My Instagram bio is "Waiting for the robins to come", has been since I got to see this in a theater...I think in 2021. I'm at six of ten Lynch films in a theater, I'll hopefully be seeing Dune on Monday to bring that to seven. Weird to me that Eraserhead and Elephant Man, two of his higher profile projects, are proving so elusive, but there's probably some distribution hangup I'm not aware.
This is probably not a unique observation, but after re-watching this last year for the first time since college, I found it interesting to see just how much of an archetypal benchmark Hopper’s performance has become (without losing any of its intensity or ability to shock). Would we have the likes of Heath Ledger’s Joker or Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigurh without Frank?
“Laura Dern, who he’d cast again four years later in Wild At Heart and many years after that in Inland Empire”
Don’t forget Twin Peaks: The Return, as one of his most famous creations. Turns out Agent Cooper was recording messages for Laura Dern back in the early 90s! As if to make up for all the withholding in Blue Velvet, MacLachlan gave her every last scrap of information.
An absolutely formative place for me. I saw my first foreign film there (JEAN DE FLORETTE) when it was still The Dayton Movies and its calendars suggested a strange, rich movie world beyond the world I knew, even if I couldn't watch most of it yet. I picked up an old calendar from eBay and had it framed last year. Hard to believe that Dayton once had a place where you could go see a collection of Warner Bros. cartoons, BETTY BLUE, PERSONAL SERVICES, L'ANNEE MEDUSES, and THE HIDDEN FORTRESS on the same day. And that was just a random Tuesday.
The last time I revisited this, I was kinda shocked by how much it does follow a straight line narratively, at least in comparison to most of Lynch's other stuff, while still absolutely delivering much of the same vibe. I think he's only sort of interested in straight narrative (many, many anecdotes of him essentially discarding parts of Mark Frost's writing for something more abstract that he dreamed up) but he sure knows how to get the feeling of a narrative, regardless of how explicit or not it happens to be. How many plot points in this movie are delivered in ways that feel incidental? It adds a lot to the ominousness of it.
There aren't a ton of movies that are this confident in choosing what to share, what to imply and what to leave blank for you to think about.
I think this was why I was a little disappointed in it when i saw it in high school. It felt like it took place in the "real" world rather than the one of Eraserhead or even Twin Peaks. Now i feel like I actually know what surrealism is.
The first time I saw it, I was absolutely sure some sort of supernatural thing was going on though I couldn't have told you what exactly. Took a couple viewings to fully see it as a (very) fractured noir thing.
Gotta talk up the Stockwell / Hopper / Nance / Dourif scene.
First and foremost, knowing what I know now about these actors, the last time I saw this it felt a bit more like "this is probably just what happening upon a party with these Hollywood lifer weirdos was like" and somehow, even thinking that, it doesn't change the impact at all.
I have a pal who maintains that Lynch is a deeply misogynistic filmmaker and I've spent a lot of time thinking about that - certainly, the guy has spent a lot of time on women suffering.
I don't think he is, exactly, though I sure do think he has blind spots. (For instance, I'm quite sure he really does have some sort of 'women are from venus, men are from mars' POV somewhere in there.) There aren't many filmmakers from his era who work up such deeply humanistic female roles that allow for nuance like him, that's for sure.
Curious about what some of y'all think on this one because I can really talk my way into many different POVs.
I wouldn’t put him quite in the category of deeply misogynistic, but kind of in the category of misguided provocateur specifically when it comes to showing female suffering (I guess it’s sort of a blind spot then?). A lot of his work hinges more on evoking audience emotion rather than making narrative sense, so one could defend the really sexually unpleasant things he puts his characters through as perhaps another instance of this, if I’m being very lenient. I personally think a lot of it is extraneous and his worst artistic instinct (in Blue Velvet, sure, but FWWM and TW: The Return lean uncomfortably far into portrayals of woman suffering as well), and feel like they’re included purely to show how awful his already unpleasant antagonists are.
Regarding Ebert's distaste for BV, my armchair analyst take is that the writer of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls did not like having his nose rubbed in the darker implications of filmic horniness.
Seeing this in the theater was revelatory for me, compared to seeing it on 2014 era Netflix. For one: the drones in the hallway made me realize it *is*, in fact, nightmarish because it's just so unsettling. But then there's touches like the cut that makes everyone disappear from that apartment ("In Dreams!"), Laura Dern's introduction, etc. It's like the subconscious has come crawling out. That being said, I do wish Dorothy felt like a character in the way that Sandy does. She is a bit too infantilized and fragmentary, almost like a symbol or some spirit that has invaded Jeffrey's life. I'm so excited to see Mulholland Dr again in a couple weeks, Lynch is probably my favorite director.
it's not novel to say this at all, but it's completely true that Stockwell in Blue Velvet is one of my favorite characters ever. I keep saying I'm going to go as him for halloween one year, but here's another one where I didn't....
I remember being 16 in 1986 and brazening my way in to Blue Velvet with a couple of high school friends. We all enjoyed it but it was also deeply weird in ways we weren't sure were on purpose, and most of the movie's power was a little bit over our heads. But it was sure fucking quotable.
It was nice to rewatch it a few years ago and find out that it more than holds up to all the bits that got absorbed into pop culture — "Heineken? Fuck that shit! Pabst! Blue! Ribbon!" and Frank Booth's "What's That Smell?" on SNL, for example. There's still a dark power to it that remains stubbornly wild, even as "Lynchian" has become one-word shorthand and Lynch himself has made (IMHO) some better works. Still a great, great movie.
Cracks me up a little that this gets lumped together with Something Wild and After Hours, which feels very much like focusing on a few surface elements that they have in common and overlooking wildly different tones (though they all have a nightmarish quality to them).
In a truly dumb move, I downloaded Blue Velvet to watch on the flight back from my honeymoon. I didn't have a clear idea of what to expect, but I'd seen enough Lynch by then to know better. No idea what I was thinking.
Kind of you to say, though it'd be awfully niche-y. I think that Keith and I are both so heavily influenced by the reference books that got us into movies that we like to do features like these that remind us of them. I don't know if there's a market for books like that anymore, but they made an impact.
"By the standards of those symphonic mysteries, Blue Velvet is a familiar verse-chorus-verse pop song ..." So true and what other filmmaker could produce such a singularly strange, disturbing film but it have it considered one of their most accessible?
I've only seen Blue Velvet once. It was so long ago...it was the first "artsy" film I ever saw. It was also the first film I ever saw that I did not understand -- but further, it was the first film I saw that did not seem to mind not being understood, if that makes sense. Or even further than that, the movie WANTED to not be understood, but rather felt. Hopper was scary, but I remember feeling most scared of Rossellini, because she was the one who was with Frank, you know? Somehow that was even worse.
I'm trying to remember when I saw it...maybe 1991 or 2. I bet it was on HBO and I must've taped it on VHS and watched it later. Anyway, any time I see a movie and I don't quite get it, I think back to Blue Velvet, and you know, I like that it's this inscrutable totem in my life, which is why I probably haven't seen it since the first time. And maybe I never will again, though reading this passionate exchange between Keith and Scott, I just may change my mind. Halloween has come and gone, but I can still go for a little fright...
My Instagram bio is "Waiting for the robins to come", has been since I got to see this in a theater...I think in 2021. I'm at six of ten Lynch films in a theater, I'll hopefully be seeing Dune on Monday to bring that to seven. Weird to me that Eraserhead and Elephant Man, two of his higher profile projects, are proving so elusive, but there's probably some distribution hangup I'm not aware.
Should have got yourself to London https://princecharlescinema.com/PrinceCharlesCinema.dll/Booking?Booking=TSelectItems.waSelectItemsPrompt.TcsWebMenuItem_0.TcsWebTab_0.TcsPerformance_28335743.TcsSection_18488524
Great discussion. I touched on the ways Lynch exposes Jeffrey (and, by extension, Kyle MacLachlan) a few years back: https://crookedmarquee.com/scene-of-an-anatomy-kyle-maclachlan-in-blue-velvet/
This is probably not a unique observation, but after re-watching this last year for the first time since college, I found it interesting to see just how much of an archetypal benchmark Hopper’s performance has become (without losing any of its intensity or ability to shock). Would we have the likes of Heath Ledger’s Joker or Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigurh without Frank?
“Laura Dern, who he’d cast again four years later in Wild At Heart and many years after that in Inland Empire”
Don’t forget Twin Peaks: The Return, as one of his most famous creations. Turns out Agent Cooper was recording messages for Laura Dern back in the early 90s! As if to make up for all the withholding in Blue Velvet, MacLachlan gave her every last scrap of information.
Shout out to the Neon! That was my art house movie theatre growing up!
An absolutely formative place for me. I saw my first foreign film there (JEAN DE FLORETTE) when it was still The Dayton Movies and its calendars suggested a strange, rich movie world beyond the world I knew, even if I couldn't watch most of it yet. I picked up an old calendar from eBay and had it framed last year. Hard to believe that Dayton once had a place where you could go see a collection of Warner Bros. cartoons, BETTY BLUE, PERSONAL SERVICES, L'ANNEE MEDUSES, and THE HIDDEN FORTRESS on the same day. And that was just a random Tuesday.
The last time I revisited this, I was kinda shocked by how much it does follow a straight line narratively, at least in comparison to most of Lynch's other stuff, while still absolutely delivering much of the same vibe. I think he's only sort of interested in straight narrative (many, many anecdotes of him essentially discarding parts of Mark Frost's writing for something more abstract that he dreamed up) but he sure knows how to get the feeling of a narrative, regardless of how explicit or not it happens to be. How many plot points in this movie are delivered in ways that feel incidental? It adds a lot to the ominousness of it.
There aren't a ton of movies that are this confident in choosing what to share, what to imply and what to leave blank for you to think about.
I think this was why I was a little disappointed in it when i saw it in high school. It felt like it took place in the "real" world rather than the one of Eraserhead or even Twin Peaks. Now i feel like I actually know what surrealism is.
The first time I saw it, I was absolutely sure some sort of supernatural thing was going on though I couldn't have told you what exactly. Took a couple viewings to fully see it as a (very) fractured noir thing.
Gotta talk up the Stockwell / Hopper / Nance / Dourif scene.
First and foremost, knowing what I know now about these actors, the last time I saw this it felt a bit more like "this is probably just what happening upon a party with these Hollywood lifer weirdos was like" and somehow, even thinking that, it doesn't change the impact at all.
I have a pal who maintains that Lynch is a deeply misogynistic filmmaker and I've spent a lot of time thinking about that - certainly, the guy has spent a lot of time on women suffering.
I don't think he is, exactly, though I sure do think he has blind spots. (For instance, I'm quite sure he really does have some sort of 'women are from venus, men are from mars' POV somewhere in there.) There aren't many filmmakers from his era who work up such deeply humanistic female roles that allow for nuance like him, that's for sure.
Curious about what some of y'all think on this one because I can really talk my way into many different POVs.
I wouldn’t put him quite in the category of deeply misogynistic, but kind of in the category of misguided provocateur specifically when it comes to showing female suffering (I guess it’s sort of a blind spot then?). A lot of his work hinges more on evoking audience emotion rather than making narrative sense, so one could defend the really sexually unpleasant things he puts his characters through as perhaps another instance of this, if I’m being very lenient. I personally think a lot of it is extraneous and his worst artistic instinct (in Blue Velvet, sure, but FWWM and TW: The Return lean uncomfortably far into portrayals of woman suffering as well), and feel like they’re included purely to show how awful his already unpleasant antagonists are.
Most totally off Ebert review, BLUE VELVET or TASTE OF CHERRY?
I'd call it a draw.
Is Option C his review of Die Hard?
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/die-hard-1988
RAISING ARIZONA is up there, too. https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/raising-arizona-1987
Regarding Ebert's distaste for BV, my armchair analyst take is that the writer of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls did not like having his nose rubbed in the darker implications of filmic horniness.
Seeing this in the theater was revelatory for me, compared to seeing it on 2014 era Netflix. For one: the drones in the hallway made me realize it *is*, in fact, nightmarish because it's just so unsettling. But then there's touches like the cut that makes everyone disappear from that apartment ("In Dreams!"), Laura Dern's introduction, etc. It's like the subconscious has come crawling out. That being said, I do wish Dorothy felt like a character in the way that Sandy does. She is a bit too infantilized and fragmentary, almost like a symbol or some spirit that has invaded Jeffrey's life. I'm so excited to see Mulholland Dr again in a couple weeks, Lynch is probably my favorite director.
it's not novel to say this at all, but it's completely true that Stockwell in Blue Velvet is one of my favorite characters ever. I keep saying I'm going to go as him for halloween one year, but here's another one where I didn't....
I remember being 16 in 1986 and brazening my way in to Blue Velvet with a couple of high school friends. We all enjoyed it but it was also deeply weird in ways we weren't sure were on purpose, and most of the movie's power was a little bit over our heads. But it was sure fucking quotable.
It was nice to rewatch it a few years ago and find out that it more than holds up to all the bits that got absorbed into pop culture — "Heineken? Fuck that shit! Pabst! Blue! Ribbon!" and Frank Booth's "What's That Smell?" on SNL, for example. There's still a dark power to it that remains stubbornly wild, even as "Lynchian" has become one-word shorthand and Lynch himself has made (IMHO) some better works. Still a great, great movie.
Cracks me up a little that this gets lumped together with Something Wild and After Hours, which feels very much like focusing on a few surface elements that they have in common and overlooking wildly different tones (though they all have a nightmarish quality to them).
In a truly dumb move, I downloaded Blue Velvet to watch on the flight back from my honeymoon. I didn't have a clear idea of what to expect, but I'd seen enough Lynch by then to know better. No idea what I was thinking.
And yes, I had an aisle seat.
When you guys finish this series, it needs to be a book.
Kind of you to say, though it'd be awfully niche-y. I think that Keith and I are both so heavily influenced by the reference books that got us into movies that we like to do features like these that remind us of them. I don't know if there's a market for books like that anymore, but they made an impact.
"By the standards of those symphonic mysteries, Blue Velvet is a familiar verse-chorus-verse pop song ..." So true and what other filmmaker could produce such a singularly strange, disturbing film but it have it considered one of their most accessible?
I've only seen Blue Velvet once. It was so long ago...it was the first "artsy" film I ever saw. It was also the first film I ever saw that I did not understand -- but further, it was the first film I saw that did not seem to mind not being understood, if that makes sense. Or even further than that, the movie WANTED to not be understood, but rather felt. Hopper was scary, but I remember feeling most scared of Rossellini, because she was the one who was with Frank, you know? Somehow that was even worse.
I'm trying to remember when I saw it...maybe 1991 or 2. I bet it was on HBO and I must've taped it on VHS and watched it later. Anyway, any time I see a movie and I don't quite get it, I think back to Blue Velvet, and you know, I like that it's this inscrutable totem in my life, which is why I probably haven't seen it since the first time. And maybe I never will again, though reading this passionate exchange between Keith and Scott, I just may change my mind. Halloween has come and gone, but I can still go for a little fright...