David Lynch In Theory

Todd McGowan studies Lynch's talent for blending the bizarre and the normal to emphasise the odd nature of normality itself. In Lynch's movies, fantasy becomes a means through which the viewer is encouraged to build a revolutionary relationship with the world.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An unprecedented look into the personal and creative life of the visionary auteur David Lynch, through his own words and those of his closest colleagues, friends, and family “Insightful . . . an impressively industrious and comprehensive account of Lynch’s career.”—The New York Times Book Review In this unique hybrid of biography and memoir, David Lynch opens up for the first time about a life lived in pursuit of his singular vision, and the many heartaches and struggles he’s faced to bring his unorthodox projects to fruition. Lynch’s lyrical, intimate, and unfiltered personal reflections riff off biographical sections written by close collaborator Kristine McKenna and based on more than one hundred new interviews with surprisingly candid ex-wives, family members, actors, agents, musicians, and colleagues in various fields who all have their own takes on what happened. Room to Dream is a landmark book that offers a onetime all-access pass into the life and mind of one of our most enigmatic and utterly original living artists. With insights into . . . Eraserhead The Elephant Man Dune Blue Velvet Wild at Heart Twin Peaks Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me Lost Highway The Straight Story Mulholland Drive INLAND EMPIRE Twin Peaks: The Return Praise for Room to Dream “A memorable portrait of one of cinema’s great auteurs . . . provides a remarkable insight into [David] Lynch’s intense commitment to the ‘art life.’ ”—The Guardian “This is the best book by and about a movie director since Elia Kazan’s A Life (1988) and Michael Powell’s A Life in Movies (1986). But Room to Dream is more enchanting or appealing than those classics. . . . What makes this book endearing is its chatty, calm account of how genius in America can be a matter-of-fact defiance of reality that won’t alarm your dog or save mankind. It’s the only way to dream in so disturbed a country.”—San Francisco Chronicle

Beginning with Lost Highway, director David Lynch “swerved” in a new direction, one in which very disorienting images of the physical world take center stage in his films. Seeking to understand this unusual emphasis in his work, noted Lynch scholar Martha Nochimson engaged Lynch in a long conversation of unprecedented openness, during which he shared his vision of the physical world as an uncertain place that masks important universal realities. He described how he derives this vision from the Holy Vedas of the Hindu religion, as well as from his layman’s fascination with modern physics. With this deep insight, Nochimson forges a startlingly original template for analyzing Lynch’s later films—the seemingly unlikely combination of the spiritual landscape envisioned in the Holy Vedas and the material landscape evoked by quantum mechanics and relativity. In David Lynch Swerves, Nochimson navigates the complexities of Lost Highway, The Straight Story, Mulholland Drive, and Inland Empire with uncanny skill, shedding light on the beauty of their organic compositions; their thematic critiques of the immense dangers of modern materialism; and their hopeful conceptions of human potential. She concludes with excerpts from the wide-ranging interview in which Lynch discussed his vision with her, as well as an interview with Columbia University physicist David Albert, who was one of Nochimson’s principal tutors in the discipline of quantum physics.

Michel Chion's study of the film and television work of David Lynch has become, since its first English publication in 1995, the definitive book on one of America's finest contemporary directors. In this new edition Chion brings the book up-to-date to take into account Lynch's work in the past ten years, including the major features 'Lost Highway, The Straight Story,' and 'Mulholland Drive. 'Newly redesigned and re-illustrated, 'David Lynch 'is an indispensable companion.

This is a study of one of Hollywood's most popular and critically acclaimed directors. Films discussed include 'Blue Velvet', 'Wild at Heart', 'The Straight Story' and 'Mulholland Drive'.

A revealing look at the life and work of David Lynch, one of the most enigmatic and influential filmmakers of our time Every frame of David Lynch's work, from the '70s midnight movie Eraserhead to the groundbreaking TV series Twin Peaks, to the digital-video DIY feat Inland Empire, bears his unmistakable imprint. But the paradox of the Lynchian is that it's easy to recognize and hard to define. Lynch is a master of the inscrutable gesture, the opaque symbol. His career evades the usual categories: pop culture icon and subject of academic study, cult figure and industry outsider. He's a Renaissance man—musician, painter, photographer, carpenter, entrepreneur—and a vocal proponent or transcendental meditation. Dennis Lim, the newly minted director of Cinematheque programming at Lincoln Center, is a skilled cinephile wary of over-interpretation.David Lynch preserves the strangeness of the Lynch's universe and offers a personal meditation on the most distinctive filmmaker in modern American culture. It leaves what Lynch likes to call "room to dream," honoring the allure of the unknown and the unknowable.

Over the last two years, Breskin interviewed seven of contemporary filmmaking's greatest directors--David Lynch, Francis Ford Coppola, Oliver Stone, Spike Lee, David Cronenberg, Tim Burton and Robert Altman. Here they discuss the role of women in their films, the relationship of politics to art, their styles and philosophies, and more.