Famous for evoking the eerie undertow of everyday life, David Lynch--the director whose films include Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart and who created the television show Twin Peaks--fearlessly projects his own psyche onto the screen. But the man with the eccentric sensibility says we shouldn't read anything into the fact that in his latest effort, Lost Highway, he takes on the meaning of identity.
PT: Do you think there's a dividing line between the people who get what you do, and the people who have a harder time?
DL: I think people think they have a hard time, but it's because--and this is a very general statement--most films are pretty easily understood. So [our] mechanism for interpretation is dulled a bit. But life is filled with mysteries, and symbols, and clues, and we all seem to get it in one way or another, one level or another. So films that allow you to dream or to have different interpretations are, for me, what it's about. The power of cinema is that it can show abstractions and things that exist down inside of us.
PT: You say there aren't answers for everything. Yet science struggles to find answers for everything. Is your feeling a response to having a father who's a scientist [Lynch's father worked for the Forest Service] ? There are names for trees, bugs can be identified. Everything is precise.
DL: Well, it's precise, but it's always changing. Scientists are like detectives. They go deeper and deeper into things.
PT: So you're a scientist of human behavior?
DL: Well, if we're all kind of detectives, that's sort of what it's like. Either the science of trees or the science of human behavior.
PT: Your films portray the heights and depths of human experience. And you personally have led a very varied life: growing up in a small town, becoming very well-known. Are there any conclusions you draw about human nature from your experiences?
DL: Well, human nature is a huge spectrum. I think through this darkness and confusion eventually comes a prize that is worth the struggle. I think that's why it's happening, I don't know. But I believe there is a beautiful ending in store for people.
PT: Do you believe in reincarnation?
DL: Yes.
PT: So you think we're here to learn lessons, and that's our struggle. We have our particular lessons to learn and we either succeed and move on or. ..
DL: Yeah, it's more complicated, because once you take a first step, you're on a certain road and you start acting and reacting and through that, learning. I think it's a very long process, but it's tough going.
PT: Mark Frost [Lynch's producing partner on Twin Peaks] has been quoted as saying you like to make people uncomfortable.
DL: That's not true. Sometimes people do things that end up making other people uncomfortable. But sometimes they do things that make people feel wonderful. There are many different textures in a film, many contrasts, but the ideas guide you to everything. If you just set out to make a film that makes people uncomfortable, the cart would definitely be in front of the horse.
PT: But you won't avoid making people uncomfortable; if it happens, it happens?
DL: Well, since everybody is different.
PT: You don't even know when it happens?
DL: You're true to the ideas for yourself, and you can't control what happens after a film is finished. Some people react one way, others another.
PT: You were recently quoted as saying that in the disturbing thing there is sometimes tremendous poetry and truth.
DL: Life sometimes makes us uncomfortable, but we learn things from it. And people always say that very good things come out of very rough situations. That's sort of the same with film.
PT: You've talked about needing to fall in love with a subject before you can really work on it for any length of time. Was it the film noir genre, was it the characters--what did you fall in love with in Lost Highway?
DL: Sort of the whole thing. The ideas come in fragments, but they come with the character and the mood, and all the parts, most of the time. Only when a large portion of the story is in front of you do you start seeing what it really is. It's the ideas stringing themselves together and feeling correct. You start to fall in love. It becomes a complete world to you.
PT:
Is there something about identity that compelled you to explore the characters? [In Lost Highway, jazz musician Fred Madison (Bill Pullman) inexplicably turns into car mechanic Pete Dayton (Balthazar Getty).] Have you had the sense of feeling like a stranger in your own life?
DL: No. There's feeling the sort of group consciousness in the ether, there's feeling things inside yourself, and then there's catching ideas from the ocean of ideas. All those things seem to play a part in the process.
PT: And you don't worry what the response will be?
DL: It's an intuitive feel. And the ideas come along, and if you're true to them and you feel that you're bringing them up as close to a hundred percent as you can, the ideas--because we are all human beings--will be correct for others. It's not that [everyone will] see them exactly the same as you do, because each machine of seeing is different.
PT: You hope there'll be resonance.
DL: Exactly right.
PT: And it was only after you finished the script that you discovered the concept of psychogenic fugue [a dissociative disorder in which a person has difficulty remembering their past and assumes a partial or completely new identity]?
DL: Yes.
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