INLAND EMPIRE

Started by MacGuffin, May 11, 2005, 04:50:02 PM

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mogwai

so david, how about a audio commentary this time?

dl: bullshit. that's how i feel about it. total fucking bullshit.

last days of gerry the elephant

Quote from: MacGuffin on April 24, 2007, 01:07:51 AM
INLAND EMPIRE US DVD Release in August
Source: Dugpa

I've been told that the INLAND EMPIRE DVD will be out in the US in August. Expect an official announcement in the next few weeks.

Wow, Toronto is not late at all.
I will be attending the opening show & watching Inland Empire for the first time this Friday, and owning it three months later?

SiliasRuby


From Dugpa.com, The David Lynch Resource....
Inland Empire DVD Announced

Okay, back to the real news after last month's April Fool's joke. This is no joke, Inland Empire has an official dvd release date in region 1: August 14, 2007. The suggested retail price is $29.95. Extras include:
LYNCH 2 (BEHIND THE SCENES OF INLAND EMPIRE WITH DAVID LYNCH)
TALKS WITH LAURA DERN AND DAVID LYNCH MORE THINGS THAT HAPPENED (ADDITIONAL CHARACTER EXPERIENCES)
THEATRICAL TRAILERS (3)
STILLS GALLERY (73 PHOTOS)
DAVID LYNCH COOKS QUINOA


So happy.
The Beatles know Jesus Christ has returned to Earth and is in Los Angeles.

When you are getting fucked by the big corporations remember to use a condom.

There was a FISH in the perkalater!!!

My Collection

Pubrick

Quote from: SiliasRuby on May 05, 2007, 12:35:39 PM
DAVID LYNCH COOKS QUINOA

this could be the key to understanding the film.
under the paving stones.

MacGuffin

"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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MacGuffin

INLAND EMPIRE DVD to Include 90 Minutes of Deleted Scenes

According to an article up at Davisdvd.com, David Lynch's upcoming two-disc DVD of INLAND EMPIRE will include a feature called "More Things That Happened (Additional Character Experiences)" which includes 90 minutes of deleted footage that will be edited together into a mini-feature.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

The Red Vine

This is going to be a wonderful DVD package. However, I saw the film at IFC Center a few months ago and was not the least bit astounded by it. Perhaps like most of Lynch's films, it deserves a second viewing.

Lynch has served his surreal sensibilities well with a film like "Mulholland Drive", but here he's gone a step too far. It's his most ambiguous feature since "Eraserhead" and his most tedious yet. Perhaps this would not have been the case if he had at least one element of his story that was concrete for his poor audience. Or maybe a shorter running time. Lynch is usually never interested in telling a straight forward story, but he is successful with intriguing atmosphere. Not so much here. Instead we have a film where odd, surreal occurrences happen again and again until it's 3 hour running time is complete. What do these ideas add up to? I would've been comfortable not knowing, but instead I just didn't care.

As I've mentioned, another viewing is probably in order. But I can't imagine the film being any more entertaining.
"No, really. Just do it. You have some kind of weird reasons that are okay.">

MacGuffin

DVD Press Release:

DAVID LYNCH EXPANDS HIS INLAND EMPIRE
The Celebrated Director Adds a Host of Extras for the DVD Debut of His Acclaimed Film Including an Amazing 75 Minutes of Additional Scenes, Plus Interviews, Behind-The-Scenes Footage and Much More

Available August 14th from Rhino Entertainment

LOS ANGELES -- David Lynch's acclaimed film INLAND EMPIRE will make its DVD debut this summer with Rhino Entertainment. Overseen personally by Lynch, the DVD will feature the director's mind-bending cinematic journey generously embellished with a number of extras including a massive collection of additional scenes entitled "More Things That Happened." Other bonus materials include a making-of featurette, interviews with Lynch and the film's star Laura Dern, a photo gallery and theatrical trailers, plus footage of Lynch at home cooking quinoa -- an edible seed similar in texture to couscous.

Filming entirely in digital video allowed Lynch to explore many different pieces of the puzzle that make up the rich tapestry of INLAND EMPIRE. Lynch had a wealth of additional scenes that were integral to his original vision of the film. For the INLAND EMPIRE DVD Lynch dove further into the story to include scenes that enrich the original mystery. "I'm very happy with the DVD because it continues the story of INLAND EMPIRE and people can discover 'More Things That Happen'" says the director about the special bonus features on the DVD.

Starring Dern, Jeremy Irons and Justin Theroux along with Harry Dean Stanton, Diane Ladd and special appearances by Grace Zabriskie, William H. Macy and Julia Ormond, Lynch describes INLAND EMPIRE with characteristic understatement as "A woman in trouble."

A surreal visual voyage, INLAND EMPIRE was shot in both Los Angeles and Poland. It features some of Poland's biggest film stars and took more than two years to complete. Lynch worked from a script that he developed during shooting which makes the behind-the-scene moments especially illuminating.

Since its premiere last September at the Venice Film Festival in Italy, the film has provoked intense reactions. Manohla Dargis of The New York Times describes INLAND EMPIRE as "fitfully brilliant, a plunge down the rabbit hole of the director's imagination and a spellbinding companion to his masterpiece, Mulholland Drive." Peter Travers of Rolling Stone lauds the film as "a puzzle whose pieces you'll keep trying to put together in your head long after you leave the theater." and Nathan Lee of The Village Voice praises Dern in the "Performance of the Year."
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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MacGuffin



Tender is the psycho
David Lynch made his name with dark characters and twisted plots. But underneath it all lies the search for light, writes Simon Hattenstone.
Source: The Age

A SYNOPSIS: DAVID Lynch's new film, Inland Empire, is about an actress playing an actress playing an actress. I think. Another synopsis: David Lynch's new film, Inland Empire, is about non sequitur-spouting human rabbits starring in a sitcom that could have been scripted by Samuel Beckett. And another: David Lynch's new film, Inland Empire, is set in Poland, features a Polish cast and tells the story of a love triangle that goes tragically wrong. And a final one: David Lynch's new film, Inland Empire, is about a weeping woman watching a terrifying movie.

These are just a few of the plot strands in the film. If you make it through the three hours, you'll leave the cinema with your senses beaten to mush. Lynch has always been a byword for weird; this is double weird with cream on top. In an age of multiplexes and movies by numbers, thank the lord of art-house loopiness for Lynch.

From the birth of the mutant baby in 1977's Eraserhead, through the grotesqueries of The Elephant Man and the oxygen-sipping psycho in Blue Velvet, to the twisted noir of Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive, Lynch has defined his own landscape. These are worlds of surface sunshine, innocence, sweet '50s songs, naive lovers and American dreams, while underneath bubbles a cauldron of depravity, deformity, ghoulish sounds and severed ears.

Lynch is the opposite of another exceptional American filmmaker, Robert Altman. Whereas Altman starts with multiple, incoherent strands and pulls them together, Lynch starts with a conventional story and allows it to implode. Inland Empire is his most experimental film yet - we are never sure what is real, fictional or dreamed, nor in what order events happen. He has become the William Burroughs of cinema, taking apart plots and characters, and randomly glueing them back together.

I've always wanted to meet Lynch. I suppose I wanted to know what kind of sicko could dream up such a circus of psychopaths, sadists, dwarves, rape victims and not-long-for-this-world naifs. He is sitting in a suite at Claridge's hotel in London, looking immaculate. His white shirt is creaseless and buttoned to the top, his grey quiff rising proud as the prow of a ship. He has never enjoyed talking about his movies. He doesn't like to be pinned down to specific meanings and is a master of the polite, evasive answer. His line has always been that a film means different things to different viewers.

He would rather we look at his movies as we would a painting or jazz - there is no right or wrong answer. He's happier talking about his myriad hobbies - painting (he started out as an artist), photography, coffee (he is a heavy user and has his own line), kitchen phobias, uteruses, nudes, the weather, smoking and, most of all, transcendental meditation.

Outside, the ground is thick with snow. Lynch loves it. He is very interested in weather. Recently, he started to make a daily weather broadcast for the Los Angeles radio station, Indie 103.1. He has already sent over his report for the day. What did he say? "I just tell them where I am. I did it from the train station this morning. I give them the date - and then I tell them what it is like for me right now. Like today I would say that it has been snowing and it is now overcast and grey. And I'd say there's a slight breeze."

He points out of the window. "See the way the steam is moving, so there's a good steady breeze. Then I would say the temperature in Fahrenheit and Celsius. I have to do some research. Today I got the temperature from the driver who had the temperature in Celsius, but I also got it from the hotel, and that jived with what the driver said." He tells me how much he loves the light - how everything good in life is connected to light, and within seconds he has segued into transcendental meditation.

Lynch has meditated for 30 years. He says it transformed his life, saved him from himself. "You naturally, effortlessly, beautifully dive within, and each deeper level has more happiness - the mind wants to transcend meaning, to go beyond into the unbounded ocean of pure consciousness ..." As he talks, his hands flutter up and down like a fledgling trying to fly. "You grooow in consciousness, you grooow in bliss, you groooow in intelligence, you groooow in dynamic peace, and the side-effect of this is: negativity starts to recede."

Lynch says he was a happy boy, moving from state to state as his father's job dictated. Donald Lynch was a research scientist with the US forestry commission, and his work took the family from Montana to Idaho, Washington, Durham, North Carolina, back to Idaho and finally to Virginia. Lynch jnr has described his childhood as idyllic - full of elegant, old houses, tree-lined streets, the milkman, droning aeroplanes, blue skies, picket fences, green grass, cherry trees.

"Middle America the way it was supposed to be." He had been a good, popular boy, a peacemaker, an Eagle scout. But it was a dull life. There was an absence he couldn't quite place.

By the time Lynch was a young man, he felt a gnawing discontent. On the surface, everything was just dandy. He studied at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, he married young, had a child, was making short films, but inside he was in pieces.

"I had anxieties, fears, so much inner turmoil, anger - about my situation in life, and not being able to control it." In his rage, did he do the whole Wild At Heart Nick Cage thing? "Yes, for sure. You know how we act when we get that way, you take it out on those people who are closest to you, and make their life hell."

He began to meditate out of desperation rather than conviction. "In two weeks the anger started lifting." But it wasn't enough to save his marriage.

In his early 30s, he got married again, to Mary Fisk, and had a son, Austin. He then lived with Blue Velvet star Isabella Rossellini for five years. After a 16-year relationship with his producer-editor, Mary Sweeney, with whom he has a 15-year-old son, Riley, they married in 2006. In typical Lynch style, they separated almost immediately.

When Lynch began meditating, he was terrified he would lose his fire. "I thought that maybe it will make me so calm, so peaceful, that I won't want to do work. It's the opposite. You've got this energy. It's so much more exciting. Intuition flows."

As a young man, he was convinced one had to suffer to portray suffering. That's what all the art students believed then, he says, his lips creasing into a Jimmy Stewart smile.

"But you don't have to die to do a death scene. You just have to understand it in your own way. It's like the law of diminishing returns - the more you suffer, the less you can do. Real suffering is something we don't want. You could say it's very romantic, and it came to me that poor, melancholy artists, slightly depressed - it's just to get chicks, and it works so well."

Was he once that melancholy artist? "For sure. The girls love that. They bring food over and drinks, and hold you tight." David Lynch's Guide To Pulling, huh? He likes that idea. "It works like a charm. But it is a joke for creativity. If you were really that way, you couldn't work."

Lynch is not at all like his gallery of freaks and monsters. But he's not so different from the true innocents - think of Kyle MacLachlan in Blue Velvet or Laura Dern in Wild At Heart - who witness the horror. Perhaps it's easiest to understand what goes on in Lynch's head when he talks about the two artists he finds most inspirational, Edward Hopper and Francis Bacon. Hopper's hazy, suburban dreamscapes and Bacon's screaming, eviscerated popes couldn't be more polarised.

An even greater inspiration is the city of Philadelphia, where he lived as a young man. "It was like seeing a five-year-long film." What was in the film? "A certain type of architecture, interiors, insanity in that city, fear in that city, hate in that city, turmoil in that city."

Lynch recites it like a mantra. And this had been absent from his childhood? "Yeah. The intensity of Philadelphia was something. I think it's different now, but I still think it's pretty bad. On top of that, it's called the City of Brotherly Love."

LYNCH IS OFTEN embraced as an ironist. He can appear to be laughing at the all-American innocents and celebrating the tawdry and amoral. But I'm beginning to realise that isn't the case. Lynch despises irony and cruelty, and loves those wide-eyed idealists who believe in love and purity.

At a screening of the new movie at the National Film Theatre, a beautiful scene is played from Blue Velvet in which Laura Dern's Sandy describes her vision of love. "I had a dream. In the dream there was our world and the world was dark because there weren't any robins, and the robins represented love. And for the longest time there was just this darkness and all of a sudden thousands of robins were set free and they flew down and brought this blinding light of love. And it seemed that love was the only thing that would make any difference."

The critic Mark Kermode, interviewing Lynch on stage, says what he loves about this scene is that it is so sincerely felt, despite the fact that so many in the audience laugh and regard it as ironic goofball.

Lynch nods, and brilliantly deconstructs the kind of audience who admire him for what he considers to be the wrong reasons. "A shared experience in the theatre is very different from seeing a film on your own, and in a theatre we all have this thing where we want to be very cool, and when you see something like this, kind of really embarrassing, the tendency is to laugh, because you are saying out loud that you realise this is embarrassing and not cool and you're hip to the scene, so this kind of thing happens. And then we also know, when we are alone with this person we're falling in love with, we do say goofy things, but we don't have a problem with it; it's so beautiful. And the other person is forgiving for these beautiful, loving, goofy things. There's a truth to the scene."

Of all his characters, Lynch is perhaps closest to the straight-talking Alvin Straight (The Straight Story), yet so many strange stories circulate about him. Is it true that he has a bottled uterus on his desk? He shakes his head vigorously. "I don't have a uterus on my desk."

What about not on his desk? He nods. "Yes, I have a bottle with a uterus in it. It was never on my desk, it's somewhere in the house. That belonged to Raffaella de Laurentiis, Dino's daughter. She had it removed. I didn't ask her for it. She thought I might appreciate it, and she had the doctor package it and send it for me." And did he appreciate it?

"Very much. It's an organic object - we see so many things in the world, but sometimes we see something that was sort of hidden and it strikes us, and ideas can come from that."

OK, then, story No. 2 - did he dissect a cat for artistic purposes? "For sure. Now here is the deal. Is this a sickness? Nooooah! In school, many classes will dissect a frog or salamander, maybe a fish. How many chefs are working with fish? It was important for me for many reasons to check out some real organic material. I called the vet. He asked me some questions to ascertain whether I was a nutcake. He determined that I was serious, but said at the present time he had no cat for me. Five minutes later, a cat had just come in, and he called me." Did he turn it into art? "No, it was just a learning experience."

My favourite story is that he won't allow food to be cooked in the house. True or false? "OK, now look at this," he says. "You have a lot of works on paper, say, in a house. Why in the world would you go into that house and spray grease on to those works of paper, unless it was an idea that came to you to deteriorate that work in some way? And this is what cooking can do. Also, wherever you can smell that cooking, it must be landing on the walls and y'know what I mean. So it is unfortunate that kitchens are in a house. To my mind, they should be a side building, easily hosed out, cleaned, and the odours and all the stuff that go with it away from the workspace."

So there is no kitchen in his house in LA? He shakes his head, with phlegmatic resignation. "I've let it go ... I've moved most of the work away from the kitchen. There is a kitchen in the house and it has been used for any number of meals."

Is it true that it caused a problem with Isabella Rossellini? He bursts out laughing. "Hohohohohahahaha! I don't think so. I think that's a myth." The full myth is that Rossellini left him because of his kitchen intolerance, though in her autobiography she says he left her and that she was heartbroken.

In the '90s Lynch had plenty of people happy to invest in his movies, but not any more. It has taken him five years to make Inland Empire on digital video cameras, his greatest struggle since Eraserhead. He could not push for an Oscar nomination for Laura Dern in the traditional manner, by placing an advert in the trade magazine Variety, so he went on the road with a cow and a placard saying, "If it wasn't for cheese, there would be no Inland Empire." He says it worked a treat, and within minutes there were news crews on the scene. Dern still did not get a nomination.

Does he find it depressing that it's so hard to get backing for his films now? No, he says, of course not - what else could he expect with such a film? "Inland Empire is three hours long, and people have trouble understanding it, so it's the kiss of death for a distributor."

He's enjoyed the struggle, though, loves working with video, loves taking the finished product on the road. "The thing was so beautiful because we go out to different cities and get a feel for how things are going, and the feel I got from the US was that there's a huge, huge bunch who are just longing for an alternative to what's coming out of Hollywood. That's a very uplifting feeling."

Lynch says it's all about finding the light, the positives. It's always there, and any of us can embrace it if we make a concerted effort - even his most infamous psychopath, Frank Booth, in Blue Velvet.

"There is some very tender thing to Frank," Lynch says, "but there's so much torment and suffering and tension in the guy. Now if this same person could transcend and experience this deeper level, a lid would come off, the darkness would start going. And then Frank would be maybe not as interesting as in the film - but Frank himself would be a much, much happier cowboy."
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

MacGuffin

"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

ponceludon

There MUST be a catch. This is too easy. (For people living in LA, that is.)

Ah hah. First come first serve. All of LA is signed up for this, I'm sure.

SiliasRuby

Quote from: Lucid on July 26, 2007, 06:27:52 PM
If Silias is the only one who goes to this, meets Lynch and shares a cup of coffee with him, then the rest of L.A.-Xixax will end up kicking themselves.
I've already talked to lynch and chatted with him a couple of times. Haven't had the coffee yet, but looking forward to it.

I'm going too MacGuffin. See you there. Let me know which person you are. Or not.....
The Beatles know Jesus Christ has returned to Earth and is in Los Angeles.

When you are getting fucked by the big corporations remember to use a condom.

There was a FISH in the perkalater!!!

My Collection

w/o horse

Tentative plans to go.  I have reservations but I don't know if I'll get back from work in time for a decent place in line.  If I don't, however, I do live on Veteran, like a five minute walk from the Billy Wilder theater, so if you want to have coffee with Lynch and then me let me know.  Because I talk about movies with a friendly smile.
Raven haired Linda and her school mate Linnea are studying after school, when their desires take over and they kiss and strip off their clothes. They take turns fingering and licking one another's trimmed pussies on the desks, then fuck each other to intense orgasms with colorful vibrators.

SiliasRuby

Quote from: Losing the Horse: on July 28, 2007, 05:19:59 PM
Tentative plans to go.  I have reservations but I don't know if I'll get back from work in time for a decent place in line.  If I don't, however, I do live on Veteran, like a five minute walk from the Billy Wilder theater, so if you want to have coffee with Lynch and then me let me know.  Because I talk about movies with a friendly smile.
Great, so many people talk about them with a frown
The Beatles know Jesus Christ has returned to Earth and is in Los Angeles.

When you are getting fucked by the big corporations remember to use a condom.

There was a FISH in the perkalater!!!

My Collection

w/o horse

In LA, and everywhere else I'm sure, there's a certain type of person you just wouldn't want to talk to about film unless you wanted snobbery and deliberate disagreement.  You know.
Raven haired Linda and her school mate Linnea are studying after school, when their desires take over and they kiss and strip off their clothes. They take turns fingering and licking one another's trimmed pussies on the desks, then fuck each other to intense orgasms with colorful vibrators.