There’s a new short from David Lynch dropping on Netflix… right… about… now.
It is, to put it politely, absurd. When it was shown to me, my reaction was basically to laugh until I doubled over. It delights me that it exists. It could only have come from David Lynch, not least because it actually stars David Lynch. Twice. Sort of.
I love him. My long-time creative partner Rebecca Swan used to tell me often that David Lynch was my favorite filmmaker whether I realized it or not. I get why she would say that. There were at least two times I saw films of his and violently hated them on first viewing, only to end up watching them over and over. Wild At Heart infuriated me before it delighted me, and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me was exactly the same. Beyond liking or disliking his films, though, my admiration for Lynch as a filmmaker stems largely from the way he has approached his craft fearlessly and with little regard for “what sells.” There are very few filmmakers who are able to work in an almost entirely personal mode, and while it means we have less Lynch work than we might otherwise, what we have is so deeply, completely his that it feels special.
When I watch David Lynch’s work, all sorts of things rattle around inside me. His films and his television shows all leave space for the viewer to have a very personal experience as they watch whatever it is he’s made. He won’t even give interviews that pin down any specifics of his work because he is so reluctant to tell you what to feel or how to react to something. When you watch something that is designed to be big and commercial, that film tells you how you’re supposed to feel and what you’re supposed to think, and it’s engineered to play the same to a suburban kid in Kansas and a 60-year-old woman in mainland China. When Martin Scorsese talks about movies as theme park rides, he’s not wrong. That’s what they’re designed to be in many cases now. That’s a specific skill, and it is what the studios want from their filmmakers now. That’s just the world we live in. Within those theme park rides, there is craft and artistry and plenty to discuss. But it’s clear that there’s a difference between something designed to deliver the same experience to everyone and something that is designed to give you room for your own experience, and that difference… that’s what is exciting about film to me.
There’s also another consideration that comes to mind when I consider David Lynch’s work, though, and I wrote about it in my review of Inland Empire years ago:
When or if you see this film, you’ll notice my name shows up in the closing credits under the “Special Thanks To” section. A few years ago, when I was still living in my apartment in Hollywood, I got a call from a friend of mine named Jeremy Alter. Jeremy’s one of those guys who seems to have worked every possible gig in this business, and even though he’s had some remarkable experiences, I’ve never detected a hint of ego in all the time I’ve known him. He’s just a hard-working family guy who seems to know everybody.
When he called initially, he said he was scouting locations for something and he wanted to drop by and take some pictures of my apartment. He didn’t say why, but he called me again a few hours after he came by and told me that he wanted to bring a crew by the following evening. Sure enough, the next night he showed up. With David Lynch and Laura Dern. They told me that they’d be shooting something for Lynch’s website, a short film. I was shocked to see that all they had with them was DV equipment.
One of my favorite things about Lynch has traditionally been the lush cinematography of his films. Altogether, Lynch had about four people with him, along with Dern and a young Polish actress who seemed to speak very little English. My roommate, Henchman Mongo, had just moved out, and Mrs. Moriarty and I were in the process of changing everything in the apartment, so one of the bedrooms was empty. That allowed Lynch to set it up any way he wanted. He had the Polish actress lay on the floor of the room, smoking, while Dern sat with her back against the wall. Altogether, they probably took two hours to work a scene, and at the end of it, Lynch carried his own equipment back out to the car. Jeremy told me that he had no idea if the footage would be used in anything, or if it would just be an experiment in the format for Lynch, but either way, they thanked me.
A few weeks later, signed DVD copies of The Short Films Of David Lynch and Eraserhead showed up at my door as a thank you. If that strange momentary intersection with the director means that you no longer trust my opinion of the film that, several years later, features all of about fifteen seconds from the footage shot that night, then I understand.
There were many times during my work as Moriarty or at HitFix where I wrote about the work of people who I have met, worked with, been in the homes of. I have lived in Los Angeles as an adult since 1990. It would be next to impossible for me to write about something at this point without having some personal frame of reference for it.
Right now, there are two films that I’m writing about for my Friday snapshot this week, and in both cases, I have enough personal experience with the people behind the films that it might be considered “conflict of interest” to talk about them, but I think there’s a conversation to be had about what that is. One of the things that creates a distance between critics and audiences right now is this strange mistrust that’s developed. At least once a week, some random person will get angry at me, while clearly mad at something else entirely, and they’ll accuse me of being a shill or paid or some variation on that theme.
It used to bother me. It used to make me crazy when people accused critics as a mass group of being corrupt and for sale and untrustworthy. My writing has always been, for better and for worse, deeply personal and even when I was writing as Moriarty, there was something incredibly revealing about writing about film. If you write honestly about art over time, you will reveal who you are. It’s inevitable. I was in my 20s when I started publishing, and I have grown up in front of you. I’ve gone from a single guy to a divorced dad, and I’ve gone through some pretty major professional upheavals. Through it all, the only thing that I can say has been consistent is that I have tried to frame everything through an honest filter.
There are times, though, when I have been careful, and I think there is no greater professional pitfall for a film critic. The truth is that access journalism requires you to be careful, and those half-truths, those delicate framings of uncomfortable information, are the places where you define what you are doing and who you are writing for. If you’re worried about whether or not you’re going to be invited to something else, you are already done. And I did plenty of it. I told myself that I wrote the hard reviews, so I clearly was still able to freely voice my opinion. One of the reasons you see critics go so violently rough on a film like Cats or Doctor Dolittle is because there’s a cultural pile-on. They’ve been saving it up for an easier target, even if they don’t realize they’re doing it. How can the studio punish anyone for anything they’re written about Cats? Any critic who got kicked off the invite list for being mean about that movie would be able to point at 50 other reviews or articles that were twice as mean and that were unpunished in any way, and they’d be right. It’s easy to kick the shit out of a disaster.
But the studios absolutely can and do exercise their wrath on the people that are writing about these big-ticket films, and the wrong misstep on the wrong film can get you quietly killed. It’s not about the big disasters. It’s about the movies where they need you to show up and play along, the mediocre disappointments that get the collective pass from the critical community. The studios don’t have to say a word to you when they’re disappointed. They can just leave you off the list, and the people who work in this ecosystem are invested in being able to be at these events. It’s important to get those photos of yourself at the Disney rides ten days before the public can attend. It’s important to be at the premiere of the last Star Wars film. It’s important to be on the set of Avengers Endgame. It’s the validation that proves that you are important. You are at the center of the cultural universe. These are the biggest things that are happening, and you’re there first, so you are important as well. I get it. It’s a logical trap.
Losing that access can feel like you’re losing your relevance. That’s backward, though. These things gain their cultural currency from the sheer volume of people who write about them, and we’re giving these companies their dominance of the conversation. We give them the relevance, but we are treating it like it’s a favor they’re doing for us. We’re handing it over to them in exchange for access to the toys. They don’t have to specifically pay anyone off to own the way discourse is framed. Instead, they simply rigged the entire system and made it politically inopportune to step too far out of line.
This is where critics should question their part in the process of selling other people’s work. Individual reviews carry little weight on a mass level, but the accumulation of generally positive reviews is a marketing tool. Embargo dates are all about marketing plans, and every single time you write a review that is timed so that some critics can publish and others can’t, you are participating in a carefully coordinated marketing plan.
When I write about the films I’m choosing to write about, you can decide for yourself if it’s a conflict of interest. This week, for example, I’ll tell you that I’ve known the director of the new film Come To Daddy, Ant Timpson, for 20 years now, and that I’ve known the film’s star, Elijah Wood, for most of that same 20 years. I’ve broken bread with them. I’ve attended at least a dozen film festivals that they’ve attended, and spent social time with them at those things. I would describe my relationship with both of them as friendly. Elijah is also a producer on Color out of Space, which was directed by Richard Stanley, who I got to know at Fantasia one year, and who I think the world of. I’m planning to write about Little America, the streaming show produced in part by Kumail Nanjiani and Emily Gordon, who I’ve known for at least five or six years and who I think are terrific people, regardless of what they are or aren’t making.
This year, there are dozens of movies and TV shows coming from people I know. In many cases, I’ve known them for longer than my kids have been alive. And when I write about these things, I’ll be very upfront with you about how those relationships inform the way I view this work. To me, that doesn’t seem like a conflict of interest at all. Instead, it’s about providing you with the most informed perspective I possibly can, and by telling you why I have that perspective, I’m allowing you to judge what that’s worth to you. I think the real conflict of interest is the constant push and pull that most outlets are forced to navigate in order to publish on what they see as a competitive timetable. The more reliant you are on the studios to give you access to do your job early, the more control they ultimately have over the conversation. Your real job in publishing should be focused on the value you’re giving to your readers, and allowing the studios to dictate terms puts you in a position where you can’t put the readers first. You may think you’re serving them by getting them early pictures or a trailer debut, but again… all you’re doing is marketing to them with those “exclusives.” It’s fleeting, and it’s not substantial, and it just makes you a middle man in a drug deal.
I’d much rather present you with work that is informed by my perspective from working in this industry and from personal relationships and conversations than with work that is designed to amplify the message that a studio is selling, but that’s not going to be easy. I am going to be shifting to a paid subscription model once we’ve got this newsletter up and running. I will keep certain elements of it free and open to anyone, but for the more candid and deeply detailed work, I’m going to be asking you guys for a very nominal fee.
I don’t want to ever depend on advertising. I don’t ever want to depend on SEO trickery and exclusive marketing materials. I want to depend on you guys, just as I’m going to ask you to depend on me. I will definitely bring a personal perspective to all of this, colored deeply by the personal relationships I have, and I make no apology for it. If you consider that a conflict of interest, what you’re really saying is that you’d rather someone exist in a vacuum, and no one does. A critic is not a person who lives without any connections to the things they write about; far from it. A critic is a person who digests a piece of work and writes about it in a way that explains and illuminates the work’s strengths or weaknesses or appeal. It’s such a specific thing, and that word, like “reporter,” gets applied to many, many people these days who are doing something totally different, something that is much more akin to being a spokesman.
Before I do make that move to a paid subscription model, I will be making it very clear to you what you can expect on a daily or weekly basis from the newsletter. Right now, we’re still just setting up some of the ongoing formats, and we haven’t had a chance to settle into a regular rhythm. We’re also still discussing last year’s films, so it’s tricky.
I’ve got some stuff for you this week, including the Friday Snapshot, which will be one of the key regular features, and then next week will be all about getting it in order and showing you what this is going to feel like on an ongoing basis. Just know this… I’m not going to be racing everyone to make the earliest possible date on everything, and I’m not going to fall back into the trap of thinking that being early somehow makes what I say more important or more urgent. And I’ll do my very best to be honest about why I think what I think and what experience I bring to these things I’m writing about, and you can decide for yourself if that is conflict or context.
In the meantime, David Lynch is yelling at a monkey on Netflix. You’ve got things to do, and so do I.
Image courtesy of Netflix