I was recently asked to write a little ditty about all the films that prominently feature Los Angeles as a character in this year’s AFI Los Angeles Film Festival (11/1-11/11). One of the films I covered was Lynch, a documentary about - you guessed it - David Lynch.
It begins and ends with references to Bastille Day. In the beginning, Lynch tells the readers of his website that Bastille Day is still months away and at the end of the film, he proudly announces that it is, in fact Bastille Day. The last images of the film are of Lynch building a shrine to the French with pastries, a bottle of wine and a French flag.
When I submitted my interview questions to the filmmakers, even though it had nothing to do with my article, I couldn’t help not asking about the significance of Bastille Day for David Lynch. And since I couldn’t use the quote in my article, here it is:
…Bastille Day is a day for David in which he gets to eat croissants with chocolate and jam in a very special way. David loves the French people and their country.
It’s like a birthday for him where “he gets to eat croissants with chocolate and jam in a very special way.”
It just melts my heart.
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Gene Z added these pithy words on Oct 27 07 at 8:35 pmYou know, it’s funny - I’m a HUGE Lynch fan and I don’t think I’ve ever seen that still of him on the Black Lodge set. Pretty cool, JHK.
A series about films set in LA. You should link to what you wrote (wherever it’s published at) as I’d like to read it. It’s an intruiging topic for an essay. Do you pick the obvious films like Chinatown or go with the less obvious choices like, well…Lynch’s recent work I suppose. Anyone else see Inland Empire? And I thought his other work was esoteric! I mean, with Twin Peaks, Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, you can at least widdle away at the superfluous symbolism and dream sequences and arrive at some underlying meaning, or theme, or deeper rumination, but Inland…Jeez. Anyway…
Good stuff, JHK.
jhk added these pithy words on Oct 27 07 at 10:49 pmUnfortunately, the films I covered were the films in this year’s festival, not the canon of L.A. movies. That would have been fun…
Now that you mention it, I’m not exactly sure where AFI is going to publish it. I know they print hard copy “newspapers” for every day of the fest but I wonder if they’re going to online any of it. When I find out, I’ll link to it or at the very least publish it here after they publish it first.
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