David Lynch: Surreal Encounters in Surreal Times

There has been quite a beautiful litany of tributes to David Lynch via every possible social media channel lately and they seem to continue still, around the clock, everywhere, and in a weird way, as far as my own content consumption is concerned, nothing has changed, as David Lynch content is pretty much the content I have always sought to consume, whenever possible. I am one of those people who can be categorized as a David Lynch fanatic, going all the way back to my childhood, and The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, Eraserhead, Wild at Heart, most of which I own rare original posters of, including foreign posters, and his daily weather updates over recent years, and I still think Lynch’s Dune is the best Dune (even though he hated it, despite it teaching him the critical lesson of never giving up final cut on your own movie.) I even collected his comic, The Angriest Dog in the World, which you will probably hate, but if you understand the guy enough, it’s the best. Watching Twin Peaks was the focus of my week when it first aired, and my fandom is so unfortunately developed that I even saw Inland Empire in the theater. I loved Inland Empire, especially because you could enjoy a good portion of the 3 hour film, doze off for a half hour, and wake up RIGHT into an outrageously brilliant cinematic nightmare still playing out on the silver screen in front of you. This can go a lot further but I’ll leave it there. You get the point.

For many years, on 9/11, I have posted on Facebook about my experience that day as a resident of Lower Manhattan, although one of the things I have never talked about, is why I didn’t leave the city IMMEDIATELY as would have likely been warranted and maybe even smart. I’ve always been one of those people who wants to be near my city when catastrophe strikes. Some of you will understand, some of you will not. We all have different relationships with where we live and for me, and for a lot of New Yorkers, it’s a unique kind of relationship. A little abusive. You know the drill.

But so the days and weeks after 9/11 were their own sort of devastating, unshakably strange experience. I remained in my apartment, about 100 feet North of Houston Street, and every day, 9/12, 9/13, 9/14, was a strange day. At first I was at the pile trying to help where I could. But eventually we needed to let the pros do their work, and return to our lives. And so the strange days kept coming. My apartment was filled with the haze that blanketed much of Lower Manhattan, an air purifier made no dent at all, and the National Guard had the island cut off horizontally, with vehicles preventing any access to the areas below 14th Street, as well as Houston Street. The island was practically empty, grief and devastation were everywhere, and shock, and all the things that you’ve heard too many times before.

The days progressed. Soon late September was approaching and I think the haze had mostly dissipated by then, but the downtown neighborhoods that remained habitable were still essentially ghost towns. And then it was the end of September. Normalcy did not return. Would not return, for a long time. In some ways, it has not returned. Again, another story.

The recent loss of David Lynch, an absolute fixture in my life, reminded me of 9/11. Because that surreal stretch of weeks, just 3 short weeks after that horrific, cataclysmic terrorist attack on our home, I had tickets to the US Premiere of Mulholland Drive at the New York Film Festival. October 6, 2001. I could not believe the screening was still on, despite it being uptown at Lincoln Center. It was almost as if, at that time, I was meant to stay, just for that. Especially because Lynch, Naomi Watts, and Laura Harring would be doing a panel after the screening.

I remember taking a taxi uptown, and the air improving (which is not usually the case.) I do not remember who I went to this screening with. I may have gone alone. It certainly wasn’t the time for a date, and many of my friends fled the city. Regardless, leaving the darkness of Lower Manhattan and escaping into a new world, albeit briefly, is something I will never forget. As the taxi cleared the National Guard at Houston, and then 14th street, and we hit 23rd, then 42nd, 50th, and so on, we finally arrived at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, at 65th Street.

And so I’m not going to talk about the movie here, but I obviously loved it, and somehow the screening was absolutely packed. It was in fact electric inside that theater and Lynch’s, Watts’, and Harring’s presence only heightened this. It only hit me a week ago that this night transpired just 3 weeks after 9/11.

After the screening, after the epic applause, the panel began. There was an interview by someone whom I cannot remember. And then . . . Lynch started taking questions from the audience.

Imagine an American audience, in Manhattan, seeing Mulholland Drive, for the first time, 3 weeks after 9/11.

What was absolutely remarkable, was that Lynch and the interviewer were selecting the audience members to ask their questions, and let’s just say they had a bad night. Every. Single. Person. They. Picked. Was . . . not the right person to pick to ask you about your movie Mulholland Drive. These people had no real understanding of who they were talking to, and what they just saw. And listen, I love Mulholland Drive. I don’t think it’s Streetcar. It’s not Lawrence of Arabia, but it is and clearly was, even then, widely regarded to be part of the canon. So anyhow, the people picked to ask questions kept on saying the same thing: “I don’t get it. Can you explain it!?!?!” They were practically PRESSING Lynch with their palpable frustration, over and over, to the point where people started laughing at how unfortunate the choosing of the questioners went. And when Lynch would answer cryptically at times addressing the importance of abstraction and mystery, the person would then say again, “But wait . . . can you just EXPLAIN it!?”

It actually became embarrassing to be part of this and it was so uncomfortable that I decided to leave.

I made my way through the theater which had its lights on at this point, through the lobby, onto the street outside the theater, and walked a little distance to the curb, standing in front of the parked cars, probably trying to decide whether I was going to take a taxi or the subway home. I can’t recall if the subway was running here on 10/6/01.

At the curb I was probably fiddling with my Motorola Star-Tac for 5 minutes, absolutely my prized possession at that point. And there were a few people walking by, a couple people emerging from the theater maybe, but just a couple. it was the standard general light foot traffic that we became accustomed to in NYC just after the attacks.

While I’m looking down, I hear footsteps getting closer, and they sounded like the kind of shoes you’d hear outside of Lincoln Center, sounding the way the bottoms of nice shoes shuffle across the sidewalk. I simply just noticed, but it wasn’t notable enough to look up for, especially when you’re the owner of a Motorola Star-Tac. So I’m doing something on the phone and notice the shuffling shoes get close, then closer, and then stop,. And then the sound of a lighter strike. The sound of this lighter strike is not just close, it’s directly next to me. At that point, I look up.

David Lynch is standing inches from me, smoking a cigarette.

And the car that I had been standing next to: his limo.

I would love to tell you that I am great in those situations but I am exuberantly not. This was DAVID LYNCH standing next to me smoking a cigarette, and I finally looked up and looked at him and he smiled at me, and it was such a big smile, and it was in fact, a mischievous smile, not just a warm, friendly smile, which was common of him, but because I was utterly frozen, staring at him, deer in headlights, and remember, I had just, many of us had just, seen MULHOLLAND DRIVE for the first time, I was simply utterly non-functional. I do remember hearing the sounds of the crowd starting to exit the theater, a good distance away, but it ONLY worsened the panic because the only thing my brain could produce was the thought: SAYSOMETHINGSAYSOMETHINGSAYSOMETHING and now the pressure was really on. I calculated that I had about 10-15 seconds to get something out of my brain.

And what came out was:

“DAVID! I UNDERSTOOD THE MOVIE!!!!”

In those flashing instants I am both proud of myself for even attempting to communicate and also able to realize that I am speaking and acting like I had just seen a brontosaurus rex. Not a good look in front of one of your idols, the moment after he premiered his Cannes Film Festival-winning masterpiece to US audiences FOR THE FIRST TIME. In those flashing instants I am at once exhilarated, humiliated, mortified, while also spiritually transported out of the hellscape that was Manhattan on 10/6/01, also having to accept that I likely appeared to be a malfunctioning animatronic human.

The crowd exiting the theater was getting closer, fast.

David, his grin bordering on what we sometimes refer to as a “Shit-eating grin,” says, “GREAT JOB BUDDY!” And he takes another drag and looks off into the distance, contemplatively.

By then one of my hands gained a mind of its own and frantically searched my pockets for the ticket stub. The crowd had reached us. A crowd led by Naomi Watts and Laura Harring. And just as they approach I manage to hand Lynch my ticket stub, and the ladies and this group simply envelope him as he signs my ticket, hands it back to me, through bodies, still smiling, and is swept away.

Surrealism was in the air.