My Salon at Marienbad

Despite growing up in the often less-than-progressive Queen cities of Cincinnati and Charlotte, I became fascinated with surrealism at a very young age thanks in large part to my grandfather Big Bill's collection of Serriers. Parisian surrealist painter Jean-Pierre Serrier (1934-1989) never became a household name alongside contemporaries (and strong influences) like Dali and Magritte, but his work has always had a firm grip on my imagination.

"Now go out and do my bidding!" I would think.

Big Bill not only collected Serriers, but commissioned the artist to create corporate art for his apparel company Velva Sheen. My impressionable mind (then and now) was extremely impressed that my Dad and Grandfather worked for a company represented on canvas by a horde of levitating men in bowler hats with vacant black eyesockets.

Serrier led me to a lifelong love of Magritte and, I suppose, explains to some extent the explosive reaction I had in college the first time I saw director Alain Resnais and screenwriter Alain Robbe-Grillet's 1961 masterpiece LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD. Long story short, I saw in MARIENBAD all my beloved cold, fascinating, inward-looking surrealist images sprung to life.

Well, sort of. "Frozen in death" may (or may not) be more accurate than "sprung to life" from my point of view, but you can (hopefully) see what I'm trying to say.

Only the shadows know

Because my VHS copy of the film is now collecting spiderwebs with the rest of my remaining tapes, I hadn't thought of the film in a while until yesterday's New York Times article "Marienbad Returns, Unsettling as Ever" written by Mark Harris. The article not only sheds some light on Marienbad's controversial, contentious and surprisingly successful initial run in New York, but also made a personal connection that was so obvious that I never once considered it.

But the movie’s nightmarishly looping, repetitive semi-narrative, drenched in incantatory voice-over and toxically discordant organ music, is as disturbing as ever and retains its power to frustrate anybody who hopes to shake loose some answers after 93 minutes. The people who walked out (literally) of “Inland Empire,” David Lynch’s “Marienbad”-influenced 2006 film, saying “What was that all about?” will find similar though more elegantly concise cause for discomfort here.

The nonlinear, schizophrenic dream-logic elements in Lynch's work (particularly TWIN PEAKS, LOST HIGHWAY, MULHOLLAND DRIVE and INLAND EMPIRE) that I find so wonderfully unsettling are a direct descendant of MARIENBAD's haunted, unsolvable psychotropic puzzle.

This flyer for a 2001 deejay gig of mine "borrowed" from Mr. Magritte

As virtually anyone who stayed up late with me at one of my 1990s bachelor pads will attest, one of my favorite audio-visual background combinations was whatever beat- and loop-driven electronic music I was into and a muted MARIENBAD playing on the set.

How I wished I could spend some time wandering the grounds and playing the matchstick game at Marienbad.

Good times...

POSTSCRIPT: In surfing around and sampling the plethora of online discussions of MARIENBAD (yes, work was slow today), I came across one from author Thomas Beltzer that was particularly excellent here. This pullquote speaks to me suh-in' fierce:

In the dark of the theater all of our wishes are fulfilled. However, despite our materiality and the ephemeral flickering of illusion before us, there in the dark we feel ourselves to be mere ghosts, lesser beings in the presence of screen grandeur. We know we matter less as real brings than the fictional beings before us.

Two is the Magic Number

David Lynch won't leave me alone.

I won't leave David Lynch alone.

I have David Lynch's fax number.
I don't have a fax machine.

David Lynch is my favorite director, but I rarely watch his films more than two or three times.
I have listened to the soundtrack to TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME more than any other album, by far.

It's no secret that Lynch explores the theme of duality in most, if not all, of his work. Three of his last four features have dealt with duality explicitly, and its no coincidence that his most famous creation is TWIN PEAKS.

A devoted father... who nonetheless made ERASERHEAD the most unsettling ode to fatherhood in history.

An interesting counterpoint (or, more accurately, accent) to Lynch's apparent fascination with both sides of the coin is that he named his production company Asymmetrical, which, to me, says that he doesn't feel that the two sides in most conflicts are necessarily standing on equal footing.

I've had Lynch on the brain for some time now... pretty much ever since the release nearly a year ago of his last feature INLAND EMPIRE. The other day I forwarded reflections of my second viewing of IE and an interesting psychiatric interpretation of IE to a fellow writer and film lover, and this was his response:

Also, I've been having a great time reading about IE, but the more i
read, the less i think i want to see it. It sounds almost painful.

I simultaneously hear what he's saying 100%, and also am saddened by it. It's not that IE is necessarily "good for you" and therefore should be watched, or even that I necessarily love it the most and want to evangelize it from the rooftops.

It's simply that I was affected by it, and for some reason, want to share that.

I loved his willingness to stump for Laura Dern's IE Oscar chances in untraditional fashion.

I wonder what it means that I am so taken in by tales of madness, murder, paranoia and dissociative personalities. I'd like to believe that it's a sane person recognizing the realities and shades of insanity, but who the hell knows. I DO know that I am plagued by many of the same dualistic fears and insecurities that the characters in Lynch's movies face.

I am a success.
I am a disappointment.

Inherently, I am a good person.
Inherently, I am capable of evil.

I am worldly.
I am naïve.

I am in control of my destiny.
My destiny is in control of me.

I "get" David Lynch's movies.
I "don't get" David Lynch's movies.

etc. etc.

All I know, is that the dark and confusing hallways of Lynch's films also exist inside of me, and that is a good thing, and a bad thing.

Why is it that THESE people still resonate with me where other fictional characters are long forgotten?

A footnote, if you will. Piggybacking on the DVD release of TWIN PEAKS: The Definitive Gold Box Edition is the CD release of TWIN PEAKS: All New Season Two Music. This is truly fantastic news for diehard fans (like myself) of the show's soundtrack music as created by Lynch, composer/musician Angelo Badalamenti, and vocalist Julee Cruise. IMHO, the music from TWIN PEAKS is the most evocative, transporting, emotional, moody, tactile music ever created. Adding something new to the canon of two that has existed with no change for 15 years is extraordinary.

I found a user review on Amazon.com that summarized my excitement for this new release in a way I (or I) couldn't say better myself...

By L. R. Grubb "empathy addict" (Philadelphia, PA USA):

A decade and a half after Twin Peaks ended, six long years since I finished watching the show, and here we are. This is music that I have quite simply been yearning for for years. There is something about Twin Peaks that has created a condensed kind of nostalgia for series itself, the time in my life during which I watched it, and the people I watched it with, as well as something more, an unplaceable, deep and vivid longing for something that does not quite exist. Twin Peaks: Season Two Music has landed softly into my current life, not unlike a telegram from my six-years-ago self, and even with such magnificent tracks like Shelly, Audrey's Prayer, Harold's Theme, Josie and Truman, Hook Rug Dance, and Half Heart, I'm left with the sense of an intangible absence, one I suspect will never be filled after living ever so briefly in the staggeringly multidimensional world of Twin Peaks.

(an old Lynch post I made to another blog)

"Through the darkness of futures past.
 The magician longs to see.
 One chants out between two worlds.
 Fire Walk With Me."


Psychogenic Fugue.
 Asymmetrical.
 The Angriest Dog In The World.
 Transcedental Meditation.
 Furniture. 
 "It's Strange Calling Yourself." 
 Electricity. 
 The Excitement of Fear. 
 Fire. 
 The Numbness of Denial. 
 Submerging Consciousness, Waking Subconscious.
 "My Dog Barks, Some."



"Let's Rock."

Naked Lynch
January 17, 2007


Why does Lynch still do it for me after all these years? Why does it feel like every other director I grew up loving and rooting for just as fervently (esp. Cronenberg, Lucas, Scorcese, Spielberg, and Ridley Scott) has long ago traded in their ability to take creative risks for increasingly narcissistic retreads of glories past?

 To each his own, of course. I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who much prefer GANGS OF NEW YORK and GANGS OF BOSTON (I mean, THE DEPARTED) to TAXI DRIVER and RAGING BULL, but I'm not one of them. A lot depends on a viewer's age at the time of first viewing when playing the favorites game... I grew up trying to convince people that Roger Moore was better than Sean Connery, so I know from which I speak. 

I remain impressed that as I grow older, and my viewing relationship with Lynch's film and TV work is now over 25 years old, I still feel in sync with the guy. In a recent interview flogging his newest book Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity, Lynch said:

"To be a grown-up and to do what you want to do is the most beautiful thing"



That is such an uncool thing to say, and yet it resonates in me like a banshee's howl. He's living his dream, and although my dream is far removed from his in many ways (I just can't get it up for yogic flying) his relentless pursuit of somehow EXTERNALLY communicating what's INSIDE of him butters my muffin.

 Because he not only does it as a director, he also composes music and lyrics (with longtime collaborator and frequent conductor of my own dream/nightmare soundtrack Angelo Badalamenti), builds his own furniture, paints, writes, makes coffee, and so on.



ah to be zen and angry.

I love it that he refuses to record director's commentary for DVD's of his films. I hate it when people he's invited into his world turn their backs on him, but karmic payback is often swift (see Lara Flynn Boyle's career after her refusal to appear in
TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME and Balthazar Getty's career after refusing to take his role in LOST HIGHWAY seriously.)

 I still remember how angry I got reading David Foster Wallace's article "David Lynch Keeps His Head" from A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again:

"the single most annoying thing about Balthazar Getty was (that) when Lynch wasn't around Getty would make fun of him and do an unkind imitation of his distinctive speaking voice that... was clearly intended to be disrespectful and mean."

Can you imagine getting your big break as an actor and then OPENLY MAKING FUN OF DAVID LYNCH ON THE SET WHEN A REPORTER WAS AROUND?

 What an asshole.

 Plenty of ink has been spilled on Lynch's behalf and I'm pretty sure "Lynchian" has made it into the vocabulary of most film fans. What inspires me is how hard Lynch has to work this late in his career to get his vision to the screen time and time again.

 MULHOLLAND DRIVE is arguably the best movie he's ever made, was on every critic's top ten list, garnered Lynch his third Oscar Nomination for Best Director, and made Naomi Watts a star overnight. And, it lost money.


INLAND EMPIRE, which Lynch shot over the course of two years by calling in a lot of favors and shooting on video, is the first film in his career that Lynch is distributing himself. Because, apparently, nobody else knows how to. Maybe Lynch doesn't even know what to do with himself (as far as I can tell, the film has barely grossed over $100,000 in over a month of release).

 It's weird, I know that most of you won't like INLAND EMPIRE that much. I'm still not sure how much i quote-unquote LIKED it myself, but I do know that I felt about as ALIVE as a person can feel while sitting motionless in a dark room for three hours.

 You may feel something you're not used to too. Enjoy a filmmaker who's (as Laura Dern's Nikki says in EMPIRE) "reaping what he's sowing."



"Fucker been sowing some pretty heavy shit."