Adam: If I didn’t know that Lynch went to Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, his framing and overall aesthetic would certainly have suggested an art school background. That’s a great observation and another thing that makes his work stand out. As for Frank and his lackeys, they remind me of Lee Marvin and his gang in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. I feel as bad for poor Jeffrey as I do for Jimmy Stewart when he’s being tormented.

Chuck: I’ve never seen Mulholland Dr. all the way through. I’ve also never heard a satisfactory explanation from anyone when I’ve asked them what it was about, so that, plus your appraisal makes me very curious to check it out now. Thanks!

Marilyn: You and Chuck have me very interested in giving Mulholland Dr. a look. Both of you guys have cinematic pedigrees that put mine to shame. Thank you for commenting!

Pat: I think you may have touched on what upset some critics at the time. This was the middle of the Reagan Years after all, and here was Lynch sort of mocking the wholesome Main Street values Reagan championed. I can’t recall a time when I didn’t love Blue Velvet though. I always appreciate your acerbic yet insightful commentary. Thanks!

Tim: I believe you illustrated why the Rex Reeds of the ’80s were so upset by this movie, but I’ve always found Lynch’s take on Americana funny, as opposed to mean or spiteful in any way. Like you, I cannot imagine Helen Mirren playing Dorothy Vallens. She was such a siren in her youth – playing Morgan Le Fay in Excalibur – but Rossellini has more vulnerability.

Jeremy: It’s possible we all go through our David Lynch phase, like The Doors phase in high school or the Ayn Rand phase freshman year of college. It sounds like you’ve moved on. As always, thanks for sharing your insights and eclectic taste in film with my readers.

Robert: You cite some excellent source material there. I hadn’t read the David Foster Wallaee article. I wonder if he would still be alive if he’d watched more Disney films and less David Lynch. Anyway, thank your your comments and continued support here. It means a lot.

Christian: Maybe if Lynch didn’t have to go through life like Brian DePalma – continually questioned about ripping off Hitchcock – that would be a good thing. Lynch almost defies a knee jerk reaction, even all these years later. Thanks for commenting!

Amanda: Every comment you leave here contains at least two words I love. “Bastard surrealist” has my nomination this time. You should write more and I do not mean commenting here, even though I enjoy reading your erudite thoughts.

Billy: That’s probably the most best approbation of my writing ability that’s come from anyone outside my family recently. Thanks! I would love for these articles to fill in what a lot of film school texts and reviews in the mainstream media don’t, so I’m glad you’re gleaming something radical here.

Patrick: If the feedback here is indicative of anything, I should write about more David Lynch in the future and will start with Mulholland Drive. What more can we say about a movie that so many people seem to love, but for completely differente reasons? Thanks so much for participating in the discussion!

Aaron: Apparently, someone close to Roy Orbison advised him to see Blue Velvet a second time after his not-so good first impression, and he understood better what Lynch was going for. The music was so vital to evoking mystery and wonder in this movie that I really should credit “music editor” Mark Adler. Superlative job on the sound, as you echo. Thanks for lending your expertise.

It’s been a while since I watched this film, although I’ll never be able to forget Hopper as Booth. Lynch also delivers another twisted villian in Bobby Peru, played by Dafoe, in Wild At Heart. Lynch walks Peru, just like Booth, along that fine line of genuine/surreal/over the top that shakes the viewer to the core. To put the feeling into words… “This is really happening? This is really happening!”

Oddly enough I also never have seen Mulholland Dr all the way through, even thought I’ve had the DVD for 3 or 4 years. After falling asleep to it two nights in a row I gave up on it. Maybe now might be a good time to try again as something tells me I can expect a review on it in the near future.

And now that I’ve seen more Hitchcock, yes, Lynch is definitely his progeny. In a bastard surrealist kind of way.

If you’re interested, here’s my interview with him from 2001. He has the greatest voice in the world:

http://www.lynchnet.com/mdrive/hgcs.html

A pleasure to read your review as always. One detail that opened up Blue Velvet for me (I think it was mentioned either in the DVD extras or in some interview with Hopper) was that Lynch’s script originally had Frank sniffing helium and not nitrous oxide. Helium has no psycho-physiological effects but makes the voice high pitched. Hopper thought at the time that nitrous would be a better choice since it’s often used for sex, but on later reflection realized that Lynch was right. Helium would’ve simply been sicker!

Your comparison to Hitchcock is spot on, as usual. It might also be fair to compare Lynch to Fellini in terms of the surety of his filmmaking. Inland Empire was a good film (like some of your other readers, I find Mulholland Dr. to be his best work, both for its structural complexity and its emotional depth — its empathy — the latter of which I don’t think Blue Velvet or Inland Empire achieves), but for all of its problems (for me, his handling of the DV medium was a major one) it follows its own course and makes you accept it on its own terms like Fellini’s best work (or like Antonioni’s Red Desert to take another example). The Straight Story is a great film too for the same reason. Why it hasn’t found as much favor with hard-core Lynch fans is a bit of a mystery.

Have you read David Foster Wallace’s essay on David Lynch in A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again? And the short film of Lynch making quinoa on the Inland Empire DVD is not to be missed if you have a chance to see it.

Keep up the great work!

As far as being the director’s high water mark among his “normal” movies, I don’t think Blue Velvet is quite as good as the pilot episode of Twin Peaks (a series that, as has been noted, covers the same ground as BV, but in a serial TV way that somehow strikes me as infinitely more subversive), but I’d stack it up against Mulholland Dr. any day, as much as I love that film. MD is a lovely head trip, and a fine experiment in genre, but BV is more audacious: it takes all sorts of safe and comfortable tropes like Capra’s small towns, Fifties pop music, boy detectives, and robins as a sign of rebirth, and proceeds to pervert every one of them, and it does this without seeming even slightly exploitative.

Now I have to go lie down and imagine the film with Mirren instead of Rosselini – my head refuses to get around that concept.