David Lynch: Beautiful Dark (The Scarecrow Filmmakers Series) [Hardcover]

Greg Olson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 28, 2008 | Series: The Scarecrow Filmmakers Series (Book 126)

For nearly 40 years, David Lynch's works have enthralled, mystified, and provoked viewers. Lynch's films delve into the subjective consciousness of his characters to reveal both the depraved darkness and luminous spirituality of human nature. From his experimental shorts of the 1960s to feature films like Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, and INLAND EMPIRE, Lynch has pushed the boundaries of cinematic storytelling.

In David Lynch: Beautiful Dark, author Greg Olson explores the surreal intricacies of the director's unique visual and visceral style not only in his full-length films but also his early forays into painting and short films, as well as his television landmark, Twin Peaks. This in-depth exploration is the first full-length work to analyze the intimate symbiosis between Lynch's life experience and artistic expressions: from the small-town child to the teenage painter to the 60-year-old Internet and digital media experimenter.

To fully delineate the director's life and art, Olson received unprecedented participation from Lynch, his parents, siblings, old school friends, romantic partners, children, and decades of professional colleagues, as well as on-set access to the director during the production of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. Throughout this study, Olson provides thorough analyses of the filmmaker's works as Lynch conceived, crafted, and completed them. Consequently, David Lynch: Beautiful Dark is the definitive study of one of the most influential and idiosyncratic directors of the last four decades.

Editorial Reviews

Review

A thorough-going critical study of Lynch's works in all media that is firmly embedded in a clear biographical narrative and backed by lengthy interviews with almost everyone in his life....The result is exactly the kind of complex, keen-eyed but sympathetic critical biography one wishes every great filmmaker could receive. (Dga Quarterly )

With unprecedented access to Lynch, his parents, family, and colleagues, Olson has captured and defined the raw, mysterious energy that flows through the works of this iconoclastic auteur. (College and Research Libraries News, February 2009 )

Olson's comprehensive biography of this highly original filmmaker contains a wealth of information, much of it previously unpublished. (CHOICE, June 2009 )

Simply put, the book, "Beautiful Dark" by Greg Olsen is a work of art...The one thing that hits you about this book is the amount of passion that Olsen has put into his work....Olsen covers nearly every imaginable work that Lynch has ever done to date and does so with great enthusiasm and passion. He insightfully moves between Lynch's works with a precision that is both refreshing and exhaustive at the same time. The result is a chance between two worlds...into a place where no one has gone before....So if you were hesitating picking this one up, as Coop would say, "Every day, once a day, give yourself a present..." And grab this book today! (Brian Kursar Dugpa.Com, 10/4/08 )

About the Author

Greg Olson is the Film Curator of the Seattle Art Museum. He has written on film for several publications including The Seattle Times, Moviemaker, Premiere and Film Comment. He has contributed to the books Vietnam War Films and Contemporary Literary Criticism. He is a board member of the Film Noir Foundation and a juror for the American Film Institute's annual 100 Years...100 Movies television programs.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 752 pages
• Publisher: Scarecrow Press; First Edition edition (September 28, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0810859173
• ISBN-13: 978-0810859173
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 2.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,049,320 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful Dark - A work of art..., October 17, 2008

By 

dugpa (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: David Lynch: Beautiful Dark (The Scarecrow Filmmakers Series) (Hardcover)

Simply put, the book, "Beautiful Dark" by Greg Olson is a work of art. Even though I had seen it coming for years now, I never expected it to affect me the way it did. I have to admit, that for years, being a long time fan of Lynch, I have read practically every Lynch related book, news article, and watched every interview that I could possibly get my hands on. After reading this book, I was overwhelmed to find out how much I didn't know about the man, and how much more I have come to appreciate what a beautiful person David Lynch truly is.

The one thing that hits you about this book is the amount of passion that Olson has put into this work. From the first page, Olson brings the reader into the personal world of David Lynch. Through interviews and conversations with Lynch, his family members, close friends, romantic partners, and professional colleagues, the result is an unprecedented, up close and personal view of Lynch's life that has never been seen before.

Olson crafts this work in a beautiful narrative that places the reader right up there with Lynch as he grows up and discovers art, film, music, life, and love. You are there beside Lynch through his relationships with his romantic partners, through his hardships, his pain, and his victories. At the same time, having written this book over the course of 10 years, Olson weaves seamlessly to narrate back to the perspective of a onlooker, detailing what it was like during various times over the years of how the public and media were reacting to Lynch's work, and what it was like to be alive and experiencing Lynch's work as it was happening.

Olson covers nearly every imaginable work that Lynch has ever done to date and does so with great enthusiasm and passion. He insightfully moves between Lynch's works with a precision that is both refreshing and exhaustive at the same time.

The result is a chance between two worlds... into a place where no one has gone before. Olson brings you to a seat at a table in a New York restaurant owned by Dino Laurentiis where across from you Lynch is laying his eyes on Isabella Rossellini for the first time. You are given rare access to stories from the set of Twin Peaks where we are told where the idea of creamed corn came from and what Mark Frost's reaction to it. Olson takes you on a magical journey to the set of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me as you watch Lynch gently kiss Sheryl Lee on the cheek. You become an onlooker of a tragic car crash that brings Lynch and his ex-wife together to care for their daughter, Jennifer through months of multiple back surgeries. As you listen to Jennifer, you come to realize why it is so important for Jennifer to follow in her father's footsteps.

I won't spoil the any more for you, however, I will say that this book gets my highest possible recommendation. Olson goes above and beyond to bring us a rare glimpse into the life of David Lynch and brings home the goods! So if you were hesitating picking this one up, as Coop would say... Every day, once a day, give yourself a present.... And grab this book today!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ever Wanted Someone To Explain Something But Not Ruin It?, February 14, 2009

By 

William M. Neal (Shell City, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: David Lynch: Beautiful Dark (The Scarecrow Filmmakers Series) (Hardcover)

This book is a gem. If even you're not a fan of Lynch, or movies, it can inspire you to great heights with the spiritual search of an artist...sure, there's plenty left out, and, in some cases, you really don't want to meet your heroes...but, so what? You get a sense that here is a person on a spiritual quest, not just a workaholic, or some kind of weird, driven "monster".

I've always wanted someone to tell me what they think, of what I saw, and this guy does it with elan. He goes through and, though maybe he just says his point of view, but for me, it explains a lot about the films I've seen, which, until now; a lot of them have been opaque. And, if you like a little mystery revealed, it is not so good. It's quite painful in fact. There's pain of course here, in learning of the lives of Lynch and his family and family of friends and co-conspirators, but plenty of pleasure as well. By the end of this heavy and very long (Almost 700 pages! Which read fast.) you sure wish like anything you too could write; or paint, or dream on canvas; and produce so much work that people got into it as much as you do.

Check out the book. Learn about Olson, Lynch, his family, friends, co-workers, and YOU!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exhaustive, Enlightening, Exhausting, April 17, 2009

By 

Matthew J. Gordon "barabajagal" (Collegeville, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: David Lynch: Beautiful Dark (The Scarecrow Filmmakers Series) (Hardcover)

It's taken me a couple of months to (almost) get through this book, which goes into great detail summarizing and interpreting each of Lynch's works. It definitely provides some insights into Lynch's worldview and his artistic approach, and of course the meaning of his rather mysterious movies. There is, of necessity in such a long book, some minor repetition, mainly to point out repetition in themes and elements in Lynch's work. It could probably have been broken into about 6 or 7 separate books, each handling one movie. Its only major flaw is that it takes until about page 573 until it offers even the slightest negative observation about the man or his work, so solid is its hagiographic belief in the man as an artistic and human genius. One gets the feeling (which the author admits is shared by Lynch) that some of the author's observations of artistic qualities in Lynch's works are probably accidental, incidental, or coincidental. But much of the insights are enlightening and insightful. I have not yet read the final chapter, on Lynch's INLAND EMPIRE, which I have not yet finished watching, as the analyses of the earlier movies would have definitely spoiled my experience if I hadn't seen the movies already- especially Mulholland Drive, which was fun to figure out on one's own. After watching the first two hours of INLAND EMPIRE, I am not so sure that it is worth the effort of trying to figure that one out on my own- it seems almost like a parody of a David Lynch movie in its utter incomprehensibility and confusion and interchangeability of space, time and characters- so I might just skip back to this book. If you are a fan of Lynch's works and want to understand them better, I highly recommend this book.