David Lynch’s Popular Surrealism Considered on Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #59

Pret­ty Much Pop hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt–along with guest Mike Wilson–discuss the direc­tor’s films from Eraser­head to Inland Empire plus Twin Peaks and his recent short films. We get into the appeal and the styl­is­tic and sto­ry­telling hall­marks of his main­stays–Blue Vel­vet, Wild at Heart, Lost High­way, and Mul­hol­land Dri­ve–and also con­sid­er out­liers like Dune, The Ele­phant Man, and The Straight Sto­ry.

What’s with the campy act­ing and the weird atti­tudes toward women? Why make us stare at some­thing mov­ing very slow­ly for a long time? Are these films appeal­ing to young peo­ple inter­est­ed in some­thing dif­fer­ent but not on the whole actu­al­ly enjoy­able? Is there actu­al­ly a “solu­tion” to make sense of the sense­less, or are these wacky plots sup­posed to remain unas­sim­i­l­able and so not dis­mis­si­ble?

Some arti­cles we drew on includ­ed:

• “David Lynch Films Ranked from Worst to Best” by Swap­nil Dhruv Bose
• “The Remark­able Influ­ence of David Lynch” by Mike Mar­i­ani
• “David Lynch in the Beau­ti­ful World of Twin Peaks” by Sean O’Neal
• “David Lynch Responds to ‘Twin Peaks’ Fan The­o­ries: ‘We All See Some­thing Dif­fer­ent in a Sto­ry’” by Jude Dry
• “‘Twin Peaks’ and Beyond: The Best Shows Inspired by David Lynch’s TV Phe­nom­e­non” by Hanh Nguyen
• “Lost High­way Explained: The Mean­ing of David Lynch’s Mas­ter­piece” by Car­lo Affati­ga­to
• “Lau­ra Dern, Nao­mi Watts and Patri­cia Arquette Reveal What It’s Real­ly Like Work­ing With David Lynch” by Zack Sharf
• “Isabel­la Rosselli­ni Assess­es the Role that Haunt­ed Her” by Lau­rie Win­er
• “David Lynch Is Done With Film, and Promis­es 2006’s ‘Inland Empire’ Was the Last Movie He’ll Ever Make” by Matt Rourke
• “In Inland Empire, David Lynch Presents Female Suf­fer­ing as it Should Be – a Liv­ing Night­mare” by Clarisse Laugh­rey
• “Revis­it a Young David Lynch Being Inter­viewed About ‘Eraser­head’ back in 1979” by Jack What­ley

Also, read Roger Ebert’s reviews of Dune and Blue Vel­vet, and his sub­se­quent thoughts on the lat­ter. What did crit­ics say about “What Did Jack Do?” Watch “Twin Peaks Actu­al­ly Explained.”  Check out his short films if you can sit through them.

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. If you’re not sub­scribed to the pod­cast, then you missed last week’s aftertalk high­lights episode. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts