Tag Archives: movies

David Lynch – Room to Dream

My mistake, I suppose, was expecting a conventional book tour interview.

This was David Lynch after all, the guy who’s given us the Lady in the Radiator, Frank Booth, and those miniature demonic grandparents who slip under apartment doors.

The setting was perfect. It’s hard to beat the cavernous decadence of The Theatre at Ace Hotel, originally built in 1927, the “former flagship movie house of United Artists.”

But then the lights went down and the evening started with all 8 episodes of Dumbland, Lynch’s crudely drawn and animated web series about a brutish mouth-breather (literally), his traumatized wife, and their hyperactive son in the suburbs. This is David Lynch’s suburbs, however, so a neighbor is a man with a removable arm who has sex with ducks, ants do a song-and-dance number calling attention to the main character being a “dumbturd,” and another character has the stick caught in his mouth removed by way of his eye sockets. It’s funny in a punishing way. To me, the series is more a testament to Lynch’s genius with sound design, which he employs to great unsettling effect.

Still, my heart sank a little because these events don’t usually run very long and the “Dumbland” screening ate up over half an hour. I was not encouraged, then, when Kristine McKenna, moderator and co-author of Lynch’s new hybrid memoir-biography, said she wasn’t going to ask him anything about the book. Instead, she had a few questions about “Summer,” as in the season, the first day of which is when this talk took place.

Okay, all right, I could go with this. Lynch is too interesting a person not to have something intriguing to share. He doesn’t like summer vacations. His ideal day is waking up refreshed, having a cup of coffee, doing some meditation, and then getting to work on a project, which can mean a painting, a film, or just daydreaming. He compared phones to sugar, meaning they’re as hard to give up as a “bag of really good cookies.”

That portion lasted about 10 minutes and then it was time for audience questions, which were submitted prior to the start of the program. Most of them concerned Twin Peaks, with one question prompting him to tell the story of how the pivotal character of Bob was inspired by set dresser/actor Frank Silva being in the “wrong” place at the right time. Another got him to reveal that he’d written and abandoned a film adaptation of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. An inquiry into his recurring dreams had him describing one where he’s in the desert watching his approaching father become distorted by the waves of heat coming off the sand, and not knowing whether this was his “good” father or his “bad” father. Later in the dream he’s hiding at the very top of a marble structure listening to the footsteps below, presumably one of the fathers looking for him. The best question was “How do you keep your hair up?” Smiling slyly, Lynch replied, “I have a heart-to-heart talk with it every morning.”

Good stuff, I thought, but then it was all over, six audience questions answered in 20 minutes. And the long, long, long line for the book signing still awaited……which I admit I abandoned.

Sure, I was disappointed. Not so disappointed I was going to cut off someone’s ear so Kyle Maclachlan could find it in a field later. No.

But look, I love Lynch’s movies and how his mind works. He’s a master of mood, of atmosphere, of residing very comfortably in that often discomfiting zone between dreaming and waking life. I do find him inspiring and an influence on my writing. I just wanted more time with the guy.

Hey, at least I have the book, Room to Dream, which I must say is pretty impressive in its depth and breadth. We’re cautioned that answers to the puzzles that are Lynch’s art do not reside here, but that’s fine, I’m not looking for answers. I just find him, the work, and his creative process fascinating and stimulating. If books are where I have to go to access that as well as the perspectives of his family members and creative collaborators, there are worse places to look. I mean, imagine being inside Kenneth McMillan’s Baron Harkonnen fat suit.

3 Surefire Writing Exercises To Keep Me Sharp This Summer

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Photo by Ellin Beltz

Ah, Summer!

Three months of siren song luring us to laze at the beach, the ballpark, the multiplex. When our brains crave the pinch of an inch in their midsections before the first chill of Fall begins to freeze off the intellect’s fat.

Alas, we writers…

If we’re going to look ourselves in the mirror at the end of each day with only self-loathing and not also unsightly spritzing tears, we must not succumb to these sunny pleasures so insalubrious to our work ethic.

It is true that writing can be such a lonely endeavor, and gosh this time of year is rich with the potential for shared experience.

No…must…resist….

Which is why I’ve created some new writing exercises! Not only to maintain my skills this summer, but also to bring me that much closer to my community without having to leave my desk.

To paraphrase George R.R. Martin, it’s not enough anymore for writers to rely on the stifling inner pressure of their own neuroses; it’s the onslaught of the outside world’s needs that will ultimately drag their projects over the finish line.

Everybody’s process is different, but I offer these up to you as well. Feel free to modify according to need, available resources, and current mental state.

3 Surefire Writing Exercises To Keep Me Sharp This Summer:

#1 Inciting Inspiration – Occasionally during the course of working I get stuck on a story issue, a plot point, or even just the rhythm of the sentences in a paragraph. It can be like walking into a brick wall, again and again and again. And again. Wouldn’t it be nice to go out and grab a frozen yogurt and then browse the antique cheese shops on Venice for a few hours?

Nice try, Summer, but you’re no match for the arrangement I’ve made with the friendly folks at Blooming Little Daisies Day Camp. I’ve got an hour to bridge my creative impasse or a busload of kids dangling over a sinkhole will know literally what the deep dark abyss of writer’s block feels like. Nothing greases the wheel of my imagination like blinking the stinging sweat out of my eyes to watch them plead with me via webcam. I mean, here’s hoping. Thanks kids, keep your heads covered and fingers crossed!

#2 Crafting Memorable Characters – Characters are the lifeblood of story, so if my protagonist or antagonist or a supporting player comes across lacking specificity, it weakens the whole body of the book, so to speak. Weakening one’s resolve to keep his hindquarters in his writing chair, to not stray when Baby Geniuses 3 beckons from the mall cinema.

Ha. Summer, you’re going to have to try a lot harder than that now that I’m collaborating with Peter Gruntergo and his doctors at This Dying Old Lady Memorial Hospital. I’ve got 45 minutes to spice up a dull character or Peter’s going to feel a little incomplete himself when he doesn’t get that new kidney. I can’t tell you what a lift it is when I’ve got medical staff and the Gruntergo family on Skype screaming me to victory.

Seriously, I can’t tell you yet. So at least I hope it’ll be a lift. We’ll see. Let’s maybe hold off awhile on ordering those balloons.

#3 Building Stamina for the Second Draft – It’s hard for me to read a first draft without agonizing over those areas that in the moment felt so magical now ringing false and flat. How do I gut up and build the stamina to tackle a rewrite? It’s a period where I feel most vulnerable as a writer, and perhaps most susceptible to the sweet-nothings of ocean air and a Nora Roberts novel, and burying strangers up to their necks in beach sand.

Wow. You almost got me, Summer. Almost. But you’ll need an extra biscuit for breakfast if you think you’re going to overpower my teaming up with an unquenchable passion, indefatigable imagination, and ironclad discipline. And my good friends at Callus Realty who’ve generously provided a closed-up home with two hundred baby rabbits trapped inside and a pernicious gas leak set to go off if I can’t finish by September 30. They are pretty cute animals, even on this grainy CCTV monitor, it would be a shame to see them…well, golly, I better stop writing this and get to it!

Happy Summer Everyone!

90s Movies Fetish

What If? – Hollywood Directors And Their Fussy Stars

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Norma Desmond – Sunset Boulevard

An article in last Sunday’s LA Times Calendar Section detailed the tumultuous production of Paul Schrader and Bret Easton Ellis’s new psychosexual neo-noir film “The Canyons.” Starring the ever reliable Lindsay Lohan, I was amused/disturbed to read that in order to coax his shy starlet to go through with a nude scene, Mr. Schrader himself bared all on the set.

Okay, then. I think plenty of actresses would appreciate the gesture, and you have to admire Schrader’s commitment to…the craft, yes, the CRAFT. Don’t you? Well it doesn’t matter if you don’t because Lohan eventually did, and the results are there for everyone to see (you know you want to) on VOD now and in selected cities this Friday.

Anyway, this story prompted me to wonder if other directors of other films of dubious merit this year experienced anything similar with their stars. So let’s play What If? – Hollywood Directors and Their Fussy Stars.

What if you’re director Dennis Dugan on the set of “Grownups 2” and David Spade is refusing to do the scene where he gets whacked in the groin seven times by a kid with a bucket over his head wielding a golf club. Do you:

a) Replace him with Rob Schneider but then surgically alter Schneider’s face to resemble Spade’s so as not to lose money on any pre-printed promotional material;

b) Replace him with Rob Schneider but only for the groin-whacking scenes, and then return Schneider to the secret island paradise he owns with Chris Kattan.

c) Wake up inside your trailer and laugh that it was all a dream because Spade has never balked at sacrificing his scrotum for a cheap laugh; or

d) Wake up on the set and realize it’s not just a dream because Paul Schrader’s next to you naked and pounding himself in the gonads to inspire confidence in your waffling actor.

What if you’re director Raja Gosnell on the set of “Smurfs 2” and Jayma Mays has taken craft services hostage because she’s fed up acting scenes with the tennis ball dangling from a string that will later be digitized as Handy/Grouchy/Vanity/Clumsy Smurf. Do you:

a) Shut down the whole smurfing production until the actual Handy/Grouchy/Vanity/Clumsy Smurfs can be smurfing located;

b) Wish Jayma and the old craft services well and replace them with Rob Schneider and his secret island paradise craft services team;

c) Enlist Neil Patrick Harris to distract cast and crew members with close-up magic while French special forces snipers end the standoff; or

d) Bring Paul Schrader on set to get naked and painted blue to read lines like he was George C. Scott’s character from “Hardcore.”

What if you’re director Gore Verbinski on the set of “The Lone Ranger” and Johnny Depp is refusing to play Tonto as an embarrassing Native American stereotype as written in the script and approved by your Disney overlords. Do you:

a) Remind him that this whole freaking disaster was his idea in the first place;

b) Show him the market research proving it was his lack of being an embarrassing Native American stereotype that led to the box office bombs “Dark Shadows,” “The Tourist,” and “Public Enemies”‘;

c) Rewrite the entire movie replacing Tonto with Jack Sparrow, because no one seems to be offended by an embarrassing pirate stereotype; or

d) Send Depp to one-on-one insensitivity training with Paul Schrader who’s wearing nothing but the crow headdress and the Washington Redskins mascot tattooed on his chest.

Thanks for playing, everybody. Let me know how you came down on these.

On Violence In My Stories

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“Ensnared” – Illustration by Scott Ritchie

The recent tragic events in Aurora, Colorado and both their apparent and alleged link to the most recent Batman films spurred me to reflect on the use of violence in my own writing, as well as what my responsibility is as the creator of such elements and images in my stories.

First and foremost, I believe in the First Amendment and that the duty of any artist is to avoid self-censorship and be unsparingly honest in his work, whatever the subject matter or medium. Personally, I do tend to explore the darker side of humanity in my writing, mostly expressed through psychological terror, or emotional violence, but also occasionally through the depiction of physical acts of violence. Should I be concerned that a reader or audience member after reading or viewing something I’ve written will personalize and pervert it, use my imagination as inspiration to commit a heinous act?

If I worry about that, I’m already censoring myself and the work suffers.

Nature vs. Nurture. Does violence in books, film, art, video games, etc. turn seemingly normal, everyday people into sociopaths or psychopaths? I say no. Perhaps I’m more concerned that its ubiquity in our popular culture is having the opposite effect: desensitizing us to the point where we simply shrug our shoulders after reading about tragic and senseless death that occurs in the real world.

I have a choice. I have free will. I can write about anything I choose, so why do I choose to depict violence in my stories at all? What about it attracts me? Well, in the spirit of free speech there is, admittedly, and I know I’m not alone here, a small part of me motivated by an exhibitionist impulse to shock or elicit an emotional reaction from people via my somewhat twisted imagination.

And I am intrigued by the dark pocket I believe exists in each of us, the contents of which we’re secretly (and not so secretly) titillated by: the things that frighten us or seem most prurient to our more surface, public sensibilities. But it’s quite healthy, necessary even, to dip into this pocket and bring the darkness up into consciousness through creative expression.

What has suppression ever done but create walking talking powder kegs?

To be clear, I’m not interested in putting purely exploitative material out into the world, the only purpose of which is to debase and disgust. No thank you. I want to be provocative, yes, but in the pursuit of something with a point of view, where substance and style can achieve equilibrium.

In regard to violence (again, both physical and emotional), I feel a need to examine the act and its perpetrators in an attempt to understand why we behave the way we do, why we hurt each other, and to shine a light on the damage and the cost inflicted. The nature vs. nurture debate when it comes to violence can be spun into so many various and fascinating narratives, and ultimately the end result I’m striving for is a confluence of the thoughtful, unflinching, entertaining, and often uncomfortably humorous.

Sometimes the results of my “investigations” are ambiguous because there aren’t any clear, obvious answers. And some of the best writing doesn’t provide answers, but rather inspires more questions. But that doesn’t mean I’m hiding behind fiction or afraid to assert an opinion. There are artists who are not compelled to explain or defend their work, but if so challenged I will stand behind anything I’ve created and enter into any reasonable debate about its merit, about its right to exist.

I’m curious to hear from other writers, readers, filmmakers, filmgoers, artists and consumers of art in general. What’s your opinion on violence in the arts, the impact it has on our society, and the responsibility of the artist?