You’re reading Even Better Asks, a recurring series where the head honchos at Even Better come up with an open-ended question for our extended web of pals to answer in blurb form. Last time, we ran through our favorite music and film from the past year. Our prompt for this week continues the celebration of a once-in-a-lifetime career and body of work:
What is your favorite scene in a David Lynch film (or series)?
Eric Zhu — “In Dreams” from Blue Velvet
I just rewatched Blue Velvet, so for me, the scene that’s top of mind right now is the first lip sync performance of Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams,” the one that takes place in the apartment where Frank Booth is holding Dorothy Vallens’ husband and child hostage. For my money, the contrast between Orbison’s velvety crooning and the flat, dimly-lit shots of the apartment is the film’s most effective collision of Americana and its dark underbelly. There’s something about the way the petrified characters are just a bit too intentionally scattered across the room, with a random dancer swaying in the background, that’s perfectly nightmarish. Off to the side, Frank’s intimate, mantric obsession with the song is the alchemical touch that keeps me up at night.
Nick Adams — Henry’s walk home in Eraserhead
I love when Jack Nance walks to his apartment in Eraserhead. It’s a simple sequence—he’s just walking home—but it captures one of Lynch’s greatest strengths: his ability to create otherworldly, eerie atmosphere. There’s the dark ambient soundscape, the wide shots that linger after Nance has exited the frame, the offbeat humor as he walks over weird piles of dirt and steps into a puddle. He’s wearing an ill-fitting suit with visible white socks shuffling through a barren industrial wasteland. Completely mesmerizing.
Patrick Haynes — Bundle of Sticks from The Straight Story
As someone relatively new to David Lynch, coming on board when Blank Check did their miniseries on him, I found that my perception of his traits as a filmmaker was wildly skewed from reality. I think I had heard about the surreality of a few of his films and the Twin Peaks project and the dreamlike nature of his latter few films. I was not anticipating how empathetic of a filmmaker he would be. My favorite scene, and one of the most empathetic I can think of from any filmmaker, is the scene between Alvin — the man riding his lawnmower cross-country to visit his ailing brother in The Straight Story — and a young runaway in which he talks about a bundle of sticks and how those sticks can resemble a family. I don't particularly know why but that story about those sticks makes me tear up every time I see it. People don't tell you about this when they tell you about Laura Palmer screaming or Frank Booth yelling about PBR. David Lynch loves a family story and I loved watching him tell those stories. He has been and will be missed.
Chris Bench — Ed and Norma’s embrace at the beginning of Twin Peaks: The Return Part 15
“There’s some fear in letting go.”
Like an oasis of goodness in a series that literally invents evil incarnate in the hellish fire of a nuclear inferno.
A gentle hand entering out of frame and Otis Redding educating us all, that Ed and Norma have been loving each other too long, to stop now.
Good enough to make David Lynch cry, good enough to make me cry.
Matt T — “Shadow” from Twin Peaks: The Return
My favorite Lynch scene comes at the end of the premiere of The Return. After almost two hours of spending time in the Black Lodge, New York and South Dakota, David brings us back to Twin Peaks and the Roadhouse. Seeing Shelly and James again felt like seeing old friends again and as the music swells you hear the Chromatics sing “pretending that we’ll leave this town”. Absolutely magical moment where I knew we were in for something special. Still get chills anytime I hear Shadow. Thank you for everything David.
Dan Sostek — Tailgating scene in Lost Highway
I discovered my answer to this recently, watching Lost Highway for the first time. I know many point to the face-to-face between Robert Blake and Bill Pullman as the standout—or Billy P wailing on sax. But I could not stop thinking about the juggling act going on here. No hand-holding as to why Mr. Eddy is initially mad. Balthazar Getty's tepid reaction. The campy action. And the payoff of Loggia going absolutely insane. "I want you to get a driver's manual, and I want you to study that motha*****!" is just an all-time delivery. People loved his "weirdness" or whatever, but Lynch worked best for me when he was playing with irony.
Sam Bender — Chicken Walk in Blue Velvet
Since David Lynch died I've been going back and watching the movies of his that I never got around to seeing when he was alive. One of those was Blue Velvet and, while I don't know if it's my favorite ever, the "Chicken Walk" scene has been stuck in my head. The walk itself is hilarious, yes, but I can't stop thinking about the dialogue. Kyle MacLachlan and Laura Dern are walking down a suburban street and he turns to her and says he knew a kid who lived in the house they were walking past, and that this kid had the biggest tongue in the world. Because it's a Lynch film, you know immediately it's not hyperbole, the kid probably did have the biggest tongue in the world. While they don't show the tongue, you certainly imagine it.
Right before he does the funny walk, Laura Dern asks what happened to him and he says that the kid moved away and that all his old friends are gone. He seems quietly sad and melancholic in much the same way we all feel sad and melancholic a hundred times a day, and he buries that sadness with the chicken walk.
Ethan Beck — The Party in Lost Highway
The sound of the party disappears. Suddenly, it’s just Fred (Bill Pullman) and the Mystery Man, played freakish and stern by Robert Blake. The close angle of Blake’s makeup-caked whiteface – like Rolling Thunder-era Bob Dylan – makes the scene one of the most memorable in David Lynch’s Lost Highway. While Blake is fabulously ominous, Pullman’s performance is nicely reactive, a nearly cracking veneer for the whole scene. Eventually he mutters “That’s fucking crazy man” in response to the Mystery Man claiming to be in Fred’s home, letting Pullman’s bubbling rage and awe peaks through. The narcissistic wounds that underlie Lost Highway, making it such a vivid work about the injured male ego, get explained here. Why is there another man in Fred’s home? The Mystery Man tells all: “You invited me. It is not my custom to go where I’m not wanted.”
Elliott Duea — Club Silencio in Mulholland Drive
Being moved to tears and not knowing why. Feeling, before comprehending what or why you are feeling. Club Silencio is the Lynch experience itself. What we’re seeing in the scene is an illusion, the man on stage says as much. It’s a stage act (dream sequence?) in a fictional movie that is Mulholland Drive. Betty and Rita are in the audience of this fictional movie during this performance (dream sequence?), but the overwhelming emotions that they experience feel as true to me as anything ever has. Again, the host literally tells them it’s all a recording, an illusion, like movies themselves - but it doesn’t matter. When I watch Mulholland Drive, I am Betty and Rita (and Diane and Camilla) in the audience. I don’t always know what’s happening, and I’m well aware that what I’m watching is all a fictional recording on video. It’s a movie. But my god, every fiber of my being is rapt, shaken, changed. I am alive, and nothing feels more real than Club Silencio.
Shawn Cooke — Grace Zabriskie’s visit in Inland Empire
It’s always the David Lynch masterpiece you’ve watched most recently, which is Inland Empire for me — memorably, consumed about three feet in front of the TV, to get maximum air from the window A/C with every light in the house turned off. The carousel of nightmarish images will be forever etched into my brain, but what rises above them right now in memory is one of my favorite entrances and one-offs: the early sequence when Grace Zabriskie’s Visitor #1 wanders up to Nikki’s (Laura Dern) mansion in the glaring sunlight, only to say “hell-o!” to her new neighbors, before her descent into dark premonitions of “brutal fucking morder.” The tight, askew digital close-ups can barely contain her head in the frame, and drive home why Lynch’s singular approach to unnatural dialogue and performance was distinct enough to warrant its own term, while almost everyone else’s stab at this affect get a “hello, human resources!” from the moviegoing public.