David Lynch Keeps His Head

OK, I know. I’ve totally been slacking about writing these posts about the essays in A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments* by David Foster Wallace. And I’m already half-way through my summer reading (!) and will need to post about that, too, before long.

How do you spell procastinator? T-E-R-E-S-A-H-U-R-L-E-Y.

Anyway.

So this essay was awesome (You knew that, though… And I think I’ve said that about every one I’ve read so far, too… How do you spell broken record? T-E-R-E-S-A-H-U-R-L-E-Y.). It’s about the time DFW got press credentials to be on the set of David Lynch’s film Lost Highway, so he could write about it for Premier magazine.

Patrick and I had watched the movie sometime last year, I think, for the first time. Yeah, I know, late to the party as usual…. but since I worked at movie theaters for so many years and got to see all my movies for free for such a long time, it’s been really difficult for me to pay to go see movies. Even movies by David Lynch (what, am I nuts?). I’m guess that since — when did I stop working for theaters? — 94 (or 95? well, whenever… a long time ago), we’ve probably averaged less than one per year. Probably less than .7 per year.

That’s not to say we haven’t watched movies, though. Since we’ve been married we’ve amassed a nice little DVD collection. And now that we have Netflix, well… I shamelessly watch all kinds of crappy, chick-flicks and idiotic comedies (when Patrick’s working), to the tune of maybe 6 or more a week.

I don’t know why we never watched Lost Highway before then.

We just never got around to it for some reason.

Anyway. DFW really brings the reader onto the set. I mean, seriously. Is it just me? Maybe it is. But it seems like every single thing he writes draws me in to the point where I feel like he and I are there together. Same with this. I felt like I was on the set. I loved watching Lynch direct, even from no shorter distance than five feet away. I loved meeting all the tech people. I loved watching Patricia Arquette and her stand-in drive up (looking identical) in her (Arquette’s) Porsche. I loved talking to the crew member who said, “Utmost is one word. There is no hyphen in utmost.” You just don’t get to do that every day. OK, well I don’t.

So yeah, this is all about me and Patrick and how much or little we watch movies, right? So back to that. There’s this scene in Lost Highway that just killed us. SPOILER ALERT …just because I totally didn’t expect it and that’s one reason it killed me, anyway… that’s why I’m alerting you, so skip the rest of this paragraph if you haven’t seen the movie and don’t want me to ruin this little gem for you)… So Balthazar Getty plays this powerful mafia-ish guy’s (Robert Loggia) favorite mechanic. Loggia brings his Mercedes in and has Getty go for a drive with him. Loggia drives, Getty’s next to him in the front seat, and Loggia’s two heavies are in the back seat. There’s this guy tailgating them. You know, honking, trying to get around them every few seconds (on a curvy, mountain-side road, no less). So Loggia waves him to “come around,” which he does, while extending a particularly expressive finger. The heavies put on their seat belts. I’m not so sure it was the gesture that really riled Loggia up, as much as the tailgating, but at this point, he (Loggia) floors it, rams the guy a couple times, and forces his (the guy’s) car off the road. Then he and his heavies jump out of the car and proceed to remove the offender from his car and beat the living crap out of him (most of which is done by Loggia) while Loggia’s screaming about the dangers of tailgating and forcing the guy to promise to get and memorize a driving manual. How many times have we all wanted to do that?

This is long! Sorry. The essay is longer, though, so there. Go read it now. And watch Lost Highway.