Salon.com > David Lynch

Celebrities weigh in on the debt ceiling

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 22:04:00 +0000

Celebrity activism usually comes around every four years ... right around election time, you'll notice. But sometimes issues are important enough that even Hollywood has to stop counting its money for a moment and weigh in on our political system. The debt ceiling debate has provided just such an opportunity. (If the day comes when I am forced to ask Snooki about fiscal policy, however, just remind me that I always keep a cyanide capsule in one of my molars. I'll be ready.)

David Lynch's ambient, ambiguous video called "How Things Have Been Going" shows that the director knows as much about this crisis as the rest of us.

On the other side of the spectrum, you have Matt Damon, who always keeps abreast of current affairs ... especially when they concern the GOP using his buddy Ben Affleck for its videos.

"The Office's" Rainn Wilson chose Twitter as his megaphone, agreeing with Damon that as a wealthy person, he should be taxed more.

Five pop culture items we missed

Wed, 15 Jun 2011 21:16:00 +0000

1. Movie-themed nightclub of the day: Club Silencio, a new Parisian nightspot brought to you by David Lynch and based upon the Rebekah Del Rio room from "Muholland Drive."

It kind of looks like half the nightclubs in the Meatpacking District already.

2. Sex tape rumors of the day: LeAnn Rimes claiming that a video of her changing in front of a mirror doesn't count as a "sex tape." We are inclined to agree. She still wants to sue the guy who put the footage online, though.

3. Reneged runaway bride of the day: The Crystal Harris-dumping-Hugh-Hefner story of yesterday turned out to be part of a media plot involving Harris getting $250K. Guess we all fell for it. Now Harris is dating Dr. Phil's son? Couldn't have seen that one coming.

David Lynch phones it in with dismembered Barbie head commercial

Wed, 11 May 2011 12:01:00 +0000

As much as it pains me to say this, David Lynch has been totally phoning it in for the last couple years. Ever since his last feature, "Inland Empire," David's just been coasting: doing his lecture circuit about Transcendental Meditation, an occasional art show or music concert, and then updates to his web page. Which is fine! You are no longer a young Eraserhead, David, if you want to go retire to the red room or hang out on a deserted beach while Robert Blake paints his face white and laughs manically behind you, no one is going to say you didn't earn it. Plus, we have "The Killing" now, so we can finally dust off our ole Laura Palmer Lil' Autopsy Kits (TM) and give it another go.

All that being said, its completely unacceptable for you to doing such a half-hearted job with these coffee commercials, Mr. Lynch:

10 year time capsule: The puzzle movie hits made possible by DVD

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 16:37:00 +0000

In 2001, DVD players outsold VCRs for the first time ever. I can't claim that this advent of home technology was the reason that "puzzle films" like Christopher Nolan's "Memento," David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive" and Richard Kelly's "Donnie Darko" caught on, but it's a reasonably sound guess. With VCRs, you could watch a film at home, you could pause it, and you could rewind it. But DVDs were made to withstand intense scrutiny: high-res freeze-frames, replaying and jumping chapters, and of course those neat little bonus features that held the promise of providing supplemental material to the film.

Before "Memento" was released to the public on March 16, 2001, the most popular thriller mysteries of the past several years had been films like "The Sixth Sense" and "The Usual Suspects." Both great movies, sure, but both included clear expository endings to make sure the audiences understood what the hell they had just paid good money to see. But when Andy Klein wrote his definitive "Everything You Wanted to Know About 'Memento'" essay for Salon and created a numerical and alphabetical system to use to watch the scenes of the film in chronological order, it was only because DVDs had recently given us the ability to do so. As Andy says:

David Lynch to direct Duran Duran interactive concert

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 20:15:00 +0000

Before last year, watching a concert on TV was a bitter-grapes kind of experience: Sure, it was entertaining, but it also served as a reminder that you weren't actually in the audience. All that changed last when the National hired D.A. Pennebaker to "direct" their live-streaming concert on the Internet. That led to Terry Gilliam and Arcade Fire joining forces in August during a Madison Square Garden show, where they turned the conert into an interactive multimedia experience on YouTube that went beyond the auteurism of "Give Me Shelter." People watching the show online could interact with the performance by choosing camera angles and submitting images that would show up onstage, creating a participatory experience that took full advantage of the medium as a two-way receiver. It was a definite game changer, and something Marshall McLuhan would have especially loved.

Watch David Lynch’s new video

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 01:20:00 +0000

Whatever you make of David Lynch's eerie, visionary films or his numerous extracurricular projects — from his 20,000-mile road trip across America interviewing ordinary citizens to his enthusiastic support of Transcendental Meditation — you can count on the director of "Blue Velvet" and "Mulholland Drive" to avoid the conventional and the predictable.

We're delighted to host the result of Lynch's latest fascinations, his collaboration with singer Ariana Delawari. Born in Los Angeles to Afghan immigrants who fled the Soviet invasion in the 1980s, Delawari returned to Kabul after the fall of the Taliban to record with Afghan musicians on her debut album, "Lion of Panjshir." Says Lynch: "Ariana writes great songs. They are filled with feelings and thoughts from her life — her life in Hollywood and life in Afghanistan, where her roots are. Ancient and modern flow together here. This mixture of cultures and her melodies and lyrics conjure a great unique feeling in people."