Mulholland Drive (RIP David Lynch)

a useless and invaluable artist for the ages

Author

Matt Zeigler
January 20, 2025

I can’t tell you who let a couple of 15ish-year-old’s into the theater to watch Mulholland Drive, but somebody sure did.

My buddy’s cool older brother was a David Lynch fan. That meant my buddy, the younger brother, was a Lynch fan too. And, if you have siblings you know how it works, if older bro says the movie is a masterpiece and everybody needs to see it, we sure as hell weren’t going to miss it.

I’ll never forget the car crash at the beginning. The questions the movie raised.

Not so much any big philosophical questions (look, I was a teenage boy, ok?) but just the Lynch “what is even going on here” vibe.

I liked it. I liked the feeling of an arc, without a story you could ever grasp. I liked how I couldn’t take my eye off it, even if I was only left with more questions.

We left the theater confused and excited.

I’ve never re-watched the film (maybe my wife and I will give it a shot).

I also never went all the way down the David Lynch rabbit hole. It felt daunting. There’s so much, and with so few answers, it was always going to be daunting.

Sometimes you want homework. Sometimes you want to be surprised.

With his passing, all I can think of is how few times a piece of art has given me that level of shocked curiosity.

There’s something truly special in there.

When I saw Ben Hunt retweet this post from the author Walter Kim, it all kind of clicked into place for me (my emphasis added):

Many years ago the New York Times paid all my expenses and held out a nice check on the simple condition that I hang out for a few days with David Lynch and write up the experience. I did the hanging out part, but it didn't really amount to an experience. I couldn't get a grip on him, at all. Because there was nothing to grip. I'm not saying he was shallow, more that he was truly elusive, meaning the "self" that was in there, supposedly, was simply that of an artist in his off hours. Which is like the self of a vacuum cleaner in its off hours. Meaning it just sits there. In his case, he smoked and drank coffee while he just sat there. And sometimes he said something. Nothing memorable. Anyway, the assignment completely defeated me in a way that no other magazine assignment ever has. I think I'll write about this at greater length soon, this non-experience I had with someone so eccentric he didn't even come off as an eccentric, but suffice it to say I'm sorry to hear he's gone. He kept alive in the minds of millions the figure of the artist, the artist as individual, useless to society at large and therefore invaluable to all.

This is a tribute by the way.

Walter Kim, on X,

How many artists can someone say something like THAT about?

Make them feel something.

It’s everything.