better written and more exciting obituaries out there for this creative titan. I just wanted to have my say. And I’ll end with, kill your idols – all except David Lynch. I think he might be the one worth saving.

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Noah Springer is a writer and editor based in St. Louis. You can follow him on Bluesky @noahspringer.com.