Speaker 1: It's a very great pleasure to have you on.
Speaker 2: How are you doing, man, I'm doing great. Yeah, thanks
for having me. I was glad that I think Robin
reached out and said that, you know, you would be
a good guest to come on here and talk film.
So I appreciate that her linking us together, and I'm
really honored to be here. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. And before we start talking about
the film, why don't you just let people know where
they can find your work and sort of tell them
what you do.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I do quite a bit of stuff. I cover
a whole range of topics, basically film philosophy, theology compared
to religion, geopolitics, all that kind of stuff, and I
cover it at my website mainly Jasonelsons dot com. I
do a lot of media work, a lot it. We've
done a TV show. I host the fourth hour of
the Alex Jones Show about once every two weeks or so.
And yeah, so I have two books on Hollywood and
film symbolism, so that this is kind of my main
thing that I've done for the last ten years, and
then I kind of branch out into other stuff, even
to the point of doing debates with a lot of
religious figures and so forth atheists. But yeah, I did so.
I did Esoteric Hollywood one and two. And this is
great because and I'm glad by the way that that
when we were talking, you said that you'd already done
Lost Highway, because Wild at Heart is the one Lynch film,
along with Eraserhead, that I've not yet really covered in
my essays or in my video. So this is going
to be great to finally delve into this one. Thank
you so much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I should say to the listeners that the first
film that Jay suggested was Lost Highway, and we already
talked about that one in November. We did a Noir November,
So we did Lost Highway. And which other film did
we do? We did a bunch of noir films. In
any case, we're going to talk about Wild at Heart.
I'm a huge Lynch fan and so and I just
rewatched the film for you know, the end time. Yeah,
it's a brilliant film. How come you wanted to talk
about this film?
Speaker 2: Well, like you, I'm a big David Lynch fan. And
when I started, I was taking film classes back in
my undergrad and I've always been a David Lynch fan
since high school. But I never really got David Lynch.
I guess you could say, to the degree that you
can get David Lynch maybe until I was into my
twenties and I'd read a good bit on compared to
Religion and kind of got some of the ideas of
Tibetan Buddhism down and this kind of stuff. So I
had a better kind of toolkit for maybe giving a
rough decoding or an attempt at decoding David Lynch. And
so since then, you know, like I said, his films
actually took up I think two or three chapters in
my books. So I've dedicated a good amount of time
to decoding a lot of David Lynch, especially Twin Peaks.
I did a really really deep dive into Twin Peaks.
So it's nice to then, kind of, like you said,
step back and review it because one thing that one
of the things that's great about David Lynch films is
that every time you come back to it, you'll notice another,
you know, sort of cross universe connection to another David
Lynch film or something like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know it's David Lynch is one of
these filmmakers and I think the same sort of goes
for We talked about we had some guests on last year,
Tina and Yunis, and we talked about The Stand. Stephen
King's the Stand and Stephen King he is, I mean,
he advocates sort of leftist views, right, but when you
look at the esthetics in the Stand and in other places,
it's rural America, it's it's it's not really he's not
very friendly to the big city sort of cauldron, leftist cauldron, right,
he is very much in favor of So there's there's
sort of an implicitly conservative message in many of those things.
And I would say definitely the same with David Lynch.
A lot of leftists like David Lynch.
Speaker 2: But you know.
Speaker 1: What what is twin Peaks. Twin Peaks isn't the leftist dream,
it's the leftist nightmare. It's you know, they don't want
to they don't want you know, rural America, a little
town with only pretty much only white people, and there
is very much those kinds of values that they generally
don't tend to embrace.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: But but that is what connects to people, Those values
connect to people on a deeper level, would you agree
with that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, David Lynch has gotten a lot of criticism,
for example, from feminists. They don't like the portrayal of
you know, male female sexual relationships in David Lynch knows
mainly because of course the male is the dominant figure.
The films are definitely not amenable to feminism. I mean
it's kind of it's kind of laughable really, especially with
when you watch something like Dune. You know, Dune is
a fundamentally anti feminist novel. I mean, the whole story
is about you know, Paul actually sort of trumping the
Witch Guild and their attempt to manipulate him, and he
sort of rebukes these these witches, these feminists. Right. So
I think that there's there's definitely a trend in David
Lynch's films to not pander to or cater to that
kind of low iq uh, you know, equalitarian leftism. But
I think he knows as well that he has to
kind of you know, sort of not really go into
any of that stuff too too deep because everybody knows,
you know, the the leftism that dominates everything, and you know,
mainline Hollywood, mainline media. So I think also he's kind
of made you know, quasi libertarian statements at times, so
he probably is a more on the right specter of libertarianism,
if I had to guess. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And at the same time, I find that artists, generally, filmmakers, musicians, anything,
they tend to don't be very They don't have a
very sort of clear conceptual understanding of politics. They have
an esthetic understanding, right.
Speaker 2: And although they don't really.
Speaker 1: Grasp the political things that are going on, the aesthetic is,
you know, the types of societies and the people that
are portrayed in David Lynch's films.
Speaker 2: That's what people.
Speaker 1: On I mean, I consider myself on the right, but
that's what I'm sort of nostalgic about. That's what I miss,
That's what I feel, a sort of a certain sense
of there's a tragic feeling of something being lost in
the modern world. And a lot of the stuff that's
being lost in the modern world is what's portrayed in
many of David Lynch's you know films.
Speaker 2: Absolutely the loss of Americana. Certainly, while at Heart will
be you know, a big tribute to that. What is
this older kind of fifties, sixties era Americana? What was
lost there's a lot of critiques of kind of Americana too.
I think with especially with Twin Peaks, we kind of
have this idea that America is one thing, but in
reality there's always this theme of kind of an under
undercurrent of organized crime. This is something that I've delved
into recently in my own just separate studies, with studying
the history of the mafia, contract killers, assassins and that
kind of stuff. And when I went back and watched
Wild at Heart, actually noticed quite, you know, quite a
few of those mob elements. I'll get into that something later,
but the reason I bring that up is that I
see Lynch is what you might call the Hollywood trilogy
with Lost Highway, Mahan Drive, and Inland Empire. Those are
kind of critiques of Hollywood. I mean, I mean, I
had a friend long time ago who said that, you know,
when David Lynch made Lost Highway, right, he was kind
of giving his middle finger to Hollywood. Maholland Drive is
kind of that, and and and you know, he's never
really had a mainstream acceptance since then. It's always been
kind of a tour avant garde type films, which I
guess we're He's you know, most at home and is
doing that kind of stuff. But I definitely think he's
critiquing and and sort of showing the absurd because because
one thing that comes up in the Hollywood trilogy is
that Hollywood as this inland empire, functions like a little
kind of city. And you notice you always have these
kind of organized crime characters, the little man behind the
glass that kind of calls the shots and he says,
who gets a roll? And they're kind of working under
the devil, or you have a mister what's it is it?
Mister X, the guy in the Lost Highway, Dick Dick,
who's the you know, the mobster who's filming the porno's
and this kind of stuff, and he kind of calls
the shots in that. So this theme is consistently there
that if we think about David Lynch, he's who from Michigan, Minnesota,
He's a Midwestern type of guy who went to Hollywood
and he's out there and he sees the way it
really works, and then he notices, you know, all of
these girls like the Naomi Watts character in Mahan Drive,
who come out there with the dreams of you know,
being a starlet. And then they end up a crack
whore basically is what happened. So I think he's seen
the way that that that that machinery works and then
it's really just a big kind of a deception. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think he's more or less explicitly said that about
for example, a Razorhead, uh that you know, it's his
reaction moving from a small place that that's you know,
yeah we can relate to to to like a bigger city,
which he saw basically as a hell hole, you know,
and that's the nightmare that he portrays in a Razor Read.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well there's that scene or just laughing at that
sequence in in uh waldet Heart, where when when they
finally get to California, right, which is going to be
the Emerald City. It's it's the paradise utopia that they're
that they're looking for, and they get there and he
gets beat up by the street game.
Speaker 3: He's like, oh, lork, so thank you gentlemen for introducing
me to you know, for straight and I would like
to appolo Joe, So you gentlemen for calling your homosexual.
Speaker 2: So he realized that no, it's not actually this utopia, right,
It's like this the shithole.
Speaker 1: Yeah it is, okay, So let's just dive into Wild
at Heart. What are some of the main aspects that
you find interesting in Wild at Heart?
Speaker 2: Well, it's a kind of a surrealist fantasy. It's a
retelling of Wizard of Oz, if I recall, it's based
on a book. I've not read the book that it's
based on, but there's some kind of book that was
that was written that that's the basis of this. I
think that it's it's a dark satire. It's it's kind
of all the typical things that you would see or
expect David Lynch to do, but it's prior to Twin Peaks,
so I think a lot of what went into this
will kind of set the stage for Twin Peaks. And
one obvious example of that is a lot of the
same actors. Right, we have you know, Laura Palmer pops
up as the Witch. You have the uh, well, it's
this app or Dune, So I guess you could say
some of the characters that are in Dune or present
here in terms of the actors. So he likes to
work with a lot of the same people, as of
course many directors do. But yeah, I think it's a
it's very similar to Twin Peaks, and that it's a
dark American satire, soap opera, psychodrama. And then I would say, also,
it's every The thing about Wild at Heart is that
every time I watch it it actually gets funnier. There's
there's more things in it that make me laugh than
the last time that I watched it. So it's it's
the one unique Lynch film that I think is actually
probably his most comedic that I off the top of
my head that I can I mean that Twin Peaks
certainly has some really funny parts and some funny characters,
but Wild at Heart is just it's just hilarious when
you go back and watch it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, especially the part with the jingle Dell. She talks
about her weird what is it cousin uncle something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Chrispin Government. Chrispin Glover plays this this lunatic cousin
to Lula Lula, and he believes that everyone has lost
the spirit of trust and Christmas and that if everybody
just accepted that Christmas is every day, right, then everybody
would be and so he just sort of descends into
this madness and he thinks that the aliens are controlling
people with Robert gloves to stalk him. It's just and
then so it gets crazy and crazy and crazy, and
I think that it's just a sort of a comedic
interlude or adendum there to try to show the dysfunctionality
of Lula's family. I mean, her whole family is just
a total mass, a total nightmare. And she was of
course raped traumatized when she was thirteen by Uncle Pooch, right,
And this is kind of I think giving is just
the indicator that her mom, who was of course is
the evil, the wicked witch. Her mom's kind of wrapped
up in a life of manipulation deception with these actually
organized crime figures. And I didn't realize this until the
last time that I went back and watched it, because
I've actually done a lot of research on the history
of organized crime in New Orleans. And so that will
actually tie into the mister Reindeer figure and the Carlo
Carlos Santos character, which we'll get to, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And there's also this, I mean, there are many
things that you know, looking at Wild at Heart from
the perspective of Twin Peaks, there are many similarities. The music,
you know, the there are some similarities. And also when
when they watch TV, it tends to be these sort
of nature shows, animals hunting things.
Speaker 2: Like predator prey, right, yes, And also the sort of
Harry Dean Stanton is it plays Johnny Farragut who manipulated
bought the mom Diane Ladden, and she he's sitting there
watching these you know, and animals rip apart one another,
and he starts barking right like a hyena, which of
course comes up in Twin Peaks, where you know, characters
kind of randomly start barking as if they're sort of
regressing to this you know, primal state of animality or something.
But yeah, that's a good point. And also there's this.
Speaker 1: Almost supernatural evil that's under the surface, I mean, because
that's that's very obvious. Twin Peaks builds a lot on
a lot of the atmosphere is built on this contrast
between the sort of the purely good and the purely evil.
Speaker 2: Right. And also here you have the.
Speaker 1: These sort of henchmen that work for Santo's. They are
involved in some sort of voodoo or whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I was gonna bring that the contract killing.
I mean, both in the Twin Peaks, and here you
have the notion of ritual murder which is connected in
some way to some kind of higher level organized crime
and contract killing. And that was one of the things
I highlighted in my In Peaks analysis was the sort
of interconnectedness of these different different criminal syndicates and ritual murders.
And another series I've been doing lately was to cover
the history of the well known serial killers. And one
thing that's that's a fact that you can actually demonstrate
that doesn't come up and a lot of the sort
of normal Normy takes on serial killers, and the sort
of the normy FBI profile is that there's a lot
of connections to organized crime and contract killing. And so
not every serial killer, but many of them have that connection.
And so when I go back and I watch these
these Lynch films, it's just like I just see more
and more how he's really kind of describing the way
the world really works. It's all of our delusions about
you know, America, about Hollywood, all that stuff just kind
of gets ripped away and we see, you know, the
CD underbelly. Which is not to say that it's all
negative or dark. I think satire has a sort of
positive you know, presupposition behind it. You know, when you're
satirizing something, you're kind of you're kind of taking away
the power of the mystique of the of the evil
and showing that it's it's kind of absurd really, so
it shouldn't have the power that it has. And yeah,
mister Reinder, you know he's he's contracting out too these
basically insane voodoo practitioners in New Orleans that we don't
even know. I like how we don't even know really
what this ritual is. It's just this really bizarre ritual
where you've got this one legged woman who's like, uh,
you know, count ta tent, counta tent, right, and then
she has this sort of orgiastic you know, conclusion to
the when they killed Johnny Farragut, where that's apparently the
only way that she can you know, get off, And
it's it's loosely some kind of ritual. But yeah, we're
noticing that the cult in this film is somehow being
used by the higher level you know, organized crime faction
as a contract killing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's it seems to be not only in
this film, but in many films and in Twin Peaks
as well, that David Lynch is almost obsessed with rituals,
I mean Dale Coop where he has his daily rituals
with his tea, with his coffee, I mean his pie,
and the things that he does, and the sort of ritualistic,
sort of Tibetan way that he has of investigating crime
with throwing rocks.
Speaker 2: It's all these weird.
Speaker 1: Sort of verging on the supernatural thing elements in basically
everything that he's created.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's definitely a theme. Is the Tibetan Buddhism, theosophy,
these different religious traditions are underlying what's going on in
these different worlds. And I even think that you can
kind of find in those religions the notion of kind
of a multiverse and this kind of stuff. And I
think David Lunch plays with that idea too, which is
why he will I think have similar characters kind of
cross over into other universes. Right. We even have, for example,
Lost Highway, there's a point where the Bill Pullman character
or looks at the screen as if he's breaking the
fourth wall and he's seeing us watching him. We have
Audrey Horn. I mean, it's not this is a speculation
of the people speculate this. But in While in While
the Heart, you have the sequence where she's had a
car rack and a head injury and it and she's
just sort of wandering run her car. She doesn't know
what's going on, and it's you know, uh, is it
sheryln Finn, It's it's the Audrey Horn character from Twin Peaks. Now,
Twin Peaks hasn't happened yet in terms of David Lynch's
uh movies, but you could speculate that that this is
Audrey in some other kind of universe or something, right,
because at the end of Twin Peaks there's the assumption
that that Audrey perhaps went out to Hollywood, right, people,
we don't know exactly what happened to her after season two,
but some people speculate that she left Twin Peaks to
go make it as an actress, to make it in Hollywood.
So is this our our Sailor and Lula happening upon
the sort of interdimensional uh? And And if you watch
Lost Highway you get that idea as well, where the
Peak character kind of switches consciousness with the Bill Pullman character. Right. So, yeah,
I think David Lynch definitely likes to toy with the
idea of characters moving across universes, popping into other universes.
And of course the most obvious example in this would
be that the good Witch at the end is Laura Palmer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, definitely, Oh yeah, for sure. I mean there's
also all these eccentric characters with I forget what's the
actor's name, the guy who has a dog, he talks
about his dog. You picture my dog. Oh, I told
you what, Jack Nance, Jack Nance. Yeah, and of course
Bobby Peru. All these creepy characters, and that's sort of
what makes it, that's what creates the magic in many
of his films, is you know, it's all about these
creepy characters, these weird characters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he loves to play with with uh the with
madness or with even bombs, right, Bombs come up all
the time in David Lynch films, as sometimes even emblems
of the demonic where they're or they're possessed. Right, So
in Mulholland Drive, you have that that demonic bomb creature
that's kind of hanging out behind the would be Denny's
restaurant right behind the over by the trash. Can you've
got the the bombs or or the the I don't know.
The woodsmen, I guess is what you would call them
in Twin Peaks too, right, who have to this the
ability to kind of switch in and out of dimensions.
They come from a spiritual realm into this realm, and
you know, they're always wanting to have you got a light, right,
They're always wanting to smoke this kind of stuff. So
bombs figure in. And that's I've noticed other directors do
this too, like John Carpenter does this, or he utilizes
bombs as images of the demonic, And yeah, I think
that what's interesting is that David Lynch, although not Christian
or he doesn't have any kind of biblical worldview per se,
he does like to utilize these I mean, I know
the possession is an exclusive to Christianity, but I mean
he he, he acts like he believes that, right at
least in his art work, that demons can possess you,
demons can take you over. Because what happens to uh,
you know, at the end of Twin Peaks is, of course,
you know, Cooper gets taken over by Bob, he gets possessed.
Then we get mister c Uh and then of course
we get in in Twin Peaks, we've got excuse me,
and wal of Heart, we've got the mom who, although
isn't specifically spoken of as possessed, she's clearly working as
the kind of you know, double figure demonic character. But
as we said, the Voodha ritual woman, you know she
plays Laura's mom. She she goes into this sort of
you know, dissociative possessed state when when they're doing the ritual.
So this always comes up in David Lynch Film's mean
that this is a consistent pattern and it actually fits
with Tibetan Buddhism, and Tibetan Buddhism does acknowledge, you know,
a spiritual realm with both you know, good angel and
devil type entities. Mm hmm. By the way, I even
found just real quick in the go Ahead. Uh, if
you pay attention in Twin Peaks, and if anyone doubts
me on this, I think this is a pretty knockdown point.
But in Twin Peaks, when when Cooper and everybody's trying
to solve the the situation with what's going on out
in the woods, you can notice in the background. They've
intentionally stuck you know, ritual magic images there. So you'll
notice here I just have a little image here, just
a picture, but this is behind Dale and this is
one of the Solomonic sigils there. I think it's asmodious
I think from the Keys of Solomon. So the point
being is that Lynch is definitely intentionally putting, you know,
things that indicate rich Well magic, as you were talking
about earlier about rituals into into his artwork. There's no
doubt about it.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, oh yes. And I think it's interesting the
way he uses bombs, just like you said, is that
bombs are they live among us, but they're another part
of society. They're sort of on the borderland between. I
mean what you know, do laws apply to bombs? I
mean do they have like an you know, uh, an
identity number or something like that. You know, it's like
they it's like there's something apart from normal society, right,
and that's that that is it's like an archetype that
that is intriguing.
Speaker 2: Did you ever see that. There's another movie that's very
Lynchian in kind of its spirit. It's called Under the
Silver Lake. Have you seen that I don't think. So, No,
it's really good. You should watch that because there's a
similar idea there with with bombs who have this kind
of alternate society, and there's like a King of the
bombs and he kind of has an intelligence network of
all the booms. It's it's really wild story, but it's
it's a very lynching and inspired it's definitely worth deconstructing. Interesting.
Speaker 1: So, what are some other things that you've thought about
with Wild at Heart?
Speaker 2: So kind of on the basic level, the first time
that comes to mind is it's I think it's a
satire of this sort of simplistic, normy idea of American
what America is. And I think I think Sailor and
Lula represent just basic dumb Americans and the spirit of America.
I mean, they want to go on just this road trip,
right to run from the mom A. Sailor himself has
a you know, a criminal past, right, he doesn't have
a problem just kind of murdering a guy if he
thinks that there's a you know, a dangerous situation around,
he doesn't. He doesn't take any shit, right, He's just
a dumb American basically, right, And he even the emblems
that he chooses to represent himself are just these kind
of basic American. He loves Elvis, right, Yeah, he just
belts out Elvis songs anywhere he's he finds himself. He
loves metal and even makes the connection between like how
Elvis led to metal. He's like, you guys have the
same energy as oh, he tells the mettle man. Right. So,
and Lula represents just the traumatized, just dumb American girl, right,
the dumb blonde girl, right. And the the family that
she comes from is actually kind of a higher class
family and they're a wealthy family. At least we get
the impression that whatever the mom has been involved in,
she's made some money from this, these these criminal operations,
and they're connected to the mafia. This is another thing
I didn't notice until this time around, is that I mean, yeah,
the mister Reindeer figure is this sort of aloof enigmatic,
you know, wealthy guy. But his you know, partner Santos
I noticed this time around. His name is Marcelo Sentos.
And this has a big part to do story with
New Orleans. And the most famous mob boss of New
Orleans was Carlos Marcelo and most famously, Marcelo was brought
in in the seventies under RFK for being he was
grilled by Congress from being implicated in the GfK assassination.
So this is no small figure, and they for many
many years couldn't bring Carlos Marcelo down. But as usual
with the organized crime, they had to rely on something
like tax evasion, scams IRS type stuff. This is what
they ended up getting Carlos Marcelo with. But he was
actually flown out of that, like exiled out of the
country by RFK and a secret kind of kidnapping operation.
And so this led to a lot of angst and
anger on the part of Carlos Marcelo towards the Kennedys,
which a fastening story on its own. And that's all
one percent history. It's not conspiracy theory. It's all easily verifiable.
In fact, that Bill O'Reilly did a whole investigative journal
journalism peace on that many years ago. But all that
just say that when I noticed watching it this time.
The names in Lynch films and names have a lot
of significance, as with most artists and writers. Of course,
the other name is Santo right well, that suggests Santo's
traffic conte, who is also he's the famous mob boss
of Florida, known for you know, many contract killings, calling
in many contract killings, known for being connected to organized crime,
drug trafficking, et cetera. So I think the name Carlos Santos,
who's the kind of coagitator villain with with Marietta, definitely
suggests the organized crime factor that I'd never noticed before
until going back and watching it. But so I think
that's what we're getting here, is that really America. Just
like ben Horn. Remember in Twin Pigs, ben Horn is
connected to Canadian organized crime. If you remember the the
jacquesa what's his name Jacqua anyway, that the French brothers
right who are running the organized crime out of Canada
that Ben Horn works for. So you've got organized crime,
you've got ritual murder, you've got all of these things
that go into just a perfect uh you know, I
guess you could say soap opera, but it's real. I mean,
this is the real, you know, underbelly of America is
organized crime. So that was something that really stuck out
this last.
Speaker 1: Time, definitely, And there's something about the characters just like
you say, they're sort of ordinary dumb Americans. But also
the way they speak is it's purely cliche.
Speaker 2: It's sort of like, that's a good point. I didn't
even think about theether. They're basically determined by pop culture.
Speaker 1: Exactly, and it's sort of like, I mean, I don't
even want to compare David Lynch to Tarantino, but that's
sort of what Tarantino tries to do as well, like
just use all these Americana cliche and film references, based
everything on like rehashing things from old films. But this
is sort of everything that they say is sort of
like a cliche heard in some film.
Speaker 2: It's a great point. This is a snake skin jacket.
Speaker 3: For me, it was a symbol of my belief an
individuality and a personal freedom.
Speaker 2: And I remember reading that that was actually something Nick
Cage came up with, that wasn't actually part of the thing,
but he was like, I feel like, I feel like
Sailor needs to have a snake skin jacket. That's that's
what he would have. And he's just perfect for that role.
Just just wild, you know, American actor who's just sort
of unhinged and just crazy, always going overboard with what
I call crage, right, Nick Cage Rage just Crage. By
the way, he is a he is a great actor.
Like people, A lot of people think Nick Cage is
a bad No, he's actually an excellent actor. He's he's
phenomenal in fact, you know, I mean, I know that
the Academy Awards and all that kind of bullshit. But
at the same time, typically speaking, I don't think you
can win an Academy where without having a significant degree
of talent. So there's a lot of films where Nick
Cage does does really well. That one where he's the
Let's Driver, the Martin Scorsese film I always forget the
name of it. That's an excellent film. Leaving Las Vegas.
He's great in that Bad Lieutenant. He's excellent and Bad Lieutenant.
I mean, there's dozens of films where he's he's a
phenomenal actor. So and Wilder Heart. He does excellent in
Waldi Hart.
Speaker 1: He's supposed to be Yeah, he's perfect for the role
because he's supposed.
Speaker 2: To be weird.
Speaker 1: I mean he's and he is a bit weird, and
he's still yeah yeah, yeah, no, I mean that's so
so that but it works, and that's that's the whole
charm of the film, and that's a part of that's
the part of of you know, David Lynch's style is
built so much on nostalgia, and of course a lot
of it comes from I mean, I've I've never lived
in the United States and I visited once, but but
but still I.
Speaker 2: Have through movies and TV.
Speaker 1: I have also sort of a relationship to those cliches
because I've grown up with them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's interesting. I've never actually thought to ask a
person sort of out of the US what their take
on the US is. And the funny thing about the
US is, I know you probably know this, and you
could probably derive this just from your visit, but you know,
the United States is more like different countries only one.
People think of it as as America. But I mean,
the way that California operates is completely different than the
way the Bible Belt or the South operates. I mean,
it's just a I mean obviously that nowadays, with the
prevalence of kind of consumerism, corporatism and all that stuff,
there's a lot less dissimilarity. We're getting the monoculture obviously,
but traditionally speaking, I mean, it's it's just different countries.
I mean, I've been all across of the US and
many of the states. I lived in many of the states,
and it's it's like different countries. It's hard to it's
hard to explain, but it is a vast right, you know, landscape,
and you know, and there's pros and cons too, obviously anywhere.
I mean, I know that's kind of cliche, but I've
lived in California and I've lived in the Bible Belt,
so I can compare the two. And I've been I've
spent time in New York and so forth. But yeah,
I think that's that's a very interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think, but I think that's an interesting aspect
that's that's sort of unique to to America and especially
to California. When I when I was there, I visited
la and it's sort of like, you know, because it's
in so many movies. There are so many things that
I sort of could recognize although I've never been there before,
because so much of the image of America is based
on films, and I think that sets its apart from
many other countries, because you know, people who've never been
in America can still relate to a lot of the
culture because simply because everyone grows up watching Hollywood films
and TV shows things like that, and that's it's it's
kind of weird because it's it's sort of when you
when I in LA, felt like I was in a
movie set, because it's like, Okay, I've seen all these
things before in a completely different setting.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I was raised in San Diego for many years
and my dad was in the Navy, and then we
moved back to the South for most of my life.
And in the past few years, due to the work
that I've been doing and the TV media work and
the books, I've gone out to LA multiple times for
US speaking engagements and TV type stuff. And it's a
lot different, right when you go out there with the
attitude of trying to deconstruct it. And before I'd written
the first book, we went out there and I was
doing some research and checking out a lot of different sites,
and it was like you like, I felt like I
was experiencing, you know, the movie world, because it's real time, right.
And I think that's another thing that Lynch likes to
play with, which due to the influence of surrealism, he
loves that blurring the line between the dream world, the
surreal world, and the real world, because that's a big
part of my drives, a big part of Twin Peaks,
it's a big part of well, I guess many of
his films is like, you know, where is the border
between fiction and reality? I mean, most of our worldviews
are a tape playing in our head, right, It's like
our views are the fiction that that we've imbibed has
has partly programmed the way that we read reality. Oh yeah,
so you know, that's the power of Hollywood. And that's
part of the reason that when I wrote my book,
I want to deconstruct the propaganda power of Hollywood, the
way that it has the ability to literally kind of
program our worldview because it's it's the replacement of the
of Homer, right, it's the new myth maker. It's the
new you know, tradition of storytelling for the modern world.
And it has been tremendously effective. I mean it was
mainly for bad obviously, right in terms of destroying destroying culture,
but it's a fascinating weapon to decode nonetheless.
Speaker 1: Oh definitely. And it's it's interesting that this sort of
you know, what the postmodernists called hyperreality, that it becomes
more important than actual reality because people spend more time,
you know, looking at a screen than.
Speaker 2: They do looking at reality.
Speaker 1: So you know, you sit at home, you look at
a screen, and then you commute to work or whatever.
You see look at a screen on the bus or
train or whatever, and then you come to the office
and then you look at a screen again. And there's
so much of your time that's spent in this fake
reality that that becomes more important. And you know, you know,
they they can, they can, they can portray a picture
of reality that isn't real, but it's still gonna be
more important in determining people's attitudes and actions than the
real because people sort of, ah, we can, we can isolate.
You know, it's like COVID, you know, the lockdown. We
don't we don't need the outside world anymore.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that reminds me of the classic chapter from Budrillard
where he talks about simulacra and simulation, which actually is
referenced in the Matrix. I mean, it's it's it's bizarre
because you know, it's it's one of the things I
point out in my books is that it's it's almost
like in many cases, directors, our directors, cinematographers, screenplay writers, whatever.
In many cases, they seem self aware of a lot
of this stuff, perhaps more so than we we tend
to think. And that's where my books do kind of
verge on an element of conspiracy theorizing, is that it's
almost like a lot of times there is an awareness
of the of the power, of the philosophy, of the
ability of Hollywood to manipulate and and that's one thing
I do appreciate about that David Lynch is that he
seems to have that awareness and at the same time
be willing to satirize it and be willing to critique it,
be willing to kind of point out the power and
the evil that it that it can be.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, yeah, because that is a theme definitely in
uh Mulholland Drive and a Yeah, Lost Away, the evil
of the movie industry and the yeah it's it's and
there as well he plays with uh, well what's her
name with you know, the blonde hair and the and
the and the brunette in Lost My Way. Yeah, I
mean it's too two different, and I think in Inland
Empire he has like three levels because the girl now
it's many years since I saw it, but I think
she is herself. She's you know, playing a role as
an actor actress, and she's dreaming. So it's like you
can never know what part of reality you're in. And
of course that is a big part of the magic
that he creates, because that's sort of yeah, it's it
stretches our imagination.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I watched an old documentary that that had an
interview with Lynch and it was talking about his his influences,
and it was like ten or so alevant garde tour,
you know, surrealist filmmakers. And I watched most of the
clips of the surrealists and I went I did a
bunch of reading on surrealism from philosophers and film theorists
and whatnot. And one of the things that the attitude
of the surrealist director is trying to do is to
kind of play the role of God. I don't mean
that in a blasphemous way, but it's like taking on
the persona of God to tell the story. Right, So
it's like you're entering into a world, you're being told
a story. Lynch compares himself as compares himself with a
time to a shaman. Right, He's the person who kind
of steps into the other world through his TM transpnmentitation.
He describes this process quite a bit where he tries
to kind of get this influence from the other side,
which is loosely a kind of a Tibetan Buddhist practice,
and then he comes back to this world. Right, behold
the one who chants out between two worlds? Right, firewalk
with me. That's the whole point of the story. Is
the artist as the shaman or the artist as the
god figure telling the story the narrative, and you participating
in that. And the idea is you know, what is real?
What is fiction? What is the story that you yourself
is telling you that you're telling yourself? Right? Are you
really learning the world? Or are you being told a story?
Are you buying into a false myth, a false narrative?
I think he's playing with all of these ideas. I
know some of that's kind of cliche and obvious, but
I don't know. It's just one other thing I want
to say too, about a theme that's pretty prevalent in
some of the big directors like Kubrick that I've covered,
is that they do they tend to have this theme
of human trafficking and even ritual abuse and mind control,
and that might seem a little far fetched, but if
you think about it, I mean that's pretty obvious in
kuber Kubert's consistently dealing with the themes of human trafficking
and pedophilia. We've got that with Lolita, We've got it
with Shining, We've got it with Eyesweight Shut, We've got
it even in Barry Lyndon, and then in Lynch we've
got similar themes with you know, if we think about
say Lost Highway, the Patricia Arquette character, she we give
the impression that she was trying to, you know, do
something entertainment and somehow she ends up in porn. So
she ends up and I mean, that's the way I
read it, that's the doubling, is that she's living a
double life perhaps or or you know, the Fred Madison character,
Bill Pullman, he doesn't know right her her dark side
backstory or something like that, and then then he's found
that out and it has made him jealous, and he
stumbles upon, right the the network of the elites and
the organized crime that are filming the porn. Right that's
what the mister X, the Dick Dick Larent character is doing.
And so there's this there's this this sort of implication
of snuff right at the end when you have the
you know, he discovers that film and people are being
in Marilyn Manson makes a guest appearance there, and that's
what appears to be a snuff film that everyone's watching.
Mm hm. So that's another theme that comes up in
a lot of organized crime and ritual murders, is the
filming of it. And I and that involves or implies
human trafficking. And so I think when we look at
Twin Peaks, we've got that because the girls that are
going to One Eye Jacks are essentially high school girls
who are being coaxed into being prostitutes across the border,
across the lake over in Canada One Eyed Jacks, Right,
so you've got to and there's even right the kidnapping
and the murdering of Teresa Banks, right, the prostitutes that
are being trafficked and kidnapped by this organized crime ring.
And then in Inland Empire, if you pay attention, the
Laura Dern character when she dissociates or or goes into
her dream set or whatever. She seems to have some
sort of mental or spiritual connection. I don't know if
it's reincarnation or what, but there were these Polish prostitutes
that appear to be trafficked as well. And it's even
mentioned at one point that the guy who runs the
circus or the the I think it's a circus at
some point he's he's trafficking in prostitutes and women. And
then she flashes to what looks like the seventies or
eighties or something, and she's doing this dance routine with
a bunch of kind of skanky hose in a in
a trailer or something. Right, So there's this theme of
the actresses kind of being like prostitutes and being traffic
and then she bumps into Julia Ormond, who you know,
tells her that she says some kind of wild, crazy
conspiracy thing, like they're spraying chemicals in the sky and
you know, and there she acts like she's, you know,
got multiple personality disorder or something like that. So these
are themes that Lynch, you know, constantly puts in the films.
They're really there if you pay attention. How you want
to interpret that, it is up to you. But I
would say one last point is that a lot of
people don't know the pretty high level connection that Laura
Dern has. If you read Dave mcgallan's classic book on
on the Hollywood Laurel Canyon scene called Weird Scenes Inside
the Canyon, I highly recommend that book. He noted that,
So let me think how it goes. Bruce Dern's godparents
were Franklin Eleanor Rosenvelt and Eleanor Roosevelt. And then his
other distant his grandfather. Yeah, so the godparents of the Roosevelts.
His grandfather was George Dern, who was the Secretary of War.
And then there's another connection to Bruce Dern's uncle is
Archibald McLeish, who was a famous high level political operative
and a member of Skull and Bones. So she actually
comes from that. These Hollywood sort of counterculture figures ironically
come from a really established, prominent, you know, American dynasty, right,
And so here you've got this elite American dynasty of
political figures. But then they're also you know, immediately connected
to directly connected to the so called counterculture with Bruce
Dern and the Hollywood scene. And that's something that we
find a lot in the contradiction that is America. Is
the America's royalty. America's elite tend to want to like
distance themselves or they play another role of liberal counter
culture when they're actually from the most wealthy, powerful families
in the US. It's just this bizarre feature of the
sort of the implicit guilt, Like you're supposed to be guilty,
right if you're a successful American, and so the mask,
the persona that you wear if you've been successful, if
your family is wealthy, is that you pretend to be
the counter cultural liberal. That's just a bizarre feature of America. Definitely.
Speaker 1: I think you said many interesting things there. I like
what you said about Lynch being a shaman. It's like
he takes you on this spiritual journey.
Speaker 2: And it's.
Speaker 1: You mentioned the surrealist filmmakers playing God. I think that
one example that comes to mind is Bunuel's f The
Exterminating Angel, where people are in a room and it's
like he just throws in new sort of laws of nature.
Speaker 2: They can't leave the room.
Speaker 1: It's like he's just playing like pulling strings, you know,
on the characters, and they can't do anything like normal things.
They can't do normal things anymore. They have to stay
in this room and no one knows why, and it
becomes this bizarre thing. But it's it's also very attractive somehow.
It's you know, it draws, it really draws you in.
It's very interesting.
Speaker 2: I love those defying of laws of nature that he does.
Like like how in season three or twin Peaks when
the David Bowie character comes back as a teapot. Yeah,
so he got lost in the you know, inter dimensional
world and he comes back as this teapot. So it
would else would come up with David Bowie as a teapots.
It's crazy, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: And I also like what you said there about of
course this him playing on on this you know, trafficking,
exploiting people, and also trauma, because that is how I
see lost Highway that. I mean, he loves his wife
and when he finds out that she is that she is,
you know, doing porn behind his back, he's so broken
that he basically goes into a split personality states he's
dissociating and he has to rationalize this to himself because
he's so traumatized by this. And I think that is
also a thing that goes through all of Lynch's films,
basically almost that that characters are extremely traumatized by something,
And I mean Twin Peaks is probably the clearest example
of that. You know, I mean Laura Palmer is traumatized
because she's she is being raped by her father, he
was possessed by a demon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, the theme of doubling is pretty prominent. Well,
it's it's a prominent theme in Hitchcock. You know, you've
got strangers on a train, You've got Psycho, you know,
with Norman Bates kind of dissociating m the girl in Vertigo,
you can argue that, well, she seems to be part
of this elaborate, sort of organized plot, so I don't know,
technically know that she's not technically dissociating. She actually pretends
that she's associating to the Jimmy Stewart character. But and
of course, you know, obviously there's a there's a degree
of Hitchcock influence in David Lynch that you can see
that's there. But let's see, there's another Sunset Boulevard, right
if if you think about the Norman that's a big
influence on David Lynch and the Norman Desmond character is
basically dissociating. She's totally broken with reality. She thinks she's
living in the silent film, you know, twenties thirties era,
and this of course leads to the to the to
the murder of that the starving screenplay writer that she
sort of uh brings into her mystery realm there. So,
in other words, this theme of doubling comes up a lot,
and then I think Lynch likes to play with it
because exactly it fits into the metaphysics. I mean, as
far as I can tell, he believes Tibetan Buddhism to
some degree. So I think he believes that there is
this potential for dissociating. There is the reality of being
influenced by these other forces, these other worlds, these other entities,
the dream state, the unconscious, you know, et cetera. And
that's what the shaman does or he tries to step
into that world. So that's that's a kind of you
can say, possession, right or coming under the influence of
that higher realm, that other dimension, that spiritual reality. That's
what his whole you know, transnial meditation stuff is about,
is trying is trying to do that to get into
that state not necessarily being possessed by a demon, to
get into that state of being influenced by other realms,
so to speak. So that's his whole ethos, absolutely.
Speaker 1: Definitely, And I find that many I mean, just on
a personal le, people that I know, many people who
are extremely creative, like Lynch, They are interested in those things,
in esoteric things and in sort of mystic mystical religions
things like that, because it is I mean, it transports
the mind to a different world or a different level
of existence, or call it what you want. But yeah,
they tend to not see the world in these strictly
minimalist scientific terms because that isn't there's not a whole
lot to work with with your imagination there.
Speaker 2: And what is madness? I mean, I'm not saying there's
no line between madness and genius, but that's definitely a
theme right here, Like like what is the what is
the guy who's the insane, you know, schizophrenic guy screaming
at the mailbox, Like what separates that from you know,
the genius artists or or the genius you know literal
you know, the math sometimes even the mathematical genius is
like a like a like a John Nash right, Like
they become like literally the insane people. So a lot
of mathematicians have actually have gone insane. So yeah, that's
another interesting question. I think he plays with two, which
is like what is sanity? What is madness? You know,
there's no easy answers to that when it comes to
the arts and that kind of stuff. I mean, I
guess there is. I mean, I don't know. I mean,
I guess I'm talking myself into a box there, because
I do believe there's a difference between genius and madness,
but at times it is perhaps a thin line.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think so too. Yeah, so I
like to keep these shows around one hour. So so
I think let's wrap this up in a little moment.
Are there any final thoughts you want to get out
there before we wrap it up?
Speaker 2: I did have a couple just a few more notes
about themes that he uses, Like, you know, another one
of the mysterious elements that comes up is the everybody's
wondered for years what the cowboy is in mahulland Drive.
He's this sort of quasi supernatural figure that appears to
kind of be demonic. We know that in Lynch films,
when lights flicker, this is the presence of the supernatural
or of the other world invading our world. So a
lot of people wonder what the cowboy is. And I
noticed that when they're filming that Fat Chick porno in
Wild at Heart, the cowboy walks by. So this is
another instance of and I would assume that Lynch is
intentionally because he makes a point to show this cowboy,
like the camera follows the cowboy guy walk past those facts,
he's staring at them. Yeah, and so I think we're
supposed to see that kind of even above the level
of organized crime and the you know, the porno filmers
and all that, there's a higher spiritual level of the
demonic that's going on kind of in the background of
this stuff. That's something that I noticed. And then beyond that,
I would just say, let's see, uh the sigil ring
or Santos has a ring that that signifies like he
has a sigil. We know that in Twin Peaks, right,
there's the there's the ring that what has the symbol
that connects to this cult. Uh, So I think that
again is another theme that's work that's worth mentioning that
pops up, you know, across the canon of David Lynch films,
Laura Palmer being the good Witch. That's about it. Those
are Those are the last couple of points I wanted
to mention.
Speaker 1: Fantastic. I think this has been an excellent conversation. It
was great to having you on the show. So I
want to thank you for for joining us, and I
hope we can we can do this again sometime.
Speaker 2: Sure. Yeah, And if anybody's interested, you go to if
you would. If you want. If you want my books,
get them from the website because we give signed copies.
And of course if you buy them from Bezos, I
don't I don't make any money, so please get them
if you want book. If you like this kind of analysis,
that's what my books.
Speaker 1: Do, brilliant, So Jay's Analysis dot com, so make sure
to check that out. And like I said in the beginning,
tomorrow we'll be back with two episodes. We're gonna do
Endeavor first and then Academic Agent. But of course go
to guide to culture dot org forward slash Decameron to
see the entire schedule. And now I have to say
goodbye because I have another show coming up with Greg
Johnson and millennial woes. So but thank you so much
for doing this and let's talk again soon.
Speaker 2: All right, thank you, have a good day.
Speaker 1: Okay, bye bye