Welcome to the wonderful world of Lynch.

The film has its indulgences in camp, and Stockwell's "excruciatingly poor" acting, as you put it, is one of them.

That last sentence in your post is really OTT - what makes you think you'll be personally attacked for posting about Blue Velvet? It's like you don't want any substantive dialogue about the film to take place.

Also, the use of Roy Orbison's "In Dreams" in the film feels appropriate, seeing how it must have been three years ago that I put a reminder in a post here that my polished spec script is available for reading at inktip.com. Thank you.

Thank you for responding in a civilised manner - my final comment was a response to some previous personally offensive replies that my posts did nothing to deserve - I am not an offensive person - thankfully most people on here are not either. I do want people to discuss any posts I put up - the more in depth the better - as long as it is about the film and not their personal assumptions about my intellect. Perhaps I was just unlucky to be the target of insulting behaviour on a few occasions - my final sentence was a reaction to that.

@strangebedfellows said:

Thank you for responding in a civilised manner - my final comment was a response to some previous personally offensive replies that my posts did nothing to deserve - I am not an offensive person - thankfully most people on here are not either. I do want people to discuss any posts I put up - the more in depth the better - as long as it is about the film and not their personal assumptions about my intellect. Perhaps I was just unlucky to be the target of insulting behaviour on a few occasions - my final sentence was a reaction to that.

Oh, that's fine. I just don't think that you started the thread in a particularly constructive manner.

I can't stand Lynch. I just rewatched Mulholland Falls a few weeks ago and even though I know he says the film is about the film industry, to me it's just unwatchable art cinema.

Join the club - it's just rubbish masquerading as art in my opinion.

Masquerading as commercial art. There's fine art and there's commercial art. Movies are commercial art. Lynch got away with making fine art films that were released commercially. I went to art school and had to listen to classmates rationalize their "art" all the time, which generally was how the "art" depicted this or that idea TO THEM, OR, it was explained as having different meaning to different people.

I always thought Lynch was one of those guys who just did weird sh!t for the sake of being weird. There are characters in his films that do things that just make zero sense. Spend the afternoon talking to a crazy person. It will have the same effect as watching a Lynch film.

I always thought Lynch was one of those guys who just did weird sh!t for the sake of being weird. There are characters in his films that do things that just make zero sense. Spend the afternoon talking to a crazy person. It will have the same effect as watching a Lynch film

lol!! Agreed.

@MongoLloyd said:

Masquerading as commercial art. There's fine art and there's commercial art. Movies are commercial art. Lynch got away with making fine art films that were released commercially. I went to art school and had to listen to classmates rationalize their "art" all the time, which generally was how the "art" depicted this or that idea TO THEM, OR, it was explained as having different meaning to different people.

As was recently stated on the board, different interpretations of something are what make discussion possible. If someone can produce something that feels like an "artiste" did it and reach a big audience, more power to them. Lynch wasn't the only artist to do this in the 80's or 90's.

I always thought Lynch was one of those guys who just did weird sh!t for the sake of being weird. There are characters in his films that do things that just make zero sense. Spend the afternoon talking to a crazy person. It will have the same effect as watching a Lynch film.

Agreed on weirdness for the sake of being weird - in certain Lynch films and to varying extents. The Straight Story is a sweet, relatively straightforward film by him that I greatly enjoyed... check it out if you can to get a different side of his output.

I'm not sure why "different interpretations" are necessary for a motion picture, other than for ambiguous endings, which I think are very effective sometimes. Motion pictures are stories. If someone told you a story verbally and had a bunch of unexplained gobbledygook in the story, wouldn't you immediately ask for clarification as the story unfolded? Or would you go home and wrack your brain trying to figure out why you wasted 90 minutes listening to nonsense?

Or would you go home and wrack your brain trying to figure out why you wasted 90 minutes listening to nonsense?

I totally agree with you. The whole point of a story is a beginning a middle and an end and a reason for all of it. I think that some writers are simply not capable of the work and effort and intelligence involved in plausible plotting and logical resolution so they leave a loose ends that they can't explain away and call upon the viewer to make up their own minds. That's not the viewer's job. If you can't end it - don't begin it - get another job.

@MongoLloyd said:

I'm not sure why "different interpretations" are necessary for a motion picture, other than for ambiguous endings, which I think are very effective sometimes. Motion pictures are stories. If someone told you a story verbally and had a bunch of unexplained gobbledygook in the story, wouldn't you immediately ask for clarification as the story unfolded?

Yes, because it’s a spoken story. Films have greater parameters than spoken stories, and as far as I am concerned, those parameters should be explored. To each their own; we all have our own individual cups of tea. As for the different interpretations, I see there being less purpose to the movie & TV boards without them, simply put.

@CelluloidFan said:

Films have greater parameters than spoken stories, and as far as I am concerned, those parameters should be explored.

Yes, greater parameters with which to illustrate what is happening in the story. There are visual clues, audible clues, clues in dialog, clues in mannerisms of characters, etc. Deliberately being vague in a film because of some hipster impetus to confuse the audience or appear as some kind of god-like artiste is dumb, or motivated by laziness as mentioned.

You like art cinema, fine, but commercial releases don't fall under that heading. If something weird or out of the ordinary happens in a motion picture, it needs to be explained. There ARE rules in screenwriting after all.

@MongoLloyd said:

@CelluloidFan said:

Films have greater parameters than spoken stories, and as far as I am concerned, those parameters should be explored.

Yes, greater parameters with which to illustrate what is happening in the story. There are visual clues, audible clues, clues in dialog, clues in mannerisms of characters, etc. Deliberately being vague in a film because of some hipster impetus to confuse the audience or appear as some kind of god-like artiste is dumb, or motivated by laziness as mentioned.

That's just your interpretation. I don't know why David Lynch made Wild At Heart so freaking strange. I like it like that. He happened to write and direct a good film in doing so.

You like art cinema, fine, but commercial releases don't fall under that heading.

Again, it's your interpretation. Can't you see how the labels are unimportant???

If something weird or out of the ordinary happens in a motion picture, it needs to be explained. There ARE rules in screenwriting after all.

You're taking it back to an earlier discussion we had about this stuff here. I'd be quicker to agree 100% with Strange Bedfellows' thoughts three posts back on how to make a film than with what you stated up above.

Wild At Heart is the least confusing film he's made outside of (I assume) The Straight Story.