THE GIFT:

using the gift of intuition to understand

the allegorical moving paintings

of David Lynch

 

by Gary W. Wright

 

        After being trained as a painter, David Keith Lynch began creating short and dream-like films that merged animation with painting that he called ‘moving paintings’.  Literally, as these short and full colour allegorical moving paintings like SIX MEN GETTING SICK (1966) and THE ALPHABET (1967) were comprised in full or in part of surreal animated moving paintings.  As time passed, the animated moving paintings disappeared and were replaced by entirely live action but equally dream-like and dream filled feature film moving paintings that gave audiences the impression of dreaming…without dreaming.  From a distance, this dream-like and dream filled moving painting style of Lynch seemed difficult to understand.  However, as Lynch noted in his own look at his life, paintings, moving paintings, meditations, and creative processes, Catching The Big Fish: meditation, consciousness and creativity, ‘…people sometimes say they have trouble understanding a film, but I think they understand much more than they realize.  Because we’re all blessed with intuition-we really have the gift of intuiting things’ (Lynch 19). 

 

Thus, using this ‘gift of intuiting things’, we could see that Lynch implicitly roasted the sickly film art and falling fortunes of the five major Hollywood studios and of Walt Disney by the mid-Sixties in the repeating one minute film loop that was SIX MEN GETTING SICK-and presciently anticipated the sickened dismay that all six of the major studios would feel after the helicopter crash that killed actor/director/writer Vic Morrow and child extras Renee Chen and Myca Le around 2:20 am in the early morning of July 23, 1982 on the George Folsey jr. produced John Landis set of the Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall produced and twilit and allegorical Landis, Joe Dante, George Miller and Steven Spielberg film, TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE (1983).  With this intuitive gift, we could also see two interpretations of THE ALPHABET, a 3:20 minute film which saw a lovely young woman-played by Peggy Lynch, the first wife of Lynch-menaced by the alphabet.  In one interpretation, Lynch implicitly roasted television, given that the short film that mixed moving painting with live action started with ‘ABC’ chanted five times.  In another interpretation, Lynch implicitly roasted capitalism and blockbuster loot obsessed commercial film art, given that the alphabet that menaced the lovely young woman was in the upper case version of the English alphabet.  Curiously, given that this menacing alphabet also presciently anticipated the equally fearsome arrival of Alphabet Inc. and its all conquering Google, THE ALPHABET also ominously anticipated sinister digital events to come. 

 

Significantly, this intuitive approach to the allegorical moving paintings of Lynch would also no doubt lead in time to greater understanding of the implicit intent of the short allegorical moving painting, THE GRANDMOTHER (1970), a curious work that mixed animated painting with black and white and colour cinematography.  Until that time, the film would be about an abused boy named Matt-played by Richard White-who used a magic seed to grow a loving grandmother-played by Dorothy McGinnis-in the attic of his family home and used her and a ‘theatre of the imagination’ to deal with two nightmarishly strange and abusive young parents-played by Robert Chadwick and Virginia Maitland, respectively-who perhaps symbolized the graphic sex and violence loving film artists of New Hollywood.  At any rate, these two nightmarish young parents anticipated an even more abusive and nightmarish father in an allegorical moving painting telefilm series and a followup moving painting to come from Lynch.  THE GRANDMOTHER also saw and heard Lynch’s first collaboration with sound designer/editor Alan Splet, who also worked on Lynch’s first all live action, black and white, dream-like, dream filled and allegorical feature length moving painting, ERASERHEAD (1977).

 

‘They’re not even sure that it is a baby!’

 

Significantly, the film was the opposite of THE GRANDMOTHER, as it saw a young, poor and oppressed couple, Henry Spencer and Mary X-played by John ‘Jack’ Nance and Charlotte Stewart, respectively-struggle to deal with a premature, nightmarish and unnamed mutant baby of indeterminate sex.  Curiously, Spencer looked and dressed like an older version of the unnamed boy in THE GRANDMOTHER, complete with his own theatre of the imagination that he used to deal with reality hidden inside the innards of the radiator in his lonesome bachelor apartment.  Here a deformed but pretty, blonde and Marilyn Monroe evoking young Lady in the Radiator-played by Laurel Near-liked to sing and dance.  At one point in the dream within a dream, Spencer found himself in this theatre of the imagination and tried, but failed, to embrace the Lady in the Radiator.  Soon after, Spencer literally lost his head, which was found by a street urchin-played by Thomas Coulson-and taken to a pencil making factory, where its brains were pronounced fine for use as pencil erasers by the pencil machine operator-played by Hal Landon jr.   

 

Using our intuitive gift, we could see that his curiously positive pronouncement implied the hope of Lynch that he could embrace a more commercial form of moving painting without sacrificing his commitment to art.  Indeed, the film ended with Spencer literally cutting his ties to his mutant baby, finding himself back in the theatre of the imagination bathed in radiant light and embracing the mysterious Lady in the Radiator, implicitly affirming that Lynch felt that it was time for him to abandon the implicit fear of capitalism seen in THE ALPHABET and his literally starving artist phase for a more commercial but no less uncompromising style of moving painting.  At any rate, soon after the successful release of ERASERHEAD, Lynch did just that.  For he was persuaded by actor/producer/writer Mel Brooks to abandon film art for film art’s sake for commercial Hollywood film art and team up again with Splet to create the surreal, dream filled and allegorical moving painting, THE ELEPHANT MAN (1980).

 

‘Am I a Good man, or am I a Bad man?’

 

Significantly, the moving painting began with a star filled expanse of space which evoked the star filled expanse of space at the beginning of ERASERHEAD, in which floated a moon and the head of Spencer, whose brain was implicitly linked to the moon.  Floating in this new expanse of space was another head, this time the head of the mother-played by both Lydia Lisle and Phoebe Nicholls-of the horrifically deformed and despondent but sweet, sincere, devout, educated, imaginative, artistic and intelligent Joseph John ‘the Elephant Man’ Merrick, who looked like the son of Spencer and the Lady in the Radiator.  Then, after a surreal prologue that purported to explore the elephant linked birth of Merrick, we found ourselves at a freak show at a carnival in Victorian London where the adult Merrick was being displayed.  Of course, this carnival freak show linked the Elephant Man to cinematic blockbuster beasts, for it not only reminded us that the first films were exhibited at carnivals, but also evoked the allegorical and implicitly Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany bashing Tod Browning film, FREAKS (1932). 

 

Here at the carnival we met Doctor Frederick Treves-played by Anthony Hopkins-who resembled and was implicitly linked to Sir Ridley Scott, then riding high on the success of his allegorical, Ozian themed and implicitly Lucas addressing film, ALIEN (1979), which had fittingly seen Hurt appear as the doomed Kane.  Soon we were following Dr. Treves through the carnival crowd and the corridors of the freak show house to see Merrick-played by John Hurt, who fittingly and openly linked the film to Sir Scott by way of his role as the doomed Kane in ALIEN.  Significantly, after being moved by Merrick’s plight, Dr. Treves spirited him away from the cruel and violent clutches of his unscrupulous ‘manager’, Bytes-played by Freddie Jones-to the peace and security of the London Hospital.  As Bytes resembled Robert Silverman, an extra in the allegorical David Cronenberg film, RABID (1977), Lynch implied that the ‘terrible’ Elephant Man symbolized the ‘terrible’ Cronenberg.  Not surprisingly, as the early allegorical films of Cronenberg, from his first, TRANSER (1966)-released the same year as Lynch’s first moving painting, SIX MEN GETTING THE SICK-to THE BROOD (1979), had caused such negative comments and criticism that Cronenberg was treated with as much fear and loathing as Merrick, at the time.  So much so that only the year before Cronenberg had been implicitly linked to the gleefully violent Doctor John Leslie Stevenson aka Jack the Ripper-played by David Warner-in the allegorical Nicholas Meyer film, TIME AFTER TIME (1979)-a film that also implicitly linked his naïve and altruistic friend, Herbert George (H.G.) Wells (played by Malcolm McDowell) to Sir Scott, apparently for Sir Scott’s implicit support of Cronenberg in his allegorical film, THE DUELLISTS (1977). 

 

Indeed, to affirm that Lynch was also addressing Cronenberg in the film, it was noticeable that the name of John Merrick recalled that of Ronald ‘Ron’ Merrick-played by Ronald Mlodzik-in the allegorical Cronenberg film, SHIVERS (1975).  An extra who resembled Doctor Roger St. Luc-played by Paul Hampton-in SHIVERS reaffirmed the implicit interest in Cronenberg in THE ELEPHANT MAN.  A sign on a building wall that stated PICKFORD WHARFS OFFICE that Treves walked by on the way to his first meeting with Merrick at the beginning of the moving painting that openly linked Merrick to Toronto film artists reaffirmed that Lynch was implicitly addressing Cronenberg in THE ELEPHANT MAN.  The presence of the Merrick sympathizing Princess Alexandra-played by Helen Ryan-also reaffirmed the implicit interest in Cronenberg’s hometown of Toronto in THE ELEPHANT MAN, for Princess Alex reminded us that the Princess Alex was a popular live theatre in Toronto.  It was also noticeable that Meyer, who implicitly linked Cronenberg to Jack the Ripper in TIME AFTER TIME, was roasted as the callous and blockbuster loot lusting London Hospital night porter-played by Michael Elphick-who brought equally callous paying customers to see Merrick in his lonely room at night in THE ELEPHANT MAN.

 

Thus, using the gift of intuiting, we discerned that the slow discovery during his stay at the London Hospital that Merrick was a sensitive, artistic and truly human being over the course of the film who used his imagination to cope with reality like Matt and Spencer, and his embrace by Dr. Treves and by mainstream London society before his death at the end of the film implied that Lynch was expressing his conviction that Cronenberg was not a violent monster like the implicitly Cronenberg linked Jack the Ripper in TIME AFTER TIME, but a sensitive and truly human artist underneath his terrifying exterior, albeit a misunderstood one, and his hope that the fear of Cronenberg that Sir Scott and mainstream Canadian, English and world society had would also die, leading them to embrace him and his idiosyncratic film art, in time. 

 

Fittingly, before the death of Merrick, Dr. Treves treated him to a Christmas panto in a real live theatre of the imagination, implicitly symbolizing the hope of Lynch that he had left the film student underground and was now in the mainstream with THE ELEPHANT MAN.  Curiously, however, despite the high quality and success of THE ELEPHANT MAN, Lynch was implicitly roasted as a naïve innocent being led to his doom by Evil and knowing Hollywood in the allegorical Lawrence Kasdan film, BODY HEAT (1981), a film that saw William Hurt’s naïve and implicitly Lynch linked Florida lawyer Ned Racine allow himself to be persuaded by Kathleen Turner’s Evil, duplicitous and implicitly Hollywood linked Matty Walker to murder her husband, Edmund Walker-played by Richard Crenna-for the life insurance money.  Lynch was also implicitly linked to the earnest West German astrophysicist and intrepid alien hunter, Doctor Johann Hoffman-played by Otto von Wernherr-in the allegorical Slava Tsukerman film, LIQUID SKY (1982).  In addition, Lynch was implicitly linked to the wild and irrational character, Tarver-played by J. Don Ferguson-gunned down by his abused and Carrie Fisher resembling daughter, Telena-played by Marin Kanter-as he attacked a group of dead end and implicitly New Hollywood linked bikers at the end of the allegorical Kathryn Bigelow and Monty ‘Lafayette’ Montgomery film, THE LOVELESS (1982). 

 

Of course, THE LOVELESS was overshadowed that year by the TZ disaster, a shocking and enraging disaster which Lynch implicitly addressed when he teamed up again with Nance, Splet and Freddie Francis-director of photography of THE ELEPHANT MAN-on his twilit, allegorical, dream-like and dream filled moving painting, DUNE (1984)-inspired by the popular and allegorical Frank Herbert novel, Dune (1965)-his first cinematic salvo in the dread allegorical Zone Wars and one that was ominously anticipated in THE ELEPHANT MAN by Merrick and his fondness for the 23^rd Psalm, which anticipated the July 23^rd disaster in 1982 in yet another eerie memory of the twilit future that haunted film art in the years before the TZ disaster.  Curiously, twilit memories of the future also haunted Lynch before the release of DUNE, for Francis Coppola implicitly warned quirky loner Lynch that he would be scythed down by dismissive audiences and scathing reviews of DUNE like Mickey Rourke’s quirky and implicitly Lynch linked loner, Motorcycle Boy, was gunned down by police at the end of his twilit and allegorical film, RUMBLE FISH (1983), an implicit and prescient Lynch addressing intent affirmed by the film’s allusions to ERASERHEAD and THE ELEPHANT MAN. 

 

Curiously, with its allusions to ERASERHEAD and THE ELEPHANT MAN, Michael Chapman also implicitly addressed Lynch in his more supportive and allegorical film, ALL THE RIGHT MOVES (1983).  Indeed, with small town football coach Vernon ‘Vern’ Nickerson-played by Craig T. Nelson-still getting  the plum job coaching college football that he wanted after the high school football team he coached lost the big game to the implicitly Hollywood linked Walnut Heights High School team, Chapman implicitly predicted that the moving painting career of Lynch would still continue, even if DUNE was not successful.  A prescient implication, for the film laid the groundwork for another small American town dominated by a large mill that was the town’s main employer in a Lynch telemoving painting series to come.  That same year, Cronenberg also implicitly and presciently warned Lynch that DUNE would not succeed in his allegorical film, THE DEAD ZONE (1983), based on the allegorical Screamin’ Stephen King novel, The Dead Zone (1979).  Indeed, Cronenberg implicitly likened Lynch’s disastrous attempt to exorcise the TZ disaster and bring harmony back to the Temple Theatre to the equally disastrous attempt of the implicitly Lynch linked John Smith-played by Christopher Walken-to bring health and harmony to his fellow Americans with the extrasensory powers (ESP) he gained after a serious head injury suffered in a traffic accident. 

 

Curiously, not content to have a film based on one of his novels implicitly roasting Lynch, King also implicitly and presciently roasted Lynch the following year in his allegorical novel, Thinner (1984), published under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman.  Indeed, with its obsession with dreams and with all of its raucous allusions to Dune and THE ELEPHANT MAN, King implied that Lynch was a one hit wonder who would disappear after the failure of DUNE like the implicitly Lynch linked William ‘Billy’ Halleck-whose name evoked loyal House Atreides man Gurney Halleck, played by Patrick Stewart in DUNE-wasted away to nothingness after a curse that made him thinner and thinner no matter how much he ate was placed on him by a Fremen Naib and Merrick evoking leader of a roving band of gypsies.  Just before Hallowe’en of ’84, some two months before DUNE arrived in the Temple Theatre in time for Christmas, James Cameron also implicitly linked Lynch to the doomed Kyle Reese-played by Michael Biehn-who died trying to cleanse audiences, film art, film artists and the universe of the TZ disaster in the twilit and allegorical film, THE TERMINATOR (1984).  Just the encouragement and inspiration that Lynch needed when he sympathetically addressed Cronenberg again and also took on Lucas and Tsukerman in DUNE. 

 

‘Is he the one?’

 

Intriguingly, DUNE began with the same star filled expanse of space that began ERASERHEAD and began and ended THE ELEPHANT MAN, neatly linking the beginning of DUNE to the end of the last Lynch moving painting.  The appearance in this starswept sea of space of the floating head and shoulders of Virginia Madsen’s Princess Irulan introducing the moving painting to audiences reaffirmed the link, as the pretty princess recalled Merrick’s equally loquacious mother floating in that star filled expanse of space at the end of THE ELEPHANT MAN, as well as Princess Alexandra in that moving painting.  After Princess Irulan set the stage with her introduction and the credits finished playing out over desert landscapes on Arrakis, we found ourselves with the princess-wearing a white wedding-style dress that evoked a similar dress worn by Margaret (played by Anne Carlisle) at the end of LIQUID SKY-and her father, Emperor Shaddam IV-played by Jose Ferrer-in the crowded and bustling throne room of the Imperial Palace on the planet Kaitain.  Signficantly, Emperor Shaddam IV evoked Carr-Gomm-played by Sir John Gielgud-the director of the London Hospital in THE ELEPHANT MAN, and resembled and was implicitly linked to Irvin Kershner, director of the Lucas executive produced and allegorical film, STAR WARS EPISODE V: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (1980).

 

While the throne room bustled, a spaceship slowly landed at the landing pad of the palace, a slow nighttime descent that evoked the equally slow arrival and nighttime descent in New York of the dimunitive spaceship carrying an alien drug addict at the beginning of LIQUID SKY.  A fitting evocation of the alien drug and orgasm fiend of LIQUID SKY, for soon a melange spice addicted and aided, presciently and intergalactically dreaming and truly elephantine blockbuster beast of a once human Third Stage Spacing Guild Navigator left the spaceship and arrived in the throne room floating in a massive tank of melange that evoked that evoked the Elephant Man in his freak show cage, accompanied by still human First and Second Stage Spacing Guild companions in full length black leather.  Significantly, the arrival of the Third Stage Spacing Guild Navigator and his entourage in the throne room was signalled by the emperor’s bald Bene Gesserit religious sisterhood advisor, Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam-played by Sian Phillips-suddenly telling Emperor Shaddam IV, ‘…he’s here, my Lord!’  Of course, the words evoked ‘…they’re here’, spoken by Heather O’Rourke’s Carol Anne Freeling, which were forever linked to the Spielberg co-written and co-executive produced and allegorical Tobe Hooper film, POLTERGEIST (1982), implicitly linking the Navigator to Spielberg and the twilit and disastrous year of 1982.   The Navigator’s implicit link to Spielberg was reaffirmed by the first words spoken by the Emperor to the Spacing Guild entourage, for the phrase ‘…we are alone’ also evoked the catchphrase ‘…we are not alone’ for the allegorical Spielberg film, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977).  Last but not least, the Third Stage Navigator’s link to Spielberg and 1982 was reaffirmed by the fact that the Navigator resembled E.T. in the allegorical Spielberg film, E.T., THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL (1982).  Thus, it was fitting that the Navigator and E.T. were both created by Carlo Rambaldi, openly affirming the link between the two. 

 

Given the resemblance and implicit link of the Emperor and the Navigator to Kershner and Spielberg, it was also not surprising that Emperor Shaddam IV was soon confiding to the Navigator a plot to destroy the House of Duke Leto Atreides-played by Jurgen Prochnow-whose popularity threatened the peaceful corruption of the Emperor’s reign.  This petulant plot involved luring House Atreides to a forbidding desert planet called Arrakis and allowing them to take over the mining of the addictive and expensive spice melange, and then wiping them out with Imperial Sardaukar terror troops and the soldiers of the House Harkonnen, led by the implicitly Tsukerman linked and gleefully depraved and Evil, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen-played by Kenneth McMillan-and his equally twisted and implicitly Carlisle linked Mentat major domo, Piter De Vries-played by Brad Dourif-with the aid of the notorious and implicitly Lucas linked Atreides traitor, Doctory Wellington Yueh-played by Dean Stockwell.  This pernicious plot reminded us that Spielberg was inspired by the success of STAR WARS EPISODE V: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK and its movie tie-in merchandise to release E.T., THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL in the equally greedy hope that the film would also be popular and sell lots of movie tie-in merchandise, so that Spielberg could be as independently wealthy as Lucas.  Thus, from the outset, Lynch implicitly linked the Evil Forces of DUNE to blockbuster loot lusting film artists like Kershner, Lucas and Spielberg.  Lynch also set us up for a symbolic film artist who created film art for art’s sake triumphing over the symbolic commercial film artists, given his own commitment to film art for art’s sake and the fact that there was an ‘art’ hidden in the surname Atreides.

 

Curiously, immediately after the Spacing Guild agreed to work the Emperor and House Harkonnen to wipe out the Atreides clan, the action shifted to the castle of House Atreides on the planet Caladan.  How fitting that the planet had a Canada evoking cadence, for the Duke’s son, Paul Atreides-who looked like a club patron in LIQUID SKY, and was played by Kyle MacLachlan-was implicitly linked to David Paul Cronenberg.  Indeed, Paul was a naturally powerful telepath like the Good scanner, Cameron Vale-played by Stephen Lack-in the implicitly Meyer roasting film, SCANNERS (1980), affirming the implicit interest in Cronenberg in DUNE.  The sound amplifying ‘weirding modules’ developed by House Atreides reaffirmed the implicit interest in Cronenberg, as they evoked the memorable use of rising levels of sound to enhance the telepathic mayhem in SCANNERS.  The resemblance of Paul’s father, Duke Leto, to Peter Kastner, a Toronto born and raised actor who played Peter Mark in the allegorical Don Owen film, NOBODY WAVED GOODBYE (1964), one of the rebel Sixties Canadian feature films that inspired Cronenberg to become a film artist reaffirmed Paul’s implicit link to Cronenberg.  In addition, the resemblance of loyal House Atreides retainers Thufir Hawat, Mentat Master of Assassins, and celebrated swordsman, Duncan Idaho-played by Jones and Robert Jordan, respectively-to Doctor Paul Ruth and an Evil scanner assassin-played by Patrick McGoohan and Denis Lacroix, respectively-in SCANNERS reaffirmed the implicit Cronenberg addressing intent of Lynch in DUNE. 

 

The fact that after arriving on Arrakis the spice melange expanded the latent telepathic powers of young Atreides reaffirmed his implicit link to Cronenberg, reminding us that the synthetic and liquid drug, ephemerol, was used to develop or depress telepathic powers in SCANNERS.  The sleeping dreams and waking visions that revealed the past and the future to Paul also evoked similar visions that revealed the pasts and the futures of different people to Smith after a head injury suffered in a car accident gave him ESP in THE DEAD ZONE, in another affirmation of the implicit Cronenberg addressing intent of the film.  Thus, using our gift of intuiting things, the sight of young Atreides surviving the Harkonnen/Imperial sneak attack on Arrakis and the death of his father-a passing that evoked the passing of Cronenberg’s own father in 1973-and confirming his creative powers and virility by learning how to ride and master the giant sandworms of Arrakis before emerging as an ESP aided messiah, Maud’dib, who inspired the planet’s freedom loving Fremen tribesmen to victory over the Evil Forces of the Emperor and the Baron implied the hope of Lynch that Cronenberg would survive the TZ disaster and the death of his father and confirm his creative powers by fully mastering idiosyncratic indie film art for film art’s sake and leading the serious film artists of the world and their grateful and admiring audiences to victory over crassly commercial and blockbuster loot lusting film artists like Kershner and Lucas and out of control indie film artists like Tsukerman, as well as exorcising the TZ disaster and bringing harmony back to audiences and the Temple Theatre.  How fitting that the letters for ‘art’ appeared in scrambled anagram form at the beginning of the surname Atreides.  How equally fitting that Prochnow was linked forever to the twilit and disastrous year of 1982 via his role as Captain-Lieutenant Heinrich Lehmann in the presciently twilit and allegorical Wolfgang Pedersen film, DAS BOOT (1982), making the death of Duke Leto implicitly symbolize the death of TZ disaster themed film art and the beginning of a bold new TZ disaster free era of film art.  !Kull wahad! 

 

Unfortunately, after initially flocking to DUNE, audiences soon abandoned the film.  Perhaps the earnest, elevating and exorcising film was rejected by audiences because the film reminded them too much of the STAR WARS Classic Trilogy and, hence, Lucas, who they had turned against for working with Kennedy, Marshall and Spielberg on the twilit and allegorical Spielberg film, INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM (1984).  The fact that Lynch appeared in a cameo as the head of a mélange spice harvester who was reluctant to abandon his valuable load of spice when the harvester was attacked by a sandworm on Arrakis may have also dismayed audiences, for it made Lynch look like he had made DUNE simply to amass blockbuster loot.  It also did not help that the innocent Morrow was implicitly linked to the willfully Evil Baron Harkonnen.  As a result, DUNE was much of a disaster for Lynch as INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM and the Lucas executive produced and allegorical Richard Marquand trimax, STAR WARS: EPISODE VI: RETURN OF THE JEDI (1983), were for Kennedy, Lucas, Marquand, Marshall and Spielberg-and the TZ disaster was for Landis.  Indeed, Lynch was so disappointed with the reception accorded DUNE that he no longer listed DUNE amongst his moving paintings as he felt Dino and Raffaella De Laurentiis destroyed his quirky vision in the editing suite (Lynch 59-60 and 179, and Rodley 116).  In fact, Lynch was so disappointed with the final result that he insisted that the producers credit Alan Smithee as the director in the expanded television version of DUNE (1989). 

 

However, despite the disappointment, when it all came together and it transcended the frustrating nightmare of its creation in Mexico City-a harrowing experience where everything that could go wrong did go wrong that was chronicled in The Making Of DUNE by Ed Naha-DUNE was still the fearless and iconoclastic moving painting event of the year, easily succeeding in its determined quest to exorcise the TZ disaster and win back angry audiences to the cause of heady and uplifting film art in its strongest moments, like the sequence that saw House Atreides moving…without moving across the galaxy from Caladan to Arrakis with the help of a Third Stage Navigator or Paul’s mastery of the Water of Life-shai’halud!  This despite the film’s lack of computer graphic imagery (CGI), which most other film artists immediately began to turn to and develop after the TZ disaster so as to create dangerous effects sequences digitally in order to avoid further set fatalities, a lack of CGI that became an idiosyncratic hallmark of the post-1982 film art of Lynch.  And how fitting that Paul’s Fremen nickname, Maud’dib, referred to the desert mouse of Arrakis, given that the Walt Disney Studio began its memorable and embattled rise to film art triumph the year of the release of DUNE with the twilit, allegorical and implicitly Spielberg supporting film, SPLASH (1984).

 

Not surprisingly, DUNE implicitly inspired more allegorical cinematic reflections on Lynch.  Indeed, Lynch was linked to the implicitly Scarecrow linked Fred-played by Christophe Lambert-in the sympathetic and Ozian themed allegorical Luc Besson film, SUBWAY (1985).  Donna Deitch also curiously linked Lynch and MacLachlan’s tumultuous experience creating and releasing DUNE to the equally tumultuous romance of the implicitly Lynch linked Vivian Bell and the implicitly MacLachlan linked Cay Rivvers-played by Helen Shaver and Patricia Charbonneau, respectively-in the allegorical and fittingly titled film, DESERT HEARTS (1985).  Deitch also implicitly hoped that Lynch and MacLachlan would recover from the failure of DUNE and go on to better things like Vivian and Cay, in the end.

 

Lynch was also implicitly roasted in the implicit form of the Lynch resembling and implicitly homosexual Francis Buxton jr.-played by Mark Holton-in the freshman allegorical Tim Burton film, PEE WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE (1985).  This latter film implicitly infuriated Lynch, for he implicitly addressed PEE WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE when he rejoined De Laurentiis, Dourif, MacLachlan, Nance, Splet, Stockwell, Frederick Elmes-director of photography on ERASERHEAD-and Patricia Norris-costume designer on THE ELEPHANT MAN-and struggled to leave behind the DUNE disaster as well as the TZ disaster and get his dream filled and surreal mojo going again in his next twilit, dream-like, dream filled and allegorical moving painting, the Ozian themed and CGI free BLUE VELVET (1986). 

 

‘I don’t know if you’re a detective or a pervert.’

       

The Ozian imagery began immediately in BLUE VELVET, with the camera point of view (POV) falling slowly out of a big blue and cloudless summer sky to the tune of Bobby Vinton’s version of the allegorical tune, ‘Blue Velvet’ (1963).  For the gentle descent from the sky not only made clear that Lynch was abandoning the heady intergalactic adventures of DUNE for a more down to Earth approach in BLUE VELVET, but evoked Dorothy’s farmhouse falling out of the sky and down onto vibrantly colourful and flower filled Munchkinland at the beginning of the allegorical and implicitly Wallis Simpson roasting Victor Fleming film, THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939).  Indeed, colourful and florid Munchkinland was evoked when the POV settled down beside a white picket fence set off with bright red and yellow tulips outside a house in the Hollywood cadenced town of Hollywood.  Ironically, however, this peaceful and dreamy opening shot also evoked the final shot of the camera rising up into a clear blue sky at the end of the murderous and nightmarish BODY HEAT, preparing us for more murderous mayhem to come. 

 

The surreal, overlap dissolve montage of shots that followed, establishing the small town called Lumberton-whose woodsy name recalled the equally woodsy name of the small town of Hollywood, and the woodsy upbringing of Lynch as a result of a father in the U.S. Forestry Service-also evoked the similar overlap dissolve montage of opening shots that established the setting and tone of some of the early allegorical films of Landis, particularly ANIMAL HOUSE (1978), THE BLUES BROTHERS (1980), AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (1981)-which began with a cover of ‘Blue Moon’-TRADING PLACES (1983) and INTO THE NIGHT (1985), introducing a snake into the Garden of Lumberton in a way that implied that this allegorical moving painting was addressing Landis. 

 

However, the blue sky and dreamy beginning also recalled the opening image of the blue sky in the Tour de France billboard that began PEE WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE, a gleefully childish, silly and curiously homoerotic film that sympathetically likened the frantic quest of the sexually ambiguous and implicitly Lucas linked P. W. ‘Pee-Wee’ Herman-played by Paul Reubens-to recover his beloved stolen bicycle to the equally frantic quest of George Walton ‘G. W.’ Lucas to recover his film form and reestablish friendly relations with audiences.  Lynch’s implicit interest in the eccentric new director was reaffirmed by the fact that Lumberton not only looked and sounded like Tim Burton, its letters could be used to create Burton.  Indeed, later on in the film, the camera would slowly focus in on the film’s protagonist, MacLachlan’s Jeffrey Beaumont, sitting on his bed with the sign of Lumberton on his bedroom wall behind him and eventually reach a point where all that was left of the town’s name was ‘-berton’, reaffirming Lynch’s implicit interest in Burton in BLUE VELVET.

 

Soon a lone Adam named Mr. Tom Beaumont-his name and T.B. initials evoking Tim Burton in another implicit nod to him, and played by Jack Harvey-was met watering the plants, flowers and trees at the side of his wooden house.  This scene reaffirmed the film’s interest in PEE WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE, for the house and its white picket fence recalled the red and white house and white picket fence of Herman, and that Herman watered his lawn after leaving his house at the beginning of the film.  Soon Mr. Beaumont suffered a stroke and collapsed on the lawn, a supine state that evoked the sight of the legs of the Wicked Witch of the East sticking out from underneath Dorothy’s farmhouse in Munchkinland at the beginning of THE WIZARD OF OZ.  This implied that Mr. Beaumont was a male version of the Wicked Witch of the East, whose death opened up the gates of the healing Ozian spiritworld dream, and set us up for the arrival of a male Wicked Witch of the West.

 

Intriguingly, no sooner did Mr. Beaumont wind up in a hospital bed than his concerned son, Jeffrey, returned to Lumberton from college to be at his side.  Significantly, the appearance, black suit jacket and name of Jeffrey Beaumont also evoked Pee Wee Herman.  Indeed, the surname Burton could be created from the letters composing Jeffrey Beaumont, openly affirming Jeffrey’s implicit link to Burton.  The appearance of Laura Dern as Beaumont’s blonde and implicitly Glinda linked girlfriend, Sandy Williams, reiterated the link of Beaumont to Herman, as she recalled not just Paul’s dreamgirl, Chani-played by Sean Young-in DUNE, but Herman’s equally blonde and tenacious girlfriend, Dottie-played by Elizabeth Daily-in PEE WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE.  The resemblance of Isabella Rossellini’s fittingly named and implicitly Dorothy linked Dorothy Vallens to Diane Salinger’s Simone in PEE WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE reaffirmed the implication that Lynch was responding to the first feature film of Burton in the Ozian themed BLUE VELVET.  Thus, with our gift of intuiting, we saw that Jeffrey’s implicit link to Burton implied that Lynch wanted to teach the young, naïve and innocent film artist some serious lessons in the art of life and in film art and wake him up to how Evil and both could be at times.  And twilit, as the Beaumont surname also evoked Charles Beaumont, one of the writers who wrote for the original Twilight Zone television series, affirming the twilit ambience of BLUE VELVET. 

 

The link of BLUE VELVET to the Twilight Zone was openly reaffirmed by the return of DUNE vet Stockwell as the implicitly Lucas linked Ben, for Stockwell played U.S. Lieutenant Katell and Japanese Lt. Yamuri in the allegorical Buzz Kulik telefilm, ‘A Quality Of Mercy’ (1961), in the third season of the original TWILIGHT ZONE telefilm series.  The arrival of Dennis Hopper-who played Motorcycle Boy’s father in RUMBLE FISH-as the black leather jacket clad and implicitly Wicked Witch of the West linked childman Frank Booth reaffirmed the film’s twilit ambience and Lynch’s determination to rid Mr. Beaumont, Lumberton and Hollywood of disastrous twilit disease. For not only did Frank Booth’s name evoke TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE executive producer Frank Marshall and Feyd and the Beast in DUNE, the presence of Hopper evoked his troubled and Adolf Hitler haunted character Peter Vollmer in the allegorical Stuart Rosenberg telefilm, ‘He’s Alive’ (1963), from the fourth season of the original Twilight Zone television series. 

 

Of course, the insidious Frank Booth also evoked the equally insidious, chubby, implicitly homosexual and vaguely Lynch resembling Francis Buxton, jr., the arch nemesis of Herman throughout PEE WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE, whose rotund form and hilarious love of money and Herman’s bicycle appeared to be Burton’s way of mocking the equally bloated and blockbuster lusting excess of DUNE.  Indeed, Booth and Buxton shared the same F. B. initials, confirming their link-while a Burton evoking ‘Barton’ could be made from the letters comprising Frank Booth.  And Sandy’s father, Detective J. D. Williams-played by George Dickerson-resembled Buxton, reaffirming the link of BLUE VELVET to PEE WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE.  Thus, with Beaumont’s victory over the troubled childman Booth, in the end, Lynch also implied his hope that Burton would grow up, take the Dark Side of Hollywood more seriously and make up for the childish nonsense of PEE WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE with some more serious and uplifting film art that would free the world of film art from the twilit shadow of troubled New Hollywood director-literally, as Hopper was a troubled and haunted New Hollywood film artist best known for his allegorical film, EASY RIDER (1969).

 

This implication that film art was being saved by the death of Booth, in the end, was reaffirmed by the fact that his death led to the rescue of Vallens, linked to film art as she was played by the daughter of Italian film director, Roberto Rossellini.  The status of Vallens as a symbol of art was also reaffirmed by the fact that she was a nightclub singer in a real life theatre of the imagination.  In addition, the name of her artist husband, Donald James Watts-played by Dick Green-who was kidnapped, along with their son, little Donny-played by Jon Jon Snipes-and held hostage by the Wicked Frank and his wicked Ozian quartet, also reaffirmed the implicit link of Vallens to art.  For the surname of her husband evoked that of Robert Watts, one of the other producers of INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM.  The Van Gogh evoking ear of Watts that was sliced off by the Wicked Frank and found in a field by Jeffrey at the beginning of the film after his father’s stroke also implicitly linked Vallens to art.  Thus, it was fitting that this severed ear woke up young Beaumont to the wicked and twilit peril that was threatening his father and Lumberton and encouraged him to solve the mystery of BLUE VELVET like a young Sherlock Holmes and ultimately free the town of Lumberton-and, hence, the forest linked town of Hollywood-of the twilit and wicked terror of Frank, liberate Dorothy and her son, and restore full health and harmony to Mr. Beaumont, audiences, film artists, film art and the Temple Theatre.  In addition, the fact that Beaumont saved Dorothy from Frank like Pee Wee liberated Simone from her gigantic boyfriend, Andy-play by Jon Harris-in PEE WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE, not only reiterated the link of the two films, but implied that Lynch was liberating audiences from the first Burton film, in the end.

 

Luckily for Lynch, audiences accepted this peace offering.  Unluckily for him, they also enjoyed the tragicomically twilit and allegorical Tim Hunter film, RIVER’S EDGE (1986), a film set in a small town in the Pacific Northwest that implied that Lynch killed his film art with DUNE as surely as Daniel Roebuck‘s implicitly Lynch linked, Buxton resembling and troubled sadolescent Samson ‘John’ Tollet killed Danyi Deats’ Jamie, a teenaged girl implicitly linked to the film art of Lynch.  Curiously, RIVER’S EDGE linked well with BLUE VELVET, as Elmes also worked on it as cinematographer, and Hopper reappeared as the feckless and paranoid Feck.  Unfortunately for all, however, jurors at the TZ trial that ended on May 29, 1987, a year after the release of BLUE VELVET found Landis and his four co-defendants-longtime producer pal Folsey, jr., first assistant director Dan Allingham, mechanical special effects supervisor Paul Stewart, and helicopter pilot Dorcey Wingo-not guilty of manslaughter in the TZ disaster, a verdict that no d/oubt displeased an ex-Eagle Scout from Arrakis like Lynch. 

 

The same year, Sir Scott implied with the many allusions to BLUE VELVET and DUNE in his allegorical film, SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME (1987), that the decision of NYPD Detective Mike Keegan-played by Tom Berenger-to leave the dangerously wealthy and seductive New York socialite, Claire Gregory-played by Mimi Rogers-and return to his wife, Ellie-played by Lorraine Bracco-symbolized Sir Scott’s hope that Lynch would leave behind the urge to create more dangerously seductive and disastrous blockbuster beasts like DUNE, and return to his better and lower budgeted film art like BLUE VELVET.  Indeed, the George and Ira Gershwin tune, ‘Someone To Watch Over Me’ (1926), was as important to SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME as ‘Blue Velvet’ was to BLUE VELVET, affirming the film’s implicit interest in Lynch.  Martin Scorsese also implied that it was time for Lynch to leave behind his angst over Paul Atreides and DUNE and get his moving paintings back on track in the Nineties like the implicitly Lynch linked abstract painter, Lionel Dobie-played by Nick Nolte-left behind his sorrow over his breakup with Paulette-played by Rosanna Arquette-and moved on to a new lover-played by Brigitte Bako-in ‘Life Lessons’, the first panel of an allegorical cinematic triptych called NEW YORK STORIES (1989).  For his part, John Glen implicitly roasted Lynch in the form of Anthony Zerbe’s character Milton Krest in the allegorical film, LICENSE TO KILL (1989), starring an implicitly Lucas linked Timothy Dalton as the latest incarnation of James Bond. 

 

Significantly, Lynch openly alluded and responded to ALL THE RIGHT MOVES, BODY HEAT, LICENSE TO KILL, PEE WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE, RIVER’S EDGE, SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME, THE DEAD ZONE and THE LOVELESS when he teamed up again with Badalamenti, Hunter, MacLachlan, Nance, Norris, Stewart, Frances Bay-who played Aunt Barbara in BLUE VELVET-Catherine Coulson-a production assistant on ERASERHEAD-Everett McGill-who played Fremen leader Stilgar in DUNE-and Jonathan Sanger-producer of THE ELEPHANT MAN-and explored the effect of the murder of another teenaged girl on another Pacific Northwest town with another intrepid and MacLachlan played young Sherlock Holmes out to solve the murderous mystery, and brought his twilit, dreamy and allegorical moving painting style to the television milieu that had given the world the original Twilight Zone television series, in the pilot moving painting for the dream filled and CGI free telefilm series, TWIN PEAKS (1990-91).

 

‘Break the code, solve the problem.’

 

Significantly, the beginning of TWIN PEAKS underlined that Lynch was not happy with the outcome of the TZ trial, for the overlap dissolve montage of surreal snapshots to the tune of Badalamenti’s sad and wistful instrumental main theme for TWIN PEAKS that established the scenic and forested environs of the small town of Twin Peaks, Washington again evoked the similar montage of establishing shots that began the early films of Landis, immediately implying that Lynch was meditating on Landis and the TZ disaster in TWIN PEAKS.  Indeed, the sound of INTO THE NIGHT being openly alluded to in the memorable soundtrack by Badalamenti, ‘Into The Night’ (1990), a sad and wistful tune sung by Julee Cruise with lyrics by Lynch, affirmed the implicit interest in Landis and the TZ disaster in TWIN PEAKS.  Curiously, however, this montage of establishing shots to the tune of the main theme of TWIN PEAKS also evoked the montage of establishing shots of small town life to the tune of the main theme by Michael Kamen that began THE DEAD ZONE, implying that Lynch was actually implicitly addressing Cronenberg again in TWIN PEAKS-or was that both Cronenberg and Landis?  At any rate, this implicit interest in the twilit and disastrous events of 1982 was affirmed when we met up with Nance’s Pete Martell.  For Martell’s name evoked film artist Paul Bartel, linked forever to the fateful year of 1982 by his allegorical film, EATING RAOUL (1982). 

 

This implicit interest in twilit film artists and the TZ disaster was reaffirmed shortly after we met Martell, on the fateful 23^rd of February 1989-a day that evoked the July 23, 1982 date of the TZ disaster.  For setting off to do some fishing, Martell soon discovered the body of the beautiful blonde teenager, Laura Palmer-played by Sheryl Lee, her surname evoking Myca Le-lying on a rocky beach wrapped in plastic like the body of Edmund Walker in BODY HEAT.  Significantly, while the body of Palmer evoked that of Jamie in RIVER’S EDGE, the fact that the first name of Laura began with an ‘L’ and ended with an ‘a’, also implicitly linked her to L.A.  This implicit link to L.A. was reaffirmed by Laura’s surname, for Palmer reminded us that L.A. was the city of the palm trees as well as of Hollywood and the angels.  Thus, it was appropriate that the star of ERASERHEAD found her, for Laura haunted Twin Peaks like the equally blonde, dreamy and art linked figure of the Lady in the Radiator haunted ERASERHEAD, and like the TZ disaster haunted Hollywood. 

 

A link to Hollywood that reminded us that another Laura, Gene Tierney’s Laura Hunt, also haunted the allegorical Otto Preminger film, LAURA (1944), a film that was alluded to in TWIN PEAKS.  Indeed, the name of Russ Tamblyn’s implicitly Lucas linked Dr. Lawrence Jacoby evoked an artist named Jacoby played by John Dexter in LAURA.  The fact that the shocked and horrified reaction of Laura’s fellow teens and the rest of the people of Twin Peaks to her death was so different from the callous indifference of the teens of that small town in the Pacific Northwest in RIVER’S EDGE to the death of the Lynch film art linked Jamie also implied Lynch’s disapproval of that film and that he was making it clear that the deaths of Chen, Le and Morrow had devastated the small town of Hollywood in TWIN PEAKS.

 

Significantly, the mystery surrounding the death of Laura and the identity of her murderer were both eventually solved by the returning MacLachlan’s new young Sherlock Holmes, FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper.  One of the clues that aided him was an upper case letter ‘R’ found under the ring finger of Laura, evoking the implicit fear of capitalism in THE ALPHABET.  Curiously, while Cooper evoked NYPD Detective Mike Keegan in SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME, he had the same initials and quirky interest in ESP as David Cronenberg.  Indeed, the name of Dale Cooper also evoked that of Cameron Vale, the scanner with the greatest natural ESP in SCANNERS, while his use of ESP to figure out who killed Laura also evoked the implicitly Lynch linked Smith using ESP to hunt down serial killers and potential mass murderers in THE DEAD ZONE.   A fitting evocation of King, for FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper also evoked FBI Special Agent Ellis Stoner in Thinner, implying that he might be linked to King.  Indeed, Cooper was as fond of fresh baked pies as Heidi Halleck, the wife of the implicitly Lynch linked Billy Halleck in Thinner, reaffirming the possibility that Coop was linked to King rather than Cronenberg.  A distraught character in Thinner named Leda Rossington whose first name was an anagram of Dale also affirmed the possibility that Cooper was linked to King.  The importance of the dreamy Red Room to the mysterious saga also affirmed the implication that King was linked to Cooper, for the Red Room evoked ‘redrum’ in the allegorical King novel, The Shining (1977).  At any rate, Cooper was not implicitly linked to Lynch, as Lynch showed up in the series implicitly linked to himself as hearing impaired FBI Regional Bureau Chief, Gordon Cole, whose name was taken from a Lynch resembling Paramount Studios employee played by Bert Moorhouse in the allegorical Billy Wilder film, SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950), linking Twin Peaks to Hollywood and implicitly affirming that film art and its artists were being roasted in TWIN PEAKS.

 

Alas, while it was too late for Laura to be saved by Cooper or by Michael Ontkean’s Rod Serling resembling Sheriff Harry S. Truman-the straight man of the duo who evoked Tom Skerritt’s Sheriff Bannerman in THE DEAD ZONE-it was not too late to implicitly blast Landis and insist that he was still a murderer despite the not guilty verdict in the TZ trial.  For the eventual rapist killer of Laura turned out to be Bob-played by Frank Silva-the implicitly Landis linked Dark Side of Laura’s father, Leland Palmer-played by Ray Wise-who was implicitly linked to Steven Spielberg given that Leland’s wife, Sarah-played by Grace Zabriskie-resembled Amy Irving, Spielberg’s wife at the time.  Curiously, however, after tracking down the Bob possessed Leland, the series ended with Cooper also possessed by the Evil spirit of the implicitly Landis linked Bob.  Perhaps this symbolized Lynch’s disapproval of Cronenberg’s cameo in INTO THE NIGHT, which implied support for Landis.  A distinct possibility, given that the Cruise sung Lynch tune ‘Into The Night’ figured prominently in TWIN PEAKS.

 

In addition, Lynch also implied that he used the series to roast other film artists like Besson, Bigelow, Burton, Cameron, Daily, Kennedy, Kershner, Reubens, Aldo the mynah, Sofia Coppola, Alfred Hitchcock, David Lean, John Milius, Roman Polanski, William Shatner, Paul Verhoeven and Billy Wilder in the form of Al Strobel’s Mike Gerrard, Dana Ashbrook’s Robert ‘Bobby’ Briggs, McGill’s Big Ed Hurley, Gary Hershberger’s Mike ‘Snake’ Nelson, Kimmy Robertson’s Lucy Moran, Piper Laurie’s Catherine Martell, Tony Jay’s Dougie Milford, Harry Goaz’s Deputy Andy Brennan, Waldo the mynah, Madchen Amick’s Shelley Johnson, Don Davis’ Major Garland Briggs, Dan O’Herlihy’s Andrew Packard, Ritch Brinkley’s D.A. Daryl Lodwick, Phoebe Augustine’s Ronette Pulaski, Michael Parks’ Jean Renault, Richard Beymer’s Benjamin Horne and Michael Anderson’s Dancing Dreaming Man, respectively, in TWIN PEAKS.  This affirmed the implicit link of Twin Peaks to Hollywood, setting the stage for a trio of moving paintings to come that were openly set in Hollywood.  The ambiguous and uncertain nature of TWIN PEAKS also implied that Lynch wondered if he should continue making commercial Hollywood film art, an uncertainty that was soon resolved in favour of Hollywood when he teamed up again with Badalamenti, Bay, Dern, Elmes, Jones, Lee, Nance, Norris, Rossellini, Zabriskie, Dwayne Dunham-editor of BLUE VELVET and editor/occasional director of TWIN PEAKS-Sherilyn Fenn and David P. Kelly-who played Audrey and Jerry Horne, respectively, in TWIN PEAKS-and Montgomery-co-writer and co-director of THE LOVELESS-and returned to the Temple Theatre with the angry, edgy, fiery, violent, twilit, openly Ozian themed, dream-like and CGI free allegorical moving painting, WILD AT HEART (1990), inspired by the allegorical Barry Gifford novel, Wild At Heart (1990).

 

‘If you’re truly wild at heart, you’ll fight for your dreams.’

 

Significantly, the sight of Dern’s blonde and implicitly Dorothy linked Miss Lula Fortune watching the implicitly Scarecrow linked Sailor Ripley-played by Nicolas Cage, who played Smokey in RUMBLE FISH-kill Gregg Dandridge’s implicitly Wicked Witch of the East linked Bob Ray Lemon in a crowd of well-dressed people at a live theatre in Cape Fear at the beginning of the film reminded us of the sight of the equally blonde New York socialite Gregory watching the implicitly Wicked Witch of the West linked Joey Venza-played by Andreas Katsulas-murder the implicitly Wicked Witch of the East linked Win Hockings-played by Mark Moses-at a reception for the equally well healed at an art gallery in New York at the beginning of SOMEBODY TO WATCH OVER ME, implying that Lynch was replying to Sir Scott in WILD AT HEART. 

 

Indeed, the surname of Ripley evoked Sigourney Weaver’s Science Officer Ellen Ripley in the equally Ozian themed ALIEN, affirming that implication.  The fact that Ripley’s SR initials were the reverse of the RS initials of Ridley Scott reaffirmed the implication.  The presence of Harry D. Stanton as intrepid P.I. Johnny Farragut reaffirmed that implication, as Stanton played Brett, the implicitly Scarecrow linked mechanic on the space cargo ship Nostromo in ALIEN.  The sight of Ripley leaving the Pee Dee Correctional Facility at the beginning of WILD AT HEART also affirmed that implication, reminding us that Sir Scott’s life had gone south since the release of the eerily prescient and twilit allegorical film, BLADE RUNNER (1982), based on the novel Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? by Philip Dick.  The sight and sound of Lee’s Glinda the Good watching over Ripley over the course of the moving painting and saving him, in the end, also affirmed that implication, for Glinda’s floating presence evoked the equally floating Good Fairy-played by Beryl Hicks-in the panto at the end of THE ELEPHANT MAN, while her sympathetic interest fulfilled the hope expressed in the title, SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME.

 

Thus, using our gift of intuiting again, the sight of Ripley loving, protecting and saving Miss Fortune from evildoers like the implicitly Bigelow or Oliver Stone linked Vietnam vet Bobby Peru-played by Willem Dafoe, who had played the biker Vance in THE LOVELESS-and Lula’s implicitly Hollywood and Wicked Witch of the West linked mother, Marietta Fortune-played by Dern’s mother, Diane Ladd-with the help of Lee’s Glinda the Good on a wacky cross America drive from the Carolinas to California, and marrying her in the triumphant end, implied the hope of Lynch that Sir Scott would fight off his critics and his doubts and not give up on film art despite all of his misfortunes and despite not having a real hit since ALIEN at that point in his career.   A fitting bit of support from Lynch to Sir Scott, given that the two idiosyncratic and indie film artists trained at post-secondary art schools to be painters, not film artists, and basically taught themselves to be film artists.   

 

Curiously, the return of Lynch in 1990 with another commercial Hollywood moving painting rather than a more personal and self-financed film art for film art’s sake moving painting like ERASERHEAD was an enthusiastic embrace of the dangerous and seductive Hollywood blonde that Hopper anticipated that Lynch would make that year despite the DUNE and TZ disasters.  For Don Johnson’s implicitly Lynch linked Harry Madox gave up trying to escape the wicked and seductive clutches of Madsen’s deadly and Hollywood linked blonde Dolly Harshaw for the healing arms of Jennifer Connelly’s sweet and shy brunette, Gloria Harper, and embraced the Wicked Harshaw at the end of Hopper’s allegorical film, THE HOT SPOT (1990)-an ending that recalled Henry’s embrace of the blonde Lady in the Radiator at the end of ERASERHEAD.  Hopper underlined his intentions with allusions to BLUE VELVET and DUNE and the return of both Madsen from DUNE and Lynch favourite, Nance, as a bank manager named Julian Ward. 

 

Significantly, King implicitly affirmed that he was being roasted in the form of FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper by openly alluding to TWIN PEAKS and implicitly roasting Lynch again in the demonic form of the diabolically persuasive Leland Gaunt, proprietor of the Needful Things curio shoppe, in the allegorical novel, NEEDFUL THINGS (1991), an implicit roast of Lynch reaffirmed by the novel’s allusions to DUNE and WILD AT HEART.  For his part, despite the failure of DUNE, Cameron also implied that he thought that Lynch was becoming a blockbuster menace, for he roasted Lynch the following year in the implicit form of Robert Patrick’s CGI enhanced liquid metal T-1000 Terminator cyborg in his twilit and allegorical film, TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY (1991).  Indeed, Cameron underlined his implicit intent with all sorts of nods to TWIN PEAKS and WILD AT HEART, perhaps due to the implicit link of William M. Sheppard’s insidious Mr. Reindeer to Cameron in the latter moving painting.  Bigelow implicitly agreed with Cameron, as allusions to BLUE VELVET, TWIN PEAKS and WILD AT HEART also featured prominently in the Cameron executive produced and twilit and allegorical film, POINT BREAK (1991), implying that Patrick Swayze’s doomed anti-establishment surfer and Ex-Presidents bank robber gang leader, Bodhi, was linked to Lynch. 

 

With its allusions to BLUE VELVET, THE ELEPHANT MAN, TWIN PEAKS and WILD AT HEART and its use of Hopper as a barkeep named Caesar, Sean Penn also implied that he was sending a message to Lynch in his freshman allegorical film, THE INDIAN RUNNER (1991).  And given that David Morse’s small town deputy Joe Roberts did not imitate Beaumont and gun down the Wicked Frank-that is, his wayward brother Frank, played by Viggo Mortensen-in the end, but instead let Frank go free, Penn implied either that a live and well Dark Side was necessary in order to be whole and make good film art, or that Lynch was not one to moralize as he had not had the courage to defeat his Dark Side.  With its allusions to BLUE VELVET, DUNE and TWIN PEAKS and its Badalamenti evoking soundtrack by Howard Shore, Cronenberg also implicitly roasted Lynch in his allegorical film, NAKED LUNCH (1991).  In addition, with its many allusions to TWIN PEAKS and WILD AT HEART, Disney also implicitly toasted and roasted Lynch and his efforts to whip Hollywood into shape in the form of the cocky young lawyer with the FBI Regional Bureau Chief Gordon Cole evoking name of Gordon Bombay-played by Emilio Estevez-and his attempts to get a New Hollywood linked team of misfit kid hockey players into shape in order to beat the implicitly Folsey linked Coach Reilly-played by Land Smith-and his intimidating Hawks in the allegorical Stephen Herek animaction film, THE MIGHTY DUCKS (1991).  Curiously, Zhang Yimou also implicitly roasted Lynch that year in his allegorical film, RAISE THE RED LANTERN (1991), perhaps for sympathizing with the plight of Chinese occupied Tibet in TWIN PEAKS.

 

Last but not least, Mike Figgis also implicitly roasted Lynch in his twilit and ironically entitled allegorical film, LIEBESTRAUM (1991), a title inspired by the Franz Liszt composition, ‘Liebestraum’ (1850), a German word meaning ‘love dream’ which evoked the loving cinematic dreams of Lynch.

 

‘Diane!  This one’s for the road.’

 

Significantly, this loving dream began with Kevin Anderson’s young, earnest, sensitive, thoughtful and implicitly Cronenberg linked architecture professor, Nick Kaminsky, showing up in Hollywood cadenced Elderstown to watch over his ailing and hospitalized adoptive mother, Lillian Munssen nee Anderssen-played by Kim Novak-a circumstance that evoked the return of the equally young, earnest, sensitive and thoughtful Beaumont to Lumberton to watch over his ailing and hospitalized father at the beginning of BLUE VELVET, as well as the doomed Edmund Walker in BODY HEAT.  Soon, Kaminsky met his old and implicitly Lynch linked friend, Paul Kessler, and his beautiful and beguiling young wife, Jane-played by Bill Pullman and Pamela Gidley, respectively-both of whom were linked to DUNE and TWIN PEAKS.  For Paul looked like MacLachlan-particularly in TWIN PEAKS-and had a first name that evoked Paul Maud’dib in DUNE, while Jane evoked Joan Chen’s Josie Packard in TWIN PEAKS and had short auburn hair that evoked the red hair of the Harkonnens in DUNE. 

 

Curiously, Kessler was a developer supervising the destruction of the Ralston Building, a heritage building with an unique cast iron exterior that was going to be replaced with a shopping complex.  Significantly, the Ralston Building looked like the Bradbury building in BLADE RUNNER, particularly in nighttime rain shots, linking the building and the film to the twilit and disastrous summer of ‘82.  Indeed, this implicit link was reaffirmed by the Figgis soundtrack, which sometimes evoked the Badalamenti soundtrack for TWIN PEAKS, and at other times evoked the Vangelis soundtrack for BLADE RUNER.  Thus, it was no surprise to discover that there had been a twilit trio of murders at the Ralston Building decades earlier, when Bernie Sheredy’s Burnett Ralston III, the wealthiest man in Elderstown, killed his wife, Mrs. Ralston-resembling Marilyn Monroe with her blonde hair and white summer dress, and also played by Gidley-and her lover, Munssen, the Orson Welles resembling manager of his department store-also played by Anderson-when he discovered them making adulterous love, before killing himself.

 

Intriguingly, over the course of LIEBESTRAUM, Jane and Nick slowly fell in love, just as their previous incarnations had done decades ago.  This swelling romance led to them making adulterous love in the Ralston Building as well, in the end-adulterous lovemaking that evoked the equally adulterous lovemaking of Matty and Ned in another allusion to BODY HEAT.  Significantly, however, the two adulterous lovebirds noticeably escaped the murders that killed their previous incarnations, despite the fact that Paul had realized the two were falling in love, had tracked them down to the Ralston Building and had listened to them make love.  Thus, using our gift of intuiting things again, we could see that in the successful closing lovemaking of Jane and Nick, Figgis implied his belief that Cronenberg had bested Lynch with his post-1982 film art and exorcised the twilit ghosts of the TZ disaster, and was now the true cinematic Messiah who would lead film art out of the twilight in the Nineties. 

 

Intriguingly, Lynch implied that he was more irritated by the implicit roasts from Cronenberg and Figgis than he was by the implicit roasts from Bigelow, Cameron, Disney, Herek, Hopper and Penn, for Gidley returned as the doomed prostitute Teresa Banks and MacLachlan as the implicitly Cronenberg or King linked FBI Special Agent Cooper when he teamed up again with Amick, Anderson, Ashbrook, Augustine, Badalamenti, Bay, Coulson, Cruise, Lee, Norris, Prochnow, Silva, Stanton, Strobel, Wise, Miguel Ferrer-who played Albert Rosenfeld in TWIN PEAKS-Mark Frost-co-creator of, and occasional writer and director for, TWIN PEAKS-Gregg Fierberg-producer of TWIN PEAKS-Chris Isaak-whose heartbroken and lonesome allegorical tune, ‘Wicked Game’ (1990), was heard in WILD AT HEART-Al Strobel-Mike the One-Armed Man in TWIN PEAKS-and Mary Sweeney-an editor on TWIN PEAKS-to implicitly affirm that TWIN PEAKS was addressing Zone War film artists by bringing the series to the big screen in the twilit, dream-like, dream filled, Ozian themed and CGI free allegorical moving painting, TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME (1992).

 

‘Don’t take the ring, Laura!’

 

Indeed, the film began with the credits superimposed over a background of television snow in a motel room.  No sooner did the credits end, then the snow and the television were brutally destroyed with a blunt instrument by Wise’s Palmer, who then used the same blunt instrument to murder Gidley’s Banks, making it implicitly clear that Lynch did not like LIEBESTRAUM-and still did not like Spielberg, given that a snow filled television screen figured prominently in POLTERGEIST.  However, as audiences already knew that Banks had been murdered prior to the rape and murder of Lee’s Laura Palmer, this opening prologue offered nothing new.  Which was the problem with the rest of TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME, which just reiterated the murderous and rapacious actions of Wise’s again implicitly Spielberg linked Leland Palmer-his link to Spielberg affirmed by the allusion to POLTERGEIST-and his again implicitly Landis linked Dark Side, Bob-played again by Silva.  Perhaps Lynch was upset by the fact that Landis and Spielberg had reestablished themselves with audiences since the end of the TZ trial in 1987.  In fact, three of the last four of the twilit and allegorical films of Spielberg, EMPIRE OF THE SUN (1987), INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE (1989), and HOOK (1991), had all been popular with audiences despite containing ominous implications that Spielberg had known of the illegal use of Chen and Le after hours on the Landis set of TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE but had done nothing to stop their use on that fateful night.  Indeed, the fact that we saw Bob and Leland both rape and murder Laura over the course of the film instead of simply finding out that Laura had been raped and murdered as in TWIN PEAKS implicitly affirmed how upset Lynch was that audiences had accepted Landis and Spielberg again. 

 

Significantly, MacLachlan not only returned as the implicitly Cronenberg linked FBI Special Agent Cooper, he consoled Laura in her dreams before her murder and before he arrived in Twin Peaks, WA to investigate her murder.  He also consoled her in the famous red curtained dream room after her death, despite not professing any advance knowledge of Laura or her murderous father in TWIN PEAKS.  An angel-played by Lorna MacMillan-fittingly helped Cooper console Laura, implicitly reaffirming the link of Laura to the City of the Angels.  Thus, using our gift of intuiting things, we could see that Lynch implicitly affirmed that TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME was not a prequel to TWIN PEAKS and that Lynch was using the film to furiously lash out at Landis and Spielberg for their continued success.  In addition, we could see that Lynch now implicitly hoped that his gloomy fear that Cronenberg had turned to the Dark Side with his cameo in INTO THE NIGHT was not true and that Cronenberg would still defeat Landis and Spielberg with true film art for film art’s sake, in the end. 

 

Curiously, the presence of Isaak as the Warren Beatty resembling FBI Special Agent Chester ‘Chet’ Desmond reminded us that Disney had suddenly reestablished itself with audiences by the early Nineties, particularly with the implicitly Bigelow and Cameron addressing and allegorical Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise film, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (1991), whose obsession with a magical red rose was implicitly alluded to via the mysterious ‘blue rose’ in TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME.  Curiously, Desmond spent the first half hour of the film investigating the murder of Banks with Kiefer Sutherland’s possibly Joe Dante linked FBI Special Agent Sam Stanley, a half hour that also saw David Bowie-who openly linked the film to Landis by way of his role as the mysterious English assassin, Colin Morris, in INTO THE NIGHT-appear as the equally mysterious FBI Special Agent Phillip Jeffries.

 

Alas for Lynch, the loving dream of TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME was implicitly disliked by film artists as much as by audiences and reviewers, leading film artists to implicitly roast him and the film in such allegorical films as the Burton film, ED WOOD (1994), the Cameron film, TRUE LIES (1994) and the Sir Peter Jackson film, HEAVENLY CREATURES (1994).  Lynch was also implicitly thrashed by Disney in the form of the implicitly Lynch linked Evildoer, Justice Frollo-voiced by Tony Jay-in the allegorical Trousdale and Wise film, THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME (1996).  However, not all film artists implicitly arrayed themselves against Lynch at this low point in his life and film art.  For Bernardo Bertolucci implicitly reached out to Lynch in his moving and thought provoking allegorical film, LITTLE BUDDHA (1993), which revolved around a twilit trio of children, Gita, Raju and Jesse-played by Greishma M. Singh, Raju Lal and Alex Weisendanger, respectively-who were believed to be three reincarnated aspects of a dead Tibetan Lama, a conviction that implied a hope that film art could be reborn in a harmonious new era in the tenth anniversary year of the release of TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE.  Of course, the film reminded us of Lynch’s interest in transcendental mediation, an evocation of Lynch implicitly affirmed by the film’s allusions to DUNE, THE ELEPHANT MAN, TWIN PEAKS and TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME and by the presence of Isaak as Jesse’s father, Dean Conrad. 

 

In addition, Penn implicitly hoped that Cameron and Lynch would put aside their differences and work together as cinematic brothers in the allegorical film, THE CROSSING GUARD (1995), while Kenneth Branagh implicitly allowed Lynch a symbolic triumph over Cameron in the form of the triumph of the implicitly Lynch linked Prince Hamlet-played by Branagh-over the implicitly Cameron linked King Claudius-played by Derek Jacobi-in the allegorical and DUNE and THE ELEPHANT MAN evoking film, HAMLET (1996).  Sir Scott also implicitly reached out to Lynch again in his allegorical film, WHITE SQUALL (1996).  However, it was the implicit thrashing Lynch received from Cronenberg in the implicit form of the automobile accident and premature ejaculation troubled film/telefilm artist, James Ballard-played by James Spader-in the allegorical film, CRASH (1996), that implicitly infuriated Lynch most of all.  For Lynch implicitly roasted Cronenberg and CRASH when he teamed up again with Badalamenti, Bowie, Gifford, Nance, Norris and Sweeney on his most iconoclastic indie film since ERASERHEAD, the allegorical, dream-like, dream filled, CGI free and BODY HEAT evoking moving painting, LOST HIGHWAY (1997).

 

‘You’ll never have me.’

 

        Indeed, the moving painting began at the L.A. home of jazz saxophonist Fred Madison-played by Pullman-and his wife, Renee-played by Patricia Arquette, who played Dorothy in THE INDIAN RUNNER-a house whose location at 7035 Hollis affirmed the implicit Cronenberg addressing intent of the moving painting, as the address reminded us that Cronenberg began his feature film career with the allegorical and implicitly New Hollywood roasting film, SHIVERS (1975).  The presence of the MacLachlan resembling Pullman as Fred Madison reaffirmed the implicit Cronenberg addressing intent, reminding us that MacLachlan’s Paul Atreides and FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper were both implicitly linked to Cronenberg in DUNE, TWIN PEAKS and TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME.  The presence of Arquette reaffirmed the implicit Cronenberg addressing intent, as she evoked the presence of her sister, Rosanna, as Gabriella in CRASH.  

 

This implicit Cronenberg addressing intent was reaffirmed by the fact that Fred and Renee were soon drawn into a strange and violent world by mysterious videocassettes left on their front step in the mornings in unmarked manila envelopes.  For the sight evoked the sight of Max Renn-played by James Woods-being drawn into a similarly strange and violent world by videocassettes in the allegorical and implicitly Sir Scott addressing Cronenberg film, VIDEODROME (1982).  Indeed, a Trent Reznor instrumental called ‘Videodrones: Questions’ on the soundtrack of LOST HIGHWAY implicitly affirmed the moving painting’s interest in VIDEODROME, and, hence, Cronenberg.  This strange and violent video world soon led to Madison being accused of killing and butchering Renee-the latest mysterious and beautiful brunette in a Lynch moving painting going back to the Beautiful Woman Across The Hall played byu Judith A. Roberts in ERASERHEAD.  Significantly, this murder evoked the murder of Joan Lee-played by Judy Davis-by her husband, Bill-played by Peter Weller-in NAKED LUNCH in another affirmation of the implicit interest in Cronenberg in the moving painting. 

 

Found guilty of the murder of Renee, Madison was sentenced to death and put on death row.  There, the older Madison soon transformed in his cell into the younger Pete Dayton-played by Balthazar Getty.  Significantly, Pete Dayton resembled the implicitly Spielberg linked car crashophile, Vaughan-played by Elias Koteas-in CRASH, while his name evoked James Spader, who played the implicitly Lynch linked James Ballard in CRASH.  Significantly, this transformation into another person recalled the transformation of Good scanner Cameron Vale into Evil scanner Darryl Revok at the end of SCANNERS, and the transformation of Rene Gallimard-played by Jeremy Irons-into John Lone’s Song Liling at the end of the allegorical Cronenberg film, M. BUTTERFLY (1991), reaffirming the implicit Cronenberg addressing intent of LOST HIGHWAY.

 

        Released from prison due to this baffling transformation, Dayton turned out to be a talented car mechanic, a love of cars that implicitly reaffirmed his link to Vaughan in CRASH.  Dayton was also discovered to have a young girlfriend named Shiela-played by Natasha G. Wagner-who looked like the twin sister of Holly Hunter’s Doctor Helen Remington in CRASH, in further implicit nods to Cronenberg and CRASH in LOST HIGHWAY.  Indeed, Shiela’s parent’s house was numbered 9532, a number that reminded us that CRASH was released in 1995 in an open affirmation that Lynch was replying to that film in LOST HIGHWAY.  That Dayton soon attracted the attention of the beautiful but dangerous Hollywood blonde, Alice Wakefield-also played by Arquette-again reiterated the film’s interest in CRASH, as Wakefield evoked Ballard’s equally beautiful blonde wife, Catherine Ballard-played by Deborah K. Unger-in that film, while the return of Arquette as Alice evoked the return of Davis as Joan Frost after the murder of Joan Lee in NAKED LUNCH. 

 

Even the arrival of Wakefield’s lover, the Edmund Walker evoking gang boss Mr. Eddy aka Dick Laurent-played by Robert Loggia-reaffirmed the film’s implicit interest in Cronenberg.  For his name evoked Dino De Laurentiis, the Italian producer who persuaded Lynch to create DUNE, a film that Lynch no doubt regretted making in part as it implicitly praised Cronenberg.  Thus, with our gift of intuiting things, we could see that by having the implicitly Vaughan and CRASH linked Dayton transform back into the implicitly Cronenberg linked Madison after losing the love of the beautiful, mysterious and Catherine linked blonde Alice, Lynch implied that he felt that Cronenberg had lost his touch and his way in CRASH.  Indeed, soon after we met Eddy/Laurent, he was seen brutally beating and furiously lecturing a tailgating driver-played by Greg Travis-in the rules of the road, a scene that implicitly made clear that Lynch was not too fond of being linked to the crashophiles of CRASH.  

 

As such, it was no surprise that the moving painting ended with Madison fleeing from the police all alone in his car down the lost highway after teaming up with Robert Blake’s Satanic Mystery Man to kill the De Laurentiis and DUNE linked Laurent-who also linked a Lynch film to Landis like Bowie did in TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME, as Loggia played another gang boss, Sal ‘the Shark’ Macelli in the twilit and allegorical Landis film, INNOCENT BLOOD (1992)-for the bleak ending summed up the implication that Lynch believed that Cronenberg had lost his way with CRASH.  Curiously, the ending of LOST HIGHWAY also allowed Lynch to triumph over Figgis, for it reminded us that Pullman played the implicitly Lynch linked Kessler who was defeated at the end of LIEBESTRAUM.

 

Curiously, Verhoeven implied that year that the triumph over the extraterrestrial Bugs equated with a triumph over the moving paintings of Lynch in his allegorical film, STARSHIP TROOPERS (1997), and affirmed that implication with all sorts of allusions to BLUE VELVET, DUNE and ERASERHEAD.  Just as curiously, Depp implied his support for Lynch that year in his ambiguous and mysterious film, THE BRAVE (1997).  For his part, Hackford also implied his support for Lynch that year in his allegorical film, THE DEVIL’S ADVOCATE (1997), and underlined that support with allusions to SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME, TWIN PEAKS and WILD AT HEART.  Indeed, by having hotshot young FBI Special Agent Cooper evoking lawyer Kevin Lomax-played by Keanu Reeves-move from Florida to a law firm in New York and eventually triumph over its Satan and perhaps Landis linked head, John Milton-played by Al Pacino-Hackford implied his hope that Lynch would also triumph over Landis and Satanic Hollywood and its blockbuster beasts with quirky moving paintings like LOST HIGHWAY. 

 

As for the Eagle Scout from Arrakis, Lynch implied his hope that he could kick off a new film art era in time for the new millennium by implicitly forgiving and embracing Kennedy, Landis, Lucas, Marshall and Spielberg when he rejoined Badalamenti, Francis, McGill, Norris, Sweeney-now a co-writer and co-producer as well as editor-ERASERHEAD actor and production designer Jack Fisk and Everett McGill-who played sturdy and stalwart Stilgar in DUNE-on his straightest and most normal film yet, the allegorical, dream-like, Ozian themed and CGI free moving painting, THE STRAIGHT STORY (1999).

 

‘A brother’s a brother.’

 

Curiously, THE STRAIGHT STORY began with a black and star filled expanse of space as at the beginning of DUNE, ERASERHEAD and THE ELEPHANT MAN.  Of course, this expanse of space also evoked the star filled expanse of space that began each STAR WARS film, a fitting allusion given that Lucas returned that year with his first allegorical STAR WARS film in years, STAR WARS EPISODE I: THE PHANTOM MENACE (1999).   Then the stars disappeared, and the camera slowly fell out of the sky like the farmhouse of Dorothy as at the beginning of BLUE VELVET, setting the slow pace of the film.  Eventually, the POV landed to the left of a small white house that evoked Dorothy’s farmhouse.  Beside the small white house was a woman sunning herself on a lawn chaise fittingly named Dorothy-played by Jane G. Heitz-affirming the implicit Ozian theme of the film.  After Dorothy got up and left, the sound of someone falling was soon heard from inside the small white farmhouse.  Soon we discovered Alvin Straight-played by Richard Farnsworth-lying prone inside his house, evoking the prone Mr. Beaumont laid low by a stroke outside his house at the beginning of BLUE VELVET.  However, unlike Mr. Beaumont, Straight was not hospitalized for the rest of the film and saved by the exorcising and healing actions of a son or grandson.  Instead, Straight healed himself. 

 

Curiously, with his white cowboy hat and feisty and indomitable manner, Straight evoked Morrow’s equally feisty, indomitable and white cowboy hat wearing police Captain Franklin in the allegorical John Hough film, CRAZY LARRY, DIRTY MARY (1974).  Indeed, the helicopter aerial shots of Laurens, Iowa that began THE STRAIGHT STORY after the credits appeared over the starry expanse of space evoked similar helicopter aerial shots of the California countryside that began CRAZY LARRY, DIRTY MARY.  In addition, like Bowie in TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME and Loggia in LOST HIGHWAY, Farnsworth openly linked THE STRAIGHT STORY to the film art of Landis by way of his role as Jack Caper in INTO THE NIGHT, the most auto-biographical of the post-1982 films of Landis.  Farnsworth also linked THE STRAIGHT STORY to 1982 via his role as gentleman British Columbian train robber Bill Miner in the allegorical Phillip Borsos film, THE GREY FOX (1982).  Curiously, longtime Lynch friend, Sissy Spacek, who played Straight’s despondent daughter, ‘Blue’ Rose, reaffirmed the film’s link to 1982, for she played Beth Horman in the allegorical Costa-Gravas film, MISSING (1982).

 

Significantly, when a phone call informed Straight that his brother, Lyle-played by Stanton-had suffered a stroke at his place in Mount Zion, Wisconsin, the equally ailing and double cane wielding Straight set off from his home in Laurens, Iowa driving first a ruby red Rheds, and then an Emerald City green and yellow 1966 John Deere riding lawn mower with a hand-made wooden trailer attached and an ever present pack of Swisher Sweets in his breast pocket.  The determined and obdurate veteran drove his riding mower east along the Yellow Lined Road to visit and patch up relations with his ailing and mysterious Great Oz brother in Ozian Mount Zion, Wisconsin, rolling along so slowly he qualified as a non-mutated and fully human Third Stage Spacing Guild Navigator as he appeared to be moving…without moving in one of the many allusions to DUNE in the film. 

 

Along the way, Straight met people linked to various twilit film artists and actors and reached out to soothe and heal all of them, such the implicitly Dante linked Laurens Ace hardware store owner/manager, Pete-played by Ed Grennan.  He also met the implicitly Burton linked Steve and the implicitly Cameron linked Rat-played by Matt Guidry and Bill McCallum, respectively-amongst a group of Herman evoking cyclists.  For their part, Danny and Darla Riordan-played by James Cada and Sally Wingert, respectively-evoked Marshall and Kennedy, while their friends, Johnny and Janet Johnson-played by Jim Haun and the fittingly surnamed Barbara Kingsley, respectively-evoked Spielberg and his wife, Kate Capshaw.  For his part, their mutual friend, WWII vet Verlyn Heller-played by Wiley Harker-was implicitly linked to Cronenberg. 

 

Curiously, a firefighter that looked like a Lucas resembling English bobby-played by Peter Ellis-seen in Trafalgar Square in London in AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, linked THE STRAIGHT STORY to Landis.  A significant link, for one of the last people that Straight met before he creeped into Mount Zion on his going somewhere slow journey was John Lordan’s Dan Akroyd resembling lonesome bachelor Priest, a good friend of Landis and co-star of the allegorical Landis film, THE BLUES BROTHERS (1980).  Thus, using our gift of intuiting without intuiting again, we could see that the mysterious and Great Lyle in his beat up house in Mount Zion, WI, was implicitly linked to Landis, allowing the film and the millennium to end with Landis and Morrow implicitly forgiving and reuniting with each other so that film art could be finally free of the Twilight Zone in time for the new millenia.  For linked to the Zone the two brothers were, as over the course of the moving without moving painting we discovered that the Straight brothers had been raised on a farm in Moorhead, Minnesota.  Of course, this twilit town evoked Agnes Moorhead and her appearance as the unnamed and harried woman fending off strange and dimunitive aliens from Earth in the allegorical Douglas Heyes telefilm, ‘The Invaders’ (1961), a famous season two episode of the original Twilight Zone television series.  An ironically sweet and hopeful message that also implied that Lynch was committed to wiping the slate clean and starting over again on the straight and narrow himself in the new millennia. 

 

Alas for Lynch, the good vibrations produced by THE STRAIGHT STORY did not last long.  For Kubrick implicitly roasted Lynch as a well meaning but naïve film artist who would never be able to change or hold to twilit account the callous, corrupt and deadly Hollywood establishment that had killed not just Chen, Le and Morrow but higher film art with its CGI enhanced blockbuster beasts in the symbolic form of well meaning but naïve Dr. Bill Harford-played by Tom Cruise-a doctor who was not able to change or hold to account the equally callous, corrupt and deadly New York establishment for the murder of the Laura Palmer evoking Amanda ‘Mandy’ Curran-played by Julienne Davis-in his last, twilit and allegorical film, EYES WIDE SHUT (1999), a film that alluded to BLUE VELVET, LOST HIGHWAY, PEE WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE, THE DEVIL’S ADVOCATE, TRUE LIES, TWIN PEAKS and TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME-and even featured Isaak’s ‘Baby Did A Bad, Bad Thing’ (1995)-to implicitly affirm the interest of Kubrick in Lynch.  A sad and cynical blast and lament that implicitly inspired the Eagle Scout from Arrakis to reply to Kubrick when he rejoined Anderson, Badalamenti, Fisk, Montgomery, Sweeney-again a co-producer as well as editor-and LOST HIGHWAY cinematographer Peter Deming to prove to the ghost of Kubrick that higher film art for film art’s sake was still alive in his next allegorical, dream-like, Ozian themed, DESERT HEARTS evoking and CGI free moving painting, MULHOLLAND DRIVE (2001), a film with the same ponderous pace and sense of inescapable menace as EYES WIDE SHUT.

 

‘I mean, I’m just so excited to be here.  I mean, I just came here from Deep River, Ontario, and now I’m in this…dream place.’

 

Curiously, the sight of Laura E. Harring’s beautiful, dark haired and eyed, and unknown character being driven slowly through the nighttime Hollywood Hills along Mulholland Drive in the back of a black car-with the twilit license of 2GAT123-evoked the sight of the implicitly Lynch linked Dr. Harford being driven slowly in the back of a taxi through the night and into the country to a castle like mansion where a strange and masked orgiastic party was being held in EYES WIDE SHUT.  This implied that the beautiful brunette was linked to the film art of Lynch, an implication soon reaffirmed when her driver-played by Scott Wulff-stopped the car and threatened to shoot her, reminding us of the murder of the implicitly Palmer linked Mandy Curran in EYES WIDE SHUT.  However, the beautiful brunette was ironically saved when a speeding car crashed into the black car, a surprise crash that killed the sinister driving and his equally menacing companion in the front passenger seat-played by Billy Wright-and perhaps symbolized Lynch’s shock at being hit with EYES WIDE SHUT. 

 

Wandering from the wreck in an amnesiac daze in her Wicked black dress with one pearl earring still in place like a lost, confused but still living Wicked Witch of the East, the beautiful brunette stumbled down the Hollywood Hills and into the streets below with one pearl earring.  Curiously, she walked by a street sign reading Franklin 7400, neatly evoking Captain Franklin and the 1974 release date of CRAZY LARRY, DIRTY MARY.  The mysterious brunette then slowly recovered from the accident with the help of the blonde and initially sweet, innocent, naive, implicitly Dorothy linked and Lady in the Radiator evoking Betty Elms-played by Naomi Watts-a Canadian from Deep River, Ontario-a Canadian hometown that evoked the Deep River apartment building that Dorothy Vallens lived in in BLUE VELVET-who was staying at the L. A. apartment of her Aunt Ruth-played by Maya Bond-in the hopes of landing a part in a Hollywood film. 

 

Here at the apartment, the mysterious brunette adopted the name Rita from a poster on the wall for the allegorical and implicitly Alfred Hitchcock roasting Charles Vidor film, GILDA (1946)-a film starring Rita Hayworth as the eponymous Gilda that constantly evoked the allegorical and Jack Warner roasting Michael Curtiz film, CASABLANCA (1942).  As GILDA was released the year of the birth of Lynch, adopting the name Rita reaffirmed that the mysterious brunette symbolized Lynch and his dreaming without dreaming moving paintings.  The reproduction of the allegorical Johannes Vermeer painting, ‘The Girl With A Pearl Earring’ (1665), that hung on the wall of the bedroom of Aunt Ruth’s apartment reinforced that implication, reminding us that the mysterious brunette was first met wearing one pearl earring, and that Lynch was trained as a painter.  Indeed, with her head wrapped in a towel after a shower, the brunette looked like the turban wearing girl in the painting, affirming the link of Rita to paintings in general and to the moving paintings of Lynch in particular. 

 

Curiously, however, Rita was then slowly but surely transformed over the course of the rest of the film into a successful film star with the Camilla Bowles evoking name of Camilla Rhodes, while Betty morphed into the bitterly disappointed and unsuccessful actress Diane Selwyn-all with the help of a mysterious blue box that evoked the black human testing box of DUNE.  Thus, using our gift of intuiting things again, we could see that Lynch implicitly used MULHOLLAND DRIVE to counter Kubrick’s gloomy prognosis in EYES WIDE SHUT that film art was dead.  Indeed, the transformation of the befuddled amnesiac Rita-the word ‘art’ fittingly scrambled up inside the name of the initially scrambled woman-into the successful film actress Camilla and of sweet Betty into bitter Diane over the course of the moving painting implicitly affirmed Lynch’s conviction that film art in general, and his moving paintings in particular, were both alive and well, and that CGI enhanced blockbusters were dying.  An implicitly Wicked Witch of the East linked dead girl-played by Lyssie Powell-discovered by Rita/Camilla and Betty/Diane wearing a black dress similar to the one worn by Rita/Camilla at the beginning of the film, was brought back to life by the mysterious Cowboy-played by Montgomery-toward the end of MULHOLLAND DRIVE, also openly affirmed the implicit insistence of Lynch that film art in general and his own in particular was back in black and ready to flourish in the new milleniium.  In addition, the presence of the implicitly Kubrick linked Cookie-played by Geno Silva-reaffirmed the implicit Kubrick addressing intent of MULHOLLAND DRIVE.

 

Intriguingly, while these two transformations occurred, Lynch also made many allusions to the allegorical Landis film, SUSAN’S PLAN (1999), which revolved around a madcap plot by a bunch of twilit and implicitly film artist linked characters to kill Paul Holland-his name evoking the also implicitly Landis linked Doctor Alec Holland in the allegorical Wes Craven film, SWAMP THING (1982), and played by Adrian Paul.  Indeed, Mulholland evoked Paul Holland, affirming the implicit interest of Lynch in SUSAN’S PLAN in MULHOLLAND DRIVE.  Perhaps because he was disappointed by the presence of Lara F. Boyle-who played Donna Hayward in TWIN PEAKS-who not only appeared as Elizabeth ‘Betty’ Johnson in SUSAN’S PLAN and got away with the murder of Holland, in the end, but also spent most of the film wearing a Barbie t-shirt, openly and wryly linking her character to rampant commercialism and product placement.  Indeed, the appearance of Watts as another Betty reaffirmed the implicit interest in SUSAN’S PLAN in the film.  In fact, the appearance of Daniel Rey as a valet in MULHOLLAND DRIVE openly affirmed Lynch’s implicit interest in SUSAN’S PLAN, as he played a gay hairdresser named Enrique who was a friend of Betty in the film. 

 

Thus, using our gift of intuiting things once more, we could see that in the sight of Betty transforming into Diane and losing a film role to Rhodes when the implicitly Landis linked film artist Adam Kesher-driving the same grey Porsche as Holland in SUSAN’S PLAN, and played by Justin Theroux-was forced to accept Rhodes-initially and curiously played by Melissa George-for his latest allegorical film, THE SYLVIA NORTH STORY by the hectoring and humbling Cowboy and by Badalamenti’s uncompromising financier, Luigi Castigliane, Lynch implied that he was dressing down Landis for using Boyle in SUSAN’S PLAN and the casual, flippant and satirical violence of that film as well as replying to Kubrick in MULHOLLAND DRIVE.  Indeed, the suicide of Betty/Diane, in the end, implicitly affirmed Lynch’s disapproval of SUSAN’S PLAN-how fitting that the name of Diane Selwyn was an anagram for ‘Weeny Landis’! 

 

Curiously, the suicide occurred after the Canadian actress hired the woefully inept and implicitly Cameron linked hit man, Joe-played by Mark Pellegrino-to kill Rhodes and after being terrorized by the Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip evoking Irene and her companion-played by Jeanne Bates and Dan Birnbaum, respectively.  Thus, Lynch implied that he was roasting Cameron as well, in the film-and perhaps even making some comment about the death of Lady Diana in 1997.  The presence of the implicitly Lucas linked Wally Brown-played by James Karen-also implied a gentle roast of Lucas and his STAR WARS Millenial Trilogy in MULHOLLAND DRIVE.   

 

Curiously, a year after its thought provoking release, MULHOLLAND DRIVE became one of the first Lynch moving paintings to be released on DVD with an insert in the case that gave the viewer ‘…David Lynch’s 10 Clues to Unlocking This Thriller.’  Thus, Lynch openly acknowledged for the first time that his films were allegorical and filled with signs and symbols that, if interpreted correctly with the gift of intuiting things, would lead to solving the mystery and transcendent enlightenment.  Allowing the Eagle Scout from Arrakis to make a brave new start in the new millennium, a new start that was no doubt influenced by five implicitly Lynch themed films that were released after MULHOLLAND DRIVE, starting with the allegorical and CGI enhanced Spielberg film, A.I. (2001).

 

        Significantly, in this film Spielberg implicitly linked Lynch to Joel H. Osment’s odd android/mecha boy David in way that implied that Spielberg felt that Lynch was not quite a truly human film artist or human being.  Indeed, as David the odd mecha boy tried to become human in order to please and reconnect with the surrogate human mother, Monica Swinton-played by Frances O’Connor-who had abandoned him at the beginning of A.I., and failed at both goals, Spielberg implied that Lynch was not only not a fully human film artist, but that he was doomed to never quite connect with his film art or with his audiences.  The return of Hurt as Mecha creator Doctor Alan Hobby affirmed the film’s implicit interest in Lynch, reminding us that Hurt played the implicitly Lynch linked Racine in BODY HEAT.  Significantly, this implicit dismissive cinematic snub from Spielberg was followed by another implicit one from Cronenberg in his allegorical film, SPIDER (2002). 

 

Given that the film revolved around a delusional, memory haunted and implicitly Lynch linked child man named Dennis ‘Spider’ Cleg-played by Ralph Fiennes-who as a boy-played by Bradley Hall-killed his Good and gentle brunette mother-played by Miranda Richardson-when he became convinced that she had already been murdered by his father, Bill-played by Gabriel Byrne-and replaced by an Evil, blonde and Hollywood linked witch-also played by Richardson-Cronenberg implied that Lynch was also a delusional and memory haunted child man whose overriding obsession with the possibility of murderous and Evil wrongdoing in the TZ disaster had killed his Good and gentle film art and replaced it with Evil and Hollywood linked witchery, an implicit Lynch roasting intent affirmed by the film’s allusions to DUNE, ERASERHEAD, THE ELEPHANT MAN and THE GRANDMOTHER. 

 

Curiously, Neil Jordan implicitly came to the luckless Lynch’s defense that same year, allowing the implicitly Lynch linked, painting loving and down on his luck gambling thief, Bob Montana-played by Nolte-to triumph over the implicitly Cronenberg linked police inspector, Roger-played by Tcheky Karyo-and the implicitly Cameron linked transgender bodybuilder, Phillipa-played by Julien Mourel-at the end of the allegorical film, THE GOOD THIEF (2002), an implicit intent affirmed by the film’s allusions to DUNE, LOST HIGHWAY, MULHOLLAND DRIVE, THE DEAD ZONE, TRUE LIES, TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME and WILD AT HEART.  For his part, Keith Gordon also implicitly mocked Lynch’s love of strange and surreal imagery, people lip synching to Fifties pop songs, and his obsession with murderous and bewildering mystery-All clues!  No solution!-in his allegorical film art since BLUE VELVET in the allegorical film, THE SINGING DETECTIVE (2003).  The same year Jonathan Mostow curiously and implicitly linked Lynch to the new CGI enhanced female TX Terminator-played by Kristanna Loken-in the twilit and allegorical film, TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES (2003)-this despite the fact that CGI was still absent from the moving paintings of Lynch!  Just as curiously but fortunately for Lynch, Burton implicitly came to his defense in the symbolic form of Edward Bloom-played as a young man by Ewen McGregor, and as an older man by Albert Finney-in his sweet and sympathetic allegorical film, BIG FISH (2003), in a reversal from the more nasty implicit roasting he gave Lynch in ED WOOD.  Ang Lee also implicitly sympathized with Lynch in the implicit form of Ennis Del Mar-played by Heath Ledger-in his twilit and allegorical film, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN (1995).  Thus, it was not surprising to see Lynch allude to Cronenberg and Spielberg when he teamed up again with Dern, Ladd, Stanton, Sweeney, Theroux and Zabriskie and complete his open contemplations of Hollywood machinations in his most iconoclastic indie film since ERASERHEAD, the dream-like, Ozian themed and CGI free allegorical moving painting, INLAND EMPIRE (2006).

       

‘Cast out this wicked dream that has seized my heart.’

 

        Indeed, the L.A. setting of the film, and the speedy return of Dern and Theroux as Hollywood starlet Nikki Grace and her new film co-star, Devon Berk, respectively, immediately implied that Lynch was up to twilit and Hollywood themed allegorical tricks again in INLAND EMPIRE.  The equally speedy arrival of Irons as her director, Kingsley Stewart, also affirmed that Lynch was addressing Cronenberg and Spielberg in INLAND EMPIRE, reminding us that Irons had played the implicitly Spielberg linked Rene Gallimard in M. BUTTERFLY, and the doomed twin gynecologists, Beverly and Elliot Mantle, in the allegorical Cronenberg film, DEAD RINGERS (1988).  The name of Kingsley Stewart reaffirmed the interest in Spielberg, for the name evoked Sir Ben Kingsley and his role as Itzhak Stern in the allegorical Spielberg film, SCHINDLER’S LIST (1993), and his voiceover work in A.I.  Significantly, Kingsley’s last name Stewart also reminded us of Paul Stewart, the director of the allegorical telefilm, ‘Little Girl Lost’ (1962), from the third season of the original Twilight Zone series-an episode that inspired the creation of POLTERGEIST.  His last name also evoked Paul Stewart, the special effects supervisor on the Landis set of TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE, who was one of the five co-defendants in the TZ disaster trial.  Thus, Kingsley Stewart was also linked to Landis, who he resembled and acted like more than he did Cronenberg or Spielberg.  Particularly when Stewart was with his partner, Freddie Howard-played by Stanton-as the tragicomic pair evoked Landis and his producer pal, Folsey jr.  In fact, the use of Irons also affirmed the film’s interest in the twilit and disastrous year of 1982, as Irons was linked forever to that traumatic year by way of his character Nowak in the allegorical Jerzy Skolimowski film, MOONLIGHTING (1982). 

 

Thus, a twilit cadence haunted the creation of Stewart’s new film and INLAND EMPIRE, a twilit cadence implicitly reaffirmed by the fact that the Morrow evoking allegorical film, ON HIGH IN BLUE TOMORROWS, was a remake of a twilit and murder scarred film based on a Polish gypsy folk tale called ‘Vier Sieben’ (‘Four Seven’ in German).  Thus, using our gift of intuiting things yet again, the fact that Grace slowly transformed into her character Susan Blue over the course of INLAND EMPIRE in MULHOLLAND DRIVE and VIDEODROME fashion and became one with the moving painting’s illogical dream within dream logic after a visit to her house from Zabriskie’s Good Witch neighbor, and eventually liberated Karolina Gruzska’s television watching lost girl-who evoked Cherie Currie’s television watching lost girl, Sarah, in the Dante directed third episode of TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE-from the Wicked Phantom-played by Krzyztof Majchrzak-in order to leave the twilit dream and come full circle by returning to her house and the visit from Zabriskie’s Good Witch healed, whole and harmonious in classic Dorothy, Sandy and Lula fashion in the end, implied the hope of Lynch that he had released the TZ disaster, at last. 

 

At any rate, Cronenberg implied that he was roasting Lynch yet again and INLAND EMPIRE and THE GOOD THIEF in his allegorical film, EASTERN PROMISES (2007), an implication affirmed by the presence of Watts as a London midwife named Anna Ivanovna.  As the Wicked Phantom was also alluded to in the implicit form of a suicide bomb victim referred to in the closing credits as the Black Suit Man-played by Suhail Al-Dabbach-at the end of the allegorical Bigelow film, THE HURT LOCKER (2008), Bigelow also implied that she was roasting Lynch and his ability to keep on going despite one cinematic disaster after another in the symbolic form of the equally indestructible bomb disposal expert, Sergeant William James-played by Jeremy Renner-and affirmed her implicit intent with allusions to DUNE.  As for the Boy Scout from Arrakis himself, the unstoppable Lynch revealed that he was his most quirky creation in the allegorical BlackandWhite film, LYNCH (one) (2008), which followed him along as he made INLAND EMPIRE.  Then it was off to implicitly roast Cronenberg again and several other Canadian and American film artists when he returned for some seriously crazy clown time as executive producer on his daughter Jennifer Chambers Lynch’s surreal, CGI free and allegorical moving painting, SURVEILLANCE (2009).

 

‘David, grow up!’

 

        Indeed, the return of Pullman as the Cooper evoking FBI Special Agent Sam Hallway immediately confirmed that the Lynches were blasting Cronenberg again as in LOST HIGHWAY.  A pivotal station wagon with the license plate 97A525 openly confirmed the link to LOST HIGHWAY, as the moving painting was released in 1997.  The many allusions in SURVEILLANCE to Cronenberg’s then recent twilit and allegorical film, A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE (2005), reiterated that the film was roasting Cronenberg.  The appearance of Michael Ironside as police chief Captain Billings reaffirmed the film’s interest in Cronenberg, as Ironside began his film career as evil director-linked scanner Darryl Revok in SCANNERS.  The appearance of Kent Wolkowski as a befuddled and pouty teenager named David also underlined that the Lynches were addressing Cronenberg in SURVEILLANCE, and also implied that the Lynches thought that Cronenberg was but a lost boy. 

 

However, while addressing Cronenberg again as in LOST HIGHWAY, there were important differences between the two moving paintings.  For unlike Madison/Dayton in LOST HIGHWAY or Viggo Mortensen’s Tom Stall/Joe Cusack in A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE, Hallaway did not transform back into a good character after spending some time as a bad character over the course of SURVEILLANCE.  Instead, he was slowly revealed over the course of the moving painting to not be a good guy FBI Special Agent, but the gleefully insane and unrepentant serial killer that Captain Billings and his fellow officers were looking for in their small and no doubt Hollywood linked town. 

 

His female partner, Elizabeth Anderson-played by Julia Ormond, who played Doris Side in INLAND EMPIRE-was also revealed to be his equally gleefully insane partner in serial killing crime over the course of the moving painting.  It was also noticeable that the two serial killers not only fooled Captain Billings and his fellow officers with their FBI Special Agent schtick, but also killed the Cronenberg linked Billings and his officers-officers linked not only to Cameron, Folsey and Landis, but also to Ivan Reitman-at the end of the moving painting.  Thus, using our gift of intuiting things, the implication was that Hallaway symbolized Lynch pere and that Anderson symbolized Lynch fille in SURVEILLANCE.  Indeed, a song by Lynch called ‘Speed Roadster’ on the soundtrack that later appeared on his cd, CRAZY CLOWN TIME (2011), affirmed the importance of the moving painting to Lynch and that daughter and father had teamed up in SURVEILLANCE for a gleefully demented symbolic slaughter of all of the American and Canadian film artists that had driven them the most crazy in order to truly cleanse the Temple Theatre and lead audiences out of the twilight-kull wahad! 

 

For his part, Antoine Fuqua implicitly linked Lynch to ex-U.S. secret agent Mike Banning-played by Gerard Butler-and had him fight to liberate the White House, and, implicitly, film art from the CGI enhanced blockbuster beast in the allegorical film, OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN (2013), and implicitly affirmed his intent with allusions to TWIN PEAKS and WILD AT HEART.  Curiously, with its allusions to BLUE VELVET, DUNE, ERASERHEAD, INLAND EMPIRE and LOST HIGHWAY, Joss Whedon implied that the renegade AI, Ultron-voiced by Spader-was not only linked to Lynch but in need of being defeated by the assembling Avengers in the allegorical and CGI enhanced super satirical film, AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON (2015), a film that saw the implicitly Cronenberg linked Vision-played by Paul Bettany-destroy the last robot Ultron, in the end.  Indeed, the implicit link of twin siblings Pietro ‘Quicksilver’ and Wanda ‘Scarlet Witch’ Maximoff-played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen, respectively-to Riley and Emily Lynch implicitly affirmed that Lynch was being roasted in AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON. 

 

As for Lynch, with a Las Vegas insurance firm boss named Bushnell Mullins-played by Don Murray-who looked like the twin brother of John Tory, the current Mayor of Toronto, two Las Vegas Police Detectives who resembled Rob Ford, the last mayor of Toronto, and his brother Doug-played by David Koechner and Larry Clarke, respectively-and a Buckhorn, South Dakota character killed real dead named Bill Hastings-played by Matthew Lillard-who resembled CBC television personality, Jonathan Torrens, and who was the writer of a Zone blog that evoked www.zonewarsonfilm.com, and a character named Charlie-played by Clark Middleton-who looked like a more handsome and virile twin brother of the poor ol’ Gardevil, the Boy Scout from Arrakis implied an interest in Toronto, its film artists and its film ‘scholars’ when he teamed up again with Amick, Ashbrook, Badalamenti, Beymer, Coulson, Cruise, Davis, Deming, Dern, Dunham, Fenn, Ferrer, Frost, Goaz, Kelly, Lee, McGill, Robertson, Stanton, Stewart, Strobel, Watts, Wise, Zabriskie and Brent Briscoe, Patrick Fischler and Robert Forster-a twilit trio who had bit parts in MULHOLLAND DRIVE-and Carel Struycken-the tall Dream Man in TWIN PEAKS-on the dream-like, slightly CGI enhanced and allegorical telemoving painting series, TWIN PEAKS: A LIMITED EVENT SERIES (2017). 

 

‘Mr. Hastings, are you the author of an online journal

or blog entitled THE SEARCH FOR THE ZONE?’

 

Indeed, the CN Tower evoking tower of the Stratosphere Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas affirmed the implicit interest of the series in Toronto, while the Mississauga evoking Vegas suburb of Rancho Rosa affirmed the implicit interest in the series in Mississauga film ‘scholars’.  The presence of Amanda Seyfried and Caleb L. Jones as Rebecca ‘Becky’ and Steven Burnett, respectively, reaffirmed the implicit interest in Toronto and its film art and artists in TWIN PEAKS: A LIMITED EVENT SERIES, for it reminded us that Seyfried played troubled prostitute Chloe in the allegorical and Toronto set Atom Egoyan film, CHLOE (2009), and that Jones played Syd March in the allegorical and Toronto set Brandon Cronenberg film, ANTIVIRAL (2012).  The presence of Jennifer J. Leigh and Tim Roth as Chantal and Gary ‘Hutch’ Hutchens, respectively, also affirmed the implicit interest in Canadian film art and artists, as the two hillbilly assassins evoked Cameron and his latest wife, Suzy Amis.  The inclusion on the soundtrack of the allegorical and Lynch re-mixed Muddy Magnolias tune, ‘American Woman’ (2015), which evoked and mocked the allegorical Guess Who tune, ‘American Woman’ (1970), reaffirmed the implicit interest of TWIN PEAKS: A LIMITED EVENT SERIES in Canada and its art and artists.  Thus, using our gift of intuiting things again, we could see that the mysterious death of Hastings, the creator of the website devoted to revelations about the Zone, implied that Lynch had joined that tragicomic sub-genre of the dread allegorical Zone Wars known as ‘Cinema Garite’ and was trying to exorcise my Zone War site and myself on one level in TWIN PEAKS: A LIMITED EVENT SERIES.

 

In addition, the fact that the implicitly King linked FBI Special Agent Cooper freed himself from the identity of Dougie-‘Hel-LLLOOO!’-Jones and triumphed over his Dark Side in Twin Peaks-with the help of the Forceful Green Glove of Destiny ably worn by Jake Wardle’s Freddie Sykes-also implied that Lynch felt that Cronenberg had made up for his cameo in INTO THE NIGHT and freed himself from any link to Landis by the high quality of his film art since 1990-including, oddly and implicitly enough, such implicitly Lynch roasting films as NAKED LUNCH, CRASH, SPIDER and EASTERN PROMISES.  In fact, the possibility that Cooper prevented Palmer from being murdered decades ago, in the end, implied that Lynch was pleased indeed with the post-1990 film art of Cronenberg. 

 

Significantly, Agent Cooper’s Dark Side evoked Johnny Depp throughout TWIN PEAKS: A LIMITED EVENT SERIES, reminding us that Depp played the implicitly Lynch linked Raphael in his film, THE BRAVE.  Indeed, Lynch alluded to THE BRAVE in the series, particularly when Cooper’s Dark Side beat the big and intimidating boss, Renzo-played by Derek Mears-in an arm wrestle, implicitly affirming his Depp addressing intent, for the boss evoked Marlon Brando, who played the sinister McCarthy in THE BRAVE.  Thus, Lynch also implied that he was not pleased that the mega-successful and wealthy actor/director/writer and symbol of commercial Hollywood film art had linked himself to the far less successful and film art for art’s sake Lynch, and was triumphing over and exorcising Depp with Cooper’s triumph over his Dark Side, in the end.  A triumph that Sir Scott also implicitly allowed Lynch in the implicit form of the triumph of odd and cigarette smoking Mecha-Replicant man Agent K-his letter designation reminding us that Lynch’s middle name was Keith, and played by Ryan Gosling-at the end of the Sir Scott executive produced and implicitly A.I. addressing Denis Villeneuve film, BLADE RUNNER 2049 (2017).  All of which implicitly affirmed that, right to the end, in order to understand and truly appreciate the dream-like and dream filled moving paintings and telemoving paintings of Lynch important it was to intuit things with the Gift.

 

 

 

 

 

Bibliography

 

Anolik, Lili.  ‘David Lynch’s Dark Art’.  Vanity Fair No. 679 (Hollywood 2017): 118-23.

 

King, Stephen.  Thinner.  New York: Signet, 1985.

 

Lynch, David.  Catching The Big Fish: meditation, consciousness and creativity.  New York: Jeremy P.

Tarcher/Penguin, 2006.

 

Lynch, David and Kristina McKenna.  Room To Dream.

        New York: Random House, 2018.

 

Naha, Ed.  The Making Of DUNE.  New York: Berkley Books,

        1984.

 

Rodley, Chris, ed.  Lynch On Lynch.  London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1997.