An interview with Crispin Glover who’s touring Florida now and more in the Miami Herald
June 26, 2015
On the surface, the filmmaker Crispin Hellion Glover (a.k.a. Crispin Glover the actor of Back to the Future and Charlie’s Angels) might seem obsessed with freaks. But after receiving his 5,000-word-plus answer to a few questions I sent him via email, it is apparent that his seeming obsession is … a little more. Referring to his two films in his in-progress “It” trilogy, What Is It? (2005) and It is fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE (2007), Glover wrote, “I would say the films do not break rules, but it is true that many people are used to a certain amount of standards of cinematic syntax that are offered by most corporately-funded and distributed films. They are also used to a certain kind of fare offered by corporately-funded and distributed cinema that does not go beyond the realm of this, which can be considered good and evil or, in another word, taboo.”
He sounds like a fellow totally up the Independent Ethos’ alley.
It’s extremely rare that I’m not granted a preview of a film before talking to a filmmaker. Actually, this is a first. it seems Glover is very controlling over his films. First of all, his movies are only available on 35mm, and Glover is always present when they are presented, plus, I am told, he does not grant press comp tickets. So I had to really on a press kit to get some idea of what these films are about. For his second film in the trilogy, the film’s synopsis goes thusly…
It Is Fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE goes into uncharted cinematic territory with screenwriter Steven C. Stewart starring in this semi-autobiographical, psycho-sexual, tale about a man with severe cerebral palsy and a fetish for girls with long hair. Part horror film, part exploitation picture and part documentary of a man who cannot express his sexuality in the way he desires, (due to his physical condition), this fantastical and often humorous tale is told completely from Stewart’s actual point of view — that of someone who has lived for years watching people do things he will never be able to do. Here, Stewart’s character is something of a lady killer, seducing a troubled, recently divorced mother (Margit Carstensen), her teenage daughter and any number of other ladies he encounters along the way.
“Ever since I read the screenplay in 1987 I knew I had to produce the film,” said Glover about what attracted him to Stewart’s story.
Stewart also plays a role in Glover’s directorial feature debut, What Is It? That film’s synopsis is described as:
Known for creating many memorable, incredibly quirky characters onscreen as an actor, Glover’s first effort as a director will not disappoint fans of his offbeat sensibilities and eccentric taste. Featuring a cast largely comprised of actors with Down’s Syndrome, the film is not about Down’s Syndrome. Glover describes it as “Being the adventures of a young man whose principal interests are snails, salt, a pipe and how to get home as tormented by an hubristic racist inner psyche.”
Glover writes about these movies with passion. However, some think they are performance pieces that should be looked at as suspect (here’s one not entirely positive reaction to his first film). I agree that it should be taken with a grain of salt, but the effort isn’t entirely vacuous. I later learned his 5,000 word response to my email questions was not exactly exclusive, as he pulls from a document he has written over the years to answer common questions. However, that document is a mere 1600 words, according to this article from Flavorwire, so I think I got some quality answers from the filmmaker who swears he does not do this to undermine journalists but help them out with the arduous transcribing process (and ask any of us, transcribing sucks). This article from San Diego City Beat clarifies Glover’s intentions.
That said, I’ve decided to share the entirety of Glover’s responses, unedited in the rest of this post. He is in South Florida this Sunday and Monday at Fort Lauderdale’s Cinema Paradiso to screen the movie’s as well as host “Crispin the Cinema. First off, for a short version of this article, check out the Miami Herald, which published my original article based on the interview (jump through the image below):
And here, the moment you have been waiting to pour through, Crispin Hellion Glover. Besides getting into detail about his two films and his “big slideshow,” he touches on David Lynch, the flicker of 35mm and his father, actor Bruce Glover, who will star in his as yet untitled next film:
a big reason why I continue to tour with the films in a group situation. Group situations can illustrate very clearly by means of laughter what is taboo. This sort of unsettled audience reaction happens quite a lot in both films. This is something that I was quite aware would happen when making both the films and the fact that is happens is a satisfying experience for me as a filmmaker. This is true even if I know some elements are bound to be misunderstood by some, I also know many we have a visceral educational illustration of a portion of how propaganda has direct affect on human moral conditioning. Taboo is the grey area that is not clearly defined by the moral codes within the culture and it makes for fascinating group discomfort when properly applied, which then can be interpreted in an educational fashion.
art and left some of the words on one of the pages. I did this again a few pages later and then when I turned the pages I noticed that a story started to naturally form and so I continued with this. When I was finished with the book I was pleased with the results and kept making more of them. I made most of the books in the 80’s and very early 90’s. Some of the books utilize text from the binding it was taken from and some of them are basically completely original text. Sometimes I would find images that I was inspired to create stories for or sometimes it was the binding or sometimes it was portions of the texts that were interesting. Altogether, I made about twenty of them. When I was editing my first feature film “What is it?” There was a reminiscent quality to the way I worked with the books because as I was expanding the film in to a feature from what was originally going to be a short, I was taking film material that I had shot for a different purpose originally and re-purposed it for a different idea and I was writing and shooting and ultimately editing at the same time. Somehow I was comfortable with this because of similar experiences with making my books.
subsequent night I will perform the second slide show and Part 2 of the “IT” trilogy. The second slide show has been developed over the last several years and the content has changed as it has been developed, but I am very happy with the content of the second slide show now.
What do you hope the audience takes away from it?
written it as a standard autobiography. As I have stated, I put Steven C. Stewart in to What is it? When I turned What is it? in to a feature film. Originally What is it? Was going to be a short film to promote the concept to corporate film funding entities that working with a cast wherein most characters are played by actors with Down’s Syndrome. Steve had written his screenplay in in the late 1970’s. I read it in 1987 and as soon as I had read it I knew I had to produce the film. Steven C. Stewart died within a month after we finished shooting the film. Cerebral palsy is not generative but Steve was 62 when we shot the film. One of Steve’s lungs had collapsed because he had started choking on his own saliva and he got pneumonia. I specifically started funding my own films with the money I make from the films I act in when Steven C. Stewart’s lung collapsed in the year 2000 this was around the same time that the first Charlie’s Angels film was coming to me. I realized with the money I made from that film I could put straight in to the Steven C. Stewart film. That is exactly what happened. I finished acting in Charlie’s Angels and then went to Salt Lake City where Steven C. Stewart lived. I met with Steve and David Brothers with whom I co-directed the film. I went back to LA and acted in an lower budget film for about five weeks and David Brothers started building the sets. Then I went straight back to Salt Lake and we completed shooting the film within about six months in three separate smaller productions. Then Steve died within a month after we finished shooting. I am relieved to have gotten this film finally completed because ever since I read the screenplay in 1987 I knew I had to produce the film. Steven C. Stewart’s own true story was fascinating and then the beautiful story and the naïve including his fascination of women with long hair and the graphic violence and sexuality and the revealing truth of his psyche from the screenplay were all combined. There was a specific marriage proposal scene that was the scene I remember reading that made me say “I have to produce this film.”
This is my first film to have been shot with 35 mm negative. My first two features were shot with standard 16mm film then blown up for a 35 mm negative from a digital intermediate.
told my mother this was his real middle name. When they were married she saw him writing on the marriage certificate Bruce Herbert Glover and she thought “Who am I marrying?” They gave Hellion to me as my real middle name. I had always written and drawn as a child and I would always sign my drawing and writing with my whole name Crispin Hellion Glover. When I started acting professionally at 13 which was something I had decided on my own I could do as a profession at a relatively young age it became apparent that I had to choose a professional acting name for SAG. I thought my whole name was too long for acting and just used my first and last name. When I started publishing my books I simply continued using the name I had always used for writing and drawing. This is also why I use my whole name for my films.
Crsipin Glover will appear at the Cinema Paradiso in Fort Lauderdale over the course of two days with his two films, It is fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE (tickets) and What Is It?(tickets) on Sunday, June 28, and Monday, June 29. The films are preceded by Crispin Hellion Glover’s Big Slide Show, Parts 1 and 2 and followed by a Q&A session with the actor/director. He will also be present to sign copies of his books. For more info, visit’ Glover’s website: www.CrispinGlover.com. All images comes from his site and used by permission.
(Copyright 2015 by Hans Morgenstern. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.)
My interview with writer/filmmaker Alan Greenberg covers work with Werner Herzog and David Lynch
June 6, 2013
Photo by Ry Greenberg
This week has seen me caught up on a couple of preview interviews with two little-known but talented directors. The first fellow I spoke with was writer/filmmaker Alan Greenberg (the second was Terence Nance, whose interview I will share shortly). Greenberg’s documentary on the funeral of Bob Marley, the Land of Look Behind is a luscious and contemplative work steeped in atmosphere. The most resonant images are that of the foggy mountainous land harboring small huts of Rastafarians who smoke amazingly humongous joints and offer philosophical eulogies to Marley, not to mention the land from whence they all sprouted. Besides the meandering chatter of the Jamaicans, the film’s soundtrack is also coated by interludes of luscious, droning and percussive synth music by K. Leimer while the camera slowly pans over the landscape. In the end, the giant funeral for this man becomes a festival and celebration by people who thought of him with greater regard than their own president. This documentary will convince you Marley was the king of Jamaica.
Greenberg had worked with Werner Herzog on Heart of Glass in 1976 before shooting this documentary in 1982. You can see the influence. However, Greenberg notes, Herzog was also inspired by Greenberg’s work. I spoke with him ahead of his visit this weekend to Miami Beach where he will discuss his book about working with Herzog, Every Night the Trees Disappear, published by the Chicago Review Press in May of last year. 
Greenberg said he considers Herzog a best friend and they remain in touch. “There were times when Werner would call me and say, ‘Alan, I stole the opening of the Land of Look Behind from you in my Gesualdo film.’ And I would look at the Gesualdo film, and he completely blew it. He did not achieve the same effect, but then you look at Land of Silence and Darkness, and you realize that’s where my influence really came to fruition because suddenly Werner was making films, not only as he’d always made films and which influenced me but now you can see it was almost a wordless documentary. There was scant narration and it was all composed in almost a musical fashion, or an oratorical fashion, and that’s how I did Land of Look Behind. I didn’t do it as a documentary. I did it as a piece of art or a piece of music.”
Greenberg will also discuss Love In Vain, his script about the Mississippi Delta blues legend of the early 20th century, Robert Johnson. He recently revised the script for a new edition, which saw release only six months ago by University of Minnesota Press as a book.
But Greenberg wrote it more than 30 years ago, and it has seen prior printed editions, the first in 1983. Now he says David Lynch will direct it. He jumped the gun a bit to reveal that to me when we spoke via phone over the weekend, and Lynch was forced to release a statement that clarified, “I’m a 30 year fan of the screenplay Alan Greenberg wrote for Love In Vain. I would very much like to direct it someday. But, a number of things would have to fall in place before that would occur.”
It’s a striking notion that Lynch would direct such a film, but there’s some weirdness to Johnson, like his alleged pact with devil. Also, Lynch has been known to take true-life stories and treat them with sincere respect on the big screen, like the Elephant Man and the Straight Story. “Yeah, there are two David Lynches,” says Greenberg, “the David Lynch who did Elephant Man and the David Lynch who did Blue Velvet and Wild At Heart and Mulholland Dr. and all of those, but there’s also the David Lynch who did Elephant Man, the Straight Story, which won Oscars and was a very poignant, charming little film.”
You can read much more of my conversation with Greenberg, by jumping through the Cultist logo below, a blog run by “The Miami New Times:”
Alan Greenberg will appear at the Art Center South Florida via Books and Books Saturday, June 8, at 2:30 p.m. in Miami Beach to discuss his books and sign copies. Visit the event page for more details (that’s a hotlink).
‘Sleeping Beauty’ offers ominous exploration of the prostitution of the female form
December 13, 2011
The last film I can remember having left me feeling as puzzled and intrigued as Julia Leigh’s Sleeping Beauty was Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut. I would go on to see Eyes Wide Shut at least 10 times and write an in-depth seminar paper in grad school using the psycho-analytic theory of Jacques Lacan to illuminate the film’s message and finally gain an appreciation for it. I still have not grown tired of that film, which too many have simply brushed aside as Kubrick’s weakest. I’d call it a masterpiece.
But that’s another article, and though I would not consider Sleeping Beauty as existing on the same level as Eyes Wide Shut, I can understand why critics are so similarly divided on it as they were with Eyes Wide Shut when it came out. When Warner Bros. released Eyes Wide Shut in 1999, just before Kubrick’s death, the director had long achieved the status of one of the handful of true master filmmakers whose influence and regard was guaranteed to last throughout the history of cinema.
Sleeping Beauty, however, is Leigh’s first film, and though she proves her skill at handling mystery* in a story, which she also wrote, the film falls just short of the transcendentalism of Kubrick or another filmmaker well know for his mysterious quality, David Lynch. That said, Leigh still has much to offer in abstract, eerie atmosphere in this odd psycho-sexual tale of the darker corners of humanity, and, if she goes on to direct more films, I can see critics re-evaluating this movie more favorably in hindsight.
The film follows Lucy (Emily Browning) on a path into prostitution in order to makes ends meet. We first meet her in a laboratory as she volunteers to swallow a medical device on a long cable. She chokes it back centimeter by centimeter, fighting one gag reflex after another as a young man in a lab coat (Jamie Timony) assures her she is doing great.
It’s a twisted set up that brazenly foreshadows the clinical and sexual film that lies ahead. The film establishes that Lucy is studying at a university and cannot keep up with the rent while struggling at jobs in the copy room of an office and waiting tables at a cafe. She is probably taking part in a medical study for some extra cash too. Oh, and she also dabbles in sexual favors for money at a bar and abuses cocaine.
This is all quickly established in several, efficient, stagey scenes, with the camera mostly at a distance, fetishsizing props, like rows of stacked chairs on tables at the cafe during closing time and neat rows of tables in the lab, 
which has almost symmetrically equal equipment on each side of the screen. Lucy and the other characters stand mostly fully framed in the shots with distance between them, as they speak in curt sentences laden with shared history.
This odd pacing is always interesting, set among one dazzling staged backdrop after another. The surreal atmosphere grows more heightened when Lucy answers an ad for work as a “model.” Following a brief interview in a wood-paneled office with Clara (Rachael Blake) about Lucy’s sex and health, the woman that will be her madame orders her to strip. As a man (Eden Falk) examines her limbs, Clara assures her that in this job, “your vagina will not be penetrated. Your vagina is your temple.”
The distinctive, clinical but warm art direction, the film’s steady pacing, the slow and delicate zooms and pans of the camera and the mysterious dialogue between the characters are all elements Leigh seems to make her own and serve the ominous mood of the film well. A still image of the scene described above, indeed captures the meticulous quality of Leigh’s mise-en-scene:
From the actors in the foreground, their postures, faces, hairstyles, not to mention their dress, coupled with the dynamic contrasts of background, the image breathes forth an evocative quality typical of the movie. Throughout the film, as events grow more twisted, even the distant camera does not detract from the chilling action.
Leigh is a certain kind of storyteller, one who has immense faith in her audience, offering an almost abstract experience of story that invites viewers to bring their baggage to the proceedings. Before this movie, Leigh had already established herself as a novelist of high regard. Her debut novel, the Hunter (1999), did a heck of a job to put her on the literary map, bringing her praise and awards from across the world. The Australia-based writer only recently followed it up with the 2008 novella, Disquiet, a book I happened to have read over the course of a single weekend a couple of years ago. I can personally speak to an odd surreal quality and economic power to Leigh’s prose that is also on full display in this, her first movie.
If there are short comings in Sleeping Beauty, it comes when fleshed out characters fail to materialize, as those that populate the world of Sleeping Beauty seem to walk through it in a haze of mystery that overshadows any insight to their individual motivations. 
For some reason, Lucy chooses to burn her first hundred-dollar bill she earns. For someone set up as so desperate for money, the effort seems a costly over-symbolic move that contradicts her actions, including a moment when she pleads for more work from Clara. In conversation with Clara, one of the elderly men who sleeps with Lucy (Peter Carroll) gives a rambling monologue that does not seem to add much of anything to the film. The director seems more in tuned with the female characters than the men and would have done just as well to leave them alone as the tools they are in the machinations of the story.
These ambiguous scenes (and there can be more or less of them, depending on the viewer) can be a detriment for those searching for story, but I would posit something beyond story rises above these shortcomings. This is the stuff of female nightmares. Imagine taking a potion that puts you to sleep with no memory or even dreams, laying down naked in a bed, where you know men have paid to be in your presence to do anything they want so long as they do not leave a mark or penetrate you. 
That is the job Lucy has signed up for, and what happens in the various scenes with three different men varies, but all send shivers down the spine. In the interest of the power of imagination, I shall spare the details, for there is nothing like the shock of the unfolding proceedings as Lucy submits her nude body to the whims of these old, damaged men, one of the angriest of whom admits to Clara the only thing that can get him an erection nowadays anyway is if a woman used her fingers to penetrate him.
Browning deserves a special award for acting while limp. She never flinches while her character suffers extreme abuse by these men. No doubt as there are some who will be left disturbed, others might feel turned on. However, the innocuousness of the set design and the calm movements of the camera, be they slow zooms, pans or tilts— are all patient, gradual and pregnant with audience implication (or director’s) gaze. Any sexuality is couched in voyeurism. There are no thrusts when Lucy works, and, as Clara tells all the men who “sleep” with her girl, “no penetration.” This is not a film that celebrates or exploits the female body. It repels just as much as it titillates, recalling a similar statement film by another great surrealist director: David Cronenberg, the aptly titled A History of Violence.
Though the elusive quality of the film does seem to get in the way of an unshakably definitive statement, Leigh offers a strong reach that recalls Lynch without coming across as a blatant copier. The amount of Lynch imitators (not that she is one directly or consciously) often steer their train way off the tracks and brew up embarrassing stupidities of films (I guess many of which I have thankfully forgotten). 
The calm and control of Sleeping Beauty save it from becoming another one of those movies.
This elusive line where transcendence occurs in a film is difficult to define without close examination of a filmmaker’s technique. Kubrick, Lynch and Cronenberg are all master craftsmen with an almost superhuman insight into the human psyche, and rare is the film in their oeuvre that does not deliver. As for Sleeping Beauty, the moments of shock that arrive hit at a gut level, tapping deep into the unconscious, the source of nightmares. Though Leigh does not really hit the subtle note for true primal chills and a grand end statement, she comes close. But even without a powerful, final moment of transcendence (and the film tries for one), the techniques in story, pace, art direction, camera work and characterization shows Leigh has all the right moves. Sleeping Beauty maintains an ominous sense of abstract but riveting mystery reeking of sexuality that will keep the adventurous viewer hooked.
Sleeping Beauty is rated R, runs 101 min., and opens in South Florida Friday, Dec. 16, at 9 p.m. at the Miami Beach Cinematheque, which invited me to a preview screening for the purposes of this review, and the Cosford Cinema at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, on the same day and time.
Notes:
*As far as the word “mystery” in cinema, do not expect a whodunit type of film. Sleeping Beauty concerns itself with the darkest, most primal drives of sex.
Film Review: Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
April 3, 2011
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives exists in that all too rare world of pure cinema: A place where images and their associative relationship, through editing and even pacing, or how long the camera lingers on a vision, invites deeper meanings. Director Apichatpong Weerasethakul is an expert at this. The Thai director has shown more maturity with every film, and Uncle Boonmee continues this growth.
Weerasethakul’s films have always been meditative. He allows scenes and images to breath with much patience, opening the audience to informed personal breakthroughs. His films are a guide to the experience the viewer brings to the cinema screen, as the projected image, I have always believed, is best appreciated as a mirror of sorts. It seems Weerasethakul feels the same way. In his 2004 movie Tropical Malady (Support the Independent Ethos, buy the movie on Amazon.com) he has the main actor stare and flirt with the audience during the opening credits. In the commentary of that DVD, he says this is in order to invite the audience into the movie.
As great and typical a Weerasethakulian experience that is Tropical Malady, the director had several movies to grow from there. Compared to Uncle Boonmee, Tropical Malady is ham-fisted. Boonmee shows a much greater trust in the audience. The camera lingers much less, and Weerasethakul’s lens has grown more focused. All the while the director leaves those entrancing spaces that invite the audience to inform the images.
Thanapat Saisaymar plays Boonmee, a farmer in his last days due to kidney failure. Though his days are numbered, this sets him up with a unique opportunity to reflect on not only his current life, but the cycle of lives that informs this old soul. 
You know he is near death when the ghost of his deceased wife Huay (Natthakarn Aphaiwong) appears at the dining room table as Boonmee eats with his nephew Tong (Sakda Kaewbuadee) and his sister-in-law Jen (Jenjira Pongpas). Huay has been dead 19 years, and Boonmee has not seen her since. As the film goes by, and he gets closer to death, she becomes more solid and explains to him “Ghosts aren’t attached to places but to people.”
The wonderful monkey wrench in all this is the fact that Tong and Jen also respond to her presence and interact with her as plainly as another flesh and blood person in their presence, though they do refer to her as a ghost. Weerasethakul is not offering a fever dream of a character approaching the abyss. This is a film about transcendence.
Complicating matters even more at the dinner place is a second, even stranger apparition. Boonmee’s long-lost son, Boonsong (Geerasak Kulhong), has returned from the jungle that surrounds the farm in the form of a creature not too different from the mythic Sasquatch but with glowing red eyes. 
He emerges out of the shadows from the stairs leading up to the dining table. A scene that Weerasethakul could have played for cheap fright is instead offered with incongruous mystery, giving a sensation of surrealism instead of terror. It feels like a scene from a David Lynch movie if Lynch had a lighter heart.
The creature soon introduces himself, and tells a tale of how he slipped away from civilization to become one with nature. As Boonsong tells his story, Weerasethakul plays with something he has also grown more crafty with over the years: sound design. He augments Boonsong’s story with an odd throbbing noise, not too different from the sound one might hear when covering the ears to only hearing the echoing of their own heartbeat. It’s a sonic theme that recurs a few more times in the movie signaling moments of transcendence in the story, and it again recalls Lynch who also uses sound in unsettling and oblique ways in his films.
Boonmee certainly feels like a transcendental experience, and it is thanks to the deliberate and daring pace of the film, not to mention Weerasethakul’s inclination to defy real world rules. He does this simply. In what seems like arbitrary images, he captures the everyday with more power than mainstream movies, which prefer to shove narrative and conflicts and character types down the viewer’s throat.
Like a great painting or a great song, his film defies written description. His movies exist in and of themselves. They are meant to be experienced. They activate the mind on a near subconscious level.
Watching his films allows for an entrancing experience, should one invite the film in through the eyes and not over-think what one might perceive to be Weerasethakul’s intentions. Recalling one of his movie’s is like remembering a vivid dream, and the best cinema is indeed dreamlike. Dreams are said to be the symbolic interpretations of the life you lead, and like a dream, this movie invites the viewer to fill the amorphous spaces with their own experiences. This is a gift beyond measure. Walking out of the movie house after a film like Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is like waking from a deep trance and experiencing the world with supreme awareness.
It’s great to see this Palme d’Or winner from the 2010 Cannes Film Festival finally made it to Miami thanks to the Miami Beach Cinematheque. Catch it tonight or tomorrow or Tuesday night. Those are the only chances you will have to see this masterpiece.
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives opens tonight and plays through Apr. 5 exclusively at the Miami Beach Cinematheque.
Listen to David Lynch’s new 12-inch electro single here (and more)
December 1, 2010
The other day I received an email from the Vinyl Factory, one of the fanciest producers of vinyl records working today, announcing its upcoming release of none other than surrealist movie director David Lynch’s new electro-based single. The director of Blue Velvet recently signed a record deal with the UK-based indie label Sunday Best Recordings to release the record. The idea might sound strange, but the results are indeed Lynchian. The lead track, “Good Day Today” is dizzying in its warped, affected quality– from the repetitive lowering and rising volume of the backing synth to Lynch’s vocoder affected vocals (not to mention the beat recalls the “motorik” rhythms of many a Neu! track). Then, on “I Know,” Lynch sounds like some old blues lady backed by nasty, echoing bluesy guitar bursts that sound very familiar to the blues guitars that pop up on many of his films’ soundtracks. Click the titles of the songs to stream them on Soundcloud.
As far as the packaging, considering the triple gatefold 12-inch also includes a signed art print by famed album designer Vaughan Oliver, and a second slab of wax (its all on 180 gram vinyl) featuring remixes by “the finest electronic music producers of the past 20 years” (the site does not mention who), 30 quid ain’t that bad a price to pay. Some of the Vinyl Factory’s releases have been much more expensive and not as fancy.
Singing is something not all that new for Lynch. I first heard him sing a couple of years ago. in 2008, he did a song for his daughter, Jennifer Chambers Lynch’s second movie, Surveillance (2008). The song appeared briefly in the film and in its entirety during the film’s end credits. At first, I thought it was a new Neil Young song. Unfortunately, no soundtrack for the film exists, but you can hear “Speed Roadster” by clicking on the song’s title, right here.
Then Lynch sang probably the most moving song on the Danger Mouse / Sparklehorse collaboration Dark Night of the Soul (a soundtrack accompanying a book of Lynch-produced images). Long before the physical release of the album you could hear the songs in an interactive “pop-up” Flash-based website. As the album hung in legal limbo that website was the only place to hear some of the songs. The website is still live, and, with a little hunting, you can hear Lynch’s track … OK, I’ll reveal where to find it: Drag the screen over to your left where some cops are hosing down a man in his underwear and laughing. Iggy Pop’s pummeling “Pain” should be snarling among the image-scape. Once you endure that noisy assault, the much more melancholic sparkles of “Star Eyes (I Can’t Catch It)” filled with chirps of twinkling electronic burbles should begin. That’s Lynch singing, sounding not too different from a mellowed out Wayne Coyne of Flaming Lips fame (Coyne also has a song on Dark Night of the Soul, btw).
Of course, Lynch has been messing with experimental music for many years. He often painstakingly works on the sonic atmosphere of his films, which clearly add another level of creepiness to his scenes. But, as far as I can recall, this singing career is a new thing for Lynch. Let me know of any other songs he may have sung. All that I have heard so far have been very interesting.
Independent Ethos 