Gabriel Hart and Gib Strange
on
David Lynch’s Inland Empire & Crispin Glover’s What is it?

December of 2006 offered Los Angeles two refreshing films with a new cinematic outlook for the New Year. The first was Inland Empire, a film “about a woman in trouble” according to it’s director, David Lynch. Laura Dern stars as an actress who falls deeply into her role after discovering that the film she’s starring in, a script based on a gypsy folk tale, has already been in production once but was never finished due to the mysterious death of the lead actress.

The second film was What is it?, a film characterized by it’s director Crispin Glover as “Being the adventures of a young man whose principle interests are snails, salt, a pipe, and how to get home. As tormented by an hubristic, racist inner psyche.” In the film, whose cast is comprised mostly of actors with Down’s syndrome, Glover presents the surreal outer and inner struggles of a young man lost in a strange world.

Musician Gabrielle Hart and writer Gib Strange had the pleasure of catching both films. Here they continue the shameless pontification and pompous bloviating that began when the theater lights came up.

Gib- What were the reactions that you’ve noticed from people who’ve seen Inland Empire?

Gabe- Interesting. It’s kind of like the people I really trust like it, and the people I don’t trust end up not liking it. The film, I think, is like a big initiation in a lot of different ways just in attention span and imagination. Usually the people who’ve seen the movie and like the movie are people I can usually have endless gutsy conversations with and I can usually talk to them about anything and trail off on God knows what. Whereas the people that didn’t like it are kind of, no offense to anyone, but sort of squirmy types.

Gib- (laughs) I’ve definitely noticed that people who tried to process the film as it was happening and sort of make heads or tails of it as it was running, those were the people who didn’t like it.

Gabe (left) and Gib (right)

Gabe- It’s a total commitment. Most art, I think should be. Art I don’t think should be this accessible easily digestible thing. The film is probably one of the only movies to that degree, where I felt like I personally was going through every single twitch of emotion that Laura Dern was. I think what happens in the movie that people miss is that Lynch creates this completely all permeating dementia for the audience which is actually what Laura Dern was kind of going through when she’s gotten trapped in this film essentially.
Yeah, it was a completely psychedelic experience for me. I have a pretty overactive imagination as it is, but it triggered something in me that made me almost question what was going on in the reality of actually being in that theater. Carolyn, who I saw it with, she felt the same, she felt like she wasn’t sure what was real and what was not after getting out of the movie. For a person like her, whose never done psychedelics at all, she said she felt like she was on drugs afterwards. To me, that’s a real testament to the power of the movie.

Gib- And the power of film in general. I’ve always dreamed of a movie where stuff would happen to the characters in it, but more than that stuff would happen to the movie. The kind of movie it was would change as it grew. Coincidentally, I tried to make a movie like that, and Austin Lynch, David’s son, who I went to college with was in that film. But that’s what I felt like this movie was getting into. It had act one with a very linear narrative but act 2 and 3 where the viewer was constantly being made to shift.

Gabe- Yeah. Again, I hate to bring up the psychedelics thing, but people who have bad trips are resisting something, like the stream of consciousness that it’s supposed to trigger. People who didn’t like the movie were resisting something. This isn’t to say that I think people who didn’t like the movie are shitty, but it’s like they’re from a different breed almost.

Gib- A different species. Yeah, I think—Hey, have a doughnut, Gabe.

Gabe- Are there any ones with nuts left?

Gib- Yeah… So you’re saying, bad trips are caused by people being too attached to consciousness as they know it?

Gabe- Yeah, exactly.

Gib- People say David Lynch movies are like dreams, which is a little too easy, but I do feel like they are closer to the facts of memory and perception, how memory works, etc.

Gabe- The human mind is just one big tape reel of everything you’ve seen, touched, felt, and heard in your whole life—

Gib- And all that stuff is echoing around up there.

Gabe- Yeah, memory in general, is never going to be accurate. That’s why everyone’s memory of something that they’ve collectively gone through—everyone’s always going to have a different story. That’s a lot like what happens in Inland Empire and Mulholland Drive.

Gib- In Lost Highway, Bill Pullman’s character says, “I like to remember things my own way…” In that movie, he’s seen killing his wife on video and Robert Blake’s kind of Satan character—

Gabe- Robert Blake was almost like his, Jung calls it your shadow, it’s like the deep recesses of your brain where all the guilt kind of gets stored and ferments.

Gib- Right. He had the powers of a filmmaker, he was high tech, he had phones and cameras and he could record things and manipulate things, which made him very threatening to Bill Pullman’s sense of reality.
But let’s talk about Lynch’s devotion to the transcendental meditation. You kind of grew up around that, right?

Gabe- I grew up in this place MIU in Fairfield, Iowa and the whole thing with TM is you’re transcending thought and rationality and you’re kind of almost transcending or bridging the gape between conscious and unconscious in a sense by this process of repetition. You’re given a word, it’s more like a syllable and you repeat it over and over in your head and you could see it as hypnotism, self brainwashing, but it has really amazing results. Lynch’s whole devotion to that movement is having an influence on his filmmaking.

Gib- I’m looking forward to his book (Catching the Big Fish) about meditation coming out. You think things being more and more unfiltered from him—when I see Inland Empire I feel like I’m seeing it closer to the way Lynch discovered, being a big idea guy, I just feel the thoughts arriving more freshly than in past films and that seems like a result of his meditation progress, those unfiltered thoughts.

Gabe- Yeah, well that’s how he made it, kind of making it up as he went along.

Gib- Also his foundation for world peace is amazing. It doesn’t sound cheesy with his name attached to it. Somehow because he knows shadows so well, he also knows the light and if anyone can save the world it’s him. He should run for politics. I’d vote for him.
But back to his filmmaking, I feel like we need new ways to look at film. I think the problem is people have too many preconceived notions of what a film is. For such a young medium there’s an awful lot of expectations involved already. If this film and Crispin Glover’s What is it? can influence people’s approach to film-going, I think that’s a really positive thing. Like for instance, the novel has been reinvented so many times so many ways, but film narrative has been pretty unchanging since D.W. Griffith. The same kind of story, and there’s so few stories anyway, you know. The ghost town just keeps telling the ghost story over and over.

Gabe- Yeah. Exactly. People have been predicting the end of film as we know it for a number of years now, and I think something like this is one of the only things that can really save it. Inland Empire and What is it?, the whole revolutionary way that they were made is the only way that’s going to open people’s doors of perception to something greater. What do you think some of the correlations between the two, besides the obvious that they worked together and what not.

Gib- That’s a good question. Crispin credits Herzog, Bunuel, Fassbinder and Kubrick with being his main influences in the film but when he was 16, Crispin saw Eraserhead over and over and I have a feeling Lynch’s influence is sort of omnipresent for him. Besides that, Kubrick himself was quoted as saying Eraserhead was his favorite film, so these are all people of the same school of thought. Glover was up for a part in a comedy Lynch had written called One Saliva Bubble. That fell through but then they worked together with fantastic results in Wild At Heart. And Crispin had some very insightful things to say about it in my interview with him (http://halloweenallyear.com/articles_crispin.html). But there’s a huge mutual respect. They both have an intuitive approach. Glover intellectualizes more than Lynch, but he does that mostly after the fact.

Gabe- He might be more symbolic than Lynch.

Gib- Yes, more symbolic more interested in the actual psychology of things.

Gabe- Right. More into shock value as well.

Gib- Well, he hates that word. “Taboo” is probably closer to where he wants to go. Blackface and Nazi imagery find their way into his film. Of course there’s the Johnny Rebel song.

Gabe- Yeah, Johnny Rebel, the most notorious racist old country guy.

Gib- (Singing) “Some niggers never die, they just smell that way”

Gabe- In the movie, just to let the readers who haven’t seen it know, while that song is playing this older naked man with cerebral palsy is presented in a clam shell. He comes floating up to the frame and one of the reoccurring angels with monkey faces comes and jerks him off like she means it. Jerking him off while the Johnny Rebel song is playing. Pretty mind burning moment.

Gib- Crispin Glover’s someone who has worked in the industry since he was a teenager. He’s said that the film is a reaction to that. There’s a point in the film where he himself appears in the film and he asks how he should be addressed by these actors with Down’s syndrome. What should they call him? And one answers, “McFly?” (laughs) So I think Crispin has reservations about being too closely associated with Hollywood and celebrity.
That’s also going on in David Lynch’s world. David Lynch, I feel, is possibly enthralled and afraid at the same time of the power that cinema has. Because he knows it’s a dangerous tool.

Gabe- Oh yeah. It’s magic, like you and I always talk about. That’s something I never really realized until recently talking with you, how magical and scary cinema in general is. Think about—the director is basically assuming the role of God trying to get all of his followers to carry out this twisted vision of his. Whether it’s horror or a romantic comedy, it’s still totally frightening. It’s like you’re trying to recreate reality. I’m sure in the old hard line Christian days they would’ve burned filmmakers at the stake. If it’s in the wrong hands it can be very akin to black magic.

Gib- I was talking with my friend, Ryan about painting, which is such an old art form, and how it started off in representation and narrative, talking about cave paintings, you know. And with the advent of the camera, it’s sort of freed painting to be more expressionist and abstract and I feel like that’s what’s going to happen with film, when the next thing comes along it’ll be freed in a way.
But anyway, I was thinking about this theory about cave paintings—That these paintings of men killing prey were not actually a journal or a way of documenting the day’s events but rather that the paintings are—“If we paint ourselves killing a buffalo, God will send us a buffalo to kill.”

Gabe- Yeah. It’s practical magic—you’re willing something to be.

Gib- Yeah. So much of film is fantasy life and what we wish would happen that people are trying to will it into existence—and this whole thing meanwhile is just lost between reality and representation anyway. It’s in a zone that’s very ambiguous.

Gabe- That was an interesting point in Inland Empire—to sort of trail of onto something else—It’s amazing to me, well, I guess a lot of actors and actresses and people in the business are essentially crazy—

Gib- (laughs)

Gabe- —and out of touch with reality, especially the real successful ones. It’s amazing they’re not all completely schizophrenic. I have respect for them in a way, they must be really strong willed people if they’re able to keep a balance.

Gib- Then again, if they’re keeping a good balance, are they really giving it their all?

Gabe- Exactly. I think that was one of the morals, if there could be one, of Inland Empire. The movie itself, the story itself, taking the reigns and rendering the director powerless. The story was basically cursed, that they discovered something in the story and I just thought that was great the way they portrayed that.
But you got to spend a couple days with Crispin and interview him for the movie. What insights did you glean from that?

Gib- Well, he’s very serious about what he does. It was difficult because he had a script in his mind that he was reading off of, you know, what he wanted to say about the movie, and I wanted to get something the other guys didn’t, so that was challenging.
He’s got a great house, there’s stairways that lead nowhere and a collection of wax models of diseased eyes. He’s pretty much as you would imagine him to be. The funniest part was after the interview his phone rang and he answered it and he listened for a long while to the person on the other end and then he said (in Crispin voice), “Well, you know if you drink diet coke and then mix it with…” And he couldn’t think of the candy and he turned to me as if he and I had just been talking about it and I without missing a beat, said, “Mentos.” And he continued, “And mentos, if you mix them your stomach will literally explode! (laughs)”
But basically, I feel like with Inland Empire, there’s this misconception, this notion that David Lynch has gone too far, that it’s self indulgent or gratuitous, which is too dismissive. And Crispin’s getting accused of—for some reason people have it in their heads that he’s being weird for weird’s sake. But it doesn’t work like that, you don’t work on a film for ten years to increase your weird cred. So nothing could be further from the truth. To me there’s nothing weird about it, that’s a weird word, “Weird.” But he put a lot of work and thought into what he’s made. I’m looking forward to his next film which is premiering in January at Sundance. He’s a filmmaker that’s going to be watched and talked about for years and years.

Gabe- I can’t think of any new movies that fit into the bracket of these two films. I think these films could almost drive film back underground just by the fact that not everyone is going to be able to handle them. Even people like me who claim to have seen it all, I was shocked by some stuff that went on in What is it? and I was fucking covering my eyes during parts of Inland Empire because I was so fucking scared.

Gib- He got you.

Gabe- Yeah, he fucking got me. He always gets me. Just the fact that these guys are doing it from a grass roots level as far as distribution of these films.

Gib- It’s not even that they couldn’t get distribution, I’m sure they could’ve if they were willing to compromise but these are two people who’ve had enough of dealing with corporate entities. For artists of their caliber with that kind of pressure on them, for them to say, “No, I’m not going to play the game, it’s not worth it.”
These are two guys who stuck to their guns their whole careers. In a world were everyone tells you you have to compromise your vision. When you’re a teenager you hear these fairytales of these badass maverick rebels who go their own way but within a few years you’re just expected to play the game and go through the system if you want a career. I feel like if you believe enough in what you’re doing, and you see it through, whether it’s 7 years to make Eraserhead or 10 years to make What is it?, somehow the audience is there. I mean David Lynch, season 2 of fucking Twin Peaks is coming out on DVD. The fact that there’s a cult audience for that after all these years is pretty incredible. Some people are so unique that they become universally appreciated.
And for example on the reverse side there’s a writer like John Gilmore who I know from personal experience talks a lot about not caring what anyone thinks and going his own way but in private it’s all about numbers, “If I do a Marilyn Monroe book, will the readers be there, will I make money?” He lets the business side of things get in his way. And it’s just accepted for him, that’s the way things are done, for instance, I remember him saying, “Why do you think David Lynch put that lesbian scene in Mulholland Drive? To fill more seats.” As if the scene was out of the blue, when the whole movie is leading up to that kiss. It’s like a confession that Lynch wishes he was a lesbian. Anyway, totally different mode of thinking. I was so disappointed to find out how much time and energy Gilmore puts into marketing himself. But then again he comes from an acting background and actors have to sell themselves to the public constantly so he’s still thinking in those terms.
But I mean, David Lynch was doing publicity by walking a cow down Sunset, in an industry where millions are spent on the publicity for one film I find that very inspiring.

Gabe- Yeah, my buddy Edgar posted this thing on the internet saying, “LA’s such a weird place. I just went for a smoke break and I saw David Lynch walking a cow across the street and Laura Dern just waving to cars.” And I freaked out, I’m all like, “That’s so fucking amazing, that’s so strange.” Then I just thought for a second, “Yeah well, no, actually that’s perfect. That’s exactly the way things should be.”

Gabriel Hart
www.myspace.com/fortunesflesh
www.myspace.com/gabrielhartandhisupsetblackguitar

Gib Strange
www.halloweenallyear.com
www.myspace.com/Hemlock_Row

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