Silencio

2 On 'Eraserhead'

 

If I went to the Toronto Star archive, I could discover precisely what day it happened. Revue Cinema, a chain that went from Kingsway to Whitby, that showed second-run movies and a lot of other weird stuff, promoted that their Whitby locale would have an 'added mystery screening' after their nine o'clock feature.

Maybe it wasn't Toronto Star. Maybe it was Now.

1981 or 1982. I got into the theatre, and I saw whatever they wanted me to see. Then came ... the mystery.

I wanted it to be 'Eraserhead'. I would have bet on it being 'Eraserhead'. I'd heard enough things about this crazy-ass film that I, being a freak, was lustful to see it. No-one could understand it! Perplexed everywhere!

At seventeen, I was a dedicated cinephile. Magic Shadows! Saturday Night at the Movies! [(I've come across some half-broadsheets from 'pages of the past', 1981-2, with movie listings on them, and I went to theatres to see most pictures.)]

'Eraserhead' was the added mystery screening. Audience eighty. I laughed at the right times, and I was disgusted at other right times.

The guy did something to me, and I hope to continue in such expressive vein.

 

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3 On "The Elephant Man"

 

Oshawa Shopping Centre movie theatres, late 1980. I believe I saw this with John Waukaluk; in fact, I think we snuck in. You could pay one admission, then sneak into another movie after the first one was finished. Some friends of mine bragged about seeing three whole movies this way, but I didn't have the stamina for three.

It was extraordinarily well-received, probably one of the best Hollywood first film debuts. It's almost quite obvious he was following the studio style, except for one or two scenes which were decidedly weird.

As I've said, I was already prepared to be a serious movie-watcher, because of Elwy.

Because of Elwy....

I was on a bus going from Memphis to Nashville once. I got into a conversation with a guy from Ontario who'd been bussing through Central America for three years. He said the roads were quite scary. He asked: "You ever seen Wages of Fear?"

I replied: "Yes. Elwy showed it."

He laughed. "Haven't heard that name in three years."

Perhaps I didn't sneak in to see it after all. I'm basing that on the fact that I missed the first couple minutes. Maybe there's another explanation....

 

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4 On "Blue Velvet"

 

1. The theatre is gone now; it was the Uptown Theatre on Yonge Street. I saw it with Frank Faulk, and we were both under the influence, if you know what I mean. It could have been the last picture I saw ay the Uptown; since it's impossible to prove a negative, don't hold me to that! (It stayed operational for another eighteen years, so I probably saw other things there later. There'd already been a lot of gab about the film, but seeing it firsthand is another thing altogether. When it was over, we walked out, and I said:

"That was the most frightening film I've ever seen."

 

2. A couple years later, from a VHS tape, I watched it again. I can't say who with, but I did. Maybe it was on Dovercourt, which was certainly possible. We were under the influence, if you know what I mean, and I saw it completely differently. This time around. The camp of the film got to me this time, and since I knew everything would turn out all right in the end, I enjoyed it as something approaching 'cinema'.

"That was the funniest film I've ever seen."

 

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5 On "Twin Peaks" 1

 

Dovercourt, on television. It was probably on CTV, though it might have been on Global. We were enthusiastic about it, though I can't quite recall who watched it with me. Fabio? Rory? Uncertain, for it was quite a long time ago. We also watched a lot of "Star Trek" back then, but that's a whole other set of stories which will never be written. (You're welcome!)

In afterthought, it may have been the last example of 'event television' in history. Maybe! In any case, it was wildly popular. I heard some time much later that Queen Elizabeth II watched all the episodes; in fact, she cut off a meeting with Paul McCartney to get to a telly and see it.

The explanations of it all were quite mad, and it reminds me of someone I knew in those days who believed "X Files" could be figured out. Sure enough, the explanations started getting published immediately. Theories about stuff like One-Eye, for example. What does it mean? Who is One-Eye? Did I realize it was all being made up at it went along? That it was a shaggy dog tale? I will never know, precisely so similarly.

 

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6 On "Twin Peaks" 2

 

We all know how bad this got. On and on and on. It had some nice moments, but really Andy is just too annoying for words. I watched it all again maybe six years ago, and that fashion show business was pretty much the worst thing I'd ever seen.

About seven years ago, on a cold winter morning, I went out with some garbage and I found that someone had left twelve cassette tapes on the brick windowsill. Whoever it was must have snuck up through the alley to the sill, right? Among the tapes, all from the early 1990s, was a "Twin Peaks" curio: "Diane..." - The Twin Peaks Tapes of Agent Cooper". Simon & Schuster, 1990. You know what it is, of course. It's a cassette, and as I look around on Discogs I see the median selling price is $72.00. It probably won't play anymore; magnetic tape only lasts thirty years or so.

We didn't watch the whole thing. Apparently, the cast of the show got bored too, and stopped watching it. David Lynch, when he fails, fails as good as Samuel Beckett.

I'll never know who left those tapes on my windowsill.

 

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7 On "Wild at Heart"

 

Those were the days of the second-run movie theatres, my children. I'd continued frequenting them since being a teenager, and I continued seeing all sorts of movies at many theatres. First it was the Whitby one (now a nightclub), then at the Fox Theatre, then at the Revue Cinema, and the I lined on Dovercourt, so I went to the Bloor, the Kingsway, and the Nostalgic Cinema (which was a little room about the Kingsway). And it was at the Bloor Cinema that I saw "Wild at Heart," which seemed like cheap trash at the time.

The fiasco of "Twin Peaks" had turned me off any 'first-run' viewing, which went along with the general decline of movie-going in that period. I thought it was amusing, but I kept thinking about better movies of the same sort. It all seemed a bit ... tired. The acting was good and all, but really it was only as good as the source material. I never thought the guy was at his best when doing other people's stories. He always wanted to stick his own obsessions into it, so everything had two (or more) cooks. And his cookery was secondary.

 

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8 On "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me"

 

This was really the point at which it was impossible to not know almost everything about one of his movies. There was some Cannes debacle in which it got booed or praised or both, and there were some folks calling it all high-toned abusive pornography. Words, words, words; and what was David Bowie doing in it? If I recall rightly, which I don't, the media were more-or-less done with him. He was all washed up, and only fit for Parisians or worse.

I suppose I once again took myself to the Bloor Cinema for this one; I don't quite recall because videotape was so readily available by then, or maybe those DVD things had come into play....

A few years after this, I was talking to someone about DVDs. I thought that the problem with the digital world is that things don't decay properly. Analog technologies will still play, and decay, long after your average DVD gets spat out in disgust from a player. UNREADABLE. LPs get scratchy, and show their ages; videotape stutters, trying to give information, fragments, disturbs. And film, especially if the subject is lousy, burns brightly around the edges....

 

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9 On "Lost Highway"

 

People certainly go on about themes and motifs, don't they? Isn't it rather possible to ignore those subjects for a while and talk instead about grammar? Isn't it the case that there's quite a lot of work being done in the idea that writers are inclined to their own linguistic quirks, such as using two little adjectives before any verb? or three as the case may be? Someone somewhere used that to argue that the Funeral Elegy was Shakespeare's work. However, to me that doesn't quite work. Writers can parody another's works without much effort in which case it will bear none of the stylistic quirks that are so coveted in the functional analysis. Regardless of this quibble, it seems somewhat likely to me that a style, at the level of grammatical constructs, are the things that are being detected all the time and everywhere and even here if you want to put a point on this I.

"Lost Highway" must have been about something, of that I'm pretty certain; but after seeing it twice, once in a theatre (Varsity?), and then at home, maybe Logan Ave, maybe Havelock, I don't recall much except for Robert Blake.

 

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10 On "The Straight Story"

 

Mary and me (we were married by this time, essentially, and living on Havelock Street, in a row house soon to be torn down) spent real money to go to a real theatre, maybe the Varsity, to see this, and it was worthwhile in that it is an ordinary film that wouldn't have been out of place as an ABC Afternoon Special.... No-one under 40 could ever get the reference. It might not have been ABC! It could have been NBC!

Germaine is technology. Use what you got. You got a Speak and Spell? Use it. You got a motion picture camera? Use it. You got a road? Use it. You got a processor? Use it. You got a paintbrush? Use it. You got something MIDI? Use it. You got symbols? Use them. You want to see your brother? Use everything. You got electricity? Use it. You have something to say? Say it.

Enough with that shit. The film is a testament to all that's decent and caring. It's not at all contrariwise to his other stuff. He wants us to treat our loved ones decently, which would result in something better than what we have.

 

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11 On "Mulholland Drive"

 

Everyone knows this is a great film, which shows that being fucked up never hurt anything. It can be pulled apart and made into a coherent narrative, mostly, but of course there are bits and pieces that will not cohere.

Earlier, in both my life and this series of stories, it was possible to recall exactly where and with whom I saw the pictures. However, on ages, and novelty wears off. Who knows when and under what circumstances I saw this? It could have been in a movie theatre, or it could be off of a DVD. At this point, it's impossible to say. However, I do know I saw it twice.

I probably saw it in a movie theatre, considering who did it and all the big charged-up reviews I came across before seeing it. Yes, it must have been in a theatre, but I have idea who I was with, if anyone. It was a very long time ago.

Nearly a quarter-century has gone by, can you believe it? Golly gee willikers, a lot of people have been born in the meantime. And none of them had any experience of anything I've set down here.

 

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12 On "Inland Empire"

 

Who knows? All the scenes could be in any order, or in a different film altogether. I'm not even sure who was in it, or how it all happened. I don't know if there's a plot at all. I do know it ends with a wonderful rendition of 'Sinnerman,' all lip-synched and danced around to. Was it meant to make so little sense? Also, weren't there prostitutes dancing to an old Motown song? And also near the end, someone stabbed and dying while a Japanese woman does a long monologue?

Plus it's a very long film, inevitably made after a television series fell through. Why did he do so much for television? Maybe it's the hotness of broadcasting. Miss it, and it's gone. The whole industry was changing at the time; movie theatres had continued closing down, and everything was being seen at home. (As Steve Martin joked at the Academy Awards decades ago: "And I really enjoyed seeing all the tapes, er, er, movies, of course I mean movies!")

This was in movie theatres, though, and I may have gone to see it there. I wonder what state I was in, who with, and anyway why.

 

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13 On "David Lynch Cooks Quinoa"

 

Made with a videotape machine. He gives his recipe for quinoa, makes quinoa, and eats quinoa. He tells us it's something he eats every day. He sits outside, eating, somewhere in the pacific northwest (I believe) and he does it in black and white.

I think this was included as an 'extra' on "Inland Empire," though I'm not absolutely sure of that. I sat on a couch to watch it, and Mary was sitting beside me. A cat named Mexico may also have been in the room, but uncaptivated and unwatching. It reminded me of writing down my bologna sandwich recipe and putting it up on the kitchen cordwood board on Dovercourt. It was a simple recipe involving bread, butter, mustard, and bologna. It was probably the most carefully-written object I'd ever written. It was precise, with no excess. Two pieces of bread, one buttered. Bologna you place on the buttered piece, then you smear mustard on the bologna. Cover with the other piece of bread, and cut in half with the knife you used to smear the mustard. Put it on a place.

The original was much better than the above. Lost my touch.

 

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15 On "Twin Peaks" 3

 

I actually engaged a streaming service to watch this the first time through. (It was a television show, after all.) I hear some episodes were watching in a movie theatre, at Cannes or some such place, plus in some other places they've been watched on the "big screen" in marathon sessions. However--not in my case! We watched them all, one after another, over a week or so.

It was pretty crazy, but it could at least be made sense of. That said, there was a lot of stuff in it that could have been in one of his other films. Certain characters would vanish from the action for hours at a time, and, I must say, "Andy" and "Dougie" are about the worst characters I've ever seen in nearly anything. Some parts which were meant to be funny weren't; some parts which were meant to be frightening weren't. (Of course, my reaction could have been aimed at by the producers.)

Later, I bought the whole thing on Bluray. I made it about halfway through, Mary got bored, and so did I. I guess some things should only be experienced once, under the influence of something.

 

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16 On "What Did Jack Do?"

 

This was another add-on to something else. Honestly, I'm looking at the list of his most recent works, and they are almost all very short. I think that after I write about a music video, I'm going to track something down so that I the creator will have fifteen-and-a-half pieces.

It's a detective story, which seems true to form. He has plenty of detectives running around ever since "Blue Velvet", almost always comically, which may mean something and may not. I could muse on it, but I won't. This one stars David Lynch and a monkey. Lynch plays a detective interrogating a monkey about some sort of a crime that happened in some place at some time. Of course, it all turns out inconsequential. No-one knows what Jack did! Something happened, as Joseph Heller wrote several times in his novel "Something Happened," and the mysterious mood is carried over into this.

By the way, looking at that same list, I see something that is still in production: a television series called "Unrecorded Night." Will it come to fruition? Probably not, since he's no longer around to direct it. It's something for the postumers to do.

 

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1 On "The Alphabet"

 

The is like "The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even," only it's a motion picture! To me, they really do look alike. Art students! Can you believe it? At least he never got into interpretive dance. The universe would have either ended or given up on us altogether.

This was another extra, attached to something or other. Maybe "Eraserhead" attached it.

I note I'm refusing most summaries to all these. Why should I bother? There are plenty of summaries out there, and mine would only be cribbing from theirs. Entropy measures the excess meanings attached to things that don't cohere into a common narrative. Look at this, and don't look away. You have many thoughts about it, some of which you share with other people. Your idiosyncratic interpretations fade into nothingness as you discover other interpretations. You discarded interpretations can ideally be measured. A lot of entropy is generated by "The Alphabet." Whatever I tell you will be wrong, to some extent. I dropped my Kindle on my baby toe almost two weeks ago. It was purple, then red. Now it's pretty much healed, but still tender. I stubbed another toe on a chair this morning.

 

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14 On "Nine Inch Nails: Came Back Haunted"

 

I found this on the Internet a couple days ago, and it's terrible. First, the song is junk. The lines could be in any order. (Why was this done?) Second, the camera shakes in too many spots, and it's very annoying. (Why was this done?) Third, a good deal of it is taken up with shots of a figurine going back and forth in two positions. Who could take that? (Why was this done?) So, I really have to ask a question, and I'm only going to ask once: Why was this done?