Many of the best scenes from this stylish and unpredictable documentary are of David Lynch telling stories. This is a man with an apparently bottomless reservoir of true-life tales that are every bit as humorous, disturbing, and all-out absurd as the stories from his films like ERASERHEAD, BLUE VELVET, MULHOLLAND DR., and others.
For instance, there's the story about the time he became obsessed with "popping" an enormously bloated dead cow with his pick-ax. Let's just say the effort backfired.
Or the time he found himself pinned breathlessly against his steering wheel in the middle of traffic by a ponderous, house-eating floor sander.
Um...
Or there's that black and white French film ("But I swear there was color in it, although I don't know HOW!"), entitled "Blood of the Beast," in which the world's most efficient slaughterhouse makes a horse disappear in record time.
And on and on and on...
But aside from chronicling many of Lynch's alternately grotesque, hilarious, and sometimes even poignant, stories, LYNCH (ONE) also gives you insight into: Lynch the mad carpenter at work in his shops; Lynch the enthusiastic practitioner of Transcendental Meditation; Lynch the meteorologist, delivering idiosyncratic daily weather reports to his official website members; Lynch the iconoclastic artiste, brewing up a batch of baffling and compelling new works; Lynch the charmer explaining to Laura Dern the real reason why he calls her "Tidbit"; and even Lynch the rock star recording his distorted, otherworldly vocals to the INLAND EMPIRE theme song, "Ghost of Love".
And speaking of INLAND EMPIRE, quite a bit of this film is a fly-on-the-wall look at the unusual gestation process of Lynch's latest absurdist extravaganza. For those who still don't know, IE is a three-hour mind-bender (and the bonus disc provides 74 more minutes of footage entitled MORE THINGS THAT HAPPENED) that, two years after its release, absolutely no one on earth has a solid, working interpretation for. Check it out.
But getting back to LYNCH (ONE), the dvd is generously packed with bonus features which, although they can get a bit tiresome, contain all sorts of hidden gems throughout.
It should also be noted that LYNCH 2 (the follow-up to LYNCH [ONE]) is included on the sprawling INLAND EMPIRE bonus disc. L2 focuses on behind-the-scenes IE production footage, as opposed to LYNCH (ONE), which is more about Lynch's background, personal philosophies, and approach to craft.
All in all, this is a film that no Lynch fan, and no fan of INLAND EMPIRE, should ever pass up.
Oh, and happy Bastille Day!
