“It is no secret that David Lynch, the writer-direc­tor-com­pos­er-painter, has an unusu­al rela­tion­ship with Bob’s Big Boy,” begins a 1999 Los Ange­les Times arti­cle on the auteur of films like Eraser­head and Blue Vel­vet. “For sev­en years in the 1980s he ate lunch there every day, order­ing cup after cup of over-sweet­ened cof­fee and a sin­gle choco­late milk­shake while scrib­bling notes on Bob’s lit­tle square nap­kins.” He took pains, notes reporter Amy Wal­lace, “to arrive at Bob’s at pre­cise­ly 2:30 p.m. each day. The rea­son: It increased the odds that he would encounter per­fec­tion.”

“If you go ear­li­er, at lunchtime, they’re mak­ing a lot of choco­late milk­shakes. The mix­ture has to cool in a machine, but if it does­n’t sit in there long enough — when they’re serv­ing a lot of them — it’s run­ny,” Wal­lace quotes Lynch as say­ing. “At 2:30, the milk­shake mix­ture has­n’t been sit­ting there too long, but you’ve got a chance for it to be just great.”

For his pains, he received “only three per­fect milk­shakes out of more than 2,500. But that was­n’t the point. For Lynch, it was enough to know he had set the stage for excel­lence to occur,” believ­ing that “whether with milk­shakes or movies,” one “must make room for inspi­ra­tion to strike — to lay the prop­er ground­work for great­ness to take hold.”

When the 1980s British tele­vi­sion series The Incred­i­bly Strange Film Show devot­ed an episode to Lynch, it nat­u­ral­ly went to Los Ange­les not just to inter­view him but to shoot some footage at Bob’s, the sacred space itself. In the clip at the top of the post, you can see host Jonathan Ross, seat­ed in one of the retro din­er’s booths and Lynchi­an­ly dressed in a white shirt but­toned all the way up, describe how, after an “all-Amer­i­can lunch,” the direc­tor would embark on “marathon cof­fee-drink­ing ses­sions. Fueled by the caf­feine and his exces­sive sug­ar intake, he’d then spend the after­noon writ­ing down ideas for movies on the nap­kins help­ful­ly pro­vid­ed by Bob.”

In the inter­view that fol­lows, Lynch him­self con­firms all this. “I was into Bob’s halfway through Eraser­head,” he says, estab­lish­ing the chronol­o­gy. “The end of Dune” — his trau­mat­ic, failed expe­ri­ence with big-bud­get stu­dio pro­duc­tion — “was pret­ty much the end of Bob’s.” Even Lynch’s daugh­ter Jen­nifer, for a time her father’s Bob’s-going com­pan­ion, rem­i­nisces about “the draw­ing on nap­kins” and the “tons of cof­fee with lots of sug­ar.” In this late-80s inter­view, Lynch describes him­self as “heav­i­ly into sug­ar. I call it ‘gran­u­lat­ed hap­pi­ness.’ It’s just a great help, a friend.”

Lynch’s rep­u­ta­tion for drink­ing Bob’s milk­shakes long out­last­ed his actu­al habit. Char­lie Rose makes a point of ask­ing about it in the clip in the mid­dle of the post, prompt­ing Lynch to explain the rea­son­ing behind his dai­ly trips — both lit­er­al­ly and metaphor­i­cal­ly, since when Rose asks if all the sug­ar got him high, Lynch admits that “it is like a drug, I sup­pose, because it revs you up.” Though by all accounts still a prodi­gious drinker of cof­fee and smok­er of cig­a­rettes, Lynch has grown more health-con­scious in recent years, a shift that may well have begun when, for rea­sons of his own, he went behind his beloved Bob’s and climbed into its dump­ster. “I found one of these car­tons that milk­shakes came from,” says Lynch in the more recent inter­view clip above. “Every ingre­di­ent end­ed in ‑zene or ‑ate. There was noth­ing nat­ur­al any­where near that car­ton.”

Even though that dis­cov­ery put an end to Lynch’s 2:30 appear­ances, all his cof­fee-soaked, sug­ar-sat­u­rat­ed after­noons spent at Bob’s had already filled him with ideas. One day, for exam­ple, “I saw a man come in. He came to the counter, and that’s all I remem­ber of this man, but from see­ing him came a feel­ing, and that’s where Frank Booth came from.” Blue Vel­vet’s psy­chot­ic, gas-huff­ing, Den­nis Hop­per-por­trayed vil­lain aside, Lynch fans who make their own pil­grim­age to Bob’s Big Boy even today will under­stand how well its sen­si­bil­i­ty may have res­onat­ed with the film­mak­er’s obvi­ous attrac­tion to mid­cen­tu­ry Amer­i­cana. But as we’ve learned from his life as well as his work, it’s best not to go around back.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sur­re­al Film­mak­ing of David Lynch Explained in 9 Video Essays

The Incred­i­bly Strange Film Show: Revis­it 1980s Doc­u­men­taries on David Lynch, John Waters, Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky & Oth­er Film­mak­ers

An Ani­mat­ed David Lynch Explains Where He Gets His Ideas

David Lynch Explains How Med­i­ta­tion Boosts Our Cre­ativ­i­ty (Plus Free Resources to Help You Start Med­i­tat­ing)

Hear David Lynch Read from His New Mem­oir Room to Dream, and Browse His New Online T‑Shirt Store

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Few can think of the very con­cept of the auteur with­out think­ing of Jean-Luc Godard. That goes for those of us exhil­a­rat­ed by his movies, those of us amused by them, those of us frus­trat­ed by them, and those of us who expe­ri­ence any com­bi­na­tion of those emo­tions and more. Godard­’s ear­ly audi­ences, at the dawn of the French New Wave in the late 1950s and the decade or so there­after, react­ed in all those ways, and some­how time has­n’t drained his work in that peri­od of its pow­er.

“How Jean-Luc Godard Lib­er­at­ed Cin­e­ma,” the video essay from The Dis­card­ed Image above, shows us how a young film­mak­er in mid-cen­tu­ry France, work­ing under severe­ly lim­it­ed envi­ron­ments and in a whole new post­war real­i­ty — cul­tur­al as well as eco­nom­ic — imbued them with that pow­er. Start­ing with a bang, his 1959 fea­ture debut Breath­less, Godard took cin­e­ma, says Dis­card­ed Image cre­ator Julian Palmer, and “tore through its foun­da­tions, rein­vent­ing the form and rein­vent­ing him­self, pic­ture by pic­ture.” This entailed “a hap­haz­ard ethos toward edit­ing” as well as oscil­la­tion between “genre and the every­day, actors and non-pro­fes­sion­als, black and white and col­or.”

Godard “found the mod­ern world, engulfed with com­mer­cial­ism, both appeal­ing in its pop-art aes­thet­ic, but also repel­lent,” and his ear­ly films vivid­ly express both halves of that world­view. All the while he “toys with the con­ven­tions of cin­e­ma,” for exam­ple by sev­er­ing the “umbil­i­cal cord” of the musi­cal score, “mak­ing you aware of how you’re being manip­u­lat­ed by his medi­um,” and lit­ter­ing the frame with text, “often with abstract phras­es, pos­si­bly just to pro­voke a reac­tion” — or, as some Godard enthu­si­asts might put it, def­i­nite­ly just to pro­voke a reac­tion.

The Godard films on which this video essay focus­es — the for­mi­da­ble stretch from Breath­less to 1967’s Week-end, with pic­tures like Vivre sa vie, Con­tempt, and Alphav­ille in-between —  also draw deeply from cin­e­ma itself. “Movies sur­round these char­ac­ters’ lives, pro­vid­ing a con­trast to their exis­tence,” says Palmer. “This fan­ta­sy can allow them to momen­tar­i­ly escape their real­i­ty.” But as the 1960s became the 1970s, “like a film com­ing off its pro­jec­tor, Godard him­self was com­ing off track. He was increas­ing­ly dis­gust­ed by con­sumer cul­ture, which was only becom­ing more dom­i­nant.”

There­after, as some crit­ics see it, the del­i­cate bal­ance between Godard­’s pol­i­tics and his aes­thet­ics was over­turned by the for­mer, but his ini­tial “man­ic peri­od of fer­tile cre­ation is still unmatched to this day, and Godard­’s influ­ence is immea­sur­able.” We should not only be thank­ful that Godard still makes films (his lat­est, The Image Book, won the very first “Spe­cial Palme d’Or” at this year’s Cannes Film Fes­ti­val), but also hope that the next gen­er­a­tion of film­mak­ers con­tin­ues to look to his exam­ple. Godard may have lib­er­at­ed cin­e­ma, but it always and every­where threat­ens to put itself back in chains.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to Jean-Luc Godard’s Inno­v­a­tive Film­mak­ing Through Five Video Essays

How the French New Wave Changed Cin­e­ma: A Video Intro­duc­tion to the Films of Godard, Truf­faut & Their Fel­low Rule-Break­ers

Jean-Luc Godard Takes Cannes’ Rejec­tion of Breath­less in Stride in 1960 Inter­view

The Entire­ty of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breath­less Art­ful­ly Com­pressed Into a 3 Minute Film

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.