Blank Check with Griffin & David - Lost Highway with David Lowery

Episode Date: October 27, 2024

1997’s Lost Highway - is it (as David Sims wrote on Letterboxd), “a movie about headache”? Is it David Lynch’s most visually beautiful film? Is it a dry run for Mulholland Dr? A radical reimagining of Bill Pullman’s screen presence? A psychogenic fugue? Lynch’s commentary on the OJ Simpson trial? An excuse for David Sims to go off on the concept of “free jazz”?? Folks - we are pleased to tell you that it is all of the above and more. The great David Lowery joins us to talk about Lynch’s deeply haunted neo-noir nightmare - a film that dares to ask the question, “What if you woke up one morning as Balthazar Getty?” Join our Patreon for franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter, Instagram, Threads and Facebook!  Buy some real nerdy merch Connect with other Blankies on our Reddit or Discord For anything else, check out BlankCheckPod.com  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 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 gonna sound like, and it's not exactly what you think he's gonna sound like. Have you tried the laugh?

It's so hard. I mean, no. is 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 he his voice is kind of wonderful. Yes, beautiful. 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? $400 million. No, I don't think so. 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 budget. I guess that makes sense because it's like... Entirely French funding though, right? I'm not joking. Yeah, that's interesting.

Well, dig in, Dostoyevsky Yeah, there's interesting. Well dig in, Dossier, I think this movie had no American financing. I can't imagine it was an easy sell in the US of A. It was the short-lived Chibi, Yes. Chibi 2000. Chibi 2000. Chibi 2000.

And which reminded me of, I remember when you did the Carpenter series and he had that deal with the live pictures where he's like, we'll give you final cut. And I think he had a budget cap, but he was like, great, I'm gonna do a slate of pictures for them. And so this was the same thing,

like Elaine Giraud, that's the guy's name, who built the channel, I believe. And- All by myself. Yes, and he was like, now I'm gonna move into film. And he like post Wild at 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, they were, well, 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 Fire Walk 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 Palme d'Or. Or Wild at Heart. Wild at Heart. And then Twin Peaks, and it's like, is David Lynch like, you know... He's on the cover of Time. Mainstream? Right, yeah. That's the thing. 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 Fire Walk 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 wass 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. Eraserhead was a cult film. Right, he was always a cult guy. But the esteem that he was greeted with, you know, when he made Elephant Man,

all of a sudden he is on a, you know, that movie's nominated for every Oscar. It's a little like Yorgos. It's so classy. It's a little like Yorgos, sure. Where it. Right, it's 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, 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. But I do remember 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. Then it was like, lost highway though. That was when Lynch was fucking off the rails. Right. Like cooked. Straight Story was like, he's over his bullshit. He's making a real movie again. Well, Straight Story was like, he made a little,

like, little weird thing for him to do. The weirdest thing he ever did, right? And it's like that, it was not a comeback tour, but it was kind of like, okay. But the vibe on Lost Highway was just like, he's over. He really embarrassed himself there. 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, look at the space adventure. It's fun for kids. Yeah, right. Was it like a little golden book? Now I want to look at these illustrations. No, it was like that slightly larger one. It was all photos. Was it photos? It is, right?

It's like the Star Wars one. I have the Star Wars one. Yeah. You know, like it's a, you know. And so I, as I also did, would then look up any movie I was interested in, Roger Ebert's movie Home 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 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. Green plan, David. Wait, which David are we talking, let's make this very clear. There's a lot of Davids. We're dealing with three Davids right now

in this episode. Didn't this happen to us last time? Didn't this happen to us like 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 weirdness of Ben David and Ben David. I called it out 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 Yeah, yes, I I 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 yeah 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 sure the problem with Dune is the yada yada that it starts to do. It looks incredible, anyway. It was a sad weapons thing, 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 episode I did, where there was an issue of Newsweek

had Hannibal Lecter 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 are we making murder movies? 100%. Yes, 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, it used to be 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, yes.

This was incredible. So it was like IMDB with Wikipedia for movies combined with a database of Roger Ebert and Pauline Kael 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 had 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 grainy early 90s. And one of them was the opening to Blue Velvet, which was with going into the earth, the guy having the stroke, the sound design in that sequence

just really was provocative to me, especially as 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 gonna 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, I feel like that's why you are always asking for these movies. Probably so, yeah, very formative. It's like this formative time for you. Very formative. But this is sort of a guy who's been like lingering over you and you're finally now getting to live through seeing one of his movies.

So I'm two months into working at the AMC Grand in Dallas, Texas. So, cause like, right, Sleepy Hollow you did, this is Blank Check and Griffith will introduce and all that and you're David Lowery. I think you're fucking the place tech. I'm not doing that, I'm just saying you're David Lowery. Well now I need to say this Blank Check,

The Griffith and David's podcast about filmography, I'm Griffin. It's a podcast about filmography, I'm Griffin. It's a podcast about filmography. He's director of a massive success early on in the career of a series of blank checks that could ever create some passion projects they want and sometimes that's just clear and sometimes they bounce baby. It's a main 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. All right, you do Sleepy Hollow, that's 99. Truth About Charlie is what, 2002? Yes. 13th Warriors, what? 99. Truth About Charlie is what, 2002? Yes. 13th Warrior is what? 99, also 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 left.

Your primary credit. You're just gliding up and down on the chair, the office chair between all the screens. The, so it- 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. Oh, yeah! I remember that! It's a big outlay for October films. a lot of standees was an actual road construction sign with the flashing light on it. And we had that. Oh yeah, I remember that. It's a big outlay for October films. Totally, yeah. They weren't doing a lot of standees I mentioned.

Do you know how many batteries we're gonna have to buy? Yeah, okay. They had an apostle standee with Robert Duvall waving his arms. Good God. Thank you. It would go like this. Yeah. It could pull a string.

I'm an 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. Mm-hmm. 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 gonna 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 could have done anything at that point, from that opening, it's hard to lose me, hard to lose a 16-year-old. Him looking at the screen and being like, David Lowry, you, you suck. Just him saying that for two hours and you're like, this is pretty good.

100%. Yeah. And Ben, did you, have you seen this before? I feel like- No, I had 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. Shit, you ain't wrong, baby. Wait, what does Robert Loja say at the end? What's his final line? It's something, it's not scumbags, it's something like that. And you're right, the soundtrack is really great. Hearing of Romstein drop, like the self-titled Romstein song. Yes. Like the self-titled Romstein song. Wow.

That band really haunted me because, of course, my last name is Hossley, and there was that popular song of theirs, Du Haas-mish. 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. I sure did. We can really out-ugly them son of a bitches. I remember that.

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 lynched 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 into there, just he had an opportunity to collaborate with artists who happened to fit with his vibe. That's the phase he was going through. 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. Yeah, definitely. Like, we're tonally... Yeah, that's a good call, for sure. He never directed a Nine Inch Nails video, but he could have. He should, probably, yeah. How many music videos has he directed?

We do that. We did a couple. He did the music video for toxic, right? He did wicked game. Uh-huh Let the dogs out. Wait a second friendly. He did do a nine-inch nails video way later though Came back haunted in 20. Oh, 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 of Nails is playing in the club?

Which is a... Was that fragmented into a video? I don't know. All I know is that it has an epilepsy warning. Oh, great. There's also, he did a Moby video that he like animated that's like weird drawings of people in skyscrapers. Anyway, not important right now.

Are you gonna do a Patreon on Dumumbland and all of his web? We'll do a short films Patreon. We haven't really figured out what to, there's so much stuff. DavidLynch.com was. Yeah. Although they're short. Larry, as is 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, how could you not do this episode?

Do we need to record, like, a Choose Your Own Adventure based on where the world might be? Pah! When this comes out. Pah! Like, oh, what, that this is releasing right after election day? I don't think.

Perfect post-election. Let's not really want to talk about it. Let's make that really clear. This episode was recorded many months ago. Many months ago. We have no idea. About a very chill movie. What things feel like.

With no bad vibes. 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 was.

Oh sure, your excitement with someone to train spot it. Yeah, exactly. Like is there gonna be like roots in it? It's a transit movie. And then I saw Mohon Drive when I was 15 years old and it did, that is, I have that moment with Mulholland. Mulholland Drive. And I'm probably, I'm about six years younger than you.

It's the same thing. It's literally the same thing. Except that I was less gothy, but Mulholland Drive is less gothy. It's very much less gothy. 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 story. College, 10-inch TV, a young woman I was possibly dating. Wow. You need to watch this. Cool.

I wanna be her for Halloween. Yeah. 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 happening. Because this movie's been hard to watch for a long time. Yeah, yes.

And hard to watch in good quality. Obviously now there's this criterion release that's very nice. Okay, but yeah, but even like a couple years ago, Keena Lorber put it out on Blu Ray, which was the first time I was in circulation for a while. And Lynch came out and was like, don't buy it. The disk is bullshit. I've been debating, like I've got some, I've got some Lynch quotes that I think

it was like, do you do the voice? We're going to have such a really fucking time. That was the first time chronologically for us. We got to hear the voice. Chronologically for us. And 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 of 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 that 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 Verhoeven'seven's of the world. When they have a funny voice, and a clear game you can constantly riff on. Right.

Saying the 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? It's 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 mid the Midwestern part is as important. The twangy thing. Fake. I witnessed Michael Shannon in line at Bear Burger. It was Moo Burger.

Called the burger report. Yeah. Oh, what if he did? 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 to. 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. I was watching a movie. I was watching a movie. I was watching a movie. I was watching a movie. I was watching 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 it, I probably got my first paycheck, which I used to buy a TV and VCR, because I grew up without one.

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'd rent a VCR. I can't 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, just never knew there was a transition. Yeah, first 30 minutes played the same for you.

Exactly. And then she's like, oh, this is a big deal to us. And then- These weird streets. When we moved to Texas, we jettisoned that black and white television. Sure, entirely.

Entirely. No TV. Out the plane, which was crazy. Yes, yeah, just chunked it right out. When you say 30 minutes to warm up, was there like a crank? You'd turn it on and it would be static. Wild.

And we inherited this from my mom's sister, my aunt, and she was just, she warned us, she's like, just turn it on and walk away and come back. It was like letting the hot water heater. 100%. Wild. And then we would occasionally rent a VCR yeah on special occasions from blockbuster and we would go to blockbuster and pick out two to three videos and and that was how I watched a lot of films and and I think after I bought my TV and VCR like that sort of opened the floodgates.

You broke the dam. They were 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, the way 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. Well, all those like, but I'll just read about it. Like large history of film books that I would just pour over at the library. Yes, exactly, just devour them exactly our library and either be like someday. I'll be allowed to watch this or someday I'll just get to yeah, and and Roger Ebert reviews were very vivid particularly as well the heart review Yeah, it was like described like Willem Dafoe'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

but I could get my hands on. And then eBay must have been coming into its own towards the end of my high school tenure. Yeah, for sure. Because I remember ordering Industrial Symphony No. 7 and Eraserhead. Was that on its own VHS? It was. Okay. And then Eraserhead, you had to get a bootleg from Japan.

That was like the only way to see that at that point. This was a pre-Lime Green box era. Pre-Lime Green box and pre- the Eraserhead box that he released on DaveLunge.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 Lynch at this point, when straight story comes out in 99, I'm like, boy, what a great way to mess with expectations, make a G rated Disney movie, and yet it's still a quint expectations. Make a G-rated Disney movie, and yet it's still a quintessential David Lynch movie. It's all him, it's all there. 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. And then Mulholland Drive came out. And Mulholland 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 some other- You're truly like opening every vein of your life right now. David Lynch was, for better or worse, one of my guys. Like he 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 of Mulholland. Yes, in not. Which had already been a can or whatever, but like this is right in the preview of it. This is what, like September? That sounds plausible. Or right after September. It came out in October.

It came out in October, so yeah. And the reaction that I had was, oh, pretty good. Not as good as Lost Highway, but pretty good. 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 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 Malick's best movie because it is the one I saw in theaters for the first time. Not a bad take. Not a bad take. But I get you. I was 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 can objectively step back and go like, maybe this is better, maybe this is better. But there is something about the love at 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 Mulholland 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 Mulholland Drive his, right?

It's like Lynch is back. We missed him, here he is. And not only is it back, but it's back and better than ever. For sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. Back and better than ever, 100%. And so 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 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 Mulholland Drive, then I circled back to Fire Walk with Me. Just to kind of get the context in which Hugh 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 a fun, it was a good week. It was a solid week of movie going. But as we were saying, textually 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 was negative, yeah. Right, 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 also 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 Mulholland 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 palate cleanser for him. And the really- That is also, as you said, in so many ways, as lynchy as any movie. But yeah, of course. 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 to take, but I think Lost Highway is his most beautiful film. On a technical level. This fucking criterion disc of it too, it kind of blew me away how good it looked. Because I must have seen it in fairly shitty quality.

Indeed, it is never, 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, they look absolutely stunning, black and white extravaganzas. But then after that, his movies kind of have like a mishmash, 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. And extreme control. He had a decent budget. 15 million is no, you don't want, that's a, that's a time. 1997, 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, and so I think he made, I think he made... I think it is a perfect movie for what it is. And Mulholland 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 Mulholland Drive, you're like, oh, he, you know, yeah, this is a big mishmash. Like Mulholland Drive basically is just like, here's some more stuff that's weird. We will get to itmash. Like Mulholland Drive basically is just like, here's some more stuff that's weird. We will get to it.

We'll get to it next week. My take on Mulholland Drive is that it's kind of weird. This is the kind of deep analysis Blink Check's gonna be doing about Blink Check. I mean about David Lynch. Well, I've, it's so interesting how Lynchian is a, we'll talk about this a little bit further on in this episode, but Lynchian is sort of 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, um, the Neal 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 talking about lynchian things is so often you're like, it's quite weird. There's just kind of a weird vibe. See, there's normal. But then this seems to be more weird. Obviously, David Foster Wallace tried to write about David Lynch. One of the worst things he ever wrote. We've got to go into this.

Like, you know, 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.

I, 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. And 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 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 is true. 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 rewatched these movies, and especially watching a lot of them in a short run, you kind of like get a better sense like 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. 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 sake or provocation or whatever. I feel like, I mean, I don't wanna 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, uh, uh,

middling in my appreciation for him 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. 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 feel strongly.

People feel strongly. Yeah. And also much like dreams or whatever, another thing we'll fucking talk about a lot. Oh boy. But like, people get really invested in their interpretation. Yeah, that's true. 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. And he is more meaningful to me. And Mulholland 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, yeah, like crucially formative. And even though I did not meet my wife at Lost Highway, I should give Mahan Rai some credit for my happy marriage, I suppose. Yeah, there you go. Humbly, 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. 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. You know what we like? If you had to name one thing that you and I both like. I think we love the movies. We love the movies. And what do we love? We love going to see the movies atieSh at DaTheatersh. That is very, very true. It's a thing we stump for.

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We're both fans of this program. We're both members. Regal Unlimited, exactly. We're both members. Card-carrying members. And it is insane how easy it is to use it. It is so simple. Yes. It's easy peasy. And you know what else is easy peasy? You can sign up right now in the Regal app or at the link in the description for this episode and use code blank check one word to get 10% off your three month subscription I mean this is a big deal huge this this is a movie company that shows movies in theaters Which we love sponsoring our movie podcast Yeah, and the two of us go to regal cinema all the time see movies once again for DX You don't understand how exciting this is for us guys And I also want to say here's some benefits you sign for Eagle unlimited you get the free tickets for your one subscription fee

Right per month you also can earn points get your purchases you make this is real griff stuff the Regal Crown Club I've been a member since 2008 baby You can redeem those points for upgrades on concessions or free concessions But also you can log on to the website and you can buy excess promotional merchandise. I do this all the time. Oh how do you get figure-roll cup toppers months later? Click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click look at this. Look at this. It's an embarrassment of riches. On your birthday you get 50% off popcorn, plus you get discounted movie tickets as low as $5 with a Regal Value Days program. Look at this, it's embarrassment of riches. On your birthday you get a free popcorn.

I love my birthday. Every time you visit him and take him to a movie, Regal Crown Club just tracks those visits and you get the bonus extra credits. You don't have to do anything, it's just doing it for you. I sound a little more excited about it, David. That's incredible. It's really incredible.

What ease of use. Once again, go to the Regal app or you can use the link in the description and use code blank check To get 10% off your three month subscription and you can go see movies I go to the regal Essex a lot. That's sort of my local regal. Where do you go? I go to Union Square because they got the 40x a classic right you like the 40x. Yeah, I love the 40x David regal

lost Highway, so I saw it. it yeah it's not in college he sounds like you saw it in college Ben saw it last night yep more like lost tonight I felt a little weird I think you can stick a bit of a head shrinker there to say you're on a number of over-the-counter drugs? Oh yeah. How many? Three. Two, three, yeah. 2.5. I'm sort of floating. We had to do like three consecutive record days and the last two you were basically non-verbal.

Yeah, so you did- You set up the mics and then you just kind of put your head down on the desk. They were verbose episodes. They were Zoom episodes. Total Peek Behind the Curtain also was the trio of Open Range, Beverly Hills Cop, and Lost Highway. That's an behind the curtain also. It was the the trio of open range Beverly Hills Cop and Lost Highway Yeah But I'm feeling better today. I did watch this movie very late last night. Oh good. Yeah. Yeah It's kind of a late-night movie. It feels weird to put it on

I'm also in the middle of writing a six thousand word piece on M night Shyamalan that I hope got published. This is the pub. This is the dating of this episode of like, we are like driving to Pennsylvania to hang out with him. We're existing in like four time continuum. So we're touching Shyamalan, breast, Costner and Lynch as like David's going to go four corners corners of America maybe one to two more movies Society is still exists. Yeah I can't wait to know what I'm gonna be up to you. Right? Yeah, it definitely exists. Like is it going amazing? Who knows? Yeah, I'm gonna call it right now. I'll be married by the time this episode Please send gifts to Griffin Newman,

one, two, three, blank check away. David Lynch, I'm cracking open the dossier, had reached his lowest point as director since the release of Dune of the East. Dune is obviously also big bottoming out for him. Starts the 90s, like I said, Twin Peaks wins the palm door. 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, like I think more than question mark. Like Matt, right. Yeah. Cause people are coming at it from like, you can tie things up. Twin Peaks got fucked up and you're gonna solve it now, right? You're gonna swing back and like clean up this mess?

No, sir. Yeah. Have you seen that recently? Fire Walk With Me? I will have seen it at this point. He's never seen any Twin Peaks things. Yes. I think-

I've only seen the pilot. I am, Fire Walk With Me is the thing I am the most afraid to rewatch. Now I do love that movie a lot. I find it very sad. It's genuinely upsetting. 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 them, the all 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, but in a way that you have to be prepared for. Dune, Fire Walk with Me, Lost Highway, Inland Empire are the four movies that upon release, people were like, what the fuck? To some degree, is that fair to say? I think Inland Empire, by that point, the Lynch cult was so massive that there was

a stronger reception for it, would you say? Obviously it's a weird... It was very well received. It was warmly received and everyone knew what he was doing. But no one was expecting big commercials, except for it, obviously. He's self distributing this threehour mini-videos. He's out there with a cow doing FIC ads.

By that point, Lynch had become the internet's boyfriend. Yes, right. And it's like, he's making this for his people. He's not trying to reach anyone else at this point. 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. And it still has its big fans.

And I think the Villeneuve movie actually kind of like makes people kinder to that film. Of course, because now Dune has been done a little more raked. Pressure off. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. 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 got flaws, 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 we watch all of for the George Lucas talk show. How was it? That's the one big Lynch thing I've never seen. Weird name. I mean, it's Lynch and Frost. 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 of it. And then there's little moments, I suppose, that are, okay, oh, have you, what do you think of On the Air? I have not seen it. It's also a blind spot for me.

It's hard to watch. 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 seen that? No, 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 and... Right, he created it with the cowboy. Yeah. Monte Montgomery.

Monte Montgomery. From fucking... The... The... No, yeah, but... The Loveless. The Loveless. Loveless.

He co-directed The Loveless. Brain-ass. Oh, right. A million years ago. Yes. Okay, yes, that's another thing. Which was his first collaboration with Peter Deming, who is now his Yes. Okay. Yes. That's another thing Which was his first collaboration with Peter Deming who is now his go-to his target his guy, right? Yeah, who's probably the most tragedylic DP alive? Yes. It also should be us 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

Okay, and then he didn't get the rest of them after He replaced the DP on Scream who was fired midwinter and then he... Yeah, then get the rest of them. Yeah. After Fire Walk With Me tanks hard at Cannes. Lynch and Mary Sweeney, his editor, producer, sometimes sweetheart, go to Madison, Wisconsin. It was near where you grew up, possibly. They go to Lake Mendota. They start looking for property there. David's sort of reconnecting with his Midwestern vibes, right, going to the hardware store, she says, watching the OJ Trial, apparently.

That's the crucial part of this. For this movie? Yes. 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's like, ooh, don't worry about it.

He directs Ex 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 a dablin' photography. This is why I asked, I was curious, and then 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 It certainly feels that way and we've been living in that way now where you're like there's a either 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. They're always projects.

And he's always fricking posting. He's posting. He posts more than Ben. Not to call out Ben. But Ben could post more. I could. I've been taking a break. 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 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 think obviously he had done commercial, a lot of commercials, music videos. I don't think, probably just wasn't an awareness. 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 weren't 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. 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 Fire Walk 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 who seems to have any level of regret or embarrassment. Right, he's like, I don't wanna talk about it. Yeah, he won't acknowledge it, but those ones, 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 Fire Walk 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 Fire Walk with Me? These are both coming from the same place. Yeah. He has a couple movies he's thinking about making.

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 flabbergasted that that script has not manifested on the internet. Yeah, let me see it. Because like, once alive, a bubble and Ronnie Rocket are always floating. Yeah, let me see it. Because like once alive a bubble and Ronnie Rocket are always floating.

Yeah, you can read those. Yeah. There's a movie called Love in Vain about Robert Johnson, the blues 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 was interested in a live adaptation

of the manga Domu, A Child's Dream. Dream. Dream. 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 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 an existing relationship with. Wrote The Wild at Heart. Wild at Heart was based on. Yes. Have you read much of his fiction or poetry or anything like that? None of it.

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. I feel like there was a movie called Sailor and Ripley that came out as well.

But that sounds familiar. I don't know. But 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 saxophonist.

And then he goes down this weird hallway, turns into Balthazar Getty and Barry Gifford's like, yeah, say no more, I'll fucking turn it out tomorrow. Piece of cake. And they start writing together. 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. 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... I've been like, that was maybe something he was gonna do for Twin Peaks,

that he never put in there. One of those little ideas that just like 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 20 years later, you see a cache and you're like, what is this hack ripping off David Lynch? Hanukkah, that guy should have just retired 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 Laverne and Shirley. That's cool. And one day someone rang his intercom outside his house

and said, Dick Loran is dead. And then he went outside to find the guy and the guy was gone. And he was like, was that meant for me or meant for the other guy whose name shares a lot of letters and is right next door? Probably, I don't know, who knows? Yeah.

And then almost certainly that is the, cause 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. I was like, I've never met 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 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 big 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 L.A. noir

saga about a man who kills his wife. It's in this movie. And obviously this movie is about how OJ is innocent. Yeah, no, clearly. That's what I said. Dearly departed, dearly departed. That's what I want you to take away from it. Gone too soon.

Yeah, oh yeah, right, RIP OJ Simpson. There is the dark side of Hollywood. Not RIP, fuck that guy, sorry carry on. Rest in chaos, RIC. 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 entertainers. Natasha Greggs and Wagner. Yes. And also, getty 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 one, it hits me really hard. Everyone has a dark history. Yes, yes. And he knew that Bill Pullman would eventually have an epope. Yes, he knew that. 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 metacasting. 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 he acknowledges it. Not brokenness.

I'd say there's like say 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, yeah. I wonder what it's like to audition for him. Apparently it's just a conversation. He doesn't actually.

It's not like he's giving you size. He just meets with someone and if he likes them. But that's the thing. It's an energy thing and a look size. 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 a little bit, but like you read about fucking Patricia Arquette'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, Islam, one of these is going to do it for me. One of these is going to click. Really settle everything down for me. Uh, yeah, eventually Gifford and Lynch just, apparently David was staying at a hotel and would call him and say, Barry, I'll be there in exactly eight and a half minutes.

In 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 people don't understand it, but it is the screenplay we wanted to write. I would argue. Like that is what we wrote down. I'd argue screenplay we wanted to write. I would argue. That is what we wrote down.

I'd argue that it's not that confusing. I would agree. It's not, well, I'll just couple questions. And I say this having had the benefit of having seen it several times over 25 years. Ben, how did you find this? Was it obviously weird? Not gonna question that, 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 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 is where it was going. Excuse me.

I noticed that in Mane to 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 things certainly in terms of like real estate of runtime. But this movie is 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 Mr. Charquette, 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 incoherent at all. It's not obtuse, I would even say. Obtuse is a better word. 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, 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 almost just an era of movies that are confusing or crazy, like in that late 90s. I don't know. I mean, I definitely, when I watch Mulholland Drive, I'm like, okay, I want to know more about David Lynch.

I was aware of Twin Peaks. I'm aware of Eraserhead's 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. Both as our Getty 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 Balthasar Getty. 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 Theroux had been the right age. Like there are other types of guys in this vein he has used throughout his career. He's got a good look for it though.

I think he looks good. He has the right look. Yeah. I agree 100%. I have two things to say about Balthazar Getty. One is... Three. One is that I don't have... He's your favorite rapper of all time. My favorite rapper of all time.

I... He's a weird guy. Yes. Also falls into the bucket of what I was saying, of people with, like, weird kind of... He's part of the Getty family. Tragic family past. Definitely.

I figured. With a name like Balthazar. Yeah, his dad was a strong name. His dad was the one who was kidnapped. Correct. Correct. Yeah. His dad is the the center of all the money in the world. Oh, wow. Yeah. You know, the one whose ear was cut off not to be lured about it. And the family, like just most of the people in that lineage have had very tragic outcomes. He has turned out better than almost the majority of the Getty's.

I said better. 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. With, like, Michael Berryman is in it. Yes. It's weird Berryman is in it. Yes, it is

It's weird. It's so bizarre. Yeah I feel like at the point that both of us are obviously he's in Lord of the Flies produced by Griffin Newman's father Also a child actor. Yeah, not my father Balthazar Gatling 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, oh 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. Hollenso, like, he'd been in stuff, and it's kind of like,

ooh, is this like Balthazar Getty 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 so I was like I'm a Republican and it was 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 firetruck just fell off a cliff, you know,

it's like a soap opera with politics in it. 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 them, and then Balthazar Gettie 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, you gotta go. One episode they're like, we just don't talk to him anymore. Like truly, yes, like he's gotta fucking go. Anyway, and I feel like that's the last I heard of him.

One of the funniest parts of the David Foster Wallace piece is where he's just kind of subtly throwing shade at Balthazar Getty, the entire article. But like's like, I don't want to talk badly about somebody. He doesn't go into it. And then finally, then he's like, fuck it. This guy sucks. Here's why. I wouldn't even go as far as to say that he sucks.

Well, no, not the performance. I know. Yeah. Just like he's an asshole. Yeah, he's an asshole. What were you going to say about him? Sorry, we derailed. Oh, well, one of those things. That's one of the funny parts, the David Foster Wallace piece,

which is a 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 Walter Zargatti, Pete Dayton, show up somewhere in the... Yes. ...in the Fred Madison sequence.

Yeah, in the early part of the movie. Fred would have seen his face and he clocked 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 100, out of invented, out of Fred Madison's, you know, subconscious and id is really what makes this movie work. Because that's how subconsciouses work.

I've had dreams where 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, 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.

They either turn to a fictional person or they turn to a different person from my life. Should we have a segment where we talk about our dreams on every Lynch episode? Romilly's dream corner. Yeah. And that was, there's like a lie in the movie where 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, I'm always like explaining to my wife the next morning, like, yeah, it was you in my dream last night, but this wasn't actually you. It wasn't what I'm about to describe. Didn't actually happen with you. It was just look 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 it. I never remember my dreams very well. But you remember the vibes? You remember the residue. Like sort of just like leaves that weird sticky. I like woke up early too, so I was like in the,

it was a humble breath. I've been off THC now for a month. Congratulations. You've been 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. Yeah. I am having full cinematic, like it's a franchise every night for me. You're building a cinematic dream? I am having full cinematic, like it's a franchise every night for me. You're building a cinematic dream here? I am, absolutely. 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. Such as this movie, yes. I think helped with like waking up in the middle of the night and being discombobulated. Probably also all of the meds.

Yeah, why don't 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 there's a lamp. And Lynch has cool lamps in his movies. He has great furniture. He built all of that furniture. nice atmosphere. Yeah, I have 14 lamps, though. I always I had there's a lamp. Lynch has cool lamps in his movies. He has great furniture. He built all of that. Really? You should actually consider that the next branch in your architect, Ben, is furniture building. Yeah, I would love to.

I feel like. Consolid carpentry. Yeah. I mean, 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 satisfying experience in my life.

It's so satisfying and I never did it again. Wow. You were like, you're not going in on top of your plus baby. But I tried to sign up for some woodworking classes over the years a couple times, and for what I'm scheduling, it didn't work out, but it is incredibly therapeutic. Yeah, I mean, Harrison Ford, that guy feels like he's got it all figured out,

and I've always assumed the carpentry's 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 beginning. It's what makes the movie work.

That it's a hard minute forty 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's about to say right it's not like 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 thing. 2001 is famously where you just shift the protagonist. We're not going to see that guy anymore, probably. Yeah. Part of it is that I just do think like Pullman is so weirdly compelling at all times.

Pullman rocks in this movie. In 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 was 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 get 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 a 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 performance. My arc in my mind is like Spaceballs, this is like for me as a kid, Spaceballs, Casper, Independence Day, Lost Highway, Zero Effect? Zero Effect is 98, 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 leading men guys, a character actor stuck in leading men bodies. And very often those guys want to must themselves up. They wanna look weirder, they resent their handsomeness or whatever. Bill Pullman's a weird example of 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 and sort of odd functions within movies where like even in Independence Day, the bid is sort of like you're too hot to be president. Right. 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. 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, right? For so long where it's like, the movie is either based around, well, you don't actually marry this guy guy or you fight with him the entire running time until the end you realize you actually do Love him or whatever. You're sleeping right?

Which is great, 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 fucking wailing on a saxophone and you're like, this feels like the more obvious version of who Bill Pullman is. He ended up in this weird zone, but you're like, yeah, Bill Pullman as sad, tragic, stoic jazz player.

With fucking dyed black hair. Makes perfect sense. He looks incredible with that hair. It 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 But then you get Robert loja to show up and fill that void loja times 10 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 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 it a fucking roll. He didn't even sure him going after it was chill. He actually... Get out of the fucking room! He didn't even get to audition for it. Right. He was waiting in the room, waiting in line,

then in the line up to go audition. By the way, he's also in Independence Day. It is hilarious that this... Okay, yes, there it is. I think that's how... That's how this happened. Okay, I'm gonna get to this. That makes sense.

But they, like, I think Robert Loja was in line to audition for Frank Booth, like, in like, sitting in the chairs outside the room, and David Lynch was meeting maybe with Dennis Hopper, 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. It 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. Lynch files this away, and when this role comes up, he's like, I know who is going to nail this. And Moshe 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 fucking good. Mm-hmm. He is very good. I wanna 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 a psychic joke. Thank you for giving me the one phrase I can now reuse over and over again. Yes, exactly. 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 meaning, quote unquote, right? 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, 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. But you know, 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,

brr brr brr brr brr brr brr brr brr. But you're free. He did that very respectfully. 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, yeah,

the intended meaning. I do love jazz, to be clear. I've got no beef with jazz. Let me say this. You love free jazz, especially. The freer the better. Off-Mike David is constantly talking about Ornette Colvin. Let me say this, and I want to say this as respectfully as possible.

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 forum. It's about the notes you don't play. This winter, take a trip to Tampa on Porter Airlines. Enjoy the warm Tampa Bay temperatures and warm Porter hospitality on your way there. All Porter Fairs include beer, wine, and snacks, and free fast-streaming Wi-Fi on planes with no middle seats. And your Tampa Bay vacation includes good times, relaxation, and great Gulf Coast weather.

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If you or someone you know has concerns about gambling visit connects ontario.ca III 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 They're always taking me to chicken on a stick 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 just shows 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 gonna do brr br going to do, you know, for like five minutes, which by all accounts, what he's doing is really hard.

He's like so hard, the hardest complex and they have to keep up with him. Right. Right. To be able to do like, look like he was doing. We were kind of like, ah, it's almost like, do you want another $40? Sometimes it's not even a wind instrument. Sometimes it's the guy just like, or the drum, the drum guy does drums. I feel like this is where I feel like I'm saying this with mockery and I'm not. We should do a jazz spin off show.

And that one, he's like, We should do a jazz spin-off show. It's the worst. Jazz check? And that one is like ba-dum-dee-ba-dum-dup-dup. I like that part. It's kind of weird. We're very committed to not being a video podcast, but I do wish our listeners could have been doing jazz. Even the pantomiming Sims did. If you thought the sound

was rich and respectful. If you thought Bill Pullman in Lost Highways cut and loose. It thought Bill Pullman in Lost Highway was cut and loose. It was like fucking shields in your annel were in the studio. Suddenly you could see the object work was so precise. This is a great quote from Lynch about 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. I would be like 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, his 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 it, Jake, it'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... -♪ CHUCKLING... -♪ ...who he needs to fund his projects, and they're like, what? You know... I hate resolutions. 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, CB3000, 2000. 2000. 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 one is it they did with her?

It must've been Portrait of a Lady. I think it was Portrait of a Lady. Yeah, yeah. Because that would've been that era. And even they balked slightly at this one, being like, it's about, what? Like, so they give them the treatment, March 95, and they were like, we need to shoot in as soon as possible,

but they didn't get to shoot until November. So Lynch was annoyed that they were. Yeah, 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, they, they vibed immediately. On his sax solo, he said, quote, I just kind of put the sax up like here and then made a bunch of noises. No, he didn't say that. I studied David Sims. You know, Angela Badalamenti writes a me empty, but how about elementi battle minty 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

David Lynch is off set 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, Ed Wood. True romance. 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? Well, 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 they are very soft. Yes. Very, yeah. She's styled basically like Betty Page when she's in dark hair mode. The first time. Veronica Lake, maybe?

Kind of, yeah, that's 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. Just Arquette said, I am, who's that? And then he was like, wow, she's the bee's niece.

No, now that story is 100% true. That's exactly how that would go. Arquette said, 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's about a man trying to recreate

a relationship with a woman he loves so much, and this time it'll end up better. That's the kind of vertigo. That's a really rose-colored glass 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 Premier 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. TINAL VISION, that's part of the job. Yeah, right. Anytime an actor comes out and they're like, I found myself 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 them 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 know he's like off to the side. You know, but- But like the whole plot of Joker is like, this guy's crazy. But he's good at comedy. Yeah. Great. You know what the plot of Joker Folly-a does? What if there was a good movie?

What if he met a crazy lady? Do you like Joker I? Appreciate yeah, I liked it. I think that's a good call appreciate is probably a good like way to put it. 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 folly a duh had on culture. Oh my god. It could be Thought it was gonna be a cultural moment Everyone thought it was going to be cool. Well, okay Not cool, but I want to defend myself by saying it is undeniably a cultural moment

defend myself by saying it is undeniably a cultural moment. I didn't want to actually say what it might be. We'll later, we'll have a pickup and we'll insert something that... The correct answer. Yeah, the correct answer. Decently sized hip. 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 gonna wanna, I yell at him. Like he's like, he'll never, he wanna work with me. A yell you say? Loja. Yeah. 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 came out. Yeah, right, right. I knew that it was basically, yeah, and then Prior 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. I think 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 I'm 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 candy 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 and was like, that's the guy. 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 head. Also doesn't give a shit about the law. Uh, uh, Blake, uh, the cold bear joke I always think of is 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. Uh, 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. Uh, the whole thing is wife who was herself an interesting figure. Yes The whole thing is very cursed dark side of Hollywood exactly like yes. Yeah, Blake He was like the last little actor right? 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 that once upon a time in Hollywood is very, very obviously inspired by Robert Blake to the point that parts of it dedicated to him.

Yes. And, uh, you know, is it really? Yeah. Like there's a dedication. I believe so. Yeah. Yeah. Um, because the idea is possibly Robert Blake hired a stunt man to kill his

wife, right? That was always the sort of body man. Yes. And Cliff Booth, it feels like he's sort of like, Tarantino's 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. Like you 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 Aqu 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. 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, uh... Lynch is like, yeah, man, he said he didn't under... 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 in it, it is one of the most incredible screen performances of all time. Kind of. It was his idea to shave his eyebrows, I believe. Fuck! Robert, you nut! Lynch left up to him and was like, screen performances of all time. Kind of. It was his idea to shave his eyebrows, I believe. Yes.

Robert, you nut! 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 Kabuki kind of thing. Like, Klaus Nomi inspired to some degree, it feels like. To quote Robert Blake, who liked to talk. Robert Blake could pop off. 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 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 confidence to that versus like, I sorta know what the devil is. Vague shimmer of understanding. Yes, 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.

He was found liable for her death in a civil trial. 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 read about.

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. 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's the warmest presence in the entire movie, right? Like he's the one guy who does. He's like, it's wonderful to see you again. He's just so happy to see Balthazar Gettys show up again. Yes. 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 recording studio. I think it's, like, the house you live in, the house you build furniture in, and the house you record music in. That's how I live my life, too. It's like Vin Diesel's? I think it's like the house you live in, the house you build furniture in, and the house you record music in. That's how I live my life too.

It's like Vin Diesel's three trailers. Is that right? One for him, one for his boys, and 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, Premiere Magazine really needs to do an expose on what actors do in their trailers. 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? 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 I think crazy trailers like I remember the stories of Will Smith's trailer Obviously, we respect Will Smith's men in black trailer story trailer. Yes. Yeah To a certain degree postman and black three stars have been really good about keeping their trailers out of the pressure

I think they realized a park it on fucking Spring Street like he did you didn't know about keeping their trailers out of the press. I think they realized- Well, they didn't have 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. No, I didn't. And I talked to you about Vin Diesel every day. Vin Diesel. Oh, should we talk about the film?

Yeah, I mean, jumping off of the OJ of it all. I was really interested watching this now, having seen OJ made in America. And I'd always known that. I always knew that that was what... It's a seed. It's a seed. It's not what the movie's about.

Looking at it as David Lynch tackles the OJ saga is very, it's wrong. There's an energy. There's an energy. Yes. But right. The thing that really, there was two aspects of it that kind of stuck out to me.

One was related to the psychogenic fugue idea was that 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 the, but he's also, he's mass media. Yeah.

He is the 24 seven news cycle. There he is holding the camera, right? 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 he's perpetuating what we can't help but want to see.

And at the end he gives Rabalosia a TV to watch his own death on. And it's a hundred%, like that's like, that is the media frenzy around a case like OJ's. Yes, yes. I don't think that, I think that, 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, I 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, in this morbid, obviously, 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 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 getting out with blue velvet sweet family man, right? right But we as the public are constantly demanding, as much as we love to cast our judgment, it's the same thing that historically caused people

to fucking line up in the streets for executions or whatever. O.J. was this example, this perfect case of just the news cycle and the media and technology had all caught up to turn this thing into a fucking 20 ring circus That would stretch out for a year and a half Where we would feed on every single morse love 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 We want people to make- I mean, it's still going. Yes. 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 say to me, does it not 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 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 years after this movie, gets caught up in his own Lynchian murder plot. 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 obsession with celebrity and crime and death

and all of this sort of stuff also 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... There's certainly a power. It's a power. A power is a great way to put it. It adds 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, 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 a second life for himself as an adult character actor in a very different vein than how he was presented as like a child actor.

Have you ever seen Beretta? No, I've never watched an episode of 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 70s. NYPD blew up 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. Yeah, so, Lost Highway Lost High waits about Fred Madison, Los Angeles saxophonist, having a great time. He's married to his wife, Renee. He's not amazing in the sack, but whatever. He gets it done.

Well, does he? Amazing. 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 like view of humanity and relationships to people And he covers there are many sex scenes in this one He covers a lot of sex a number of different ways, right?

But the 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 serenity to the women and there's this effort and stress to the men. Right. Yeah. He hears on his intercom that Dick Laron is dead. Mysterious. Gets a weird VHS of the outside of their house. Mysterious.

Basically gets a paranormal activity dropped off on his doorstep. Here's 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 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 in Final Cut Pro or whatever. But in this, something about shooting it 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, 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 gonna 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 the Inland Empire is like, terrifying. It's just, Inland, 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 when Peaks 3. Amen. And I will be doing so, but I can't wait to just hear you go through it. It is a journey. Yeah.

So, Like, 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 plays sax, like, crazy. 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, 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 the term that like they'd have different gradations and Peter Deming has talked about how like they'd have dark and then they'd have next door to dark and always have to choose between the two and and that those were the two things in prep all he really talked about was that dark hallway I was just like 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 a hundred 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 him in Seven, the Seven, which is even- 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, L.A. Yeah, like bowling shirt cool, 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 was, I guess, too young to know about swingers. Not the swingers. Well, swingers is the same time is lost that way. Where I'm like, yeah, this moment where men wore bowling shirts and did

swing dancing and shit and it was genuinely cool for five seconds. It's almost immediately overcooked. And this is the same kind of vibe These are always in conversation. You're jazzy kind of thing. There's obviously like the deep like Bob's There's the Bob's big boy like yeah, right. Yeah, all right, right Right, let me go get a gas station sure. Yeah, polo shirts and yeah, which he often the 18 Woody Woodpeckers from the gas station, 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. 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 Camby 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 love that. Right. 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 black-dollying someone does feel vintage. Like, because he literally cuts her in half. Wait, 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. Like this is where culture was. Yes. Um, cherry poppin daddy. I remember that name.

Oh my God. Squirrel nut zippers. Squirrel nut. What a fucking basement for culture. I, as someone who was watching this movie in a, and Lynch's subsequent work in a very gothy phase of my life, I did know Michael Massey because I knew him from the Crow, which was a cherished movie of mine. Then Mahon 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, shocks me. And then of course, David Patrick Kelly is one of the most 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 from Crowhead. Yeah. Um... Have you ever considered zoot suits? Yeah, obviously. I think you could pull it off.

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, bro.

It's about as unnerving as anything. Like you go to parties in, this has only ever happened to me in LA, but you 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 guests 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 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 gonna be. I don't think I even knew about the Mystery Man at all. I don't think I knew it. The only thing I think I knew is that Bill Pullman was going to turn into Balthazar. Oh, 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 never, this was pre-internet. So like I would not have seen a trailer online and I certainly. One guy is going to have a crazy weekend. Looks like we've got a car on road. 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 saw this movie. Cause yeah, I did not, um, know that that was going to happen. Um, and then he... Well, then they get another tape of them in their bed, right? After this horrifying encounter? 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, 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. So fucking scary. God, another great example.

Yeah. Just the jitter when they hit pause. It's unmistakable. But you cannot quite figure out what you're seeing. Yeah. 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, what do I describe? Stop making me do the plot of Lost Highway, come on guys. Do the fucking plot for Lost Highway! So then, Fred Madsen gets arrested, and he goes to jail. He gets put on death row. Yeah, I guess in between this, he walks down a weird hallway.

That's right before the murder. That's right, yeah. He walks down the hallway, you know something's up with that hallway. 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. Out of context, I spend more time looking at myself in the mirror than he does in the scene of that movie. And I never think of myself as a particularly weird or troublesome individual. No, he's got an incredible plenum. He goes to jail. He gets put on death row. Who's the guard? Henry Rollins. Henry Rollins.

Henry Rollins is the guard. And Jack Kehler. Jack Kehler 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 the landlord in Big Lebowski. But didn't he come up with something we were watching recently?

Jack Kehler, he's in Men in Black 2. Yes. Could it be that? Waterworld, Spy Who Shagged Me, we've been covering them 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, I was curious. Before he turns into Balthazar Gettys? He's also in I Love You to Death, that's what it was. Of course. Yes. He plays the 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. Gotta check it out. It's fun. Starts with a 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 talk more about's a little weird. I can't wait. We gotta talk more about what Lin Chi means. I went and found the script for this movie because I was just shooting scripts. I was curious how it might have changed.

And this is 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 of this footage has kind of been compressed into this brief sequence before he becomes Balthasar Getty. 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 Balthasar Getty 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,

like turning his, 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. This one doesn't have a missing pieces, 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... I 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, Red's features are removed, leaving a blank, white mass with eye sockets. We move into the eye sockets and beyond. Red'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 of London. 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 Rob Boutin style. Like crazy Tetsuo shit. His face is inflating and throbbing and pieces are like growing out of his head. The bump on his head, on Balthazar Gedi'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 seam 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 Boteen fucking change-o face kind of shit, it wouldn't stick out as much. He turns into Balthazar Getty 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.

Just the logic of that sequence is just 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 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 what's the paperwork that's gonna be involved? Security card sir What's the paperwork that's gonna be involved with the discharge of this prisoner? Do you have a starts with security card, sir?

When they release him into the stable and supportive arms of Gary Busey. 90s Gary Busey. Very stable. You'll get that great leather jacket, that great pompadour, ready to order two meatball subs. His hair's looking good. Yeah, he's gonna get... Oh, now I know I want a meatball sub. But he doesn't really remember anything. No. They refer to something that happened the previous night and it keeps coming up.

But is the implication that like, this guy was with his parents and he kinda got zapped into it? Cause they're like, yeah, your parents are here. Like, what is this, metaphysically? Where was Pete Dayton yesterday? I think, and we're treading dangerously close to analysis. Which I don't care about, to be clear.

So like, if the movie is about- How does Zootopia feed its people? Sorry, go on. Like, you buy giant popsicles, you melt them down, you make tinier popsicles. Very good point, very good point. You buy giant popsicles you melt them down you make tinier popsicles That I I would argue that Right Madison is conjuring up all of this. Yes, including p-date 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 chopped her in half? He's feeling very melancholy about that. 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. 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 plotier version of it. A plotier 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 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... He keeps making the wrong decision over and over and over again. 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. Well, also not to spoil 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, 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. I think of Detour just because it's so famously lurid for the moment. Right. Michael Massey is back, obviously, is gonna have an incredibly, incredibly good death. Really one of my favorite,

like such a 90s LA death too. Death by glass table. Yeah, glass table to the head, 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 It's like a hammer Boy Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck the ladies like him. I keep thinking 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. David Lynch remake. Yeah, it's still Bill Pullman. 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 Lozier's character. Mr. Eddie doesn't seem like a guy you want to even, like, give an inch with. 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 even made 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 car. Why are you following me? You're too close!

Robert Loja plays Mr. Eddie slash Dick Laurent, a gangster porn magnate with a bit of a short fuse. A bit? I don't know how else to describe him. I'd say he's a bit of a no-fuse Norman. Right. He's just 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. Oh, it's another Tuesday in Griffith Park. Yeah. 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 are like both giants and kind of like oddly dressed and stuff. It seems to me he might've done it. Yeah, right, right. He might've done it. Cause like Mulholland Drive has Robert Forster

and the other guy, right? The guy from the Sam Raimi 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 Forster and Mulholland Drive and thank God he's in Twin Peaks The Return, absolutely shattering the backboard any time he is on screen for even one second. Incredible performance. But right. Brent Briscoe.

Yeah, that's it. From Simple Plan. Love that guy. The bet, 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 gangsters mall.

Yes. He's dating, uh, Mr. Gregson Wagner. Yes. Hanging out with Giovanni Ribisi. Yeah. Yeah. Who had bad kind of guy to hang out with.

A lot of, 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 Ribisi and other times we're like, Giovanni Ribisi! And he is like, you know, you said Franco, James Franco is a Feast of Famine actor, right? Where it's like sometimes he's engaged, he's giving you everything and sometimes you're like, what the fuck are you doing? Ribisi, it's truly a problem where I'm like, anytime Ribisi is bad in a movie, I blame the people who hired him

Where he was gonna 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, Natasha Gregson Wagner great love her so pretty obviously Gregson Wagner, great, 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? 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. You're gonna rob my friend, we're gonna 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 the plot of these movies. 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 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 in. And the nastiness of Hollywood, right? And like the undercurrent of everything underbelly. She sure had 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? Louis zone, but she's more like voluptuous and like kind of a throwback look But this feeling of her being like this sort of like cursed naif. Yeah. You know? Yeah, yeah. And then you have movies... She's also just like in R-rated movies. 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 in Ed Wood. She's like, such a beacon of goodness. A 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 it 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 then she's obviously on medium for many years and one's Emmy and whatever and then she gives us 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 so a lot of prestige TV she directed a a lot of prestige TV. She directed a movie, I think, recently. Did I think it was a TIF last time? It was a TIF. I saw her outside her restaurant and I was like, well, I don't know what I would say to a sharkette. So I did not approach her.

But she has barely made movies since Boyhood, which is now 10 years ago. She did escape to Danimora though. She escaped to Danimora. She did. Don't tell anybody. She did the fucking Gypsy Blanchard one. 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 Connelly, one million Joel Edgerton's. Yeah. And I'm just like, this must have cost a fucking hundred million dollars. 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. Very good doing this the same time she was doing Severance. You're right though. She's very good in this film. Yes. Yes, or you know, she's playing an archetype. She's playing two archetypes, just 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. And boyhood, she's a human being. Yeah, boyhood, right. 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 does she want an Oscar? What do you think of her in this movie, David Lowery? 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, David Lowery? 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, 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. 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 gonna be her for Halloween, which is a very different way to process this movie. Yeah, and it's- You get a wig, it's easy. Yeah, it's a great costume. And Patricia Arquette's talked about

how scary this movie was. And David Lynch, to his credit, is always, he'll put actors in these really difficult situations, but acknowledge that it is difficult. He's like, I'm asking you to do something really dark and uncomfortable. She will always say that she felt protected by him. He protected her specifically.

Yes, but this is the kind of thing she did not feel comfortable doing, didn't really do in other movies, even though other movies were always kind of taking her right up to the line. It tipped towards that. Yeah. And I think actors will do that for David Lynch.

Laura Dern certainly has, Isabella Rossellini famously, and that's why Roger Ebert hated that movie, was because of that scene with her. And it is, it's like really hard, that movie, it's like this one, those scenes are really hard to watch. That one more than this one perhaps, because this one has 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 we'll have talked about, 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 Patricia Arquette speaks very very highly of this and as 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. Yes, sure. Yeah, she's had some, yeah. But she's wonderful in this movie and really iconic. I would say this is an iconic performance. Yeah, the look is iconic. Yes, the whole affect, the energy aura, whatever you were saying, yes, iconic.

And not in the way that everything is iconic now. I had an iconic breakfast burrito or whatever. More classically iconic. But also Slay. But also it's a triple Slay. Yeah. Right, go off. Times infinity. So she's like, we're going to rob Michael Massey. They kill him by mistake. Balthazar, you know, p- 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, it's a bit heavy. Gettys is cheating on Gregson Wagner. Yes. Who has picked up on him and called it 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 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. Like 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 Holman'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 happened. Yes. And is Manson in that video or does he come in later? He's later. It is a weird- It's later on, yeah, there's like another sequence at the hotel where-

Where they cut him. Yeah. And so Michael Massey dies, he gets tabled. And so Michael Massey dies, he gets, he gets tabled. Um, and does it, Pete sees that picture of like the two Arquettes together, right? Yeah, and it's of which one is you. Right, yeah. And she points to her. Are you both of these people?

Yeah. Um, and then we're kind of in empty cabin times, right? Well, they have sex on the beach, illuminated. Outside of the cabin. Yeah, they go to the cabin where the the like I love that the movie gets specifics Like I know offense he can get us fake. I think I get very specific and then they drive to our 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 have sex outside

illuminated by the headlights of the car Yes, and then they get into the cabin and build appointments there and she willuminated by the headlights of the car. Yes. And then they get into the cabin and Bill Pullman's there. And she's like, you'll never have me. She abandons him. Right, right. She goes in by herself.

Yes. And Bill Pullman's there and 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. Eddie shows up and they slit his throat.

That's really the, he has to go find Mr. Eddie. 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 on the road with him transforming again, probably. And this score's going crazy, and the fucking, you know, road is rushing at us. And this is like the music that Rod Reznor wrote for the movie, which I think is the first time he, quote unquote, scored anything. Oh, must have been.

And what an incredible trajectory to go from this to Soul. Winning Oscar for Soul. Yeah, Ninja Turtles. Ninja Turtles, Challengers. Challenger's score is 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. But it is funny to imagine Brent Reznor like sitting there in his tight t-shirt while Pete Docter's like, so the Soul had 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 gonna say, he's 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. Yeah. 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 the point.

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 fucking walk through a wall somehow. Anyway, yeah, Lost Highway. So the movie's just about how O.J.'s innocent and yeah, three and a half stars.

What do you guys think? Yeah, no, I 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 Ebert. I feel like this is the moment where people really fucking hate,

cause Godzilla's the next year, where Emmerich is like, fuck you, Ebert. I put you in the movie. Mayor Ebert. Yeah, Mayor, you know, like, and all that. Where people are really living or dying by two thumbs up or down. It started a little earlier with my favorite movie, Willow, with the Ebor-Sysk dragon.

Sure, and General Kale as well. General Kale, yes, definitely. Right. Which is also funny that, not funny, but Siskel dies a year after this. Yeah, he dies in 1998. 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, they didn't feel like... But Ebert no longer had an antagonistic relationship with his co-host. And 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 like the most beautiful criticism in the world sometimes but like he'll write about I always say this laventura

I read his review of laventura was like this guy is helping me understand Something I watched from 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 he's had... Now, some would call him a coward. Some.

Even the people he stayed on his fence with, he, like, comes around to basically saying, like, I have to acknowledge there is value in what David Lynch is doing. Right, because he had such... We will talk 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 that. Where you're like, come on, buddy. And then, so it just wasn't his cup of tea. And then he's old, but he's always acknowledged. Blue Velvet, he despised and was like,

this made me unhappy. That's the one, probably, we'll talk about at the moment. And 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. You're responsible for you to be doing this.

So he acknowledges the craft, but just hates the movies until you get to Mohon Drive, which is where I feel like we should talk just a little bit about why this movie... He did also love The Straight Story, I will point out. Oh, that's right. He did. Get that four stars. Yes. Yes. But Mulholland Drive, go ahead. I think, so like watching these and trying to interpret my own...

you know, 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 vibe right away with Mulholland Drive. And the people who were disappointed with Lost Highway, I think, approached Mulholland Drive of like, okay, well, this is what he was trying to...

Yes. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's like, he's always dealt with doubles. Like you've had like, you know, the Maddie and Laura Palmer, you've got Leland and Bob, you've always had these people. Like, so he's like, he's been working towards crystallizing this idea of

duality, of our interior duality becoming, um, externalized. And I think Mulholland drive is probably not as succinct as lost highway. No, of course not. It's not as succinct as lost highway, but because of that lack of succinctness, because it's not as the entirety, 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 intent 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, for better or worse, it does feel very plotted out. And it feels intentional more so than Mahalan Drive because Mahalan 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 Robert Forster and Briscoe, are now gonna 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. Mulholland Drive, he does the Lost Highway thing again. They don't turn into different actors, but they transform or wake up or what have you. Obviously Mulholland Drive is very simple and I'll explain in our episode. You've solved. Mulholland 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 to- It literally begins with the head hitting the pillow. Like he's giving you clues.

I've made this point before. It's not that outrageous. Right. But it is, and I think on a very formally intrinsic level, the fact that the 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 Theroux subplot, I think it is a very unjondest perspective of Hollywood. Whereas Lost Highway is like, LA sucks. This place is a seedy cesspool. Don't come here. Whereas Mulholland Drive, in spite of how dark it gets, manages to maintain this old Hollywood glamor, 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. Yes, they're leading the film.

They are not duplicitous. They are not compromised. They could maybe become a little compromised at one point, but 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 ever come. But you know, I don't like that lady though. They had a little old lady. Eee. And 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 film crushed. This film's a steamroller. You need half a black hat?

The February box office made $3.8 million. That'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? It's a four mil.

Yeah. 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 I'm taking some credit for that three-point. Yeah, you're 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 when you play that game disposition a great view on the world

And I I've said this in other episodes, but I feel slightly with a perfect 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 prestige or just sort of more serious minded, forward grown up movies that 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. And it got like a hyper wide release at Christmas. Yeah, it was a big Christmas movie.

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 on limited 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 dollar budget. Yeah, I know these days that would be a sensation Yes Number one of the box office Griffin is a rereleased 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 Griffin? 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 Pan and Scan VHS. Same. It was the first time I saw them, period. Oh, really? I had seen them on VHS, but certainly in their... 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 masked in layers of who fucking knows. knows 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 No, it's like 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 what you look at there have now been three wide releases of Phantom Menace. Original release it opened to

like 70, 60 something. The 3D re-release in 2012 it opened to like 24 and this time it opened to 8. Every like 10 to 15 years they re-release it and it does a third of what it did the last time. Okay, alright. And they'll keep trying. It's done okay for itself though. Yeah, it's doing fine. Did you guys see it? I've been very busy. I need to go see it.

I'd like to go see it. I don't know. I saw it last time when they did the 3D. I saw the 3D. I did that. It was bad. Yeah, it was pretty shit. 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. Right. 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, and Disney was like, we're not fucking putting these back in theaters. And Revenge of the Sith was never seen. Eh, maybe we'll see them one day. Number three is a political thriller. Disney was like, we're not fucking putting these back in theaters. And Revenge of the Sith was never seen.

Maybe we'll see them 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. Totally great. Cause not a cost of Gabris. No. Uh, when I call them a great auteur, I guess it's like, this is sort of a,

is it dev? Uh, is it a devil's own? No, but also a good guess good guess in the world grown-up movies back then grown-up move. 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 a 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 Winsor- Bloodwork is 2002.

Clint programmer was this. Who, it's a little later. He's like old in bloodwork. Great move. Bloodwork is so good. Absolute power is okay. So what would you enact when as the president? Have you seen absolute power?

I have not. I saw, this would be a momentous couple of 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, and 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 the name of the movie. Going out on top. Number four is a disaster film. Volcano.

Dante's Peak. Not Volcano, yes Dante's Peak. Well done, loud and clear. The better of the two, Dante's Peak, in my opinion. Dante's Peak, Volcano Blow Up, Ben Lake. Grandma Dying in Acid Lake. It was so disturbing. Fucked up.

Yeah, I did not like that scene. Number five is a comedy sequel nobody asked for. Ben was probably there, probably. I don't know. Ben's considering. It's a comedy sequel. No one asked how long has it been out? It's been out for two weeks It's gonna top out at 36 million dollars. Was it close to the release of the first or was this did they wait? This is the fourth in the series. Oh, it is M Major League colon back to the miners. No, that is a totally good guess But maybe someone asked for that one. I don't know them majorly colon back to the miners. No, that is a totally good guess.

But maybe someone asked for that one. I don't know. And that's why I thought the clue was you saying Ben asked for. They do go back to the mine. Those movies get me. I like cry to both major league one and two, but not to the mine, not back to the miners. That one's also that's three, not four. Yeah. Yeah.

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 This is a really count. But the same the original is this? What the fuck is this? I think they remade it eventually. That doesn't really count, but you know, they remade the original. Is it a Beethoven? No. No, fuck. Is it like star driven? Yeah. And the same person? Same star, but he is cooked.

Yes. Family comedy. Oh, oh, oh, oh. Ben, were you there opening weekend to see Vegas Vacation? Vegas Vacation. The movie that Nashville Ampoon took their name off of. No, because my dad wouldn't take me. Wow. He thinks that Chevy Chase is an asshole. Well, he is an asshole. Your dad wasn't wrong.

No, he wasn't. Your dad was ahead of the curve. I have not seen Vegas Vacation. I haven't either. No, no one ever. But that is the one, it is just called Vegas Vacation. Nashville Ampoon was like haven't either. No one ever. But that is the one. It is just called Vegas vacation. Nashville ampoum was like, we'll set this one up. You've also got...

We'd rather wait for Van Wilder to swing around. Just to fill in the rest of the top ten for you, David, you've got Fool's Rush in. That's the loaner Matthew Perry Marry Salma Hayek. Yes. A fatal mistake. Because he knocked her up. Is that why yes Yes, I knocked her up. I think that it ends up being That's at least some plop point the phone. Yeah, you know drop. Yes the daughter at the end the grand

Can't really part of it. It's a it's a Twilight Zone ask premise of what if you had to marry some of number What if you had to marry Salma Hayek? Number seven at the box office is the Disney remake of That Darn Cat with Christina Ricci and Dougie Doug. A movie which 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 Doug 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 eight is 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- What's it called? 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 chug along. Those are some legs. Yeah. Huge legs. Number 11 is fucking shine Do you hate to shine because it took Tom Cruise's Oscar? Oh sure like it's so offensive that he doesn't have the Oscar for Jerry McGuire Already, but then you're like who won shine. You're like, what's that one again? Yeah, I've never seen shine but isn't you know, Jeffrey Rush comes into the movie like so late That's what I was gonna say the weirdest part I remember my parents

No, it was that Noah Taylor at least should have won if you were getting to someone he was nominated, right? But no, I'm in Mueller stall was that guy Noah Taylor kept getting the precursors and then there was the swerve on Oscar morning I recently I rewatched multiplicity and I was trying to do the math on. He got a no until I got a sag supporting nomination bizarre. Sorry. What were you doing? Multiplicity. Multiplicity. And I was multiplicity and I was like, well, if I were making 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 there. You kidding me? Yeah.

Well, I mean, not for Keaton. I don't know. For Keaton! 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. Not even Professor.

In the same year. And I'm like, I think I I gotta put both of those guys in. Yeah, Nutty Professor's a good shot. 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 is obviously a lead. Ah, fuck, yeah. Eddie Murphy for Nutty Professor, Woody Harrelson for People vs. Larry Flynn, and Philip Baker Hall for Hard Eight. I may be 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 Oh, it's incredible. God level in that movie. Anyway, Lost Highway is good. Hard agree. 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. Fair to say. It'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 guess you can call this a more minor work by him, I guess. But it's also, it's so, the stuff that comes out of it

is so, it has to start with this. It does. If he had never made another movie about people becoming other people... In LA. ...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 the scene.

He keeps evolving it. And it gets better and better. He's like, instead of a highway, what if about a road? Just a drive, honestly. Yeah. Just like one little drive. Just a little drive away. And then he was like, no, no, no, no.

Empire. Empire. Empire. Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. What if he played Imperial March over Inland Empire? He was still regretting his decision to pass on the return of the Jedi. I can't wait to hear you guys discuss the technical specifics of the making of Inland Empire. That'll be fun, I think. And it was fun having you on our show, David Lowry. Thank you for having me back.

And what do you want to plug for an episode that's coming out in November? I'm just going to 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, it got me at the right time. And I'm going to just find that weather report, look at it again and believe that that's where

we're headed. Larry, that's a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. 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've never seen in person. And the local Target 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

in more so than just photographs. They do. And as a Lego fan, I texted you when I saw it on the floor 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. We had like 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. Cool. 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 it's one of the reasons I love David Lynch's Dune in spite of his own, you know, the reason he doesn't is because I love knowing what he intended

and seeing all of 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. You had a difficult birthing process. There was a beautiful film somewhere in there and stuff that I'm still very proud of.

And it really meant a lot to me to see that. How about we plug this? How about? Change.org, Make Peter Pan 22. Let's post this when the episode comes out. Let's get an influx. Yeah. People sign up to join this petition.

Now to be clear, you're not agitating right now the Disney green light of Peter Pan and Wendy's sequel. No, but just the desire being out there is enough. We wanna support the support. Exactly, there you go. How weird was that though, for me to just walk by that? It's pretty weird. It blew my mind.

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 Jared McGuire, hang your balls out there.

Oh. In Prince's manifesto at Kinko's. We've had like two really good endings so far to this episode. Yeah, so we should be done, right? But I just remembered I brought something. This may fall flat. We're like babies, but gift?

What? 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, man. Everything was, but I was planning on coming to New York that spring for the Green Night Press Tour. Yeah. 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 people tried to game out. We were gonna do the Green Night RPG as a symbol to the team arpeggio.

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 and David would like this. Absolutely. So there you go. This is going right on the cork board. Wow. That's been sitting tucked away in a book for the past four years. It's got beautiful stained glass. It is 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. 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 beautiful stained glass why

wouldn't I sell a postcard of it? 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. Thanks for being here, 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 it ended up coming out. 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 Bardi for helping to produce the show. Thank you to Alex Barron, E.J. McKeon for editing.

E.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. B JJ Burch 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 know what our Patreon is. This episode's so far in the future that we don't even have anything. We don't even fucking know. We don't even know what our pain crowd is. We don't even know. This episode's so far in the future that we don't know what the fuck is happening other than to say on this feed next week, straight story. No, I actually, we're doing probably Major League, I think if it lines up, 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 pot that you're gonna use. See you next week for the straight story. And as always... GIVE ME THAT FUCKING POP DADDIES!